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darkpoisonouslove · 4 years

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Griffin x Valtor Angsty Headcanons

@trashcankitty12 You requested these some time around 17th December last year and I haven’t forgotten I promised to do them if I got the inspo. Well, I finally did so here they are:

1. Do they have a lot of arguments? If so, over what?

They don’t really argue that much. They can end up arguing about strategies and sometimes when Valtor decides to distract Griffin in the wrong moment. But it’s mostly over work that they don’t see eye to eye. Especially when Griffin wants less bloodshed which would require more effort on their part. Valtor doesn’t really care about innocent lives and he has so much on his mind that any extra effort required of him is the equivalent of torture. So they often times can’t reach consensus on that. Valtor will also go out of his way to try to impress his mothers (even though that will never happen) and that can be too much for Griffin sometimes since he starts driving her insane by insisting they have to be doing better when there’s no way for that to happen. (And it says a lot when she thinks he’s being too pedantic and in over his head with perfectionalism.)

2. Who apologizes first? In what way? Is it hard for either of them to apologize?

Griffin can be so goddamn stubborn, even more than Valtor. And he gets scared that she might think of leaving. So a lot of the time it is him who approaches her first after a fight. However, he does have a hard time apologizing. Not only because of his ego but because he’s been taught that admitting mistakes is a weakness. So he isn’t really good at apologizing with words. He will say that he doesn’t want them to fight, though, and admit that she does have a point. And he apologizes in actions. He comes to be more verbal about his regret over time, though, and asking her to forgive him. Griffin appreciates all of it. And tries to reciprocate when she figures she might have been wrong.

3. Which one has more insecurities? Over what?

They both have insecurities but Valtor has more. He’s pretty much woven from insecurities that he’s not competent enough, not strong enough, not smart enough, not good enough and anything else he’s not good enough at. The problem is that there will never be enough for his mothers and even though he realizes that, it is too difficult to break out of the mindset that’s been pushed on him during all those years.

4. Who gets more riled up? Do they show their anger?

Valtor is much easier to rile up. He’s a ticking bomb waiting to explode. Especially when he’s already on edge and his mothers have had a talk with him. He will explode over something. He shows it through his voice that rises immediately, his expression distorts in rage and his magic fills the room tangibly, surrounding you as if to trap you as he doesn’t try to hold it back. Griffin might back off but she may not either. Depends on how angry she is herself. She is usually more collected but in a fit of rage, she’s just as reckless as him. They’ve gotten in magical fights with each other when they were both mad.

5. How do they hide their pain when they’re upset? Do they try to hide their pain?

Valtor will always try to hide his pain. It’s just something that’s been engraved into him and drilled into his head. He can’t really hide from Griffin, though. She knows him and can tell when something’s wrong. He usually doesn’t want to cry to her every time his mothers hurt him (not only because of his pride, but also because it just happens too often) but Griffin can tell he’s not fine. She will leave him alone if he insists he doesn’t want to talk but she will make sure to be extra close and offer silent comfort. (He really appreciates it.)

Griffin gets irritable when something is wrong and she starts exploding over the smallest of things. Valtor knows that there is a problem when she starts acting like that and he tries to figure out what’s going on. Griffin isn’t really helpful as she refuses to tell him and insists she’s fine, only getting more annoyed by his attempts to get to the truth. She will relent eventually (usually in the form of another explosion) and pour it all out in the open. She tries her best not to cry but the tears usually come simply because she’s been trying to bottle it all up but it’s coming out all at once and it can be overwhelming. Valtor will do his best to comfort her and hug her if she allows it. She usually does which is good for him because he’s not all that great with words when it comes to offering consolation.

6. Who tries to make up first? Does it work?

Valtor actually tries to make up first most of the time. Griffin can be very stubborn and she’s usually right. And he wants to fix things when he cools down. He wants to make sure she knows he didn’t mean to hurt her because he loves her and he doesn’t want to give her a reason to leave.

7. Would they hate-fuck if they were mad at one another? If they had a falling out?

Yes, and yes. Even if they’re mad (or hating each other), they will use sex as an excuse to be close to each other. And as a way to show the other that there is no getting away from each other and that between them. There is a lot of roughness and marking to leave the other reminders that they are theirs. It’s very possessive and usually mind-blowing (except after the breakup when it is just heartbreaking). And they both remain smug about “claiming” the other even after they make up.

