NEIGHBORS (1981)
“The Thing(s) That Wouldn’t Leave”: Neighbors by Thomas Berger (1980) / by John G. Avildsen (1981)
Ordinarily the fairest of men, Keese felt he was being manipulated by these loathsome people (to what end he could not have said, for he was alternately both victim and victimizer), and he decided now to be stubborn. He had a moral advantage over Harry at the moment, or at least the appearance of one. Why should he voluntarily give it up?
“Confess?” he asked disingenuously. “To what? To living in my own house? To breathing air?”
In a fondly remembered sketch from the third season of Saturday Night Live, there’s a fictitious trailer for a schlock horror picture entitled The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave. The static-camera segment lasts less than a minute and features Not Ready for Prime Time player John Belushi as the boorish friend of a young couple played by Bill Murray and Jane Curtin. Belushi portrays an unrelenting, clamorous man unable to read the obvious social cues that the evening’s festivities have concluded. Instead, the man combs through the couple’s record collection before flipping through a nearby issue of TV Guide and inviting strangers over to watch the late show. The voice-over narrator (in actuality, Dan Aykroyd) authoritatively intones: “It Came Without Warning! They Were Just Being Polite!”. It’s a quick-witted snapshot relatable to anyone who has ever occupied the more subservient role to such an impolitic character - where one takes on an instantly regrettable sense of obligation in overextending one’s generosity for the sole purpose of avoiding insulted feelings.
What nobody in the studio audience or at home could have realized during its original live TV airdate - March 25, 1978 - is that the premise had its roots in reality. It’s an embellished presentation of Belushi’s apparently well-known habit of wearing out welcomes, perhaps a by-product of all that infamous alcohol and drug abuse chronicled in tabloids and Bob Woodward’s rushed-out tell-all Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (1984) or the later Live from New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (2002).
Evidently, Belushi refused to comprehend the end of a party - nights were prolonged. A nickname was brandished: America’s Guest. Belushi could show up at any random person’s doorstep in the country and somehow earn an invitation through his natural likability. The reality of this situation was much darker, as these drop-ins were - at times - the aftereffects of having consumed large quantities of harmful substances. And, of course, this reality led to an untimely death.
But the playful variant of this - the slovenly party animal in search of a Good Time - would fit Belushi like a glove when it came to John "Bluto" Blutarsky in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). And the garrulous slob who is amusing to be around would continue in 1941 (1979), Steven Spielberg's anarchic Mad magazine-esque World War II panoramic extravaganza, as Belushi excels in his limited screen-time as the cigar-chomping Captain Wild Bill Kelso. (As written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, it's half Bluto and half John Milius, the film’s Executive Producer.)
Belushi is emblematically slick as Jake Blues in The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980), maybe a shade more reserved but still readily excitable in occasional manic bursts of energy. By the time Neighbors was being developed as a film project, Belushi had the more temperate supporting role in Joan Tewkesbury’s Old Boyfriends (1979) under his belt, and Continental Divide - the first under Steven Spielberg’s Amblin moniker - was complete, and being readied for a September 1981 release. In it, Belushi plays the unlikely romantic leading man.
It’s clear from this thumbnail that Belushi was - at the time - struggling to get out from underneath the usual roles he was being offered; to dial back on the combustible energy that made producers and influential people stand up and take notice. To be less like that blistering Joe Cocker impression featured in the stage-show Lemmings (1973) and carried over to Saturday Night Live.
So, Neighbors. The film adaptation of an acerbic comedy and best selling novel by author Thomas Berger (Little Big Man, translated to the screen by Arthur Penn). A surefire hit to be produced by Jaws duo Richard Zanuck and David Brown at Columbia Pictures, the property was also partially owned and controlled by legendary talent agent Swifty Lazar and Bernie Brillstein. And Brillstein just so happened to represent both Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.
