John Belushi: The Final 24 (Full Documentary) The Story of His Final 24 Hours

[Music] march the 4th 1982 john belushi is one of the most famous faces in america [Music] hollywood royalty john wizard is an american hero and his life was an american tragedy we all thought we were invincible back then i mean who doesn't when they're 23 24 years old he was a good man but a bad boy but extremely funny he's a comic genius with a fatal flaw john did everything in his life to excess he was on a binge i was gonna go out there that night it was just that close tragically in 24 hours belushi will be dead poisoned by a toxic overload of drugs [Music] [Music] los angeles march the 4th 1982 it's midday and john belushi glides down sunset boulevard on his way to a power meeting it will be his last this is the beginning of his final 24 hours alive [Music] belushi has been using cocaine since he arrived in l.a four days ago his meeting is with the two men who more than anyone have been responsible for making him a star michael eisner the president of paramount pictures and belushi's manager bernie brillstein the purpose of the meeting was to decide what movie john was going to do for his commitment to paramount it was like george clooney they were coming to talk george or john into this movie [Music] at the meeting there's just one item on the agenda belushi's next movie eisner wants him to star in the joy of sex a farcical takeoff on a popular sex manual he's convinced it'll be a sure fire money maker they saw him as a as a star that could put people in the seats and there was a project that was hanging around the studio that wanted to get made they had an option on it they'd paid money get it's written and they saw john as the express way to uh to uh to get it done [Music] belushi resists his instincts tell him that the joy of sex will be a career damaging disaster and a personal embarrassment i don't need nothing you were saying you have to read it you're not going to believe it you know they said they want me to wear a diaper in this movie so it's going gonna open like i'm a baby in a diaper i promise you it's gonna be great during the meeting belushi receives a call from his friend and fellow actor dan aykroyd aykroyd gives him some advice oh don't do that piece of [ __ ] are you kidding me come on get away get away get out get away come home it's the spring things will happen over the summer or the fall we'll figure something out i was writing ghostbusters right then which he would have been in and i said don't worry john we're going to cover we're going to do great stuff you know don't be pressured to do this come home yeah bye bye belushi flatly refuses to do the movie it was very nice no one yelling was no crazy thing and it was finally decided that it was a stalemate you know no one was gonna do anything but belushi has a hidden agenda he's battling an addiction that's getting the better of him all right i'll get it for you how much does that cost me 1800 bucks john belushi god bless him as an addict a to z and just like every other addict it's a deadly disease and there's always reasons that people use but fundamentally it's the addiction that kills them just three years earlier belushi had the number one movie the top-rated tv show and the number one album all at the same time no other entertainer had ever done that well that's one of those career highlights uh that one gets once uh in a career uh john had soul man at the top of the record charts he had saturday night live at the top of late night television and he had uh the number one comedy in the nation and we all shared the abundance and it was a time of celebration and you know massive adrenaline rushes and uh just really good times was a heck of a ride it was a good ride most the time a couple times just hanging on but it was scary sometimes it was exciting it was fun it was um innovative it was different life with john was very fast it was it was it was it always was fast he always was on a fast track he had a lot to do it was very busy john it was a person who seemed on a mission in general in life like a little tornado he just went through life and and brought people along and i think uh that most people enjoyed their time but uh he did have more energy than most people belushi was a comic genius he was unpredictable outrageous a master of slapstick like heaton or chaplin any of those people and i would definitely compare him to those people as a comedian um he had a great ability to physicalize so he could make you laugh by raising his eyebrow [Music] he wanted to do more to branch out into more serious roles but the studios only wanted the belushi they knew from his earlier movies they'd love to have me do uh animal house goes to camp animal house joins the army animal house uh rides a space shuttle you know but uh it's not the way i work the trouble is belushi hasn't had a hit movie in three years and the pressure is beginning to take its toll has turned down the sex comedy the studio have lined up for him next he changes the agenda he's borrowed money from his manager before and now tells him he wants cash to buy guitar come on bernie and we had cash in the office and i gave him eighteen hundred dollars cash was me uh god knows i didn't know what's gonna happen but the money is not for a guitar to be at the meeting that he allegedly came here for and to ask for money for drugs in the middle of the meeting that's good drug addict behavior that's how they behave what's going through his head is where am i going to get my next hit what's going to where can i get drugs with 1800 in his pocket belushi's drug binge is about to hit a new