Wired (film) - Production

Production

The film adaptation of Wired did little to separate itself from the book's dubious 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 Judith Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and James Belushi. However, in many ways, the film version of Wired diverged from its source material. 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; although Eddie Floyd later 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 - a parody of the chess game between the Knight and Death in the Ingmar Bergman film, The Seventh Seal (1957).

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. Belushi's Saturday Night Live colleague Chevy Chase is referred to but not seen; dialogue also refers to SNL co-stars Gilda Radner and Laraine Newman by first name (although, like Chase, they are never seen). Other real-life associates of Belushi's are depicted onscreen, but 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, Carrie Fisher, and Steven Spielberg) are not depicted in the film at all. Belushi's friend John Landis, who directed the actor in the films National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) and The Blues Brothers (1980), flat-out refused to have his name incorporated into Wired and threatened to sue for invasion of privacy, 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 fatal 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.