8. Do they hold grudges? Is it hard for them to let go/forgive each other?

They don’t really hold grudges. Even if they can’t let go of the hurt immediately, it dissipates with time. And besides, they can’t hide it from each other when there’s a problem because it instantly shows in their combined magic and they have to talk it out whether they like it or not. Both of them have had times when they were reluctant to talk but they both admit that it was better that way since the problem got resolved.

9. Is there something big that could potentially tear them apart if it was revealed?

Yes, the fact that his mothers are planning a genocide. Other than that, there aren’t things that they don’t know about each other. And they got through everything else but it sucks that the one thing that is left is exactly the one that can tear them apart and did.

10. If something already happened to tear them apart, what would make them come back together? Is it even possible?

This question is just too ironic. I don’t want to say that it’s impossible but it is somewhere there. For that to happen Valtor would have to give up on his pride and ambitions and Griffin will have to find a way to earn his trust back which just… like I said, not completely impossible but right next to it.

11. What’s their favorite pastime when they’re upset?

For Valtor it is physical activity. He will put all the rage he has inside him in it and that will help him get it out. And he always gets loads of rage when he’s upset. It’s a mechanism that he’s developed to make sure he won’t display any weakness. So any feelings of sadness and helplessness will quickly be converted into anger which he’ll use to fuel him in his physical exercises.

Griffin loves to read when she’s upset. She’ll lose herself in a book and won’t think about the thing that is upsetting her. And if she finishes the book, she can grab another one and keep repeating until the issue is gone and she doesn’t have to deal with it.

12. Who do they confide in when shit hits the fan (besides each other)?

They don’t really have anyone they can truly talk to about what is bothering them besides each other (and not even that is possible sometimes). Griffin may talk to Faragonda about some things but never about Valtor. He’ll lose it if he understands she’s told Faragonda anything private about him and she also can’t get an unbiased opinion from Faragonda anyway.

13. Is it hard for them to talk about their feelings openly with each other? If so, is there any way that can be resolved, even in the slightest?

It is hard for both of them in the beginning. Valtor just doesn’t know how to open up to people and also expects to be ridiculed about any feelings he may have so he just doesn’t do it. Griffin finds it hard to talk to him because of the very same things and because she knows how he’s been raised and also the way he behaves does not exactly leave you inclined to share your innermost feelings with him. They slowly get more and more comfortable with each other, though, and things start to slip into conversations until they find themselves tackling feelings directly. It was never a conscious process, though. Any conscious effort has only been made towards being understanding of the other.

14. Who grieves more when the other is away?

That would actually be Valtor but you’ll never be able to tell. He forces himself to keep going about his day. He doesn’t have the time to sit around and wait for her return anyway. And work keeps him occupied but the moment he has an ounce of free time, his thoughts immediately drift to her and the fear that she won’t return rises in him instantly and makes him do his best to push it down.

Griffin gets more visibly restless when Valtor is on a solo mission. As his partner she can’t help but feel like something will go wrong when she’s not there to watch his back. She can’t really sit still. She tries to work but that doesn’t always help. She makes sure to avoid other coven members if possible as she doesn’t need whispers to start going around. People talk enough as it is and all they know is that she and Valtor are sleeping together. She is ecstatic when she feels him come back.

15. Who misses the other more, or really thinks about them more?

That’s hard to say. Valtor has a lot on his mind at all times and can’t really afford to get sidetracked while Griffin tries not to lose her focus. She has been distracted by thoughts about him while reading a book, though, which to her was the biggest sign that she’s in love because hardly anything manages to get between her and her books. She has a bit more free time so she finds herself thinking about him more.

16. Do either of them have a special item (an article of clothing, a necklace, a book) that they use when they miss the other? if so, what is it? What do they do with it (read, wear, look at, smell)?

Griffin wears one of his shirts if he’s been on a mission too long and she starts missing him. And she sleeps in his bed even if he’s not there.

Valtor has a copy of her favorite book of poetry and he goes through it if she’s not there to be with him. Sometimes he just keeps it close to feel her presence even if he’s too tired to read it. Griffin has found him sleeping with the book next to him in bed but she decided not to comment on that. She didn’t want him to get all defensive about it.

