John Belushi, Sam Kinison, John Candy and Chris Farley were each tied to the same movie role, one after another, and every one of them died before the film could be made. The movie is called Atuk, and Hollywood has been trying to make it since 1971. The part was an Inuit hunter from Alaska turned loose in New York City, loosely adapted from a 1963 satire by the Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler. In early 1982 the script reached Belushi, a big man with no brakes, and he read it and wanted the part. On March 5 he was found dead at the Chateau Marmont from heroin and cocaine at 33. Sam Kinison got further than anyone. Production started in Toronto in February 1988 and shut down after eight days when he fought United Artists over rewrites. The studio sued him before the month was out. Four years later a 17-year-old drunk driver hit his car head-on outside Needles, California, and Kinison was dead at 38. John Candy took an interest next. In March 1994 he was in Durango, Mexico, shooting a western, and he died of a heart attack in his sleep on March 4 at 43. Chris Farley grew up studying Belushi and followed him through Second City and SNL. By most accounts he wanted Atuk because his hero had wanted it first. He died in Chicago on December 18, 1997, from cocaine and morphine, at 33, the same age Belushi was. Farley had reportedly passed the script to Phil Hartman for a supporting role. Five months later Hartman's wife shot him while he slept at their home in Encino. He was 49. Nobody needs a curse to explain this list, because the part kept drawing the same kind of comic. Jonathan Winters showed interest in it too, and he lived to 87. Hartman is still the name that will not fit, because he was the steady one his castmates called the Glue. Atuk has still never been finished, and what it left behind is a lawsuit and a list of the men who made a generation laugh the hardest.