When Gary Busey ground production to a halt for spiritual reasons
Hollywood has introduced some peculiar characters to the world, like Gary Busey, who found fame back in the 1970s. After an Oscar-nominated performance as the titular character in The Buddy Holly Story, Busey continued his career over the next few decades with other hits like A Star Is Born, Lethal Weapon and Point Break.
However, off-screen, Busey has experienced some life-altering experiences, such as fracturing his skull in a severe motorcycle accident in 1988. Due to not wearing his helmet, Busey seriously injured himself, resulting in permanent brain damage. The actor was also addicted to cocaine, leading him to appear on Celebrity Rehab in 2008.
Talking to The Irish Times, Busey explained the severity of his addiction. “I OD’d on May 3rd, 1990, and thank God, because I realised I’d been dancing with the devil in a very small circle, and the devil was leading the dance. I left the dance and said: ‘You kick on from here – I’m gone. I’m dancing on my own.’ When you do a drug like cocaine, you want to get that first hit back, but you never will. That’s gone. It’s a chase to the death when you’re addicted to cocaine.”
His experiences with brain damage and drug overdoses led Busey to dedicate himself to Christianity in the 1990s, proclaiming himself a proud member of the religion. However, the actor’s dedication to his faith led him to complicate the production of the 2003 film Quigley, also known in the United Kingdom as Daddy Dog Day.
The bizarre film features Busey as a man who is reincarnated as a fluffy white pomeranian named Quigley, with most critics putting it in the ‘so bad it’s good’ category. In an interview with The AV Club, one of the actors, Curtis Armstrong, revealed how Busey forced filming to stop due to his qualm with the movie’s depiction of Heaven.
He explained, “Busey supposedly had done this — he’d been in an accident and died and came back. He showed up on a set made to look like Heaven, and he looked around and said, ‘I can’t play this scene.’ They were three days behind at this point. But Busey said, ‘It’s nothing like this. I’ve been to Heaven, and it doesn’t look like this. That sofa’s all wrong. That mirror is ridiculous. They don’t even have mirrors!’ It was ridiculous. He was completely nuts about the design of Heaven.”
The story doesn’t end there. Armstrong hilariously revealed that Busey got into a fistfight with an actor over the matter. “But then, on top of it, one of the guys playing an angel had also died and come back. And this guy got into an argument with Busey about the way Heaven looked! The two of them wound up coming to blows, and they had to send everybody home. So there you go. That’s what we were working with.”
Watch the trailer for Quigley below.