17. Who cries more? Who gets more emotional in general?

Griffin doesn’t consider herself emotional but compared to Valtor, she is definitely the feelsy one. Or rather, the one that shows her sensitivity more openly since Valtor is wary of having his emotions used against him or being ridiculed for them. Once he learns to trust her with his vulnerability, though, he starts showing more and Griffin is just in awe of his softness. That is what has made her cry a couple of times. Though, she’s cried over books too. Valtor teased gently about that, said that she was his “sensitive bookworm”. She tried to glare but it didn’t really work out through her tears.

18. Do either of them have the other’s stuff lying around their house?

Griffin has practically moved in his room which has no more room in it anymore with her stuff everywhere. Especially the plants. Valtor wasn’t a big fan at first but watching how gentle she is with them has proven to be soothing and he came around. They do have some trouble sharing the desk, though, as they both have a lot of need for it. They try to make do because they want to be around each other.

19. How about teasing? Do they tease each other while in a fight (whether it be with themselves or just general teasing)?

Well, yes, of course. Valtor is the master of teasing and Griffin tries her best to resist but she can’t always do that for long. Luckily for her, Valtor isn’t doing that much better when she turns the tables on him.

20. Do either of them have any vices?

Pride? Do we count pride? Also, Valtor’s coffee consumption could probably be listed as a vice. And Griffin’s carelessness when it comes to getting enough rest surely classifies as well.

21. What’s the thing they miss most about each other?

Valtor misses her smile and her touch because he could tell from just those how she felt about him. It was different when she touched him or smiled at him from when anyone else did it. There was just so much warmth and tenderness in her and the way she regarded him and that is not something he’s had outside of his relationship with her.

Griffin misses his voice and his words. For how skillful a liar she knew he was, she always believed everything he told her. She never doubted whether he loved her and meant the compliments he was giving her. It was like a special kind of magic that no one else had and it made her feel wanted and loved.

22. What’s their go-to breakup/angst song?

Griffin was about to resort to the heavy metal from her teen years. XD She was just mad at the universe and at herself for having to leave him. She knew how much she hurt him and she harbored intense self-hatred for that and was constantly ready to murder someone so she needed music to fit her edgy mood.

Valtor almost started hating music thanks to her departure. The only thing he could bear to listen was just music without lyrics and it was usually something fast and angry. He did his best to steer away from melancholic pieces because he knew it would just drag him deeper in his pain. Not that he admitted he was in pain.

23. Who’s more jealous?

Valtor would be the obvious answer. You don’t touch what is his. You don’t look at it. You don’t even think about it. However, Griffin is just as jealous. Especially at the beginning of their relationship when it wasn’t quite official and she was sure he only wanted her for her power so she was afraid he might find himself another witch. Not that there was any witch more powerful than her but still. There was just this fear inside her since she knew she was feeling more about him than he was feeling about her anyway. So she kept all the other witches away while also doing her best not to look clingy. Valtor had so much fun teasing her about it but she did fire right back, of course. Once the feelings settled a little and Valtor realized them, he made sure to be more reassuring even if he kept teasing her.

24. Who is the first to forgive?

It depends. Valtor was never really taught the value of forgiveness but Griffin can hold a grudge like no one else if she thinks he was wrong to go against her when she was clearly right. It takes her time to come around sometimes but Valtor also has trouble letting go of his pride pretty often. It really depends entirely on the situation.

25. What’s the one deal breaker for either of them (lack of communication, fear of commitment, etc)?

For Valtor a deal breaker would be lack of respect for his actions and opinions considering the way he’s been raised. And while Griffin happens to argue with him often, she never does it in an attempt to belittle and humiliate him so he feels safe with her even when they don’t see eye to eye on everything.

For Griffin lack of honesty and attention would be the thing chasing her away. She wants to be able to trust her partner and also to feel appreciated. Luckily, she always believes Valtor and even when he is snowed under with work and can’t pay her attention at that precise moment, he makes it up to her once he has the time. She doesn’t feel neglected or forgotten with him.

26. Who would take longer to let go? Do they ever really “let go”?

Neither of them really lets go. But Griffin will manage to move on with time even if it still hurts and she is still in love. She will just try to get on with her life because the relationship may be over but that isn’t. She will probably struggle with any potential relationships because of lingering feelings for Valtor. She won’t think it’s fair to the other person and to herself as well. But eventually, I think she would try to have a new relationship even if there is still love for him.

