Neighbors (film)
Encyclopedia
Neighbors is a 1981 film
based on the book by Thomas Berger
. It was released through Columbia Pictures
, directed by John G. Avildsen
and stars John Belushi
as Earl, Dan Aykroyd
as Vic (renamed from the novel's Harry), Cathy Moriarty
as Ramona, Kathryn Walker
as Enid, and Lauren-Marie Taylor
as Elaine. The film takes liberties with Berger's story, and features a more upbeat ending. The screenplay of the film is officially credited to Larry Gelbart
, although it was extensively rewritten, to Gelbart's public disapproval.
was originally assigned to compose the score for Neighbors but was later replaced by Avildsen's frequent collaborator Bill Conti
. John Belushi unsuccessfully tried to have the film finish with a song written and performed by the punk rock group Fear
(Belushi had discovered the band and brought them to Cherokee Studios
to record songs for the film). Music producing partners Steve Cropper
and Bruce Robb
remember recording the band's music, but nobody knows exactly what happened with the final soundtrack which was ultimately replaced in the film by Conti's more traditional movie score. "How can I describe what it was like recording in the early days of punk?" said music producer and Cherokee owner Bruce Robb. "We had decided to track the song selection in order, and were on track 4 before the band realized they were all using different set lists. The irony is we couldn't tell." Upset with Belushi's antics and believing that Fear's music was inappropriate for Neighbors, the movie studio eventually forced the band off the soundtrack project. To make up for it, Belushi got them a guest spot on Saturday Night Live
.
.
David Ansen
, writing for Newsweek
, wrote that "Thomas Berger's paranoid comic novel could have been made a fascinating movie in hands of, say, Roman Polanski
, who knows how to make a comedy of menace. John G. Avildsen doesn't have a clue: you can't twist reality if you can't establish a reality to twist. Belushi and Aykroyd obviously got cast because they're "bankable," but no one seems to have asked if they were appropriate. The parts demand subtle comic acting – they do TV turns. Just how much blame falls on Larry Gelbart's disjointed script is hard to say (Avildsen could make any writer look bad), but without question Bill Conti has come up with the year's most offensive score – a cattle prod of cartoonish cuteness that only underlines the movie's desperate uncertainty of tone. The ads for Neighbors call it "a comic nightmare;" it's more like a sour case of creative indigestion." On the other hand, Roger Ebert
for the Chicago Sun-Times
awarded the film three stars out of four, and wrote that "Neighbors is a truly interesting comedy, an offbeat experiment in hallucinatory black humor. It grows on you." Ebert also wrote approvingly of Belushi and Aykroyd as the leads, citing it as "brilliant casting, especially since they divided the roles somewhat against our expectations." In his book Guide for the Film Fanatic, Danny Peary
wrote, "I think this surreal comedy is imaginatively done, and perfectly conveys the lunacy of the two comics...I'm glad they went against type because both actors are at their absolute best." Peary argued that the "final picture is faithful to Thomas Berger's zany, satirical novel" but noted that he prefers "the film's happier ending."
Neighbors was John Belushi's last film; he died in March 1982, less than four months after the film's release. It was during filming this movie that he relapsed into drug addiction. A comprehensive look at the film's troubled production can be found in Bob Woodward
's 1984
book, Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi
and also in the 2005 book, Belushi: A Biography
.
1981 in film
-Events:*January 19 - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquires beleaguered concurrent United Artists. UA was humiliated by the astronomical losses on the $40,000,000 movie Heaven's Gate, a major factor in the decision of owner Transamerica to sell it....
based on the book by Thomas Berger
Thomas Berger (US novelist)
-Biography:Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Berger was in Europe with the United States Army and then studied at the University of Cincinnati, and at Columbia University. He worked as a librarian and a journalist before publishing his first novel, Crazy in Berlin, in 1958. Berger may be best known for...
. It was released through Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
, directed by John G. Avildsen
John G. Avildsen
John Guilbert Avildsen is an American film director.-Life and career:Avildsen was born in Oak Park, Illinois, the son of Ivy and Clarence John Avildsen...
and stars John Belushi
John Belushi
John Adam Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, The Star of the Films National Lampoon's Animal House and the The Blues Brothers and for fronting the American blues and soul...
as Earl, Dan Aykroyd
Dan Aykroyd
Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter.-Early...
as Vic (renamed from the novel's Harry), Cathy Moriarty
Cathy Moriarty
-Career:Her first film credit was Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull in 1980, as Vikki LaMotta, the wife of Robert De Niro's lead character. Her performance earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also appeared opposite Andrew Dice Clay in the short-lived CBS...
as Ramona, Kathryn Walker
Kathryn Walker
Kathryn Walker is an American theater, television and film actress. She was with Douglas Kenney for many years until his death in 1980 at the age of 32, and was married to singer James Taylor from 1985 to 1995...
as Enid, and Lauren-Marie Taylor
Lauren-Marie Taylor
Lauren-Marie Taylor is an American film and television actress. She is perhaps best known for her role in the 1981 horror movie Friday the 13th Part 2...
as Elaine. The film takes liberties with Berger's story, and features a more upbeat ending. The screenplay of the film is officially credited to Larry Gelbart
Larry Gelbart
Larry Simon Gelbart was an American television writer, playwright, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...
, although it was extensively rewritten, to Gelbart's public disapproval.
