Trader Vic's was delayed when the Corbin Park developer filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Construction activity began resuming in 2012; however, a new completion date for Trader Vic's has not been announced. The song "Werewolves of London," a Top 40 hit co-written by Warren Zevon and appearing on his 1978 album Excitable Boy, contains the line "I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic's," presumably referring to the chain's London location. The restaurant is also referenced by Bill Murray's character Frank Cross to John Forsythe's character Lew Hayward in the 1988 movie "Scrooged." Trader Vic's Trader Vic's is a
Warren Zevon Sick" and an austere version of Steve Winwood's 1980s hit "Back in the High Life Again". With record sale brisk and music critics giving Zevon his best notices since "Excitable Boy", "Life'll Kill Ya" is seen as his second comeback. He followed with the album "My Ride's Here" (2002), with its morbid prescience of things to come; the album included "Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song)" (co-written by Mitch Albom, the author of "Tuesdays with Morrie", and featuring Paul Shaffer, the "Late Night" band, and a spoken vocal from TV host David Letterman) and the ballad "Genius" (later used as the