This week in the Deep Hurting Project: Wired. It's a biopic of John Belushi. This could have made a good movie, but there were a couple problems: First, they chose  to base this on Bob Woodward's book of the same name, which was lambasted by more or less everyone who knew him because it focused on the drug use that killed him to the exclusion of much of anything else. And then, they adapted it into a film. They were more or less banned from using any of his SNL material, so they had to do their own pale imitation of it. The only people whose names were used were Belushi, his wife Judy, Dan Ayckroyd, Cathy Smith, and Bob Woodward. And then, to compound the error, they had Earl Mac Rouch, the same guy who wrote Buckaroo Banzai. While I have no complaints about that film, I have to admit that this resulted in a very confused film, made all the worse by their decision to make an anti-drug angle as subtle as a sledgehammer to the head. If you knew who John Belushi was, you were pissed off by how the film treated him, and if you didn't, you probably concluded that John Belushi was just a guy who did a shitton of drugs and killed himself because of it. Nobody liked it. Well, not exactly nobody, but I'll get to that at the end.

• 0:35: Well, the fact that this movie's been dubbed from an ancient VHS because it was never released on DVD is obvious. Well, at least Michael Chiklis actually nails John Belushi's mannerisms down pat. He had to audition somewhere in the area of 57 times before he finally got the job. He worked hard, it paid off (even though it would be The Commish that brought him to stardom), and, with a better script, he'd actually do good. I think the fact that they started off with the only one of his SNL routines they got the rights to helps. 
  
  
  
• 3:32: Belushi is dead, and they choose to play it like some sort of schtick routine.
  
• 5:05:  John Belushi's apparently back from the dead and he escapes from the morgue.
  
• 10:00: So, we have a Puerto Rican cabbie named Angel carrying Belushi in his cab as they carry away his body and clear out his home.
  
• 11:36: Why am I dead, because you're officially stupid.  Could you tell that this movie was made when people actually believed the War on Drugs could actually work? And that blatantly kicking users when they were down was seen as a viable option?
  
• 18:00: Okay, fun fact, this song was also used in The Blues Brothers 2000. 
  
• 21:57: Why the fuck is Baldar Richard Nixon? Because they were both played by Dan Ackroyd on SNL? And why are they making it a Shakespeare pastiche?
  
• 32:36: So, John Belushi is being autopsied, while screaming and fully conscious, by a sushi chef, while a laugh track plays. WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA? And then, they follow up this scene with the Blues Brothers performing "Soul Man." Normally, this would be welcome, but with it just following the autopsy, it's basically this:
  
  
  
• 38:21: And we're back to the autopsy? And he's pretending to be Brando?
  
• 40:59: And they're not even trying to get into the spirit of the Samurai sketches, with his extreme actions unnerving straight man Buck Henry, instead we have him acting insane while an announcer talks about Pitcher Phil Latio, wiener jokes , a little boy named Yoko (!), and threatening to commit seppuku with his tanto in a hot dog bun and mustard (that has to dull the blade).
  
• 45:27: Now he's going on the Just Say No version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with Dan Ackroyd? And why didn't he just drive to Las Vegas when he had the chance? Why does one scene follow another in this film?
  
• 53:40: Woodward's going to do for Belushi what he's done for Nixon. I'm shocked they got away with that.
  
• 56:17: For what it's worth, John Landis denies this ever happened. And, surprisingly, this is what opened the original book.
  
• 58:12: "Then stop, especially the cocaine." Well, that was unusually dismissive for a doctor.
  
• 59:20: You'd think they'd tell him to "Assume the Position." Of course, that was ROTC, not Delta.
  
• 64:40: And they're making a comedic scene about how the coffin's too big to fit on the plane? 
  
• 69:16: The Ventures are apparently metal music now.
  
• 73:47: Is that "Love Kills" by Joe Strummer? The song from Sid and Nancy? The film that's also a biopic of a famous drug casualty and ends with a taxicab as a metaphor for the afterlife? Is this where Rouch got the idea for this horseshit framing device from?
  

You know what, I'm going to take a break. I'm going to take a bath, finish watching Das Boot with Alison, and then I'll come back and watch the last half hour of this shitfest, talk about the one person who actually liked the film, and hopefully at some point, I'll get myself caught up with the Deep Hurting Project Awards. Jah knows how many genre cycles it's been since the last one.