Plot
Earl Keese is a low-key, ineffectual, middle-class suburbanite with a wife, Enid, and teenage daughter, Elaine. Earl's peaceful, dreary life changes when a younger couple, Vic and Ramona, move next door. Vic and Ramona both impose themselves on the Keese household; Earl is infuriated by the loud, gung-ho Vic, and flustered by the sly and seductive Ramona. Earl is frustrated by his inability to handle Vic and Ramona, and the way that he can never come up with absolute proof that the couple are doing anything wrong on purpose. Enid and Elaine are no help, and over the course of one night, the antagonism between Earl and his new neighbors escalates into suburban warfare. Earl begins to question his sanity, and the sanity of his wife and daughter. He realizes that his new neighbors have provided him with the most excitement he's had in years, and that they can give him a promising future out of suburbia and away from his family. In the film's closing scene, Earl joins Vic and Ramona, leaving his family behind and his house on fire.Music
Tom ScottTom Scott (musician)
Tom Scott is an American saxophonist, composer, arranger, conductor and bandleader of the west coast jazz/jazz fusion ensemble The L.A. Express.-Biography:Scott was born in Los Angeles, California...
was originally assigned to compose the score for Neighbors but was later replaced by Avildsen's frequent collaborator Bill Conti
Bill Conti
William "Bill" Conti is an American film music composer who is frequently the conductor at the Academy Awards ceremony.-Early life and career:...
. John Belushi unsuccessfully tried to have the film finish with a song written and performed by the punk rock group Fear
Fear (band)
Fear is an American punk rock band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1977. The band is credited for helping to shape the sound and style of American hardcore punk, the group started out as part of the early California punk rock scene, and gained national prominence after an infamous 1981...
(Belushi had discovered the band and brought them to Cherokee Studios
Cherokee Studios
Cherokee Studios was a recording facility in Hollywood, founded in 1972 and closed in August 2007 to make way for a new building, after 35 years of operation under the Cherokee name as a well-renowned studio...
to record songs for the film). Music producing partners Steve Cropper
Steve Cropper
Steve Cropper , also known as Steve "The Colonel" Cropper, is an American guitarist, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as the guitarist of the Stax Records house band, Booker T...
and Bruce Robb
Bruce Robb (producer)
Bruce Robb is an American musician, record producer, engineer, and music supervisor. He is most recognized for his active role in the formative years of the music industry: first as a member of “The Robbs” during the music revolution of the 1960s, then as a founder of Cherokee Studios in the...
remember recording the band's music, but nobody knows exactly what happened with the final soundtrack which was ultimately replaced in the film by Conti's more traditional movie score. "How can I describe what it was like recording in the early days of punk?" said music producer and Cherokee owner Bruce Robb. "We had decided to track the song selection in order, and were on track 4 before the band realized they were all using different set lists. The irony is we couldn't tell." Upset with Belushi's antics and believing that Fear's music was inappropriate for Neighbors, the movie studio eventually forced the band off the soundtrack project. To make up for it, Belushi got them a guest spot on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
.
Critical and box office response
For one test-version of the film, the head of Columbia Pictures, Frank Price, made the contentious decision to have quotations from positive press reviews of Berger's book assembled into a caption that would serve as a prologue to the film (this move prompted an angry missive from Dan Aykroyd). The final version of Neighbors was released to cinemas in December 1981. Although Neighbors was not a commercial flop, it received harsh reaction from both critics and from some fans of Belushi and Aykroyd, who were perhaps expecting a comedy closer to The Blues BrothersThe Blues Brothers
The Blues Brothers are an American blues and soul revivalist band founded in 1978 by comedy actors Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as part of a musical sketch on Saturday Night Live...
.
David Ansen
David Ansen
David Ansen is a reviewer and senior editor for Newsweek, where he has been reviewing movies since 1977. He came to Newsweek after several years as the chief film critic at Boston's The Real Paper...
, writing for Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, wrote that "Thomas Berger's paranoid comic novel could have been made a fascinating movie in hands of, say, Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
, who knows how to make a comedy of menace. John G. Avildsen doesn't have a clue: you can't twist reality if you can't establish a reality to twist. Belushi and Aykroyd obviously got cast because they're "bankable," but no one seems to have asked if they were appropriate. The parts demand subtle comic acting – they do TV turns. Just how much blame falls on Larry Gelbart's disjointed script is hard to say (Avildsen could make any writer look bad), but without question Bill Conti has come up with the year's most offensive score – a cattle prod of cartoonish cuteness that only underlines the movie's desperate uncertainty of tone. The ads for Neighbors call it "a comic nightmare;" it's more like a sour case of creative indigestion." On the other hand, Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
for the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
awarded the film three stars out of four, and wrote that "Neighbors is a truly interesting comedy, an offbeat experiment in hallucinatory black humor. It grows on you." Ebert also wrote approvingly of Belushi and Aykroyd as the leads, citing it as "brilliant casting, especially since they divided the roles somewhat against our expectations." In his book Guide for the Film Fanatic, Danny Peary
Danny Peary
Danny Peary is an American film critic and sports writer. He has written many books on cinema and sports-related topics.-Biography:...
wrote, "I think this surreal comedy is imaginatively done, and perfectly conveys the lunacy of the two comics...I'm glad they went against type because both actors are at their absolute best." Peary argued that the "final picture is faithful to Thomas Berger's zany, satirical novel" but noted that he prefers "the film's happier ending."
Neighbors was John Belushi's last film; he died in March 1982, less than four months after the film's release. It was during filming this movie that he relapsed into drug addiction. A comprehensive look at the film's troubled production can be found in Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward
Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....
's 1984
1984 in literature
The year 1984 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The book Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is widely read....
book, Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi
Wired (book)
Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi, is a 1984 non-fiction book by American journalist Bob Woodward about the American actor and comedian John Belushi....
and also in the 2005 book, Belushi: A Biography
Belushi: A Biography
Belushi: A Biography is an "oral history" biography of John Belushi, written and collaborated by John's widow, Judith Belushi Pisano and co-author Tanner Colby, with an introduction by Dan Aykroyd...
.