Neighbors is a 1981 film based on the book by Thomas Berger. It was released through Columbia Pictures, directed by John G. Avildsen and stars John Belushi as Earl, Dan Aykroyd as Vic (renamed from the novel's Harry), Cathy Moriarty as Ramona, Kathryn Walker as Enid, and Lauren-Marie Taylor as Elaine. The film inevitably takes many liberties with Berger's story, and it features a more upbeat ending. The screenplay of the film is officially credited to Larry Gelbart, although it was extensively rewritten, to Gelbart's public disapproval.
Plot
Earl Keese is a low-key, ineffectual, middle-class suburbanite with a wife, Enid, and teenage daughter, Elaine. Earl's peaceful, dreary life changes when a younger couple, Vic and Ramona, move next door. Vic and Ramona both impose themselves on the Keese household; Earl is infuriated by the loud, gung-ho Vic, and flustered by the sly and seductive Ramona. Earl is frustrated by his inability to handle Vic and Ramona, and the way that he can never come up with absolute proof that the couple are doing anything wrong on purpose. Enid and Elaine are no help, and over the course of one night, the antagonism between Earl and his new neighbors escalates into suburban warfare. Earl begins to question his sanity, and the sanity of his wife and daughter. He realizes that his new neighbors have provided him with the most excitement he's had in years, and that they can give him a promising future out of suburbia and away from his family. In the film's closing scene, Earl joins Vic and Ramona, leaving his family behind and his house on fire.
Troubled production
Neighbors was troubled throughout its production: Belushi and Aykroyd switched their roles in pre-production, acting against type (usual-wild man Belushi played the meek Earl and usual-straight-arrow Aykroyd played the obnoxious Vic); they also argued constantly with director Avildsen (believing he had no understanding of comedy) and lobbied to have him removed (Belushi wanted either Aykroyd, himself or John Landis to direct); and Avildsen argued with producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown.
In addition to this, Aykroyd and Belushi rewrote the screenplay (to the annoyance of original screenwriter Larry Gelbart), Belushi's drug problems caused trouble on set, there were problems with the film's music, and disastrous test-screenings led to multiple edits of the finished film being assembled in a succession of fervent attempts to make the film make more sense and to be more audience-friendly.
Music
Tom Scott was originally assigned to compose the score for Neighbors but was later replaced by Avildsen's frequent collaborator Bill Conti. John Belushi unsuccessfully tried to have the film finish with a song written and performed by the punk rock group Fear (Belushi had discovered the band and brought them to Cherokee Studios to record songs for the film). Music producing partners Steve Cropper and Bruce Robb remember recording the band's music, but nobody knows exactly what happened with the final soundtrack which was ultimately replaced in the film by Conti's more traditional movie score. "How can I describe what it was like recording in the early days of punk?" said music producer and Cherokee owner Bruce Robb. "We had decided to track the song selection in order, and were on track 4 before the band realized they were all using different set lists. The irony is we couldn't tell." Upset with Belushi's antics and believing that Fear's music was inappropriate for Neighbors, the movie studio eventually forced the band off the soundtrack project. To make up for it, Belushi got them a guest spot on Saturday Night Live.
Critical and box office response
For one test-version of the film, the head of Columbia Pictures, Frank Price, made the contentious decision to have quotations from positive press reviews of Berger's book assembled into a caption that would serve as a prologue to the film (this move prompted an angry missive from Dan Aykroyd). The final version of Neighbors was released to cinemas in December 1981. The film was profitable because the studio decided to release the film in the largest number of theaters possible during the end of the year holiday season before the reviews and word of mouth spread to damage the film. Although Neighbors was not a commercial flop, it received harsh critical reaction and fans of Belushi and Aykroyd, perhaps expecting a comedy closer to The Blues Brothers, were disappointed in it.
David Ansen, writing for Newsweek, wrote that "Thomas Berger's paranoid comic novel could have been made a fascinating movie in hands of, say, Roman Polanski, who knows how to make a comedy of menace. John G. Avildsen doesn't have a clue: you can't twist reality if you can't establish a reality to twist. Belushi and Aykroyd obviously got cast because they're "bankable," but no one seems to have asked if they were appropriate. The parts demand subtle comic acting - they do TV turns. Just how much blame falls on Larry Gelbart's disjointed script is hard to say (Avildsen could make any writer look bad), but without question Bill Conti has come up with the year's most offensive score - a cattle prod of cartoonish cuteness that only underlines the movie's desperate uncertainty of tone. The ads for Neighbors call it "a comic nightmare;" it's more like a sour case of creative indigestion."[1] On the other hand, Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "Neighbors is a truly interesting comedy, an offbeat experiment in hallucinatory black humor. It grows on you." Ebert also wrote approvingly of Belushi and Aykroyd as the leads, citing it as "brilliant casting, especially since they divided the roles somewhat against our expectations."[2] In his book Guide for the Film Fanatic, Danny Peary wrote, "I think this surreal comedy is imaginatively done, and perfectly conveys the lunacy of the two comics...I'm glad they went against type because both actors are at their absolute best." Peary argued that the "final picture is faithful to Thomas Berger's zany, satirical novel" but noted that he prefers "the film's happier ending."[3]
Neighbors was John Belushi's last film; he died in March 1982, less than four months after the film's release. A comprehensive look at the film's troubled production can be found in Bob Woodward's 1984 book, Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi and also in the 2005 book, Belushi: A Biography.
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