and dangerous level belushi's cocaine addiction began seven years earlier on the set of saturday night lives america was ripe for a new generation of of humor uh and we just we we just hit it at the right time of course we were absolute rebels uh you know uh and really ill-behaved and uh really bratty and realized why me man i mean why me i think there was just an attitude of rebellion and irreverence and uh don't don't trust the old order um which was part of why the show could succeed in the late 70s there was also a new attitude to drugs cocaine was easy to source and the television industry was fueled by it [Music] monday we come up with an idea tuesday we wrote it wednesday we read it thursday we blocked it and saturday was on the air it was for a writer uh it was great we got to produce our own pieces we were given a lot of autonomy so from that point of view it was wonderful but it was video commando time we were live there was a lot of pressure and stress i relieved that by punching out the ceiling in my dressing room so i had a little more air people thought that was a temper tamper and that wasn't uh that was merely me physically trying to get a little more space in there because i was feeling claustrophobic uh we we you know we let off steam on the weekends after the show to be there and work there was to be like in a subway station for the rich and famous to be at a party where you know there'd be keith richards and william burroughs and barishnikov and uh andy warhol you know plus the cast plus people from hollywood you know all in the same place and so that's that's on that's sort of unduplicatable but it's also a great lesson because after that you know there's hardly a party that is going to really impress me now [Laughter] the cast once had to do four shows in a row without a break by the last week almost everyone was using cocaine to keep going it's three in the morning and you have to think of three more jokes before 5 a.m and you're falling asleep and someone puts out a line of cocaine you have to be extremely strong-willed not to do it simply because you need to stay awake not because you're going to be funnier for belushi and many on the show coke was seen as just a harmless stimulant virtually risk-free the entire culture had found this new thing cocaine and it's easy if i take a sniff you'll get far you're not putting a needle in your arm it's very clean it was perceived as a drug that would help creativity it would assist in loquaciousness and uh solving the world's problems and exchanges so it was just prevalent and ubiquitous and uh i think to john it was a something that kept him up at night it stimulated his uh you know his thinking but belushi seemed to be using more than anyone else he started going on binges i think with john in particular his appetites were always big and that's where you know part of his problem was he always did a little more than anyone else he always went a little longer than anyone else john was a man of the night he loved being john belushi he loved to sing in clubs and at the time i believe people were doing a lot of drugs and i don't think he separated himself from the drugs but it wasn't big-time drugs it was just really i can't you can't go back and understand that time there's a time of studio 54 there was a crime of great separation of young people and old people and a lot of people were doing drugs who couldn't handle them including adults people lawyers everyone so if you kept john out of trouble and kept him focusing on what he was doing and his career which he really didn't care about that well when you get hot so fast you don't have time to care you think more more they'll keep giving me more john had an insatiable appetite for for everything for for life or for all of the tastes and pleasures and sensations you know from you know motorcycle speed to uh you know to uh to a good you know to three pieces of cherry pie and he seemed like a bull people thought he could do anything and at that period of history people didn't acknowledge the potential risk there was a lot of sort of whatever sort of feeling about drugs now called no distinction between abuse and addiction addiction you can't stop even when you want desperately to stop it's a biological process it's different for different people and once you cross that line or throw that switch you're there it's really a question of pharmacology and biology than any real psychological issue the speed with which you get there sometimes has to do with what's going on emotionally with you because you're looking for solutions trying to feel better can't regulate can't trust but once you're there you're there everyone thought it was the hippest thing in the world and no one thought they'd die for me no without realizing it over the three years he worked on the show belushi developed the addiction to cocaine that he would struggle with for the rest of his life [Music] john belushi has 22 hours left to live using the cash he borrowed from his manager he's on a mission to score some drugs he's barely slept in the past four days he arrives at a friend's apartment she has a valuable contact who's also there kathy evelyn smith a dealer and junkie how are you doing welcome to ula how are you smith has spent years traveling with rock bands supplying them with drugs the three of them do coke belushi's wife judy is at their home in new york she knows he left for la on a mission to get high and try to stop him he was on a binge and you know i wanted to knew if he went back it wasn't going to end he had a mindset and uh just plowed right ahead made made the choice belushi's friend dan aykroyd is