Bill Murray is coming to the defense of his long-time friend and fellow SNL alum John Belushi.
During a recent appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Murray slammed journalist Bob Woodward for his portrayal of Belushi in his 1984 biography “Wired,” which chronicled the life and career of “The Blues Brothers” star. Murray called Woodward’s take on Belushi “completely inaccurate,” and suspects his sources were pulled from “the outer, outer circle” of people that knew him.
“If he did this to Belushi, what he did to Nixon is probably soiled for me too. I can’t take it,” Murray said. “You could have two sources and everything like that, but the two sources that he had, if he had them for the ‘Wired’ book, were so far outside the inner circle that it was criminal, cruel.”
Murray suspects that Woodward’s takedown may have been motivated by jealousy. He pointed out that Woodward is only “the third most famous person from Wheaton, Ill” behind professional football player Red Grange and Belushi.
“Belushi made people’s careers possible. Mine would be one of them,” Murray said. “There’s a lot of people that slept on John Belushi’s couch. There’s a lot of people that stayed for free at his house until they made it in New York. And I’m one. He died in an unfortunate way, but man, he was still the best stage actor I ever saw.”
Murray went on to explain that he was asked to contribute to the book, but from the very beginning thought the project “smelled funny” and refused to help.
“I didn’t want to have anything to do with it,” Murray said. “It went exactly where I thought it was going. Even worse than I thought it was going. Just the title alone, it was cold.”