And back to Wired:

• 83:55: Not one sustained laugh. Well, that's certainly fitting.
  
• 91:04: Yes, you read that correctly, Angel offers to let John live by challenging him to a game of pinball... on a Blues Brothers machine... that Angel doesn't even fucking play...
  
• 98:40: Why the drugs? Because maybe all that physical comedy is fucking exhausting and he couldn't handle it long-term without drugs? And that they were fucking endemic in the scenes he worked in?
  
• 99:18: and they left that plot point aside for 9 minutes?
  
• 100:48:  Well, everyone except Jane Curtin.
  
• 100:55: Belushi didn't do the needle day in, day-. He did it because someone convinced him doing a speedball was a good idea, even though cocaine and heroin work together so well that it's absurdly risky to even try it.
  
• 102:25: You did it to yourself, John. Your addiction is totally within your control and you can quit anytime you want.
  
• 103:08: "Breathe for me, Woodward?" Wasn't he going to do to you what he did for Nixon?
  
• And we end on Michael Chiklis doing John doing Joe Cocker, and I'm not sure if the weird mannerisms of the SNL Joe Cocker really lend themselves to a touching song like "You Are So Beautiful." Especially in this context.
  

So, I mentioned that there was one person who liked the movie. That person? Peter Gabriel. And I suspect that happened because he thought it was Say Anything. Well, this might require some context, so here it is: remember that scene from Say Anything? You know which one: 



You see, back then, Peter Gabriel was very stingy with what movies got to use his songs, and Cameron Crowe decided to send a copy of the film to him. When he got back from Peter Gabriel, he said he liked the film, but he wasn't happy with the scene where the main character overdosed on heroin. Apparently, it turned out whoever sent the print to him swapped it out for Wired. 



So, apparently, Peter Gabriel actually liked this movie. And my working hypothesis is that he wasn't really too familiar (at least enough to be invested) with the work of John Belushi. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that when he went to America for those pivotal years, he probably spent Saturday night on stage. He didn't even appear on the show until 1993. Now I wonder if they changed all the names, created some fictional identity, this film might have actually been halfway decent. Well, at least it's better than The Babe Ruth Story. At least Wired wasn't boring.

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Awards that haven't changed:

• Most Reprehensible: Vaxxed. Nuff Said. 
  
• The Richie Cusack Award for Epic Fails: Yep, the scene from A History of Violence where William Hurt asks "How do you fuck that up?" is now a fixture of the Deep Hurting Project. And now, I've decided to devote his awards to simple fucking things that the filmmakers fuck up spectacularly. Do I give it to Hilary's America for setting out to make a movie claiming Democrats are the real racists and fail to do justice to targets who would seem like shooting fish in a barrel? Or The Apparition for somehow having more plot in the fucking trailer than the actual film? Nope, I'm giving it to The Emoji Movie. Why? Because they fuck up the most basic aspects of the plot: Gene has the unusual problem of having multiple emotions which forms the basic thrust of the film, except that other emojis actually show multiple emotions, and not just Steven Wright. They go for a "be yourself" moral, but fuck it up because when Gene tries to be himself, it risks THE ENTIRE PHONEWORLD BEING DESTROYED. And it somehow saves the day because the girl he's into is impressed by a weird emoji. They go for a feminist moral claiming that there was an era where female emojis could only be princesses and brides, except that Smiler (a female) was not only the first emoji, but was their leader from time immemorial. I feel I may need to create a  Richie Cusack Awards post at some point cataloguing the most jaw-dropping epic fails in the Project.
  