also in new york at his office just a couple of blocks from judy the thing is with john he didn't even have to buy it you know people loved him so much they wanted to hang out with him and socialize with him so they would buy it for him and give it to him like you know he would show up at a party and they'd automatically hear have fun and uh he would be collecting all this this coke and uh and it was you know judy judy's job and my job sometimes to to confiscate without his knowledge and to get rid of it with his wife and best friend on the other side of the country belushi is far away from those who care about him he now takes some of the cash he got from brillstein and gives it to smith sending her off to get more drugs this time it's not for cocaine belushi wants heroin he's losing control sliding deeper into his drug-filled binge and there's no one around to tell him to stop [Music] just two years earlier belushi and aykroyd were about to take the blues brothers on tour they'd created the characters on saturday night live and the movie had been a smash hit but belushi knew he had a problem and he wanted to deal with it for the tour he hired a bodyguard smokey wendell to keep him away from cocaine he said you know i have all this going on the animal house the saturday night um and i'm working on these other projects and all of a sudden uh it's just going too fast for me and if i don't somehow get a hold of myself and get control of myself i won't be around in the next two or three years smokey was great he was ex-new york state police ex-louisiana state police an ex-secret service he had gone with nixon to china he was a very colorful and wonderful character who had john's best interests at heart i was asking him why he was so dependent on it what why did you always have to feel the need to go because most of the time it's it's usually basically loneliness uh pressure um more insecurities in yourself that you can't live up to that and i i believe when we talked about it it was that people always wanting him to be funny people always wanting to be on there was no space so that's why he would have to go to candyland on belushi's last day the drug that had once offered an escape was now controlling his every move [Music] it's late afternoon and john belushi has less than 19 hours left to live after doing cocaine with kathy smith he asks her to score heroin belushi then returns to his apartment at the chateau marmont in hollywood [Music] he makes a number of phone calls first to brillstein saying he's changed his mind he will do the joy of sex after all next a call to michael eisner head of paramount telling him the same thing [Music] belushi now phones eisner's senior vice president jeff katzenberg and arranges to meet on friday sure in a typically outrageous belushi move he tells the paramount executive to give him a wake-up call okay katenberg writes it in his calendar thanks the executives believe belushi is now on board i have medical students every day in my unit and i always train them to put their fingers in their ears when an addict is talking to them because what they say is all [ __ ] it's all obfuscation it's all distortion it's all their brain trying to find a way to get them out of there so they can continue using so what you've got to respond in a with an addict is how they make you feel and learn to sort of intuitively read all that and so this issue of john weighing out scripts and being so disturbed by that there's no addict i know gets into that kind of nuance it's more that he wanted to go use he wouldn't do anything true to form the next call belushi makes is to kathy smith to find out if she's scored the heroine he wants to hook up immediately kathy it's john yeah how fast can you get here his brain at that point will be going use or die use or die the brain believes if it doesn't continue using and believe is not really an accurate word it manifests through neurobiological mechanisms that if the individual doesn't continue using they will die so use or die belushi shows no signs of slowing down he and kathy smith spend the next four hours constantly on the move buying and consuming drugs the pace frenetic and surreal [Music] at one point belushi calls dan aykroyd in new york he left me a message a slurred drunken uh kind of message that was just indecipherable and i heard that on the answering machine and then i just continued working but belushi's message worries aykroyd he'd been on the receiving end of these calls before he walks from his office to judy belushi's greenwich village apartment he and judy have to take action it was clear we you know had to stop help stop him try to get him some other kind of help um i think danny felt very immediately worried he may have been more in touch with the reality of it from having heard that tape [Music] they decide they have to rescue john and get him out of los angeles judy calls smokey at his home in virginia she said do you think you can find some time for john and i had always told her you know never thinking would happen i would say hey if you ever need time i will make time whatever i'm doing i would do and i was i said okay fine i'll be out there tomorrow smokey tells judy he'll fly to la and bring belushi home but tragically he didn't get to make that journey for her [Music] judy and john were childhood sweethearts they met at high school she was 15 he was 17. the first time i saw john he was on stage he was doing the varsity show the big event in town i'd seen a lot of these shows and he was one of the best and i knew it immediately this guy has talent they grew up in wheaton illinois a suburb of chicago john came from