SUBTERRANEAN CINEMA
My friend, Don, over at Simply Scripts stumbled across a website called Subterranean Cinema, which offers a handful of ultra-rare I-didn't-know-they-wrote-that screenplays.
So I went on journey. I read them all. I began a series of articles at Script Magazine's website, which I will continuously update with links here.
You won't believe what I discovered.
-MM
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NOBLE ROT
"Holed up in a bungalow at Los Angeles tony Chateau Marmont hotel on the Sunset Strip, [John] Belushi hit the L.A. party scene harder than ever before, which, not surprisingly, resulted in a frustrated Novello usually having to write and revise the script alone. At the same time, Paramount made it known that the Noble Rot drafts they were seeing were unacceptable. Feeling the pinch, Belushi put it into overdrive and let go of the wheel. During the nights scoring drugs and partying till dawn on the Sunset Strip at such clubs as the Roxy and the Rainbow, Belushi met a former backup singer (and girlfriend of Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot) named Cathy Smith. Smith, a junkie, introduced Belushi to the next step on the chemical ladder: heroin. Always afraid of needles and knowing heroin was the point-of-no-return, Belushi now began experimenting with the dangerous opiate, combining it with cocaine into the ultra-rush "speedball". With Aykroyd secretly planning a flight to the West Coast to bring his troubled friend back home, Belushi began a non-stop three-day binge. On March 5, 1982, after Hollywood pals Robin Williams and Robert De Niro left his bungalow in the early morning hours, Smith administered the umpteenth speedball to Belushi. In the morning, allegedly seeing him still snoring and alive, she took his car and left to run errands. Later in the morning while she was gone, Belushis personal trainer, Bill Wallace, showed up to rouse his friend to work out but instead discovering he was not breathing. After frantically applying CPR and summoning medical help, Wallace knew it was too late for Aykroyd to help his doomed friend. John Belushi was dead. And Johnny Glorioso would never live on the screen..."
Go here for the article and here to download the script.
THE TONY CLIFTON STORY
"Andy Kaufman said Clifton died of cancer at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Hollywood. That is exactly how Andy himself would die four years after writing this screenplay... What the hell did I just read?"
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