Wired (film)
Encyclopedia
Wired is a 1989 film
biography of John Belushi
directed by Larry Peerce
, adapted from the book Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi
(written by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward
and published in 1984). It starred Michael Chiklis
(in his film debut) as Belushi. Wired was both a critical and a commercial failure. The film has never been released on DVD, and the videocassette (released by International Video Entertainment, now known as Lions Gate Home Entertainment and later re-released by Avid Home Entertainment) is out of print. The film was marketed with the tagline "For John Belushi every night was Saturday Night."
shortly after dying from a drug overdose in early 1982, as he literally awakens in a morgue and is about to undergo an autopsy. Panicked, Belushi escapes and finds himself in the company of the enigmatic Angel Velasquez (Ray Sharkey
), a Puerto Rican cabbie who takes Belushi to significant moments in his life from the beginning of his career to the courtship of his wife, Judith (Lucinda Jenney
), into his burgeoning comedy career, his friendship with Dan Aykroyd
(Gary Groomes) and his eventual decline. The film alternates between Belushi as a ghost and his journey with Velasquez to flashbacks (in non-linear style) as his career starts to heat up. Meanwhile, journalist Bob Woodward
(J. T. Walsh
) is researching Belushi's life as he prepares to write a book about the late comic actor. Woodward's investigation leads him to Cathy Smith
(Patti D'Arbanville
), who procured drugs for Belushi, and the story climaxes with Woodward directly conversing with Belushi during the actor's dying moments.
Although Bob Woodward's Wired was a bestseller, it was criticized by many close to Belushi for its sensationalism, and the film adaptation did little to separate itself from the book's reputation (promotional material described Wired as "the film Hollywood didn't want made"). Like the book, the film was boycotted by several of Belushi's friends and family, including Dan Aykroyd, James Belushi
, and Belushi's widow, Judith Belushi Pisano
(two years after the release of the film, Pisano wrote her book (Samurai Widow
, 1991) to counter the image of her late husband portrayed in the original book
and this adaptation).
However, in many ways, Wired diverged from the book it was based upon. The film was criticized due to the addition of several fictional elements that were not present in the book, such as the guardian angel
character, and the addition of Woodward himself as a character (played by J.T. Walsh). Other difficulties for the filmmakers during production included their inability to obtain the rights to the original Saturday Night Live
skits that had made Belushi a star, and so they were forced to write imitations, e.g. "Samurai Baseball" (also, The Blues Brothers never performed "634-5789" in concert as they do in this film; however, Eddie Floyd
performed the song in the 1998 film Blues Brothers 2000
). However, the screenwriters did manage to work allusions and in-jokes to Belushi's film and TV routines into scenes and dialogue in the film. The film also alludes to the fact that Belushi's fictional guardian angel may not be sending him to Heaven
but possibly Hell
at the film's end when Belushi agrees to a pivotal pinball game.
The characters of Wired are a mixture of real-life people and obvious facsimiles. Judith Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bob Woodward and Cathy Smith
, in addition to Belushi himself, appear by name in the film, but other real-life associates of Belushi's were assigned fictional names. For example, Belushi's manager Bernie Brillstein
is represented in the film by Alex Rocco
's character "Arnie Fromson", and Belushi's minder Smokey Wendell is represented by Blake Clark's character "Dusty Jenkins". Many real-life celebrities who figured specifically in Belushi's life and featured prominently in Woodward's book (including Robert De Niro
, Robin Williams
, Ed Begley, Jr.
, Treat Williams
and Carrie Fisher
) are not depicted in the film at all. John Landis
, who directed Belushi in the films National Lampoon's Animal House
(1978) and The Blues Brothers
(1980), flat-out refused to have his name incorporated into the film and threatened to sue, causing the producers to label a generic name on the film director
who appears in the film. As played by Jon Snyder, the film director is an obvious lookalike of Landis during the Blues Brothers sequence, and in the scene where he is walking across the movie set, a helicopter can be heard in the background (a reference to the helicopter accident that occurred when Landis filmed Twilight Zone: The Movie
). The film also depicts the director punching a coked-out Belushi in the face during the filming of The Blues Brothers. This event, recounted directly from the opening of Woodward's book, was dismissed by Landis as "not true". Bill Murray
, who starred alongside Belushi in Saturday Night Live, also allegedly threatened a lawsuit against the film's producers if they depicted him in the movie. An obvious portrait is made of Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels
, played by actor Joe Urla, although the role is listed as Stage Manager.
