‘You’re killing yourself’: The day Blues Brothers director punched his star

Drugs weren’t hard to come by on the set of The Blues Brothers, and actor John Belushi’s self-destructive, drug-addicted temper affected the set more than anyone could have expected.

Let us remind you that the movie tells about two brothers who have to collect 5000 dollars to save the orphanage where they grew up. To do this, they decide to reform their youth band: the Blues Brothers.

We are October 25, 1979, late afternoon. John Landis is extremely tense. He made his fourth feature film, The Blues Brothers, a rock and roll musical comedy. He returns to John Belushi, the comedian from Saturday Night Live, with whom he recently performed the comedy American College, in which he took over the screen.

Alongside the troubled Belushi, another of the film’s headliners, is his friend, also from SNL, Dan Aykroyd, who would go on to world fame with Ghostbusters. Their duet in front of Landis’ camera is expected to be a box office hit, but behind the scenes it’s a disaster.

The film is way behind schedule, it costs a lot and the shooting is not finished at all. One reason for the delay is Belushi’s cocaine-addicted lifestyle, which he takes all the time, except when he is forced to rest and then take Valium. He is mostly stunned. And on this day, October 25, 1979, he refuses to leave his caravan.

Landis, enraged, forces his way in to find his actor sitting, bloated, in a terrible state, hair disheveled, staring off into space. The smell of brandy and urine mingles, there is a pyramid of cocaine on the table.

The frightened director shouts at him:

John, you’re killing yourself! It’s economically unsustainable, don’t do this to my film! Don’t do this to me! Don’t do this to Judy or yourself!

Belushi remains haunted. Seeing that Landis has started pouring coke down the toilet, he stands up and starts walking towards his principal, who greets him with a punch in the face! Belushi, much larger than his friend Landis, fell to the ground and cried: “I’m so ashamed, I’m so ashamed”.

Convinced that he couldn’t do his job without taking drugs, Belushi would continue his self-destructive behavior throughout much of the filming, as well as the rest of his career, until he died in 1982 of an injection of “speedball” (a mixture of heroin and cocaine) during a party at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.

Considered to be one of the most promising comedians of his generation, he ultimately experienced only fleeting fame.