a family of hard-working albanian immigrants his parents weren't really happy together and i and i feel that he knew that sensed it and i think that you know kids are unhappy if their parents aren't happy and i think a little bit of his humor around the house and when he was young had to do with learning early that he could make his mother laugh that she was a good audience and um maybe a little bit feeling like by making her laugh he was making her happier but i i think also as he grew up he realized i know he said to me he could never make his mother happy and i think you know that's one of those things that kids really suffer from dan payne was belushi's high school drama teacher he remembers the first time he saw belushi it was at an audition the music director said well john what are you going to do he said and he just started well i was going to tell some stories and he started telling things you know he was like a stand-up and they were really funny and all you could hear the other students waiting to audition standing backstage they were all laughing so this guy said to me this guy's hilarious the kids just love him we're gonna put him in the show he fit in everywhere and i don't quite know why he was short he was stubby i never you know you've seen the pictures of him i don't think you'd say he was uh he was a nice looking kid good looking guy but he was not quote handsome uh he wasn't the big blonde idol kind of guy he was just sort of there you know and and but people he would just there's something about it was very magnetic personality by the time john finished high school he was the football captain the homecoming king and voted most popular student he liked to surround himself with people and always stood out in the crowd i would say that john needed uh the group uh he was he was a tough guy i mean alpha male illinois heterosexual toughy but with you know an open heart i mean he was very sensitive and vulnerable and this is partly the reason that he came to the demise that he did that he trusted people tragically on his last day belushi now put his life in the hands of a known junkie it was to be a fatal error [Music] it's now early evening and belushi has less than 14 hours left to live he and kathy smith arrive at the roxy nightclub a hollywood landmark that leads to an exclusive upstairs bar on the rocks celebrities can do what they want here without being bothered slipping through a side door into the bar belushi is agitated his mind racing he's complaining to anyone who'll listen about the pressure he's under to do the joy of sex and the pressure of being john belushi belushi and smith go to the bathroom [Music] a potent cocktail is being prepared a mixture of cocaine and heroin that produces an immediate euphoric rush it's called a speed ball [Music] belushi has just upped the ante he's about to inject cocaine and he's added a powerful opiate to the mix heroin [Music] it's an extremely powerful delivery of large doses of the drug to right to the brain and what you see in humans when they're delivering the cocaine by this mechanism uh they begin behaving like laboratory animals laboratory animals when you give them free access to cocaine will use straight for a couple weeks and die that's just about what humans do they will either run out of money or they will die and a binge and cocaine as i've said is where you the first hit feels great the next however many each one feels subsequently worse until you develop a psychosis it always develops you know you're going there and yet you can't stop from starting it and once you start you can't stop till you're done so you run out of money or something horrible happens to you [Music] [Applause] belushi and smith spend five hours at on the rocks making more than one trip to the bathroom belushi seems unable to stop by the way if john belucci stayed in wheaton illinois where he was born he would have been the same guy same way you can't blame someone for someone's drug problem it's the person who thinks he can handle it then often he can't and when you're doing drugs what would you want to drugs you didn't want a career john was really good at creating characters but he hadn't gone through the maturity which there's no age for it but i think maybe it was a little uh it was late he was 33 when he died he hadn't gotten to the point where he let go of the child and didn't let other people define him and and decided for himself that he was who he was a good person worthy of everything good that came to him and those kind of ideas that i think give you your strength and he didn't have that on his last day belushi is a shadow of his former self his body is slowly being destroyed by the drugs he's consuming [Music] it was all very different when belushi was in his twenties after college he moved to chicago with judy it was here he got his start at the training ground for america's top comedians the famous second city theatre he knew that night he said that night that this is what i want to do i'm gonna i'm gonna get i'm gonna get up here one day in 1971 he did he went straight to the main stage without having to train with one of the touring companies that had never happened before nor has it been repeated since [Music] oh it was incredible he walked on stage he didn't have to open his mouth one knew that he had enormous presence and then he turned out to be a good actor belushi was a high octane performer he pushed at the boundaries for the rest of the cast of course it was the perfect scene for john because he was given permission to be insane you know and john was one of like our bellwether he was at a broad point for us as our little