One scene in Wired features Joe Strummer
's song "Love Kills
", from the soundtrack to Sid and Nancy
(1986) - another biopic about a celebrity drug casualty, Sid Vicious
(interestingly, both Sid and Nancy and Wired tell their respective stories largely in flashback form, and both films use the image of a taxi cab as a metaphor for the afterlife). In another scene in Wired, Billy Preston
appears as himself, playing a piano accompaniment to Chiklis as Belushi singing the song "You Are So Beautiful
" (co-written by Preston) in the style of Joe Cocker
.
The producers of Wired had problems finding a distributor for the film, as many of the major studios refused to distribute the film. Several independent studios such as New Visions backed away from it. Atlantic Entertainment was about to distribute it, but financial problems prevented that from happening, so Taurus Entertainment agreed to distribute the film.
Cast notes
.
Leonard Maltin
condemned the movie as "the film fiasco of its year... mind-numbingly wrongheaded." Maltin noted that Michael Chiklis "looks a little like Belushi but conveys none of his comic genius in some clumsy Saturday Night Live recreations" and that J.T. Walsh, "as Woodward, is an unintentional howl with the decade's most constipated performance."
Writing for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley dismissed the movie as "the silliest celebrity bio since Mommie Dearest
" and "a biography without an ounce of soul or a shred of dignity. Billed as a fantasy-comedy-drama, it manages to be none of these. The drama is laughable, the comedy lame, the fantasy without wings." Kempley described the film's direction as "ludicrous," the script as "preposterous," and also criticised Michael Chiklis' portrayal of Belushi: "Sam Kinison
might have played the part -- like Belushi, he's obscene, overweight, abusive and mad as hell. Chiklis, who does look and sound like Belushi, is rather cherubic in his movie debut. There's a Bambi
-ish quality to his portrait of debauchery, a strangely cute requiem for a funny man."
Also writing for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wondered if this movie is "what the real Belushi's family, friends and fans really need. Certainly Belushi deserves as much scrutiny as the next public figure who died after heavy drug use, but this autopsy seems unnecessary." Howe had no praise for Michael Chiklis' performance as Belushi: "Despite a histrionic outpouring of growls, snorts, yells and re-creations of familiar Belushi shticks, from Jake
Elmore
to Joe Cocker, Chiklis seems to miss every opportunity to redeem himself. He's loud where he should have been soft, flat where he should have been funny and dead where he should have been alive."
Vincent Canby
for the New York Times described the movie as "a bit fuzzy and off-center."
Roger Ebert
for the Chicago Sun-Times
wrote that the movie "is in some ways a sincere attempt to deal with the material, but it is such an ungainly and hapless movie, so stupidly written, so awkwardly directed and acted, that it never gets off the ground." He also criticized the movie's lack of authenticity: "There should be, at some point in a movie like this, a moment when we have the illusion that we are seeing the real John Belushi...That moment never comes. I always was aware that an actor (Michael Chiklis) was before me on the screen, and that Wired was an ungainly fictional construction. The saddest moments were the ones in which Chiklis attempted to re-create some of Belushi's famous characters and routines. He never gives us a living Belushi, and so why should we care about the movie's dead Belushi?", though he also said that Chiklis did a "good job" with his performance in his syndicated movie review show Siskel & Ebert.
Jay Carr for The Boston Globe
dismissed the film as "bummer theater...It's worse than crassly exploitative."
