Michael O'Donoghue looks like a chemist in a A Marseille heroin lab who sells children on the side. He is main muse and writer on the phenomenally successful NBC Saturday Night staff. O'Donoghue's hair usually hangs damp across his head. He wears black ballet shoes which give him a dainty, light/lethal stride. Michael would be very effective with piano wire on a dark foggy street. Thin, delicate fingers are hidden most of the time but he smiles often, a charming cobra smile. It is usually followed by dry apreggios of laughter. Michael O'Donoghue could be blind. His eyes (assuming they exist) are always covered by deep, sea-green sunglasses. When he looses his water moccasin smile, the shades stay blank and dark. He is like that, functional and sinister. Michael is an orchid--rare, decadent, sickly. Pictures of beautifl nude amputees are tacked carefully to his wall. Fondled stumps and secret smiles. "What is John Belushi like?" he asks himself. The glasses darken. "Well, John can be a real monster sometimes."
Late at night, small sleepy men jockey elevators up and down for laughs. The seventeenth floor of the NBC building is restless with midnight noises. Lily Tomlin and Saturday Night producer Lorne Michaels drift by, taking most of their conversation with them. Linoleum footsteps slap down one hallway. It's like a hospital; always awake, often in pain.
"I'll tell you what middle linebackers are good for," John Belushi bellows into the rustling noise. "They're good for going to Germany and killing Hitler!" He kicks at his desk, knocking over Famous Tank Battles of World War II. "Just send them on some straight-ahead, ugly, behind-the-lines, bullshit death mission. That's what you do with them."
Belushi was and is a middle linebacker: mobile (despite a bad wheel from an acting injury); quick, grabby mind (for offensive formations and complex scripts), and the hot, full-throated killer instinct that kept Dick Butkus biting people in pile-ups. Johns moves to the action, the guts of the scene or situation, and reacts--often emotionally, but always with thrashing, tearing, creative movement.
He knocks over a bottle of tequila, drenching a half-written monologue. Both hands reach for his wide, pale forehead. "I haven't slept in three months!" Shadows of monsters play across his face. "Listen, pal..." He leans close, pointing a finger and arching an eyebrow for emphasis. "I just got back from New Orleans this morning and I am real tired and I still got to write and act in a show this week." He tips desperately forward. "I've flown forty of these fucking bombing missions, forty shows. They're goddamn suicide runs." He rises up, reassuring himself. "Hey, I'm an ace...I can handle it."
John straightens himself and begins sopping the liquor from his desk. Abruptly he leans over and pulls a piece of paper from a box full of rumpled, violated mail. "Listen to this." Assuming a very teenage expression, he reads, "Coke is sooo expensive these days. I'm really sooo high right now but I had to tell you I really love you. He jams the letter back in the box. "That crazy chick sends me tampons full of pot." Muttering something about African weed, Belushi begins ransacking Dan Ackroyd's (transcriber's note: Dan's name is spelled A-C-K-R-O-Y-D throughout this article) already abused desk.
The two comic assassins share a locker room of an office. The only things missing are a set of shoulder pads and some spare motorcycle parts. A bulletin board is blanketed with snaps covering the macho spectrum: Ackroyd, kneeling proudly, gripping two pump-action 16-gauge shotguns, an array of small arms spread out in front of him; John playing dead beneath a sedan; Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys; John wearing a gas mask in Philadelphia's disease-ridden Bellevue-Stratford. The Dick Butkus Story--underlined--is open on a book case, above which hang cue cards from Saturday Night's Star Trek sketch. There is also a photo of John poised gallantly as Captain Kirk with a Vulcanized Chevy Chase at his side. "That was my favorite bit ever," John explains. "That thing never worked in dress or any rehearsal. It really died. Shit, it was a ten-minute sketch, the longest up to that point. But I'll tell you, on the air it worked. We made it work."
