Bob Woodward's biography of the late Saturday Night Live star John Belushi dropped more than 40 years ago, but one old Belushi friend is just now spilling how he feels about the job that the Watergate journalist did. It's not a complimentary take, reports Variety. "If he did this to Belushi, what he did to [President] Nixon is probably soiled for me, too," actor Bill Murray said on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast over the weekend about Woodward's Wired: The Short Life & Fast Times of John Belushi, first published in 1984. "I can't take it."
Murray slammed Woodward's sources for the book, claiming they "were so far outside [of Belushi's] inner circle that it was criminal, cruel" for Woodward to use them as the basis for his book, which Murray called "completely inaccurate." The 74-year-old Groundhog Day and Ghostbusters actor said he was asked to take part in the book, released two years after Belushi died, but that he steered clear, as the whole project "smelled funny" to him.
"I didn't want to have anything to do with it," Murray told podcast host Joe Rogan. "It went exactly where I thought it was going. Even worse than where I thought it was going. Just the title alone ... it was cold." The Independent notes that others close to Belushi—including Belushi's Blues Brothers co-star Dan Aykroyd, Blue Brothers director John Landis, and Belushi's widow, Judith Pisano—also put the book on blast when it first came out.
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"Woodward does other things, I've seen him on TV and he can be smart and everything, but, you know, he's going to have to answer for [the book]," Murray said. "You don't get a free ride. Not with my friend." As for Belushi, Murray added: "He died in an unfortunate way, but man, he was still the best stage actor I ever saw." More here. (More Bill Murray stories.)
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