On March 5, 1982, comedian John Belushi (Michael Chiklis) wakes up to find himself naked in a city morgue. After running out of the morgue in a panic, he enters the cab of Angel (Ray Sharkey) who takes Belushi on a tour of various moments of his life while telling him how he threw it all away chasing highs from drugs. Meanwhile Belushi's widow Judy (Lucinda Jenney) enlists the help of investigative journalist Bob Woodward (J. T. Walsh) in the hopes he can write something to get ahead of any lurid and exploitative rumors.
Wired is an adaptation of the 1984 book Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward. While Judith Belushi and Belushi's manager Bernie Brillstein had contacted Woodward about making such a book specifically to counter rumors and speculation, the end result despite becoming a bestseller was eviscerated by Belushi's friends and loved ones as sensationalized and one sided. Woodward sought to sell the film rights to the book the year it was released but was met with disinterest from major Hollywood film studios because according to Woodward "there's too much truth in it.". Producers Edward S. Feldman and Charles R. Meeker eventually bought the film rights for a relatively modest sum of $300,000 and managed to acquire $12 million of the films $13 million budget from independent financing from New Zealand conglomerate Lion. Bob Woodward served as an uncredited technical advisor on the film while Earl Mac Rauch of Buckaroo Banzai adapted the material (including adding the fantasy elements). The film had to sidestep a lot of details to avoid lawsuits from Belushi's family and industry friends and colleagues with the producers unable to obtain any rights to Belushi's SNL sketches meaning substitutes had to be created. When the film was released, it opened in 19th place behind Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in its 14th weekend and was pulled from theaters after two weeks making a paltry $1 million against its $13 million budget. The producers blamed Michael Ovitz and other prominent Hollywood figures for "sabotaging" the film's commercial prospects with more prominent distributors, but the movie really didn't need any of those conspiracies as its an awful offensive mess that gives us a surface level view of Belushi (at best) while it meanders on "drugs are bad" as its be all end all.
I'm going to start off by saying one, and only ONE, good thing about this film: Michael Chiklis is actually pretty good as Belushi. He's not quite a 1:1 representation of Belushi, but he does capture the gone too soon actor physical appearance, delivery and energy with fairly on point delivery. Chiklis was chosen from over 200 potential actors and auditioned 50+ times for the role and you can see why and had this actually been a good biopic Chiklis could have worked.
Aside from Chiklis, pretty much every other objective of paramount importance to any biopic is bungled in the worst possible way. Aside from a proposal scene between John and his wife Judith that's probably the most human moment we get from this movie regarding Belushi's life, every other sequence is one of three things 1)Contextless re-enactments of stand-ins for Saturday Night Live that look terrible and play as hollow facsimiles of actual SNL sketches because the filmmakers couldn't obtain any rights to actual SNL material and gave the barest minimum of effort with Dan Akyroyd's casting to the point my reaction to seeing him was "who's that supposed to be?". 2) A morbid secondary frame story involving Belushi's widow Judy talking to Bob Woodward about a book that feels like self-aggrandizement on Woodward's part. And 3) a tasteless A Christmas Carol/It's a Wonderful Life primary frame story where a hospital gown clad Belushi is escorted through his life by "guardian angel" Angel played by Ray Sharkey with some truly tasteless and stupid scenes like Belushi lying naked on an autopsy table as a Japanese sushi chef sharpens his knives....not a joke, that's in the movie. We don't really get any insight into Belushi as a person and the film feels like it exists solely to give a finger wagging lecture to someone who died and that's not a reason to tell this story, if you're going to tell a story of someone's real life you have a responsibility to have a reason beyond After School Special level "drugs are bad" nonsense that you can see on TV for free.
Wired boasts an admittedly pretty decent portrayal by Chiklis as Belushi, but everything else in this movie is just wrong. The focus is wrong, the framing is wrong, the terrible fantasy elements and focus on Bob Woodward are wrong, and the only other thing that maybe approaches being okay is Lucinda Jenney as Judith Belushi. Wired has been mostly forgotten by people and there's a good reason for it because at best it's a puddle deep analysis of Belushi, and at worst it's a disrespectful puppet show played with a man's corpse in front of his friends and loved ones. The only merit one can see in Wired is playing it as a double feature with The Babe Ruth Story to show the yin and yang of bad biopics so mistakes of these two extremes won't be repeated in other attempts.