Caryn James for The New York Times
began her Wired review with the words, "There is almost no excuse for Wired, a film so devastatingly dull that it seems longer than John Belushi's whole career", before adding "audiences do not like their pop icons tampered with, and in biographical films such tampering is inevitable. Audiences bring to such films vivid images of people they feel they know, and they have consistently rejected films that fail to reflect that image...Any weeknight, viewers can turn on television reruns of the Saturday Night Live shows that made Belushi famous. And no matter how much Michael Chiklis, the star of Wired, resembles Belushi, his Killer Bee and his Joe Cocker imitation are no match for the highly visible, memorable, syndicated originals."
Richard Corliss
, in his review of the film for Time Magazine, singled out Michael Chiklis's "boldly percussive performance," but described the movie itself as a "turkey, overstuffed as it is with mad ambitions and bad karma."
Rolling Stone
labeled the movie "a howling dog...Whether by design or by forced compromise, Wired is even more of a gloss than the candy-assed view of Jerry Lee Lewis
in Great Balls of Fire!
. Far from pointing any fingers, Wired the movie hardly names names...it appears that nearly everyone Belushi encountered in big, bad Hollywood tried to warn him off demon drugs. Wired packs all the investigative wallop of a Care Bears
flick." The review also criticizes Michael Chiklis for capturing "none of Belushi's charm, warmth or genius. It's excruciating to watch Chiklis drain the wit from such classic Belushi routines as the Samurai, the Bees and the Blues Brothers."
The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard
section at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival
.
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
biography of 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...
directed by Larry Peerce
Larry Peerce
Larry Peerce is an American film and TV director whose work includes the theatrical feature Goodbye, Columbus, the early rock and roll concert film The Big T.N.T. Show, and One Potato, Two Potato , the first U.S...
, adapted from the 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....
(written by Washington Post journalist 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....
and published in 1984). It starred Michael Chiklis
Michael Chiklis
Michael Charles Chiklis is an American actor, voice actor, occasional director and television producer. Some of the previous roles for which he is best known include Commissioner Tony Scali on the ABC police drama The Commish, LAPD Detective Vic Mackey on the FX police drama The Shield, Thing in...
(in his film debut) as Belushi. Wired was both a critical and a commercial failure. The film has never been released on DVD, and the videocassette (released by International Video Entertainment, now known as Lions Gate Home Entertainment and later re-released by Avid Home Entertainment) is out of print. The film was marketed with the tagline "For John Belushi every night was Saturday Night."
Plot
The story follows John BelushiJohn 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...
shortly after dying from a drug overdose in early 1982, as he literally awakens in a morgue and is about to undergo an autopsy. Panicked, Belushi escapes and finds himself in the company of the enigmatic Angel Velasquez (Ray Sharkey
Ray Sharkey
Raymond "Ray" Sharkey, Jr. was an American actor best known for his role as Sonny Steelgrave in the television series Wiseguy.-Early life and career:...
), a Puerto Rican cabbie who takes Belushi to significant moments in his life from the beginning of his career to the courtship of his wife, Judith (Lucinda Jenney
Lucinda Jenney
-Career:Jenney began her acting career in 1984 with Hearts and Diamonds. Several roles followed throughout the eighties, appearing in the 1986 comedy The Whoopee Boys, the award-winning Peggy Sue Got Married, with Kathleen Turner and Nicholas Cage. She appeared as 'Iris' in the Oscar-winning film...
), into his burgeoning comedy career, his friendship with 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...
(Gary Groomes) and his eventual decline. The film alternates between Belushi as a ghost and his journey with Velasquez to flashbacks (in non-linear style) as his career starts to heat up. Meanwhile, journalist 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....
(J. T. Walsh
J. T. Walsh
James Thomas Patrick "J. T." Walsh was an American character actor. He appeared in many well-known films, including Nixon, Hoffa, A Few Good Men, Backdraft, Miracle on 34th Street, Breakdown, and Good Morning, Vietnam.Walsh was known for his roles as "quietly sinister white-collar sleazeballs"...
) is researching Belushi's life as he prepares to write a book about the late comic actor. Woodward's investigation leads him to Cathy Smith
Cathy Smith
Catherine Evelyn Smith is a occasional backup singer, rock star girlfriend, "groupie" and drug dealer, who served 15 months in the California state prison system for injecting John Belushi with a fatal dose of heroin and cocaine in 1982.Smith had been paid for a front page headline story in the...