Valtor pretends there is nothing to let go of, that she didn’t mean much or anything, really, to him outside of her role as his magic partner. But he never lets go. He hates her and he knows he will hate her until he dies. But he also loves her and that doesn’t seem to have the intention of going away any time soon either. He uses it to feed the hate and rage because he’s convinced that there’s nothing else that can come of it.

27. Who is more afraid of confrontation?

Valtor is. He’s not scared of the confrontation itself as much as he is of the consequences. He’s always been told that he’s not good enough and he’s afraid that any fight might make Griffin realize that as well and leave him. It doesn’t stop him from going off when he’s angry but it really gets to him later on and he is hovering over Griffin for a while before he can calm down and trust that he hasn’t chased her away with his bad side.

28. Who’s the first to distance themselves (if either)?

That would be Valtor because he is (not so knowingly) trying to avoid any hurt that will come if she walks away. It’s a poor coping mechanism but it’s at work anyway. Griffin sometimes doesn’t let him do that because she’s concerned for him and sometimes she’s just too mad and will not accept him walking away from her. It has led to entirely new fights but they’re working their way through it.

29. Who’s more patient? Is it hard to break that patience?

Griffin has always been more patient, though Valtor knows just how to irritate her. It’s not so bad when it’s playful but if he’s doing it with the intent of truly annoying her and starting a fight, it can get pretty ugly. Griffin tries to be more patient with him because she knows he wasn’t really taught how to resolve conflicts in a civilized manner and without hurting the person he loves but he just pushes all of her buttons and she has had a few cases of exploding really fast and even worse than him.

Valtor can turn out to be the more patient sometimes despite being the more passionate and reckless one of the two. Usually, if Griffin gets ticked off by something that he can make his way around without getting mad, he will be the one to help her calm down. Sometimes his attempts to brighten the mood backfire and they end up fighting when Griffin riles him up as well but he has had a high rate of success in helping her find her cool. Ironically enough.

30. Who’s the first to blame themselves?

It depends, really. Griffin will blame herself if she thinks she was wrong. But sometimes she just says that she was never wrong and that is that on that. In those cases there is no budging from her, even if she mellows out in the way she insists she was right.

Valtor has a tendency to blame himself because he’s afraid of chasing her away. However, that clashes with his pride and he sometimes apologizes for the smallest of things while other times he insists he’s right because he can’t get over his pride. They have fought it out a couple of times and it seems to melt away once the angry energy is out of their system and one of them is pinned under the other.

31. Who’s more likely to do something out of spite?

Griffin, actually. She is a very spiteful creature while any spiteful retaliation has been long beaten out of Valtor by the Ancestral Witches. He knows Griffin won’t hurt him for doing something out of spite but he is actually glad that he doesn’t have to deal with his own spite when he already has to deal with hers. It makes getting along a little easier and he’ll take it, pride or no pride.

32. Who would be the first to say they hate the other? Would they mean it?

Griffin has said it before they were together when he wouldn’t stop pestering her. There were a few times when she had had enough of him and told him she hates him. It was quite the shock for him and she could tell despite his attempts to cover it up. She swore it was more trouble fixing that than just tolerating his bullshit because she needed to reassure him three hundred times that she didn’t mean it. And the fact that he would refrain from going back to his teasing for a long while after that actually worried her because it meant he had really taken it to heart. After the second time she said it, she swore to herself that she wouldn’t anymore. She has since then, once or twice. It just slipped out in her anger but once they started their relationship, she made it a priority to make sure she would never say it again. She hasn’t since then. Not even after she ran away from the Coven. Not even after he came back from Omega. He has said it to her, though, and she knew he meant it every time. It really hurt but she understood.

33. Who worries more?

They both worry. A lot. Griffin worries more openly, though, while Valtor will pretend he’s not worried but will keep looking for excuses to be close to her and touching her. She knows he has been taught to associate affection with weakness so she doesn’t complain when he won’t admit he is worried sick for her. And she knows that he’s also doing it to protect her from his mothers in case they decide he cares too much for her.