• The Raw Deal award for films that really deserved better: The Master of Disguise. I think we can all agree that this movie is utter crap, made even worse by catering to the narrow demographic young enough to find fart jokes, ass jokes, and a man named Pistachio Disguisey dressing up like a turtle and biting people's noses is funny, but old enough to recognise Bo Derek, Tony Montana, and Robert Shaw's character in Jaws and relate to Pistachio's ass fetish. But take the initial conceit: a spy comedy franchise built around a man with a preternatural ability to disguise himself, using that as a vehicle for the actor in question to showcase how versatile his performances can be. If Peter Sellers was still alive when this idea was going around, this would have been fucking perfect. Hell, if you've seen Holy Motors, the stuff Denis Levant does throughout the movie fits much the same MO (except without the espionage), and that movie is much better. Imagine what such a thing would have been if it wasn't picked up by a studio who pretty much exists as a welfare organisation for former SNL cast members who couldn't get roles in other studios. And you could even retain the weird borderline-autistic personality Pistachio had (at least if you put more work into it), perhaps adding a Little Voice element into the mix that could help explain why he's so good at it, like his impersonations are a way of trying to blend in to the neurotypical world.
  
• Most Brain-Breaking: Baby Geniuses 2: Superbabies. This one literally broke my brain to the point where all I could say was "why the fuck not?" after about 30 minutes. It  fucking wins.
  
• Most Ham-fisted piece of shit movie trying to be thoughtful and failing spectacularly: I Know Who Killed Me. Obvious symbolism that says nothing, a serial killer movie by someone who fails to understand what serial killing even is, and some twists so idiotic.
  
• Most enraging twist ending: The Devil Ins- The facts surrounding the Rossi case remain unresolved. Visit therossifiles.com for more information on the ongoing investigation. Or don't because the site went down after it became clear that nobody gave a shit. 
  
• Most insulting Sequel: Piranha 3DD. You take a good guilty pleasure film, a B-movie that actually fits a good balance between schlock and legitimate goodness, and they fuck up all the goodwill the original film gave them. They even ignored the sequel hook at the end of the first movie. Fuck this movie. 
  
• Most whiplash-inducing sequel: Escape Plan 2: Hades. You go from the more-or-less realistic The Hole in the original film, and the sequel (presumably set shortly after that) has it in a bored Sci-fi dystopia prison in Atlanta.
  
• Worst Original Song: The Identical for "Boogie Woogie Rock and Roll"
  

Updated Awards:

• Least Holly-Jolly Christmas movie: The Nutcracker: The Untold Story, because I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Nazi rats and the joyless new lyrics to Tchaikovsky's deathless music are never going to be topped when it comes to shit Christmas movies. Maybe with An Action Star Christmas, but it's not a Christmas movie.
  
• Most Frustrating experience as a viewer: Joe Dirt 2. Every scene goes way too long, the plot rips off several movies, including the original, the timeline makes no sense, it doesn't even square with the original film's timeline, and it doesn't even have the original's one clear redeeming quality: a kick-ass classic rock
  
• The movie so boring I just stopped bothering to look for new shit after about 10 minutes: Rampage.
  
• Best Worst Movie: Gigli. Somehow, I found the utter insanity of the film's execution breathtaking. Maybe it was Christopher Walken coming in to interrogate Ben Affleck and deciding he wants some pie, then leaving, never to reappear in the film again. Or maybe it was the mentally challenged kid saying Baywatch "made [his] penis sneeze." Or maybe it's Al Pacino coming in to explain why the movie's so stupid. The Bratz film is ineligible for this award to give others a fighting chance.
  
• Worst Film I've Ever Seen: Disaster Movie is #1 on IMDb's list of the worst films ever made. It did not disappoint; it's just 80 minutes of "insert pop culture reference from 2008 and have it flattened by a cow here." That's it.
  
• Megatron Award for Bad Comedy: See above.
  
• Most Generic piece of shit:Daddy Day Camp. You just know there's nothing interesting or new for anyone, including the kids who were subjected to it.
  
• The The Eye Creatures Award for Just Not Caring (formerly Most Stunningly Incompetent): Movie 43. Somehow, a movie that took seven years to make and includes many of the greatest talents of Hollywood turns into an apathetically made anthology film with not a single laugh in ANY of its scenes.
  
• Most Damn Faint Praise: The Fog. It at least got me interested in what went wrong when Selma Blair tried to paint her toenails on air. And that big hat is the best character.
  
• Most enraging use of music: The Open House for introducing me to a great band like Shannon and the Clams with a very stupid movie.
  
• Most Jaw-dropping stupidity: Shut In. This teen has been faking being totally paralysed for several months and has fooled EVERYONE for all that time, even as he poisons his mother and fucks with her prescriptions without her noticing it. 
  

