Today we got to interview Emile Hirsch for his new film Twice Born. We’ll bring you the full interview about his new dramatic film next week when Twice Born opens, but before we wrapped we got in a few questions about John Belushi. Hirsch is tapped to play the “SNL” star in a new film from writer/director Steve Conrad.
Before his passing at the age of 33 due to a drug overdose, Belushi had already created several landmark characters. In the movies, his Jake Blues was one half of The Blues Brothers, and Bluto was the scene stealer of Animal House. On “SNL” his recurring characters included Jake Blues as well, plus “cheezborger” chef Pete, conehead Kuldroth and Samurai Futaba, who could be anything from a deli chef to a dry cleaner.
Hirsch is waiting to confirm which Belushi characters he will reproduce in the film, but he definitely has plans for Samurai Futaba. “Oh, I’m sure that there’s going to be all kinds of stuff,” Hirsch said. “The samurai character is just too funny. I want to sneak the samurai character in there for sure. That’ll be in there.”
In films like Into the Wild and Milk, Hirsch has transformed into real life figures, be it dramatic weight loss for survivalist Chris McCandless in Wild or big ‘70s hair for Cleve Jones in Milk. How he will transform into Belushi is still under discussion.
“I’m not sure exactly what it will be, but whatever it’s going to be, it’s going to look right and it’s going to feel right and people are going to be happy with it.”
Twice Born opens December 6 and the John Belushi film goes into production next year.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