On paper, there didn’t seem to be a downside. Cast the two performers in this bizarre comedy set on a secluded and almost otherworldly cul-de-sac with a meek middle-class, middle-aged square versus a pair of conniving newly-moved-in next-door neighbors. Misunderstanding begets misunderstanding. But before production commences, and owing to Belushi’s continuing interest in expanding his range, roles are reversed. Aykroyd slides over to the flashier role while Belushi signs on as the paunchy, bespectacled suburbanite.
Belushi’s Earl Keese is a boring domestic and aging straight-laced citizen with untapped resentment bubbling to the surface in wife Enid (Kathryn Walker) and college-age daughter Elaine (Lauren-Marie Taylor). It only takes new transplants Vic (Aykroyd) and Ramona Zeck (Cathy Moriarty) and their perverse unconventionality to juggle these dissatisfactions loose. Here, there would be nothing hip in Belushi’s wounded demeanor as conveyed through a slow, slouchy gait.
The common consensus - not unlike Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern in Bob Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens (1972) - is that Aykroyd and Belushi should have switched roles. But on what screen evidence do we have that 1981’s Dan Aykroyd could have handled the particular solemnity required to be Earl, the straight man? Primarily known for conspicuous motor-mouthed types like Irwin Mainway of Mainway Toys on Saturday Night Live, Vic’s overbearing, laser-focused dismissals to Earl feel much more natural in the hands of the performer. Belushi was trying something new while Aykroyd was treading on familiar territory.
In the novel and in the film, the point-of-view is from the perspective of 49-year-old Keese. Keese is a boring man who retires home for a predictable Friday evening with Enid, his equally-as-tired wife. The two watch boring television before Enid listlessly shuffles off to make a boring dinner. Earl’s comfortable night is thrown for a loop when the overtly sexual and insouciant Ramona (Cathy Moriarty, coming off of Raging Bull) shows up on his doorstep, stakes out his living room, and soon his bed, generally exhibiting bizarre behavior. Dan Aykroyd is the other half of the couple - named Harry in the novel and Vic in the film. Sporting oddly-penetrating sky-blue contact lenses, a golden blonde coif, powder blue suit with three cigars in the pocket, Harry/Vic is a demanding figure of overarching imposition - The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave - constantly buddying up and then disarming Earl Keese with a falsely deferential attitude. In each instance of Earl suspecting wrongdoing, Harry/Vic has an unusually convenient answer. The novel and film are a series of real and imagined slights towards Earl - a litany of rude gestures and absurdities that take on a more significant meaning in his mind.
It’s this inability to translate such interior thoughts that is one of the film’s bigger issues. The novel is about perception. Keese sizes up Vic/Ramona and feels that they are routinely disrespecting him. But is his mind playing tricks during these warped social interactions? In a way, the premise is not unlike Dan Aykroyd’s own Nothing But Trouble (1991) - an equally-as-troubled production, with no one really behind the wheel to apply sense to an unusual scenario populated with buffoonish personae. In that film, the town is in cahoots with a grotesque elderly judge (Aykroyd), and it’s this conceit that plagues lead characters portrayed by Chevy Chase and Demi Moore. In Neighbors - the novel - the incidental characters in this anywhere, U.S.A. community treats Vic/Ramona as if they’re long-lost friends.
In both film and novel, Vic/Harry and Ramona end up challenging Earl’s preconceptions after running roughshod in his home. Early on, Vic/Harry insists on having an Italian feast with the new neighbors. The only issue? Earl knows that all restaurants have closed for the evening, so take-out is out of the question. No problem, Vic/Harry says. There’s a new place that just opened - Caesar’s Garlic Wars - and if Earl would foot the bill and loan him his car, Vic/Harry will do all of the legwork. Suspecting trickery, Earl sneaks next door to catch Vic/Harry clumsily making pasta and sliding it into take-away containers. Earl, quietly apoplectic, resorts to sending Vic/Harry’s vehicle off into a nearby swamp. Earl is sure he’s gotten away with it - but Vic/Harry and Ramona are somehow always aware of such covert actions. It’s as if they have antennae.