34. What scent reminds them of the other?

Baked bread and jasmine remind Valtor of Griffin. Also the scent of ink, though that one can be pretty irritating to his sense of smell.

Griffin always thinks of him when she smells gardenias because she was very pleasantly surprised when he gifted her some for her birthday. And the smell of coffee is a constant reminder too.

35. Do they have any regrets (regarding the other, or just in general)?

Valtor regrets ever falling in love with her. He even regrets recruiting her for the Coven bc he was wrapped around her finger ever since he met her. He just wishes he hadn’t.

Griffin does not regret leaving the Coven but she regrets leaving Valtor. She regrets that she didn’t just spell him and take him with her. She didn’t have to surrender to the Company. She could’ve just found them a hidden place for them to be together. She’s pretty confident that he would have stayed with her if he’d been given the opportunity to think without his mothers being a threat to him. But that just only makes her regret it more.

36. Who’s quicker to walk away if a situation gets heated?

Neither, really. They’re both too stubborn and often times their fights escalate unbelievably before the tension settles a little and one of them can calm down enough to put a fight to it. Griffin claims it’s strategical on her part because she knows he won’t just let her move away from the fight.

37. Who is more prone to anger?

They’re both like ticking bombs just waiting to explode, especially when they are swamped with work and irritable as hell, but Valtor is always more prone to anger. It’s just his thing. Griffin says it gets old sometimes but she doesn’t truly mind. And she loves calming him down when it’s possible, loves feeling him relax in her hands and knowing that even his anger doesn’t stand a chance against his feelings for her.

38. Who cries more in an argument? Do either of them cry?

Griffin has cried a few times. Valtor has had tears pretty much ruled out of his life a long, long time ago and even with Griffin he still has a hard time letting go. It usually only happens when she catches him off guard and he is never off guard during a fight so he doesn’t cry during those. Griffin has started crying, though. He panicked when she just burst into tears out of the blue but it was actually much worse that time he could see the tears gathering in her eyes while they were yelling at each other until they just started rolling down her cheeks silently. It broke his heart, and even more so that he couldn’t help her because he was the reason for her tears and she wouldn’t let him calm her down. Not right away, at least. Griffin has reassured him that crying ultimately makes her feel better, though, because all the negative emotions flow out.

39. Does it take a lot for it to get to the point of yelling?

Not really. Griffin will half shout if he keeps ignoring her while he’s working on his notes and he will start growling and it will soon turn into full on yelling. They do tend to yell a lot but neither of them seems to bat an eye at that. It’s just the normal way of communicating for them while they’re in a fight.

40. Who sleeps on the couch? Can either of them sleep without the other?

It depends. Valtor will sleep on the couch if Griffin kicks him out of bed. Occasionally, he’ll move there himself because he can tell she needs space. Griffin will move on the couch when she’s mad at him but still wants to take care of him and let him have his rest because she knows how tired he always is. If he’s really gotten on her nerves, though, he can kiss the bed goodbye for the night.

They make do when they have to sleep on their own but it’s very unpleasant for both of them. Griffin feels cold without Valtor’s heat next to her and he feels very lonely and instantly starts panicking about what he’ll do if he has to sleep alone again. He really doesn’t want to when he’s so used to feeling Griffin and her love for him right next to him in bed.

41. Who’s more likely to protect the other?

Valtor will not stop to think for a second if something is threatening her (as long as he is sure it is not a test of his mothers’). Griffin is a bit more strategical, although for how reasonable she believes herself to be, she also jumps in without thinking when Valtor is exposed to danger. It’s almost like her magic is pulling her towards him when they both know together they are much stronger and almost invincible.

42. If one of them gets injured, who worries more?

Griffin frets more because she knows how hurt Valtor has been throughout the years by missions and by his mothers. She doesn’t want him to go through any more pain even if she knows he can handle it. Valtor, on the other hand, is more worried for her because he doesn’t know how good a job he can do with healing. She has always been better at that even though he is the one with the Dragon Fire.

43. Who would be more afraid of the other’s death/harm?

Valtor. He doesn’t even want to think about it because he knows he won’t be able to pick himself up if she dies. Especially if he fails to keep her safe like he’s supposed to. Griffin knows that she will be devastated at the event of his death but there is still the mission to help dark magic users and she knows she will push herself to see that through at the very least. .Even if she’s sure she’ll never find it in herself to love someone else.

