Customer Reviews

Belushi: A Biography

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John Belushi has been, I think, one of the most misunderstood late celebrities in recent memory. This was due in large part to a certain book by a certain reporter, whose name I won't speak here. Judy Belushi Pisano went a long way towards setting the record straight in "Samurai Widow," letting the public into her grieving process and the aftermath of John's death in 1982.

Now we've come full circle with this wonderful biography of the man himself, told by those who knew him best. John was many things to many people, and all facets of his life and personality are talked about in this book, often with amazing candor.

I also have to comment on the wealth of photos included in the book, many from the private collections of Judith and the Belushi family. They're a real treat to see (John was a very cute little boy) and add to the sense that this is a very personal biography.

Fans of John will love this book. It reveals the funny, kind, infuriating, generous person that we as his fans, who could only know and love him through his work, always knew he really was.

This book is full of wonderful photographs, it amazes me how
many of them make you instantly smile. Each chapter of the
book takes you through a chapter of John's life told by those
who knew him, loved him, and worked with him.

Reading this book gave me the opportunity to listen in on all
of John's friends and family sharing all of their experiences.
Hearing so many different ways to describe the events in
John's life, through so many different eyes, allows us to finally
begin to understand what kind of person he really was.

I knew all sorts of facts about John Belushi. But, now after
this book, I feel as I though I actually know the man. It is
this connection that inspires me to work even harder to keep
the memory of John Belushi alive.

Matt
[...]

Beautifully done...and now I really know, right from the start, how wonderfully talented John was. If you lived his fast paced life with tremendous pressures and being the best he could possibly be, you'd probably be hitting some drugs, too. Lets focus on who the man really was and about all of his close friends who really loved him. Judy Belushi Pisano does an excellent job putting this book together. What a talent she is a fantastic achievement. I couldn't put this book down and I have the rings on my ass to prove it !!! Now John would have appreciated that comment !

Most if not all of the facts of this book will not be new to John's fans. Especially those who have read the eight-or-so books already written about or by him and his friends and family.

And, title aside, it is not really a biography; it is an oral and pictorial history. But that is its strength. The voices of those friends & family come through, showing their love for the man.

But the interesting thing is, as awesome as some of the stories may be (especially to those who haven't read them before); the pictures do an even more excellent job.

Some of the photos were previously seen in SAMURAI WIDOW and WIRED, but most are never before published. And in them, you can see the buildup from Belushi's boyhood through the first three years of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Then the explosion when that show, ANIMAL HOUSE, and the Blues Brothers record all hit at the same time.

And then the fallout. Visually, I think you can mark the moment when the road turned hard for John; it's in a full-page picture, on page 172, of him in costume for 1941.

It's in his eyes. Look at most of the photos that precede this one, and there is a light in them, something that's growing, some kind of spark.

And though it's probably too simple to say that Hollywood stunted that growth and killed that spark, it's also, probably, accurate.

Because in most of the post-1941 photos, that spark is gone, with only a brief resurgence in the pictures taken during the filming of CONTINENTAL DIVIDE.

This was apparently a happy (if not always fun) time for John, and the pictures reflect that. Unfortunately, more so than the movie, which is enjoyable but instantly forgettable.

The key picture here for me is on page 222. It shows Belushi wrapped in a blanket, sitting on some cabin steps in his stocking feet. He's just sitting, and staring, and thinking of god knows what, but the image has an apparent vulnerability that the photogenic John rarely showed in pictures. He was a man who always seems to have known where the camera was and how to keep its eye on him. Not here.

But CONTINENTAL DIVIDE flopped, and in the photos that follow, he mostly looks wasted. I don't mean that with the drug connotation, I mean that spark was being denied again.

A note at the end proclaims, "This book is not objective," and it isn't, so bully for them for admitting it. It's an attempt to bring a loved one back to life by talking about him.

I grew up on "Saturday Night Live" and my favorite comedy is NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE. I remember the day John Belushi died and I've read WIRED at least three times. I've also read and reread SATURDAY NIGHT: A BACKSTAGE HISTORY OF "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE" by Doug Hill & Jeff Weingrad and LIVE FROM NEW YORK: AN UNCENSORED HISTORY OF "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE" by Tom Shales & James Andrew Miller. I also read SAMURAI WIDOW by Judy Jacklin Belushi.

So how could there be anything left to say?

I hesitated about buying BELUSHI but, after I picked it up and started thumbing through it, I couldn't put it down. And I couldn't put it down after I got it home. The stories are told by the people who were at ground zero in Belushi's life and the photos are new and personal.

This is a great book for the person discovering what a stormy genius John Belushi was and for the long-time fan who thought he or she knew everything about him.
And BELUSHI is also for everyone else in between.

As Senator John Blutarsky once said, "NOTHING IS OVER UNTIL WE DECIDE IT IS!"

I was in the library a week before surgery looking for light fiction to tide me over a week of recuperation, when I saw "Belushi" sitting on a new non-fiction shelf and picked it up on a whim. I never got to the fiction.

Well-collected and organized first-person interview quotes, personal photographs, behind-the-scenes stories...this is a wonderful, yet cautionary, tale of the 1970's in America. I laughed out loud; tears came to my eyes. Thank you, authors.

Disclaimer: John Belushi was born in the same hospital (a few years later) as I was; one of his father's restaurants was two blocks from where I did some of my growing up; I was in Second City audiences while John was there; I've watched SNL faithfully since its first year; I saw even John's bad movies. Prejudiced I am-this is still an admirable, accurate, caring biography.

Belushi tells through recollections of those who know and worked with him the tale of the rise and fall of John Belushi. He was a man who craved fame but was torn down by it. He was forced to grow up young due to his home life, and as a result he never really grew up, clearly evidenced by the many memories of him acting as a boy would act in situations that really called for a man. Contrasting these instances are those stories where he manned up and did what needed to be done for his family or his work. As one who was always there for everyone else, it seems almost like he never cared enough for himself to ask others to help.

The photos and stories in this book are fantastic, many never previously seen by the public. The intimate retellings of private encounters and interactions with this comedic genius are wonderful reading. The self-destructive bent he acquired to cope with the stress of his unparalleled success is seen to evolve through the telling, with Belushi only trying to return from the brink after passing too close to its edge.

There were only a few minor quality-control issues with this fantastic work, most prominent being the typo in the footer for an entire chapter. Outside of that and a few other typos here and there, the book is wonderful.

Never realized how driven and comically brilliant John Belushi was and his legend will never be the same in my eyes after this book.

John Belushi, a man of laughs, a man who lived for an audience's
approval and cheers, John Belushi was an entirely respectable man and deserved to be remembered as a man of great worth among friends and colleagues, this book harrowingly displayed him as both, they did not write from a biased point of view, but rather from many perspectives, of friends and family. Every comedian should allow the utmost respect for such a spectacular man, John, may you rest in peace, knowing that all of your fans will remember you forever, we love you.

I Was born later(that same year) so I didn't grow up literally or figuratively speaking On John Belushi, But I heard about him growing up and saw re-runs and classic scenes of his Sketches, The Samurai, the guy who wouldn't leave, He was and is hilarious, I have seen the Classic "Animal House". The Man was/is a Legend, Sadly also a Tragic figure who can be compared to a Genius I did grow up on "Chris Farley". Belushi -The book- Is in Depth, Has Lots of Photos, History,and other tidbits about the man.