Giving up on Ackroyd's desk, Belushi crashed back in his chair. He closes his eyes and rakes his stiff hair in several directions. "Jesus, I'm really stumbling through this week." For a moment he holds one expression. Belushi's face is a remarkable vehicle, capable of flying from Mussolini to Brando wih express stops at Truman Capote and Toshiro Mifune. It is a powerful, physical face; at times classically handsome, at times brutish. Even on a miniaturizing TV screen he translates forcefully; perhaps especially on a TV screen. Belushi dominates. Whether as a Samuri Hit Man or a castrating, demonic Ed Ames, he pulls attention.
The phone startles him. It is a close high school friend calling from Texas. The conversation is casual and bullshitty until John explodes into the receiver. "No, I'm not going to the fuckin' class reunion. Why? Because the coach won't show my game films. That's right. No films, no Belushi." He shakes his head. "Yeah, I heard about Prinze. That guy was an asshole for killing himself like that. For blowing his head off. You know, I stayed at the Beverly Comstock when we were doing the Beach Boys special. That's right. I know why he killed himself." Belushi pauses. "Cause the maid service is so bad in that place. Shit, I almost killed myself waiting for a clean towel."
He hangs up, takes another swallow of tequila and begins offhandedly, "About three months ago, or close to that, I thought real seriously about killing myself." He rubs the bridge of his nose. "I finally had almost everything I thought I could want and all these people started to involve themselves in my life. Pushing me in different directions. There were too many options." Belushi stretches dangerously far back in his chair. "I remember looking out a window from up here one night. You know, looking out and thinking, 'What the fuck--I could just walk out there.' But then I thought I would just let things take their course. I've always lived real fast. When in doubt, I floor it. I'd just let my lifestyle play itself out."
John looks very tired. "I'll tell you what kept me together: the people up here. When somebody is really in trouble, they kinda gather around you. One of the writers is down, his relationship is fucked, and we're trying to get him through it." He looks for a cigarette. "My wife and the people here saved me."
The tinny cassette speakers shriek Stevie Miller's "Rockin' Me Baby" as John staggers with an invisible guitar. He's power-chording all over the office. The song ends and he slips into Joe Cocker singing "The Letter." The head bends and twists, uncontrolled hands pull at thinning hair. It's terrifying. Belushi laughs. "I was working in a factory one summer. A real garbage summer job. And every morning that song would come on the car radio. I'd turn that fucker way up and sing my brains out. I guess I got good at it. I love that guy." When Cocker guested on Saturday Night, their long-awaited duet was painful--and hilarious. "I could have sung him off the stage. He just didn't have it...no power. I really held back." John turns down the Miller cassette. "The week he did the show I took him to the doctor a bunch of times, really took care of him. I almost lost my job 'cause of that. John shifts in his seat. "He really attracts slime. Bad people."
It's almost four o'clock and John decides to call California. ("I have a friend out there who's going crazy.") Speaking in comforting, sing-song tones, he warns the other end, "Never watch yourself on TV. It's neurotic to do that. You should know and be satisfied with knowing that you're brilliant. Stability is just a word, like security and sanity. Forget about those bullshit words, we don't need them." He plays therapist for awhile; it is wearing on him and he has almost finished the bottle of tequila.
Finally he hangs up. John's eyes slide shut every few minutes. When he pulls himself out of his chair to show me Polaroids of his cross-country trip, the bottle is upside down and is draining down his leg and onto the carpet. Not-Ready Player Garrett Morris walks in smiling. He extends his hand. "John, I just watched a video of the New Orleans show and you were excellent. Man, you really saved it." Belushi begins a wise-ass interruption and Morris jumps right down his throat: "Hey, don't step all over my scene here. I'm trying to pay you a compliment. Now let me finish." Forty missions, and these pilots are flinching, gun-shy, tasting even their own blood.
"Blood, urine and mucous. A pretty nice mix, huh pal?" Dan Ackroyd often sounds like Jeff Chandler jazzed on crystal meth. Today he is a Union cavalry officer, gray sideburns and all. He casually hitches up his pants and swaggers out of teh dressing-room toilet. Belushi, wearing a toga and a wig of cascading ringlets is a strange blend of Annette Funicello and Victor Mature. He is reading lines into his makeup mirror.