(Patti D'Arbanville
Patti D'Arbanville
Patricia "Patti" D'Arbanville is an American actress and former model.-Early life:D'Arbanville, born May 25, 1951 in New York City, New York, is the daughter of Jean , an artist, and George D'Arbanville, a bartender, and attended PS 41 on Eleventh Street...
), who procured drugs for Belushi, and the story climaxes with Woodward directly conversing with Belushi during the actor's dying moments.
Background
Michael Chiklis won the role of John Belushi after being chosen over 200 other actors, and put on 30 pounds for the part. Many thought that Chiklis would never ascend to stardom for being the lead in such a negatively-received film.Although Bob Woodward's Wired was a bestseller, it was criticized by many close to Belushi for its sensationalism, and the film adaptation did little to separate itself from the book's reputation (promotional material described Wired as "the film Hollywood didn't want made"). Like the book, the film was boycotted by several of Belushi's friends and family, including Dan Aykroyd, James Belushi
James Belushi
James Adam "Jim" Belushi is an American actor, comedian, and musician. He is the younger brother of comic actor John Belushi.-Early life:Belushi was born in Chicago...
, and Belushi's widow, Judith Belushi Pisano
Judith Belushi Pisano
Judith Belushi "Judy" Pisano is an American writer, graphic designer, and artist. Born Judith Jacklin to parents Robert Leslie Jacklin and Jean Buchanan, the youngest of four children. Jacklin attended Wheaton Central High school in Wheaton, Illinois, where she met and began dating John Belushi...
(two years after the release of the film, Pisano wrote her book (Samurai Widow
Samurai Widow
Samurai Widow is a memoir by Judith Jacklin Belushi, the wife of comedian John Belushi. Judith wrote Samurai Widow in response to the negative portrayal of John in the 1984 Bob Woodward book, Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi and its subsequent film adaptation in 1989.The book...
, 1991) to counter the image of her late husband portrayed in the original book
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 this adaptation).
However, in many ways, Wired diverged from the book it was based upon. The film was criticized due to the addition of several fictional elements that were not present in the book, such as the guardian angel
Guardian angel
A guardian angel is an angel assigned to protect and guide a particular person or group. Belief in guardian angels can be traced throughout all antiquity...
character, and the addition of Woodward himself as a character (played by J.T. Walsh). Other difficulties for the filmmakers during production included their inability to obtain the rights to the original 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...
skits that had made Belushi a star, and so they were forced to write imitations, e.g. "Samurai Baseball" (also, The Blues Brothers never performed "634-5789" in concert as they do in this film; however, Eddie Floyd
Eddie Floyd
Eddie Lee Floyd is an American soul/R&B singer and songwriter, best known for his work on the Stax record label in the 1960s and 1970s and the song "Knock on Wood".-Biography:...
performed the song in the 1998 film Blues Brothers 2000
Blues Brothers 2000
Blues Brothers 2000 is a 1998 American musical comedy film that is a sequel to the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. Directed by John Landis, the film featured Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman, with cameos by many musicians.-Plot:...
). However, the screenwriters did manage to work allusions and in-jokes to Belushi's film and TV routines into scenes and dialogue in the film. The film also alludes to the fact that Belushi's fictional guardian angel may not be sending him to Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
but possibly Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
at the film's end when Belushi agrees to a pivotal pinball game.
The characters of Wired are a mixture of real-life people and obvious facsimiles. Judith Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bob Woodward and Cathy Smith
Cathy Smith
Catherine Evelyn Smith is a occasional backup singer, rock star girlfriend, "groupie" and drug dealer, who served 15 months in the California state prison system for injecting John Belushi with a fatal dose of heroin and cocaine in 1982.Smith had been paid for a front page headline story in the...
, in addition to Belushi himself, appear by name in the film, but other real-life associates of Belushi's were assigned fictional names. For example, Belushi's manager Bernie Brillstein
Bernie Brillstein
Bernard J. "Bernie" Brillstein was an American film and television producer, executive producer and talent agent.-Life and career:...
is represented in the film by Alex Rocco
Alex Rocco
Alex Rocco is an American actor. His roles have ranged from comedy to playing gangsters in Mafia movies.-Early life:...