44. Who ends up yelling first? Are they always yelling when arguing, or do neither of them yell at all?

Either one of them may start yelling. It depends on who is more enraged at the moment, but usually the other is quickly brought up to speed. They rarely have a quiet argument, or even moderate noise level. Usually, it’s yelling with them.

45. Who would be more likely to save who?

Griffin is more likely to save Valtor based on the sheer number of times he gets in trouble. He just puts himself at risk far more often thanks to his recklessness and impulsive decisions and she ends up saving his ass a lot more often than he returns the favor.

46. Who stays up at night brooding?

Griffin. She is just the one that stays up in general. Valtor is too tired to stay up but he’ll find a time slot to brood during the day, you can be sure of that.

47. Who has more dreams/nightmares about the other?

Griffin. Valtor just doesn’t dream a lot in general. His subconsciousness has closed off as much as possible thanks to Lysslis’ strolls in his mind and he doesn’t have a lot of dreams. Not even nightmares. Griffin will happen to have a nightmare here, a wet dream there to go with her daydreams about a future life together outside the war that they may have. She is afraid of losing him to the Council or to his mothers but she also has some good things going on with him in her subconsciousness. ;)

48. Who comforts who after a bad dream/event?

Valtor doesn’t always wake up when Griffin startles awake from a nightmare and she prefers not to wake him up. He is pretty good in comforting her, though, and she has told him that. He always laughs it off and says that she thinks that because she hasn’t been comforted by herself. She is the best at comforting and he will kiss her breathless until she accepts it and agrees with him which Griffin always tries to struggle against but she loses out in the end.

49. Do they think about each other a lot? Does it affect their performance/schoolwork?

They do think about each other quite a bit and it affects them both despite their best efforts. Valtor will find himself thinking of her soothing warmth next to him if he’s staying up all night bc of a mission and Griffin will drift away into memories in the middle of a sentence from her research because it will remind her of him and the moments they’ve shared. They’ve even had spells go wrong because of their thoughts about each other.

50. If one of them were to come back after a long time, who would come to who? would it go well? Would the other person take them back?

This is kinda pointless, but no, it would not go well as evidenced on the show. And even if Griffin were the one trying to go back to him, he wouldn’t take her. Not after she left him. He can’t trust her again and trying and failing (or getting stabbed in the back by her again) will just hurt more. Remember those regrets he has? He doesn’t want to add more to those. Not even for the chance to be happy.

#winx club #winx griffin #winx valtor #griffin x valtor #covenshipping #winx headcanons #trashcankitty12 #angst

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Belushi Review: Showtime’s Look at John Belushi Is Almost Definitive

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The world got to know John Belushi’s eyebrows before we got to know the man. They projected his innermost confusion, telegraphed his thought processes, and misdirected his most sincere intentions. Showtime’s heartfelt and intimate documentary, Belushi, opens with clips from the comic icon’s screen test for Saturday Night Live. Armed with just his face, he lets those eyebrows steal the scene. They cajole, caress, and careen across the bottom of his brow, culminating in a series of aerobic stretches with a gymnast’s flair. Belushi didn’t have to crack a joke, he barely had to say a word, and yet showed a world of possibilities within a few inches of cranial space. Belushi really was a lot like his decathlon character in the Little Chocolate Donuts skit. All he needed was some sugar to keep him going. The documentary shows Belushi really was born that way, and didn’t need the extra sweetening.

Too bad he couldn’t keep it up. But we know this from the beginning. The first real scene takes place at the height of Belushi’s fame and adulation. He stole the movie he was just in, Animal House, which was the most successful comedy film of all time at the time. He was on the number one TV show in America. His record The Blues Brothers’ Briefcase of Blues, not even a comedy album, but a labor of love with musician friends he respected and adored, was at the top of the charts, with hit singles doing the same. Director R.J. Cutler (The War Room, The September Issue, Listen to Me Marlon) immediately declares this documentary isn’t about one of America’s favorite performers, it is about the cannibalistic hungers of fame.