Soon, bygones are bygones. Enid sits with Vic/Harry. The quartet has dinner together - amends are made - but minor verbal transgressions further anger Earl. Whenever they’re alone, Ramona flirts with Earl, but he’s never sure if it’s on the level. Eventually, Vic/Harry tells him he can have her - but then openly makes a play for Enid and Elaine, Earl’s radical college-aged student. In the novel, she’s been expelled due to a misunderstanding involving a stolen ring - it’s soon cleared up with the university’s faculty. In both novel/film, much to Earl's chagrin, Elaine sees nothing wrong with sitting on 'Uncle' Vic/Harry's lap.
In the novel, the book closes as Earl accepts that the Vic and Ramona free-spirited lifestyle has re-invigorated him. He leaves Enid and Elaine and goes on the road with the duo - but before too long, he has a fatal stroke. His last image on earth is Vic and Ramona declaring, casually, “It could happen to anybody.” (The film doesn’t get so dark, even though this line begs for Cathy Moriarty’s delivery.)
At the time, the director engaged on the production had Oscar-winning successes and questionable lows: John G. Avildsen, winner of 1977 Best Director Oscar for Rocky and summarily fired from Saturday Night Fever in the very same year. Avildsen started the decade with the offbeat word-of-mouth hit Joe (1971), segueing into a ludicrous sex comedy starring Allen Garfield (1972’s Cry Uncle!) and then turning serious for a picture that earned Jack Lemmon a Best Actor Oscar (Save The Tiger, from 1973).
Avildsen would continue in this schizophrenic fashion for much of his career. Immediately before Neighbors, there was a little-seen and remarked upon passion project (Slow Dancing in the Big City) and the team-up of acting titans Marlon Brando and George C. Scott in the tepidly received The Formula.
Even weirder is the incestuous relationship Avildsen’s films can have. The montage of Tony Manero grooming himself in front of a mirror to the Bee Gees - from Saturday Night Fever, a film in which Avildsen left under creative differences - is parodied with Belushi in Neighbors. And in Saturday Night Fever, in the originator, there's a poster for Rocky in Tony Manero's bedroom.
Production histories report that Belushi/Aykroyd believed Avildsen didn’t understand comedy. Despite those early underground releases, comedic subtlety wasn’t Avildsen’s specialty. Much of Neighbors is in long shot with awkward line readings. There’s even the strange atmosphere bestowed upon Vic and Ramona - almost as if they are alien beings, further induced by on-the-nose music by Bill Conti (who wholly replaced tracks by Tom Scott, Belushi's choice). It’s exaggerated, jaunty, and thriller-like with use of a theremin and a parody of The Twilight Zone theme. (Weird musical trivia abounds in Neighbors: at one point, there’s an odd off-camera mention of Sky Saxon (of The Seeds) read by a television announcer (Aykroyd again). And behind the scenes, Belushi was hoping to use L.A. punk band Fear for use on the soundtrack. Around this time, he would infamously insist they appear on a Saturday Night Live episode guest-hosted by Donald Pleasance that aired Halloween 1981. Belushi would cameo.)
Oddly, Belushi’s “look” in the film - older than his years - is reminiscent of what the ‘older’ Belushi looked like in the eerie SNL sketch Don’t Look Back in Anger (March 11, 1978), a segment shot on film by Tom Schiller. In it, it’s Belushi who has lived longer than any of his cast-mates, a lone survivor - gone are Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. Belushi visits their graves, offering solemn remembrances.
Of course, the cruel irony was that the opposite came true (and fast). Neighbors would be the last picture Belushi would make. A filmed segment - his final on-screen appearance - would be for ABC’s Police Squad! in the recurring joke where famous people turned up in cameos as corpses. As it was set to air soon after his untimely death, it was deemed in bad taste and excised.
Instead, in the conceit, he was replaced by Florence Henderson.