's character "Arnie Fromson", and Belushi's minder Smokey Wendell is represented by Blake Clark's character "Dusty Jenkins". Many real-life celebrities who figured specifically in Belushi's life and featured prominently in Woodward's book (including Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
, Robin Williams
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...
, Ed Begley, Jr.
Ed Begley, Jr.
Edward James "Ed" Begley, Jr. is an American actor and environmentalist. Begley has appeared in hundreds of films, television shows, and stage performances. He is best known for his role as Dr. Victor Ehrlich, on the television series St...
, Treat Williams
Treat Williams
Richard Treat Williams is a Screen Actors Guild Award–nominated American actor and children's book author who has appeared on film, stage and television...
and Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Frances Fisher is an American actress, novelist, screenwriter, and lecturer. She is most famous for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, her bestselling novel Postcards from the Edge, for which she wrote the screenplay to the film of the same name, and her...
) are not depicted in the film at all. John Landis
John Landis
John David Landis is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is known for his comedies, his horror films, and his music videos with singer Michael Jackson.-Early life and career:...
, who directed Belushi in the films National Lampoon's Animal House
National Lampoon's Animal House
National Lampoon's Animal House is a 1978 American comedy film directed by John Landis. The film was a direct spin-off of National Lampoon magazine...
(1978) and The Blues Brothers
The Blues Brothers (film)
The Blues Brothers is a 1980 musical comedy film directed by John Landis and starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues, characters developed from a musical sketch on the NBC variety series Saturday Night Live. It features musical numbers by R&B and soul singers James...
(1980), flat-out refused to have his name incorporated into the film and threatened to sue, causing the producers to label a generic name on the film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
who appears in the film. As played by Jon Snyder, the film director is an obvious lookalike of Landis during the Blues Brothers sequence, and in the scene where he is walking across the movie set, a helicopter can be heard in the background (a reference to the helicopter accident that occurred when Landis filmed Twilight Zone: The Movie
Twilight Zone: The Movie
Twilight Zone: The Movie is a 1983 science fiction horror film produced by Steven Spielberg and John Landis as a theatrical version of The Twilight Zone, a 1959 and '60s TV series created by Rod Serling. Those starring in the film are: Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, Vic Morrow, Scatman Crothers,...
). The film also depicts the director punching a coked-out Belushi in the face during the filming of The Blues Brothers. This event, recounted directly from the opening of Woodward's book, was dismissed by Landis as "not true". Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
, who starred alongside Belushi in Saturday Night Live, also allegedly threatened a lawsuit against the film's producers if they depicted him in the movie. An obvious portrait is made of Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels, CM is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, and comedian best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live and producing the various film and TV projects that spun off from it.-Early life:...
, played by actor Joe Urla, although the role is listed as Stage Manager.
One scene in Wired features Joe Strummer
Joe Strummer
John Graham Mellor , best remembered by his stage name Joe Strummer, was the co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist of the British punk rock band The Clash. His musical experience included his membership in The 101ers, Latino Rockabilly War, The Mescaleros and The Pogues, in...
's song "Love Kills
Love Kills
-Cast:*Mario Van Peebles – "Poe Finklestein"*Lesley Ann Warren – "Evelyn Heiss"*Donovan Leitch – "Dominique"*Loretta Devine – "Sylvia Finkelstein"*Louise Fletcher – "Alena Heiss"*Daniel Baldwin – "Danny Tucker"*Robert LaSardo – "Diesel"...
", from the soundtrack to Sid and Nancy
Sid and Nancy
Sid and Nancy is a 1986 British biopic directed by Alex Cox. The film portrays the life of Sid Vicious , bassist of the seminal punk rock band the Sex Pistols, and his relationship with girlfriend Nancy Spungen .-Plot:The film opens with several police officers dragging Sid Vicious out of the Hotel...
(1986) - another biopic about a celebrity drug casualty, Sid Vicious
Sid Vicious
Sid Vicious was an English musician best known as the bassist of the influential punk rock group Sex Pistols...