“John always had appetites that were completely out of control, for everything, but I didn’t start to worry about him until he was at the Universal Amphitheatre, playing for 7,000 people,” Harold Ramis, who had known Belushi since their improvisational comedy beginnings, says over the soundtrack and applause. “I looked at John on the stage and I thought, ‘He’s on the most popular comedy show of our generation, he was in the most successful comedy film ever, and now he’s onstage fronting an amazing band.’ My first thought was, ‘How great for him.’ My second thought was, ‘Knowing his appetites, I don’t think he’ll survive this.’”

With that, Ramis throws a dark shadow over the rest of the film. Every success the documentary shows from here on has a cloud of doom hanging over it. Belushi was a wild man, bouncing around on the very edge of the most visible stage, both higher than anyone possibly imagined. SNL made overnight stars out of most of its cast. Chevy Chase was plucked out early because, well, he was Chevy Chase and they weren’t. But while former drummer Chase went on to be a matinee draw, Belushi became a rock star.

Belushi’s life has been told before. Watergate journalist Bob Woodward wrote the tawdry 1984 book Wired, which was adapted into a feature film in 1989. The documentary makes ample use of audio clips from Tanner Colby’s 2012 oral history Belushi: A Biography. Belushi’s wife Judith interviewed many of his friends and castmates, like Ramis, Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Lorne Michaels, Carrie Fisher, Ivan Reitman, Penny Marshall, and John’s brother Jim Belushi. Judy conducted the interviews in the first few years after Belushi’s death. This gives Belushi an immediacy, but also makes the stories feel older. None of the other interviews are shown as talking heads, except archival footage of Belushi himself.

While the guest voices condense the story, and breathe an even-handed life into the material, Belushi works best when it lets Belushi tell his own version. Some of the most revealing insights come from a series of letters written to Judy, who had been with him ever since Wheaton Community High School. The letters, which open “Dear Jutes,” begin when Belushi is still in an Indiana summer stock company, smoking pot and listening to The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, which he writes makes him think of her whenever he hears it, “Especially ‘With a Little Help From My Friends.’” His rendition of Joe Cocker’s adaptation of the song is a late highlight, and Belushi’s letters are interpreted very effectively by Saturday Night Live’s Bill Hader.

The letters illuminate Belushi’s passions while humanizing the larger-than-life performer. Home movie footage succeeds in showing him trying to find an elusive normalcy in real life. The letters offset the seemingly effortless rise of the comedian with the inner turmoil that fed it. Belushi comes off as obsessed with success but terrified of fame. A late letter reveals Belushi was afraid he reached a point of no return. Some of the letters are funny, others insecure, still others come off as despondent.

One of the most unexpected revelations about Belushi is how he felt like an outsider growing up, and was embarrassed by his Albanian immigrant background. One wouldn’t think Belushi might be embarrassed by anything. “We all wanted to be American,” his brother Jim Belushi explains. John, who was expected to work in his father’s restaurant, instead put it to work for him, inspiring his Pete Dionasopoulos of the Olympia Café character in the “Cheeseburger, cheeseburger” sketches.

Much of Belushi’s story is brought to life by the animated sequences from Robert Valley. These are particularly effective when showing Belushi during his high school years drumming with a band called the Ravens, and illustrating his time with the improv group he founded, The West Compass Players, which led to his joining Chicago’s Second City troupe. His rise is spectacularly fun to hear, and the animation makes up for lost footage.

The film also gets into his many contradictions. Belushi is drawn losing himself in the albums of comics like Jonathan Winters and Bob Newhart. But when he is asked, during his Second City period, his opinion on Lou Costello, Belushi says “Nope, don’t like him.” John wanted to create something new. The film also shows how much spontaneity played into Belushi’s comedy. He’d only seen the samurai movie with Toshiro Mifune on TV the night before he auditioned for Saturday Night Live.

Belushi was flown from Chicago to New York to officiate over Lemmings, National Lampoon’s Off-Broadway spoof of Woodstock. He stole the show with his impersonation of Joe Cocker. Lorne Michaels saw Saturday Night Live as a show which would be an “upheaval” for network television. Belushi said he hated television during his interview, but told Michaels he would deign to appear on the show. He’d already auditioned for a rival series called “Saturday Night,” which was going to be headlined by sports announcer Howard Cosell.