The two are awaiting a rehearsal castcall for a scene they will do before four or five million people--live. Danny leans forward and confides, "John, I snuck onto the fourth floor last week." Belushi searches for the implication. Danny continues, lower. "Do you know what they keep on the fourth floor? The TVQ. The fuckin' Television Likability Quotient; the survey more powerful than Nielson. I saw it!" He asks in mock panic, "Well, how'd we do?" "We're suckin' wind, pal." Danny smiles and his eyes flicker crazy. "Guess the order. Guess...
Forget it, I'll tell you. Jane, Gilda, Garrett, you, me and Laraien 'cause she's skinny."
Belushi's mouth drops, amazed. "Jane Curtin is the most liked person on this show?!" He shakes his head. "They musta polled Harlem! Anyhow, two years ago, Rich Little was Most Liked Man on television, so they give him a series and it power-dives." Danny agrees: "You gotta be a NTVPB to make it on TV: a No-Talent Visually Pleasing Bum."
Broderick Crawford is dying in rehearsal. He fades, shaking before the cameras and no one can help him. The soggy cop's face, slit-eyed in the prying light, tilts and pivots, looking for shade. Harsh directions from the darkness make him raise and arm or chuckle. The voice that bullied Judy Holliday, busted forgers and bought the state of Louisiana is a beaten imitation. It settles thickly in a cavernous studio 8H. And always the three cameras circle him; they pin him, slit him open and fight for what's left. But they owe him, those three-hooded, damp-eyed snouts poking lazily around. He rambles on about Jascha Heifetz and the good old days "right here in this studio."
"Inhuman. Those fuckin' things are cold, inhuman machines." Belushi lies back on a couch of the darkened set. Crawford is a silhouette at this angle. Lorne Michaels has both his hands dug deep in his pockets, designing some salvage. The crew is surprisingly quiet; only Crawford's choked monologue fills the room. John puts his hands to his face, wiping away the scene. "They're eating him up. They're killing him."
"John Belushi could never, will never, die onstage," says Michael O'Donoghue, drumming his fingers on his desk. "He just won't let it happen. Hey, if he has to, he'll throw wet bread at the moose, put a salad bowl on his head. John will go out there and get all the love that he can." O'D makes a fist. "He'll insult them, intimidate them, laugh with them--he will do what it takes. Those are the instincts of a very successful popular entertainer." He pauses. "Those are also the instincts of a very difficult human being.
But understand, John can also be very lovable. He's also a great, great instictive actor. He sails right in there and gets real dangerous." Michael lights a delicate brown cigarette. "You see, John has a phase he's got to work through: the star trip. He's young, probably never had much money, and now he's got limos and all this nose powder. John's got a real Judy Garland personality sometimes; he wants to grab a piece of the world and snort it."
O'Donoghue swells his chest and smiles. "John's got a fabulous ego, but if he gets through this and says, 'Hey, that was fun but I want to be a serious actor,' he could be one of the greatest ever." He points at me with his tobacco stiletto and warns, "What you have to remember is that it's that very self-destructive drive, that crazed, death-oriented gusto that does indeed put the edge on his performance." O'D smiles. "It gives him the edge and puts him over the edge."
O'Donoghue stands to leave. "The strain on John is unbelievable," he says. "Every week he goes out there live. Hey, that's like putting your hand on some highly charged battery and taking a real fuckin' jolt. I hope he gets through. Jesus, he could end up like Michael Pollard, a husk. You make a cross and he turns to dust."
Every picture in Lorne Michaels' sunny, well-ordered office is at a different angle. Portraits of Lily Tomlin, White Power Ku Klux Klan devotees, Paul Simon, girlfriend-model Susan Forrestal (an Avon Lady), Chevy, John and Michaels in Washington are all off-center. Bad-boy Belushi surveys his handiwork. The office is a blend of the prim and the insane--a neat description of Michaels himself. On his impressively old and massive desk is an equally impressive antique Emralite lamp. A fluffy big bird is strangling in a venetian blind cord and a rubber shark lies belly-up in the aquarium. John fishes around the tank for a goldfish floating belly-up as well. He somberly carries it to a potted plant and buries it there. Gilda is made up for holding. Warm, comfortable, she nestles against John's cheek and rocks to sleep. He starts kissing her on the neck. "Don't move," he commands. "I've got really good suction going here."