(interestingly, both Sid and Nancy and Wired tell their respective stories largely in flashback form, and both films use the image of a taxi cab as a metaphor for the afterlife). In another scene in Wired, Billy Preston
Billy Preston
William Everett "Billy" Preston was a musician who gained notoriety and fame, first as a session musician for the likes of Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and The Beatles, and later finding fame as a solo artist with hits such as "Space Race", "Will It Go Round in Circles" and "Nothing from...
appears as himself, playing a piano accompaniment to Chiklis as Belushi singing the song "You Are So Beautiful
You Are So Beautiful
"You Are So Beautiful" is a song written by Billy Preston and Bruce Fisher and Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys. It was first recorded by Preston and made popular in a version by Joe Cocker....
" (co-written by Preston) in the style of Joe Cocker
Joe Cocker
John Robert "Joe" Cocker, OBE is an English rock and blues musician, composer and actor, who came to popularity in the 1960s, and is most known for his gritty voice, his idiosyncratic arm movements while performing, and his cover versions of popular songs, particularly those of The Beatles...
.
The producers of Wired had problems finding a distributor for the film, as many of the major studios refused to distribute the film. Several independent studios such as New Visions backed away from it. Atlantic Entertainment was about to distribute it, but financial problems prevented that from happening, so Taurus Entertainment agreed to distribute the film.
Cast
- Michael ChiklisMichael ChiklisMichael Charles Chiklis is an American actor, voice actor, occasional director and television producer. Some of the previous roles for which he is best known include Commissioner Tony Scali on the ABC police drama The Commish, LAPD Detective Vic Mackey on the FX police drama The Shield, Thing in...
as John BelushiJohn BelushiJohn 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... - Ray SharkeyRay SharkeyRaymond "Ray" Sharkey, Jr. was an American actor best known for his role as Sonny Steelgrave in the television series Wiseguy.-Early life and career:...
as Angel Velasquez - J. T. WalshJ. T. WalshJames Thomas Patrick "J. T." Walsh was an American character actor. He appeared in many well-known films, including Nixon, Hoffa, A Few Good Men, Backdraft, Miracle on 34th Street, Breakdown, and Good Morning, Vietnam.Walsh was known for his roles as "quietly sinister white-collar sleazeballs"...
as Bob WoodwardBob WoodwardRobert 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.... - Patti D'ArbanvillePatti D'ArbanvillePatricia "Patti" D'Arbanville is an American actress and former model.-Early life:D'Arbanville, born May 25, 1951 in New York City, New York, is the daughter of Jean , an artist, and George D'Arbanville, a bartender, and attended PS 41 on Eleventh Street...
as Cathy SmithCathy SmithCatherine Evelyn Smith is a occasional backup singer, rock star girlfriend, "groupie" and drug dealer, who served 15 months in the California state prison system for injecting John Belushi with a fatal dose of heroin and cocaine in 1982.Smith had been paid for a front page headline story in the... - Lucinda JenneyLucinda Jenney-Career:Jenney began her acting career in 1984 with Hearts and Diamonds. Several roles followed throughout the eighties, appearing in the 1986 comedy The Whoopee Boys, the award-winning Peggy Sue Got Married, with Kathleen Turner and Nicholas Cage. She appeared as 'Iris' in the Oscar-winning film...
as Judy Belushi - Alex RoccoAlex RoccoAlex Rocco is an American actor. His roles have ranged from comedy to playing gangsters in Mafia movies.-Early life:...
as Arnie Fromson - Gary Groomes as Dan AykroydDan AykroydDaniel 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...