The documentary expertly weaves the double-edged sword of celebrity. Belushi chafed at being recognized on the street as “that Bee guy” from their bumble-bee sketches, but his performances, many of them exercises in extreme physical comedy, struck a nerve with audiences. Belushi lets clips strike at the audience to back it up. Michaels compares Belushi to Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden from The Honeymooners, because he brought a blue-collar vibe. On SNL, Belushi is remembered as being very competitive, distracted by the success of Chevy Chase, and dismissive of the women writers and performers. Once Chase left, Michaels says “the thing that John most hoped for, that he would be the alpha male, had now happened.”

The documentary is at its most exciting when it shows clips. From the early Lemmings stage show, through Saturday Night Live, Belushi highlights the anarchy Belushi brought to the stage. It could easily slip into be a “best of” clip show, featuring his memorable characters Jake Blues and the Samurai, or his ruthless spoof of Elizabeth Taylor choking on a chicken bone, giving herself the Heimlich maneuver and returning to the chicken. But instead informs Belushi’s motivations. Cutler consistently finds perfect clips to illustrate how Belushi’s individuality drove him to seemingly unimaginable heights. The onscreen examples justify the star quality which put him on the cover of Newsweek and Rolling Stone. We get the sense of how Belushi helped change American culture and comedy, in the same league as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin, and George Carlin. But while scaling the dizzying heights, the movie never loses its sense of doom.

Belushi’s spiral into addiction is covered at length. In the second season of SNL, Belushi got injured doing a pratfall and was prescribed painkillers. When the prescription ran out, he turned to the street for hard drugs. Later in his career, Belushi would hire President Nixon’s personal bodyguard to keep him away from bad influences, but on his rise up, many of his colleagues cut him a lot of slack. “He was testing all his boundaries at that point,” The Blues Brothers director John Landis explains, before excusing Belushi: “I don’t think we lost more than four or five days of shooting because of the drugs.”

Belushi got clean for a year, living Martha’s Vineyard. Carrie Fisher, however, says in an interview that by skipping rehab, Belushi never dealt with sobriety’s most challenging aspects: day to day life can be boring, and the comic star didn’t have the coping mechanism to deal with feelings the drugs were covering up. Cutler’s documentary is moving, offering a look into the soul of the man who embodied the “animal” found in every college fraternity, Bluto in Animal House. The documentary deftly explores Belushi’s attempts to make the beast noble, taking his acting seriously in smaller films like Old Boyfriends, Continental Divide, and trying to break out of the audience’s preconceptions with his last film Neighbors.

Cutler finds Belushi, the performer, but doesn’t quite catch John as a person as Belushi incrementally shifts its focus from his art to his drug binges. Belushi can’t fully celebrate Belushi, because everyone watching knows the ending. In March of 1982, Belushi sequestered himself at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles in order to finish “Noble Rot,” a screenplay he was writing with Don Novello. Here the film very succinctly and poignantly captures the love people felt for the man, Belushi. Aykroyd, who said he fell in love with Belushi the moment they met, still bears deep wounds.

“He was sad and defeated,” Aykroyd remembers about his last conversation. “I thought I’ll finish this page, this paragraph and get out there. I didn’t get to him in time. I carry that with me forever.” Belushi’s long-time blues and soul brother thought he had a solution. “I told him I was writing something great for us,” we hear Aykroyd say in the film. “I was writing Ghostbusters.” While the documentary gives this revelation a sheen of hopeful might-have-beens, it really only underscores how that would be a mistake assumption. Everything about the documentary says a successful film might only have slowed the same inevitable ending.

For all the archival footage found in Belushi, one particular short film broadcast on Saturday Night Live is sadly not featured, except for a few stills in one of the quicker montages. “Don’t Look Back in Anger” shows John, as an old man, walking through a cemetery and reminiscing about his old friends on SNL. They’re all dead in the film, Belushi is the last survivor. Why? Because he is a dancer. This may have been how he saw himself, and as his audience most wanted to see him. But for all the missed promise it may have subverted, the skit fits with Belushi’s larger picture. John Belushi is dancing through a graveyard, happily. The film is a wake, of sorts. But the dance is how Belushi ultimately moved through life, with a dancer’s grace which defied the body held down by strong appetites. Belushi would have been a more satisfying film if it took smaller bites.

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Belushi airs Sunday, Nov. 22, at 9 p.m., on Showtime.

The post Belushi Review: Showtime’s Look at John Belushi Is Almost Definitive appeared first on Den of Geek.

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