The more Gilda squirms, the faster John bobs her up and down on his lap. She holds up her hand to stop him and announces triumphantly, "Girls can fuck even after they're dead, y'know." John's right eyebrow leaps to his hairline. "That's right," she says, "and girls can always do it--boys can't." Belushi pushes her off his lap.
You look very important at Lorne's desk. Very good," Gilda flatters. Belushi immediately grabs one of the three phones before him and snaps in a modified Canadian accent, "Hello, Elaine's? Yes, I'd like the usual table for Saturday night, say elevenish." Grabbing another phone: "Yes, I know I've got a show to do, Ringo. Don't worry, I can cut out early." And another: "Carly dear, how does One Fifth around eleven sound? Great." Gilda trembles with laughter. After she leaves, John gets up from the desk and straightens all the pictures.
Looking up at the yellow-seated balcony that will be filled in a few hours, he says, "Listen, I'm not a normal person. I don't know anybody who's talented that's normal. Well, maybe with the exception of Bob Newhart. Anyhow, this face isn't prime-time TV star material." He mugs a matinee-idol smile. "Chevy has that and it's made him a fortune. See, that's personality. This show is all actors. We're not gonna burns up and become Arte Johnson--'cause the talent's there." Bill ("The New Kid") Murray wanders by glassy-eyed and muttering dialogue. What's incredible is that we get this show out, not that we handle its success.
You can work everyday, 100 hours a week on this show; it becomes your life. Each show is a lifetime. It kills you but it's also what I always wanted." He leafs through a copy of the shooting script. "I've taken that insane plunge into writing which keeps me from getting trapped. TV is real dangerous that way, so I always try to keep moving." He shapes a box with his hands. "It clamps you into a style or part, which is why I do different things. Like anything to avoid the traditiona 'Success Corrupts Hollywood Actor.' I won't be corrupted by any one thing. I won't let it happen." The Saturday Night band begins tuning up behind us.
If this show ever became something I couldn't do, I'd walk away from it. I wouldn't let it destroy me, kill all my confidence in the rest of my life. Look how many people it's killed. Not me, pal."
Cops and robbers, kids games like dodging pretend bullets behind the blue Chrysler parked on the corner. It had to be played close and for real or else it didn't work. Ackroyd and Belushi never grew up, or maybe grew up only so far and then refracted in some Jimi Henrix riff, snorting mescaline and going on to improvise before friends. Like light hitting a pool of water, the humor bends, shatters into crazy--sometimes ugly--tangents.
The Roof Garden is nestled on the eleventh floor of Rockefeller Center. High-finance shangri-la, "BusinessWorld," a place where burned corporate victims go to calm themselves--it's a hidden plateau guarded by vigilante scrapers. Danny and John play here sometimes.
"This a great for 'Auto Theft Monks,'" John laughs, surveying the paths and walkways built around thick walls, meditative structures. He places his hands together and intones, "Father, I have returned from working with the underprivileged street youths." Danny falls right in: "And what have you accomplished, my son?" John fishes into imaginary robes and replies, "I have learned new ways of hot-wiring late-model cars; Cadillacs and Monte Carlos in particular. I also bring you keys to customized Chevy van, the kind so popular with young people today." The two walk, heads bowed beneath a thick Gothic arch, down a narrow gravel path laid out in the garden. "You have done well, my son," Danny says benignly. "Tomorrow you shall go forth and steal accessories: rear-view mirrors, chrome exhaust pipes. There is much to be done." They smile religiously and file through the window to the elevator which takes them down to another, more important playground: Dress rehearsal.
Sissy Spacek drops her baton three or four times. Sissy never drops her baton, but dress rehearsal is one gloved hand around the throat. John fixes his blond wig and keeps moaning, "Ooooh baby. Whew. Feels sooo goood." He goes on soon as Jerry Lee Lewis, busted for among other violations, selling fish heads to minors, crossing state lines to incite a society debutante."
