by Ed West

Created on: August 30, 2010

Six Lives Cut Short

As we are all aware death is a part of life.  Sometimes a person faces death bravely, fighting for every breathe and every moment before finally being overtaken by the inevitable.  Other times it seems that people simply resign themselves to their mortality and slip quietly away.  Then there are those who pass too early either by their own hands or by circumstances that were simply beyond their control.  Death comes in many forms, but no matter the form it is always the one certainty in life.  I feel that the celebrity deaths that have the greatest impact on me are those that die before their time.  Throughout the history of movie making their have always been tragic stories such as these, but I want to focus on six in particular that I have felt directly.

John Belushi died when I was still young, too young to remember the event myself, but having seen him in multiple roles I feel that his is a life that I miss greatly.  My first experience with seeing John on screen was the movie Animal House.  This is a movie that speaks to most people and has inspired many similar college themed movies.  John Belushi's character, John Blutarsky, is one that anyone who has attended college can relate to.  When I first watched this movie I laughed in all the right places, but for all the wrong reasons.  Having watched it again during my college years I realized how great a film this truly was and how much he brought to the movie.  Blues Brothers was a different experience altogether.  This movie was funny from beginning to end and it didn't matter what life experience you brought to the table when you watched it, you laughed.  I have also watched him in many episodes of Saturday Night Live and in 1941 and can honestly say that he always kept me laughing.  I truly believe that even if you were simply standing in line behind him at a fast food restaurant he would make you laugh.  John Belushi was a very funny man, a fantastic actor, and a tragic loss to cinema.

River Phoenix's passing in 1993 was a great surprise to me.  I, like so many others, was introduced to a young River through the movie Stand By Me in 1986.  His talent was evident throughout this movie and it was not a surprise to me that he was forecast to be a great Hollywood star.  Three years later I got another taste of his brilliance, however briefly, in the third installment of the Indiana Jones

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>