- Jere BurnsJere BurnsJerald Eugene "Jere" Burns II is an American actor who has appeared in theatre productions and on television and is best known for his role as ladies' man Kirk Morris on the television series, Dear John.-Early life:...
as Lou - Clyde KusatsuClyde KusatsuClyde Kusatsu is a U.S. actor.Kusatsu was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he attended ʻIolani School. Kusatsu began acting in Honolulu summer stock, and after studying theatre at Northwestern University, started to make his mark on the small screen in the mid-1970s...
as Coroner - Tom BowerTom BowerTom Bower is a British writer, noted for his revelatory investigative work such as his unauthorized biographies.A former Panorama reporter, his books include unauthorised biographies of Tiny Rowland, Robert Maxwell, Mohamed Al-Fayed, Geoffrey Robinson, Gordon Brown and Richard Branson...
as Detective - Earl BillingsEarl BillingsEarl William Billings is an American character actor who may best be known as Rob in the 1976-1977 television series What's Happening!!.-Life and career:Billings was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Willie Mae Billings....
as Detective - Dakin MatthewsDakin MatthewsDakin Matthews is an American actor with a long history of work in film, television and theater. He is also a playwright, director, and theatrical scholar.-Life and career:...
as Washington Post editor - J. C. QuinnJ. C. QuinnJ.C. Quinn was an American film and theatre actor. His acting career included stage, television and film television roles.-Career:...
as Comedy coach - Steve VinovichSteve Vinovich-Biography:Vinovich was born in Peoria, Illinois, the son of Jennie J. , a secretary, and Stephen J. Vinovich, an insurance salesman.-Filmography:*Cold Case *8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter...
as Studio executive - Matthew Faison as Dr. Robbins
- Billy PrestonBilly PrestonWilliam Everett "Billy" Preston was a musician who gained notoriety and fame, first as a session musician for the likes of Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and The Beatles, and later finding fame as a solo artist with hits such as "Space Race", "Will It Go Round in Circles" and "Nothing from...
as Himself
Cast notes
- Michael Chiklis' participation in Wired derailed the actor's career for 18 months: "After Wired, everyone was afraid to touch me for fear of reprisal...It was a bittersweet situation. All of a sudden, I was starring in a major motion picture and the next thing you know, I'm being asked by reporters, 'Do you think you'll be blackballed?' I literally went from appearing at the Cannes Film Festival, with the whole international press corps asking me questions, to being alone in my one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn with the phone not ringing. All the dreams and aspirations I'd ever had in my life were in question. It was a humbling, scary experience." Chiklis later told James BelushiJames BelushiJames Adam "Jim" Belushi is an American actor, comedian, and musician. He is the younger brother of comic actor John Belushi.-Early life:Belushi was born in Chicago...
that he took on the lead role in Wired out of "love, respect and homage" for his brother, and apologised for any hurt he had caused the Belushi family.
Critical reaction
The critical response to Wired was almost uniformly hostile. Wired has an overall approval rating of 0% on Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
.
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...
condemned the movie as "the film fiasco of its year... mind-numbingly wrongheaded." Maltin noted that Michael Chiklis "looks a little like Belushi but conveys none of his comic genius in some clumsy Saturday Night Live recreations" and that J.T. Walsh, "as Woodward, is an unintentional howl with the decade's most constipated performance."
Writing for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley dismissed the movie as "the silliest celebrity bio since Mommie Dearest
Mommie Dearest (film)
Mommie Dearest is a 1981 American biographical drama film about Joan Crawford, starring Faye Dunaway. The film was directed by Frank Perry. The story was adapted for the screen by Robert Getchell, Tracy Hotchner, Frank Perry, and Frank Yablans, based on the 1978 autobiography of the same name by...
" and "a biography without an ounce of soul or a shred of dignity. Billed as a fantasy-comedy-drama, it manages to be none of these. The drama is laughable, the comedy lame, the fantasy without wings." Kempley described the film's direction as "ludicrous," the script as "preposterous," and also criticised Michael Chiklis' portrayal of Belushi: "Sam Kinison
Sam Kinison
Samuel Burl "Sam" Kinison was an American stand-up comedian and actor. Kinison was known for his intense, harsh and politically incorrect genre humor...
might have played the part -- like Belushi, he's obscene, overweight, abusive and mad as hell. Chiklis, who does look and sound like Belushi, is rather cherubic in his movie debut. There's a Bambi
Bambi
Bambi is a 1942 American animated film directed by David Hand , produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten...
-ish quality to his portrait of debauchery, a strangely cute requiem for a funny man."
