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Jack Nicholson is singular for many reasons, but one of his most fascinating attributes is that he was commercially bulletproof. Don’t get me wrong, Nicholson made a flop here and there, but there was never a sense with the star that he needed a hit. Even when he was slumping (e.g. in the mid-1990s with “Wolf,” “The Crossing Guard,” “Blood and Wine,” “The Evening Star,” and the initially unpopular “Mars Attacks!”), everyone figured Nicholson would get it straightened out one way or another. He was just too damn appealing to not score a hit once every few years.
If Nicholson was ever kinda-sorta in trouble, it was probably in 1977. Yes, he was only two years removed from winning Best Actor Oscar for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (which was an incredibly competitive year), but he was more immediately on the hook for two box office bombs in Arthur Penn’s “The Missouri Breaks” (a pricey Western that paired him with a wilding-out Marlon Brando) and “The Last Tycoon” (a limp, all-star adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished 1941 novel). Evidently, Nicholson hadn’t adequately scratched his Western itch with the Penn film, so he pursued an oater with his “Chinatown” director Roman Polanski. When that film got sidelined due to Polanski’s arrest for sexual assault of a minor, Nicholson turned his attention to a comedic Western titled “Goin’ South,” which he would star in and direct.
Though Westerns were falling out of favor in Hollywood, Nicholson playing a surly outlaw who slips the noose due to the calculating charity of a young woman (Mary Steenburgen) seemed like a good time at the movies. Factor in a colorful cast that included Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, and Veronica Cartwright, and it felt like a slam dunk. There was just one problem: John Belushi. How could one of the most sought-after comedic talents of his generation be a problem? That’s a tale that’s taken on the scale of legend, and even became grist for a viral short film.
Directing John Belushi was not always a joy
John Belushi was a force of nature, both as a performer and a human being. He was often the funniest person on any given episode of “Saturday Night Live,” and could steal big-screen scenes with just the cocking of an eyebrow in classics like “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” Alas, due to his many appetites, which included drugs and alcohol, he could be incredibly sensitive and kind one moment, then turn into a raging monster the next.
Given Nicholson’s counterculture Hollywood background, which brought him into contact with drugged-up maniacs like Dennis Hopper, there was probably an expectation on the set of “Goin’ South” that he could handle a wild child like Belushi. But Belushi, apparently fired up by his own press clippings, was more than a handful. In Patrick McGilligan’s “Jack’s Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson,” Belushi’s behavior on set is described as disruptive. “He made petty demands and fought with the ‘Goin’ South’ producers, especially Harold Schneider, whose job it was not to lose fights,” wrote McGilligan. Presumably as a result of his tantrums, Nicholson began to pare down Belushi’s part in the movie, which only infuriated him further. At the end of the shoot, Belushi vented, “Jack treated me like s*** on Goin’ South. I hate him.”
Little is known about the specifics of the Nicholson-Belushi feud, but it inspired the filmmaking brothers Jake and Sam Lewis to shoot a speculative short about the relationship, and, considering the two artists involved in this kerfuffle, it might not be weird enough.
Jack Nicholson and John Belushi are The Cowboy and the Samurai
In “The Cowboy and the Samurai,” a pair of producers are chased out of Jack Nicholson’s house by a knife-wielding Belushi, who has threatened to chop their testicles off and have them feed them to each other. Nicholson, dressed in apparel close to his costume in “Going South,” arrives and calmly endeavors to talk Belushi out of his foul mood. The two reach a detente, but only after a surreal, neon-lit battle that pits gunslinger Nicholson against a sword-wielding Belushi. Ultimately, Belushi apologizes, and that’s that.
In real life, Belushi eventually made up with Nicholson and, per Bob Woodward’s book “Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi,” sought the star’s advice regarding a film project just days before his death due to an overdose of heroin and cocaine.
As for “Goin’ South,” it received mixed-to-negative reviews from prominent film critics, some of whom wished it had included more Belushi. The film did middling business in the fall of 1978, but at no point did anyone proclaim Nicholson’s career to be teetering on the brink of disaster — which is to their credit, because any naysayers would’ve had egg splattered all over their face come 1980 when Nicholson scored a hit with Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.”