comedy wagon train went out into the wilderness if john went wherever john went you know anything south of john was saying an actor has a very ambiguous position vis-a-vis an audience he has to expose himself to them so to speak and he has to ask them for his kind of confirmation and there's something in him that needs to ask and something in in him which hates that need to ask there was no sign of the addiction problems to come that were to destroy belushi when he was a second city i think he was still young enough and buoyant enough that he didn't need a lot of pharmaceuticals to amuse him he was so just thrilled to be on stage i don't think he was more pharmaceutically inclined than the culture around him he had an enormous amount of self-assurance and confidence way beyond either his age or his or his level of achievement he had he just knew he would make it and you knew he would make it chicago was i think a big formative time for john he was on top of the world there it was the safest place to be he was successful he was supported by his his teammates people would come in from out of town to look at him and say you're doing a great job come out and screen test for us we could always return home to chicago he could count on the audience to embrace him he knew what restaurants to go to he knew where to get coffee at two in the morning if he wanted to take a walk he had nice roommates he had judy who was fabulous and supportive in a rock it was a you know he still had a dream and so i think nothing could compare to those days after second city belushi got his break on saturday night live but everything changed when he won a part in the low budget movie animal house he became an international superstar overnight opening night i had never seen anything like in new york it was just just crazy the theater was crazy so it was a big night we were it was a premiere and it was in new york city and he was like you know one of the stars of the movie and it was um it was a moment of innocence because we went forward from that room and i don't think it was ever the same you know it just took a turn it wasn't all bad by any means there was a lot of good that happened after that but it was just sort of um a real moment that changed after that well you get to those heady atmospheres uh it's uh it it's sometimes tough to stay anchored and i think that that was certainly a factor in in the usage of the cocaine and the vulnerability of john the people who were preying upon him and kind of sucking his energy in that psychic vampire sense you know it had taken belushi just seven years to make it on his 30th birthday he'd reached superstar status he was number one in every medium film tv and rock and roll but in three short years he would lose it all [Music] it's close to midnight and belushi is still reeling from the combination of cocaine and heroin he's been injecting into his bloodstream after five hours at the bar belushi and smith leave belushi tells smith to stop the car he opens the door and throws up now they're heading back to the chateau marmont belushi's final destination at bungalow number three belushi rushes to the bathroom and is sick again belushi and smith smoke a joint he picks up his guitar strums a few chords and passes out a few seconds later he abruptly comes to [Music] 3 15 am kathy smith injects belushi with one more speed bull it will be his last [Music] two years earlier at the height of his fame belushi came close to beating his addiction [Music] before taking the blues brothers on tour he hired bodyguard smokey wendell [Music] smokey's brief was to keep belushi away from drugs he was put to the test on his first day belushi was in a recording studio learning a song for the tour wendell spotted an outsider talking to belushi these were people that would be commonly known as suppliers they would be able to produce party favors smokey watched the dealer go into the bathroom after talking to belushi smokey then went into the bathroom himself and found the drugs john went into the bathroom came back said a few words to the guy which i knew it was basically not whatever was there was no longer there so john went back in the booth guy went back in so we did this three times we played this game third time john was getting really annoyed with the gentleman smokey then approached the dealer standing by the coffee table and i said you know there are many ways to sweeten coffee i have to like sweet and low sweet and low looks very much like this and i had poured it into the coffee at that point i said to the gentleman i said you know we could do this all day i just don't know how much money you can afford to lose the guy like got totally very uncomfortable the dealer tried another tactic slipping some cocaine into a cigarette pack belushi announced that he wanted a smoke and picked up the cigarettes and he was going to put in his pocket well then i knew that there was a favor in there that turned into a physical altercation with john and i it was a tug of war and we were wrestling on the floor in the studio and the two guys that ran the studio they were i don't believe this i can't believe this and we got up and i said john look if you want to do this then you don't really need me here if you don't i mean this is gonna happen every day it worked we did a tour with the blues brothers and that was grueling because we had uh you know 20 shows in 16 cities and uh you know he we were able to meter the the dosages and uh and john have performed beautifully and effectively and we had a great lucid clear creative time and uh so smokey worked belushi kept clean for the entire tour he desperately