New Awards:

• The Martian Award: Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. This is a film that only makes sense if you assume that it was made by an alien who decided to watch a bunch of crappy turn-of-the-millennium action movies, assimilated their cliches, decided to try its own hand at it without understanding, well, much of anything.  
  
• Worst attempt at a cultural exchange: Kung Fu Rabbit. Incredibly, when China is given the chance to make their own version of Kung Fu Panda, it makes a film that was briefly a contender for the worst film I had ever seen.
  
• Most Wasted Opportunity: Nazi Overlord. You promise us Nazi zombies, and you give us three minutes' worth of zombies, none of whom do anything more than eat an ADI. Fucking Hell, the scenario from that episode of Last Podcast on the Left where Jeffrey Dahmer sent his zombie teen boyfriend on a beer run sounds like a better movie.
  
• The What the Fuck Do You Mean It's For Kids Award: Woody Woodpecker. A movie based on a character that kids haven't watched in at least two decades, with some fucked up morals, Tinder jokes, the hero committing arson, taxidermy, and said hero becoming such a gaping asshole I just decided to rename him Goatse.
  

Knives Out

(May 19, 2020 at 12:14 am)*Deidre* Wrote: Knives Out

Sword out.

What's the prize for the winner?

A strange Easter egg I just noticed in Kiki’s Delivery Service:


Is that a shout-out to a documentary about a Nazi war criminal? In a family film?

(May 19, 2020 at 12:26 am)The Valkyrie Wrote:

(May 19, 2020 at 12:14 am)*Deidre* Wrote: Knives Out

Sword out.

What's the prize for the winner?

Guns out.


You blade people are soooo cute.

(May 19, 2020 at 5:34 am)onlinebiker Wrote:

(May 19, 2020 at 12:26 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Sword out.

What's the prize for the winner?

Guns out.


You blade people are soooo cute.

Which is why stealth is so important.

(May 19, 2020 at 5:34 am)onlinebiker Wrote:

(May 19, 2020 at 12:26 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Sword out.

What's the prize for the winner?

Guns out.


You blade people are soooo cute.

Yeah, it's all fun until somebody backs into your Bowie seven or nine times.

(May 19, 2020 at 5:34 am)onlinebiker Wrote:

(May 19, 2020 at 12:26 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Sword out.

What's the prize for the winner?

Guns out.


You blade people are soooo cute.

'A sword never jams, never has to be reloaded.  Close on a man with a gun fast and he can't use it.  Close on a man with a sword and you'll be spitted.' - Robert Heinlein, author, military officer, fencing champion.

Boru

(May 19, 2020 at 6:04 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(May 19, 2020 at 5:34 am)onlinebiker Wrote: Guns out.


You blade people are soooo cute.

'A sword never jams, never has to be reloaded.  Close on a man with a gun fast and he can't use it.  Close on a man with a sword and you'll be spitted.' - Robert Heinlein, author, military officer, fencing champion.

Boru

Quote:Heinlein's experience in the Navy exerted a strong influence on his character and writing. In 1929, he graduated from the Naval Academy with the equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts degree in Engineering, ranking fifth in his class academically but with a class standing of 20th of 243 due to disciplinary demerits. Shortly after graduation, he was commissioned as an ensign by the U.S. Navy. He advanced to lieutenant, junior grade while serving aboard the new aircraft carrier USS Lexington in 1931, where he worked in radio communications, then in its earlier phases, with the carrier's aircraft. The captain of this carrier was Ernest J. King, who served as the Chief of Naval Operations and Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet during World War II. Heinlein was frequently interviewed during his later years by military historians who asked him about Captain King and his service as the commander of the U.S. Navy's first modern aircraft carrier. Heinlein also served as gunnery officer aboard the destroyer USS Roper in 1933 and 1934, reaching the rank of lieutenant.[21] His brother, Lawrence Heinlein, served in the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, and the Missouri National Guard, reaching the rank of major general in the National Guard.[22]

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(May 19, 2020 at 5:34 am)onlinebiker Wrote:

(May 19, 2020 at 12:26 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Sword out.

What's the prize for the winner?

Guns out.


You blade people are soooo cute.