Jim Belushi on His Career Renaissance With Kristen Stewart’s ‘The Chronology of Water,’ Reinventing Himself and Still Dreaming of His Brother John

When Jim Belushi was playing Ken Kesey — a literary giant gone to seed — in “The Chronology of Water,” he’d hear Kristen Stewart calling out from behind the camera with one consistent note.

“Drunker!” she’d yell.

And Belushi, who is nothing short of a revelation in Stewart’s feature directing debut, would adjust his register, finding the sadness drowning in a sea of booze and revealing the struggling family man hiding behind the prankster persona.

Stewart, whom Belushi describes as having “the mind of a writer, the heart of an actress, and the soul of a director,” created space for him to improvise, to breathe, to live inside Kesey’s skin.

“I studied Ken Kesey for three months,” Belushi says. “But I don’t do imitations. I can’t. My brother John was brilliant at it. I just try to get the essence.”

That essence, it turns out, is grief.