Also writing for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wondered if this movie is "what the real Belushi's family, friends and fans really need. Certainly Belushi deserves as much scrutiny as the next public figure who died after heavy drug use, but this autopsy seems unnecessary." Howe had no praise for Michael Chiklis' performance as Belushi: "Despite a histrionic outpouring of growls, snorts, yells and re-creations of familiar Belushi shticks, from Jake
The 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...
Elmore
Elmore James
Elmore James was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and band leader. He was known as "the King of the Slide Guitar" and had a unique guitar style, noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice.-Biography:James was born Elmore Brooks in the old Richland community in...
to Joe Cocker, Chiklis seems to miss every opportunity to redeem himself. He's loud where he should have been soft, flat where he should have been funny and dead where he should have been alive."
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
for the New York Times described the movie as "a bit fuzzy and off-center."
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...
wrote that the movie "is in some ways a sincere attempt to deal with the material, but it is such an ungainly and hapless movie, so stupidly written, so awkwardly directed and acted, that it never gets off the ground." He also criticized the movie's lack of authenticity: "There should be, at some point in a movie like this, a moment when we have the illusion that we are seeing the real John Belushi...That moment never comes. I always was aware that an actor (Michael Chiklis) was before me on the screen, and that Wired was an ungainly fictional construction. The saddest moments were the ones in which Chiklis attempted to re-create some of Belushi's famous characters and routines. He never gives us a living Belushi, and so why should we care about the movie's dead Belushi?", though he also said that Chiklis did a "good job" with his performance in his syndicated movie review show Siskel & Ebert.
Jay Carr for The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
dismissed the film as "bummer theater...It's worse than crassly exploitative."
Caryn James for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
began her Wired review with the words, "There is almost no excuse for Wired, a film so devastatingly dull that it seems longer than John Belushi's whole career", before adding "audiences do not like their pop icons tampered with, and in biographical films such tampering is inevitable. Audiences bring to such films vivid images of people they feel they know, and they have consistently rejected films that fail to reflect that image...Any weeknight, viewers can turn on television reruns of the Saturday Night Live shows that made Belushi famous. And no matter how much Michael Chiklis, the star of Wired, resembles Belushi, his Killer Bee and his Joe Cocker imitation are no match for the highly visible, memorable, syndicated originals."
Richard Corliss
Richard Corliss
Richard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...
, in his review of the film for Time Magazine, singled out Michael Chiklis's "boldly percussive performance," but described the movie itself as a "turkey, overstuffed as it is with mad ambitions and bad karma."
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
labeled the movie "a howling dog...Whether by design or by forced compromise, Wired is even more of a gloss than the candy-assed view of Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...
in Great Balls of Fire!
Great Balls of Fire! (film)
Great Balls of Fire! is a 1989 American biographical film directed by Jim McBride and starring Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis. Based on a biography by Myra Lewis and Murray M. Silver Jr., the screenplay is written by McBride and Jack Baran...
. Far from pointing any fingers, Wired the movie hardly names names...it appears that nearly everyone Belushi encountered in big, bad Hollywood tried to warn him off demon drugs. Wired packs all the investigative wallop of a Care Bears
Care Bears
The Care Bears are characters created by American Greetings in 1981 for use on greeting cards. The original artwork for the cards was painted by artist Elena Kucharik. In 1983, Kenner turned the Care Bears into plush teddy bears...
flick." The review also criticizes Michael Chiklis for capturing "none of Belushi's charm, warmth or genius. It's excruciating to watch Chiklis drain the wit from such classic Belushi routines as the Samurai, the Bees and the Blues Brothers."
The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard
Un Certain Regard
Un Certain Regard is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's Official Selection. It is run at the Salle Debussy, parallel to the competition for the Palme d'Or.This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob...
section at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival
1989 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Wim Wenders *Christine Gouze-Renal*Claude Beylie*Georges Delerue*Hector Babenco*Krzysztof Kieślowski*Peter Handke*Renée Blanchar*Sally Field*Silvio Clementelli-Feature film competition:* Chimère by Claire Devers...
.