wanted to win his battle against addiction and by the end of the tour he was in such good shape smokey felt it was time to move on [Music] and we had him working out and losing weight and and he would become he said oh yeah the highlight of my height tonight was i got two more push-ups in but he would laugh and that would be his way of saying i can do this he would find time to come and talk to me i would be asleep downstairs and he would knock on the door and it was basically i think he was at that point where he didn't want to sleep he didn't want to go out and he just wanted to talk and it would be about the work of the job plans ideas he has his wife how much he loved judy how much she meant to him and i mean on more than one occasion he would say to me you know whatever she needs whatever she wants i don't ever question you just do it and i said really and he said yeah i said well then you can't question why we're sitting here together because this is what she wants and he just smiled he said boy you got me again and that's when i knew as we kept bonding that he wanted this and then he was it was becoming easier and easier for him and at that point i was uh i was looking to move on to the next and i just said you know i think i think you're okay to go on and i remember him being so disappointed and i remember him saying to me what is it do you want a car do you want i'll pay you more i'll pay you i said it's not that you don't john you don't need me the following summer was one of belushi's happiest spent at his favorite place martha's vineyard it would be his last you know it was beers and wines and occasional occasionally a little the green stuff uh but uh no no powders or pills that summer and it's certainly reflected in the picture where he's standing with judy belly to belly he's got a blue shirt on and a hat and you can see how good his color is he's got the full weight on there's no gauntness there and it was a summer of body surfing jeep rides running on the beach dodging sharks that was truly he was truly off and relaxed then those were wonderful moments he did have more energy than most people and that was that was his uh you know need to slow down sometimes was a something he he had trouble doing but once he got slow he was real slow put him on a beach and he could stay there all day just keep bringing some food water you'll be fine [Music] at the end of the summer hollywood came calling again belushi agreed to star in the comedy neighbours with dan aykroyd well neighbors we shot at night on staten island and again at that time coke was ubiquitous and everybody was using it like coffee was it was to keep us up at night but for belushi it meant temptation he tried what we call white knucklet he tried to just avoid all this you can only do that so long it's like trying not to eat you can only go so long without eating eventually you're going to eat he stopped lots of times he had a fairly long success seemingly successful time but i you know in retrospect uh clearly whatever that was wasn't dealt with he was just in abstinence it's like the dry drunk you know um if you stop drinking but you haven't it's the same thing whatever that is whatever that's about getting people off drugs is the easiest thing in the world anybody can get off drugs the problem is staying off and that's where the whole treatment process comes in now many people believe a they can control themselves and you see this not a volitional process so they can't or that b they could substitute it with something else like exercise and yoga and all these things and that will work for a time but inevitably when there's a stress when there's uh drugs available they will relapse he could be triggered because he didn't feel he had a scene on the show he really wanted to be on it wouldn't be on and that could trigger it he could have had some great success it was so exciting that it triggered it so i just think drug addiction ultimately there is some kind of chemical imbalance or dysfunction going on and i think um there seems to be new research all the time and maybe one day someone can tell us all about this but i really don't know i just don't know intervention back then was not a tool that was used today uh if we had a problem like this we'd get six to ten people together we'd get the guy or girl in the room and sit them down and say it's going to stop you're going into rehab that's it and the flex cuffs would come out now i mean now that's what we do back then that was not uh you know not a technique that was that was widespread after filming neighbors belushi's cocaine addiction took hold again with each hit he was slowly killing himself and on his final day he was far from those who could have saved him it's just before dawn john belushi has six hours left to live he's been injecting cocaine and heroin all day [Music] he complains of feeling cold kathy smith puts him to bed and turns up the heat belushi lapses into sleep or unconsciousness he's dying of his disease at this point this is not an overdose this is toxic chronic toxic effects on the body overwhelming him finally smith writes a letter and orders toast and coffee from room service at 10 15 am she makes one last check on belushi he's snoring [Music] she puts her drug paraphernalia a syringe and spoon into her purse and leaves belushi is now alone in the bungalow his wife judy and best friend aykroyd are at home in new york sure i mean i felt like i should have been with him that whole time out there it would have been different if i was there but you come back to a point where you realize well first of all it might not have been different if i was there