Wired is an adaptation of the 1984 book Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward. While Judith Belushi and Belushi's manager Bernie Brillstein had contacted Woodward about making such a book specifically to counter rumors and speculation, the end result despite becoming a bestseller was eviscerated by Belushi's friends and loved ones as sensationalized and one sided. Woodward sought to sell the film rights to the book the year it was released but was met with disinterest from major Hollywood film studios because according to Woodward "there's too much truth in it.". Producers Edward S. Feldman and Charles R. Meeker eventually bought the film rights for a relatively modest sum of $300,000 and managed to acquire $12 million of the films $13 million budget from independent financing from New Zealand conglomerate Lion. Bob Woodward served as an uncredited technical advisor on the film while Earl Mac Rauch of Buckaroo Banzai adapted the material (including adding the fantasy elements). The film had to sidestep a lot of details to avoid lawsuits from Belushi's family and industry friends and colleagues with the producers unable to obtain any rights to Belushi's SNL sketches meaning substitutes had to be created. When the film was released, it opened in 19th place behind Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in its 14th weekend and was pulled from theaters after two weeks making a paltry $1 million against its $13 million budget. The producers blamed Michael Ovitz and other prominent Hollywood figures for "sabotaging" the film's commercial prospects with more prominent distributors, but the movie really didn't need any of those conspiracies as its an awful offensive mess that gives us a surface level view of Belushi (at best) while it meanders on "drugs are bad" as its be all end all.
I'm going to start off by saying one, and only ONE, good thing about this film: Michael Chiklis is actually pretty good as Belushi. He's not quite a 1:1 representation of Belushi, but he does capture the gone too soon actor physical appearance, delivery and energy with fairly on point delivery. Chiklis was chosen from over 200 potential actors and auditioned 50+ times for the role and you can see why and had this actually been a good biopic Chiklis could have worked.
Aside from Chiklis, pretty much every other objective of paramount importance to any biopic is bungled in the worst possible way. Aside from a proposal scene between John and his wife Judith that's probably the most human moment we get from this movie regarding Belushi's life, every other sequence is one of three things 1)Contextless re-enactments of stand-ins for Saturday Night Live that look terrible and play as hollow facsimiles of actual SNL sketches because the filmmakers couldn't obtain any rights to actual SNL material and gave the barest minimum of effort with Dan Akyroyd's casting to the point my reaction to seeing him was "who's that supposed to be?". 2) A morbid secondary frame story involving Belushi's widow Judy talking to Bob Woodward about a book that feels like self-aggrandizement on Woodward's part. And 3) a tasteless A Christmas Carol/It's a Wonderful Life primary frame story where a hospital gown clad Belushi is escorted through his life by "guardian angel" Angel played by Ray Sharkey with some truly tasteless and stupid scenes like Belushi lying naked on an autopsy table as a Japanese sushi chef sharpens his knives....not a joke, that's in the movie. We don't really get any insight into Belushi as a person and the film feels like it exists solely to give a finger wagging lecture to someone who died and that's not a reason to tell this story, if you're going to tell a story of someone's real life you have a responsibility to have a reason beyond After School Special level "drugs are bad" nonsense that you can see on TV for free.
Wired boasts an admittedly pretty decent portrayal by Chiklis as Belushi, but everything else in this movie is just wrong. The focus is wrong, the framing is wrong, the terrible fantasy elements and focus on Bob Woodward are wrong, and the only other thing that maybe approaches being okay is Lucinda Jenney as Judith Belushi. Wired has been mostly forgotten by people and there's a good reason for it because at best it's a puddle deep analysis of Belushi, and at worst it's a disrespectful puppet show played with a man's corpse in front of his friends and loved ones. The only merit one can see in Wired is playing it as a double feature with The Babe Ruth Story to show the yin and yang of bad biopics so mistakes of these two extremes won't be repeated in other attempts.