Dress is played like the real thing. There is an audience and there is a solid taste of live TV voltage. The studio floor is a lesson in field maneuvers. Huge cameras on dollies, boom mikes, cue card men and actors all square-dance inches from death. It feels like a strafed village. A woman grabs Sissy after her intro and pulls her wild-eyed to the dressing room. Belushi is remarkably casual. People fly by frothing and he stands and watches the monitor. The temptation is to give in to the panic and run screaming for the stage--to get it over with. John is an ace and he paces himself, trying to smooth out the ripping adrenalin--save it for game time.
Dress goes well except it is nearly twenty minutes too long. Almost a quarter of the show must be cut. Upstairs, the hallways are painted an institutional green. Like the inside of a destroyer. The writers seal themselves into Lorne's office for their ritualistically desperate group meeting. No one speaks in complete sentences; stutter or stumble and someone will run right over you. There just isn't time. In less than two hours, this show will be seen live by millions of people.
Dan is curles up in the dressing room, deeply absorbed in Better Management Through Computers. Ackroyd has a peculiar State Trooper/Android way about him. I keep expecting him to break character but he never really does. "John's got conviction, energy, drive. What can I say? The man's a genius. He's the best," Dan spits. "Only, sometimes he departs. Leaves the land of the living, becomes somebody else." He shifts position abruptly. "That's the comedians's disease."
The two men meet in that chopped Harley and large handgun nexus where they can turn into narcotics agents and shake down a writer in the street. Initially, the bond was so strong they always presented a united front when dealing with the real world. Through time and constant closeness, some drifting has occurred. Still, Ackroyd reaches Belushi like the best when the monster sets in. "I act like a parole officer," he explains logically. "I get incredibly straight, authoritarian and intense. It usually does the trick."
Air time and the monster is that blank, hypnotic red camera eye. The separation between off-camera and on; the inches between a darkened studio and coast-to-coast TV is too dramatic. You step through a set and you are on. There are no retakes or going back. There is a wild urge, standing a few feet from the light, to kick over sets and shove your way into a scene.
The power is addictive. When things fall right for John, when he is on, every outrageous gesture pays off. He owns the moment, soars with the media heat. It takes him days to come down.
My eleventh-grade Algebra II book is sitting on John's bookshelf. The same blue cover with the strange mosaic patterns shares space with a picture of Ernie "Mr. Cub" Banks and some silver goblets, a wedding gift from Brian and Marilyn Wilson. Judy Jacklin is making the whole scene perfect by guiding me through her husband's Wheaton (Ill.) High School Yearbook (class of '67). John is all over the place: captain of the football team (he was All-State honorable mention his junior year), homecoming king and his first real monologue--playing the coach in the Varsity Show. Belushi had the balls to play the Glorious Blue Fairy that same night. He had the courage and security to dress up in leotards, frilled tutu, blond wig and wand and dance around in front of his whole high school. Middle linebackers don't do things like that. Within five years he moved from a Universal Life Church coffee house in Chicago to teh legendary Second City (breeding ground for Nichols and May, Alan Arkin, Barbara Harris and later, Gilda Radner) to a spot on the debauched rock/comedy revue Lemmings to the National Lampoon Radio Hour and touring show to Lorne Michaels and a secure grip on the heart of Saturday Night.
Sweet blue-eyes Judy closes the year-book and laughs. "Sometimes I wake up and I think we're still in Chicago. It's been a weird few years." John stumbles out of the bedroom, a little beaten up by last night's show. He sits down to watch the first installment of Bionic Boy. Bionic Andy has a tough day: His sensitive nerve implants swell up and short circuit in his legs; he crawls up a mountain to find a sacred Indian cave, and he loses the big game. Still, as the episode ends and he is given a birthday cake, he can't blow out the candles; things are just too perfect.
John Belushi turns, misty-eyed, to his wife and stares with profound Albanian insincerity. "You know, honey," he oozes. "If today were my birthday, I couldn't blow out the candles." He smiles and deep caring creases his forehead. "Life couldn't be more perfect if I wished it."