and um just it's just a light you know life you it's just you gotta let go of it you gotta know that's what it i get that's what happened that's all that you can there's no more that's it can't redo so or i was gonna go out there that night you know it was just that close you know it was really close like a hair close you know yeah to uh you know of course i i will always feel for the rest of my life that maybe i didn't do enough and uh but uh but he was alienating us at the end as well you know and pushing us away and uh he'd get real mad if you took the coke away and uh you know and uh you know it was uh but i'll i'll live with that for the rest of my life that we did that we didn't get there in time belushi has been lying unconscious in his hotel bed for hours [Music] then at 12 p.m bill wallace belushi's assistant arrives at the bungalow with a typewriter belushi wanted for scriptwriting [Music] john [Music] wallace immediately senses something is wrong he can't hear john's usual snoring [Music] john come on we're going to be late he walks into the bedroom telling belushi it's time to get up belushi is curled up on his right side wallace shakes him there's no response he discovers belushi is not breathing his first instinct is to call brilstein we're in trouble first words we're in trouble what do you mean in trouble he's sleeping he won't get up no no he's having a problem breathing and i said oh and i wanted to action like i knew what i was doing i had my assistant call uh 9-1-1 john come on wake up come on wallace pounds on belushi's chest tears in his eyes crying you dumb son of a [Music] come [ __ ] john i went to the cedar sinai to wait at the emergency entrance so no one would know john was coming over at the chateau marmont paramedics place belushi on the floor not knowing he's already dead they suspect a heart attack [Music] they try to revive him but soon give up wallace protests but they say it's too late john belushi died on the morning of the 5th of march 1982. at the cedar sinai hospital brilstein waits and waits the ambulance is not coming and finally one of my assistants calls and said brad you can come home john is dead and what do you do when you're alone in a phone booth no one had a cell phone then and one of your best friends died you can't believe it i of course felt responsible you know i know everyone says this wasn't your fault he would have gotten the money someplace though but i gave him the 1800 bucks you know uh do i wish i hadn't sure it was his money you know he had made it for me i gave it all and i guess the guitar is still there the police arrive at the chateau marmont then the media the word will soon be out the first thought i had was judy's going to hear it on the radio i called danny in his 25th street office got him on the phone said danny don't ask me what to do i'm telling you john is dead it's not a joke i was writing ghostbusters at the time and i was writing a line for him when the when the call came from mr brilstein that that he'd uh that he'd gone and uh i immediately got up and went outside to get to judy i didn't want to take a cab i didn't want to be carried i had to move myself otherwise i would have just buckled to my knees and i ran ran down to judy's uh from 5th and 23rd around down to morton street i heard someone punching the lock and uh and run up the stairs and it was danny and uh and i i told her before anyone else knew you know that he was that he was gone and uh but it was essential for me to get there before the before she heard it from someone else and you know that's a real good friend okay so it was two weeks later that coroner thomas naguchi confirmed the cause of death the office issued the official death certificate described as acute cocaine and heroin intoxication an examination of belushi's arms revealed that he'd been injecting for some time he had injection sites both sides i mean this is not an overdose this is this is toxic effect of intravenous drugs it's hard for me to believe that he was doing intravenous drugs for only four or five days this does not look like that kind of situation at all it's like somebody's been doing it for a while and finally dies of it kathy smith was arrested and eventually served 18 months in prison for her part in the tragedy she was convicted of involuntary manslaughter every year thousands of fans still make the pilgrimage to martha's vineyard just to stand at belushi's grave [Music] so somehow he's just touched people in that way and i think when you actually have people feeling that you've made a difference in their life then they don't forget you [Music] four years of television and seven movies and we're still talking about them isn't that amazing you get a sense that we do meet those who've gone before and we meet them in the form that we knew them and they meet us in the form that they knew us and just for a while not forever not for eternity there is a reunion there and it's going to be one rock at night [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Popcornflix

Views: 156,076

Rating: 4.8335047 out of 5

Keywords: free movie on youtube, Popcornflix, Full movies English, popcornflix full movies, free movies popcornflix, free full movies on youtube, #popcornflix, popcornflix movies on youtube, john belushi, john belushi death, blues brothers, saturday night live, celebrity deaths, tv series, john belushi saturday night live, john belushi animal house speech, john belushi animal house, john belushi documentary, john belushi interview, full tv episode, snl, John belushi snl

Id: WCkJTnqlah0

Length: 52min 2sec (3122 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020