"Look for a sign that says Tartland: I'll meet you there." They were the cryptic directions from Dan Aykroyd, who wanted to keep his whereabouts private. We--my photographer and I--drive down the 401 into the heartland of Ontario, our eyes peeled for a signboard covered with fluted apple and blueberry spheres--little home-baked UFOs--cresting over the landscape. We see nothing. We stop and ask for information at a local garage sale. Four bikers cackle wildly as we drive off.
Tartland?. Was Aykroyd for real? Soon, the swarthy, handsome profile of Richard Kruk (a longtime friend of Dan's) on the back of a pickup truck comes into view. He points to the village grocery store--Tartland, what else?--goes inside for an ice cream tart or two, then leads us up the country road to Dan's summer retreat.
Aykroyd drives up a half hour later, clambers out of his smooth vanilla 1940 Buick Special and greets us with open arms, an infectious smile and, "Ah...ah...well, I'm sorry. We've been calling it Tartland for years. It's always been Tartland to me." Take Aykroyd at his word, for sure, but not always literally, and always be ready for a few surprises.
At six feet, Aykroyd is handsome and stocky with rumpled, wind-blown black hair, blue eyes and an open boyish face. He wears a pale yellow shirt over white shorts and his ubiquitous black Blues Brothers sunglasses. In person, he has nothing of the comic celebrity about him. He doesn't fly into character at the drop of a hat, or regale you with funny stunts. He is friendly, down-to-earth, a little serious. But if you look closely enough at his face, you can almost see the comic incarnations lurking behind the flesh, ready to pounce.
Aykroyd, who with his wife Donna Dixon, divides his life among homes in Los Angeles and Massachusetts and an apartment in New York, often spends his summer months in southern Ontario. For someone who could be anywhere in the world, why does he come here? "April 17 a bell goes off in L.A. and we're outta there," says Aykroyd, sitting at the edge of the lake and gazing out over it. "It's my R & R time. Rest and reading. I come up here because it's where my family roots are. Even if it were some bald, ironscape hovel dissolved by sulpher and acids, something that looked like a mining strip in Wyoming, I'd probably be here, because it's my family. The bonus is that it's a great place to be. The waters are warm and the people are here to be private."
Aykroyd's retreat, a 1040s Air Stream trailer, sits on several hundred acres of cedar, birch and maple trees on an escarpment above a clear blue Ontario lake. He came here as a child every summer, as did his father before him. The land, settled by his Yorkshire ancestors, still holds the Aykroyds' ancestral home, a white clapboard farmhouse. When he and Donna leave California and their Los Angeles estate, they leave the luxurios life behind. Home in Ontario, he lives simply. His trailer, a footpath away from his parents' cottage, holds a tiny galley kitchen, bedroom, small sitting space and bathroom. The luxuries for him seem to be found in less material things: the stunning cliffside view of the blue lake and blue sky, the forest around his property, undisturbed morning swims with Donna and visits with his old friends.
Aykroyd, born in Ottawa 34 years ago, has been a big name in New York, Hollywood and the world for 10 years. A writer and actor, he explodes on the screen with his bursts of comedy. Whether in NBC's Saturday Night Live television sketches or in his later films, Aykroyd's sharp talent for mimicry, his outrageous ability to lampoon anything animate or inanimate, his machinegun delivery and his consummate wizardry for conjuring up the wackiest characters make him hard to forget. He's long gone from Saturday Night Live, but who can forget his Jorge Festrunk, one half of the "wild and crazy" Czechoslovakian brothers who wore stomach-turning prints and expected to dazzle the britches off beautiful "American foxes"? Or his Conehead creation, Beldar, who titilates his wife, Prymaat, by suggesting they indulge in a little "ringtoss" before dinner?
His career has been, in the critics' eyes at least, uneven. The critics have panned many of his films--Dr. Detroit, Neighbors, Blues Brothers. Even Spies Like Us, Aykroyd's most recent release, was given only a lukewarm reception. But the man knows how to make us laugh. "My family on both sides knew how to laugh," says Aykroyd, lounging by the lake with a glass of champagne and a Wonderbread sandwich slathered with a friend's home-made zucchini relish. "It's not as if they knew 150 jokes or put lampshades on their heads. They just had an ability to sit back and observe the world with mirth. It's that English/French thing--the English reserve and dry wit mixed with the quick, manic sense of the French. The French...physicalize their humor. I always got that from the Gougeon side, my mother's side. And my father--he's the natural."
Aykroyd did not plan to do comedy. In fact, as he tells it, he didn't plan anything. His career in comedy just evolved. But he was 10 when he first studied improvisation, the key training, he believes, for comedy. "I took classes with Brian Gordon at Ottawa Little Theatre. As I remember it, my improvs were always ironic or funny."
Later at Carleton University (where he took courses in criminology), he hooked up with a number of people he would later remember as having fuelled and enlarged his comedic imagination. "My friends, Herb Lane and Monsieur Chartrand, loved Hitchcock and black humor and a little nastiness. They were great influences. Duncan Layton was another another major, major influence on me. He started that sardonic way of saying, 'Yey' and 'Thank yooo. Well, Thank Yooo,' when something annoying happened like a fender-bender or you got pooped on by some bird. Him...and...Roger Lacroix and Hugh MacMillan...those guys were my network in Ottawa. They taught me a lot about humor. I looked at life seriously then. I still have that side to me, too. I'm a bit crusty. I see the dark side of things."
It it's surprising that Aykroyd credits his friends from long ago with feeding his later comic success, it's also perfectly in character. "Life's a collaboration," he says. "I owe the greatness of my life to my collaborators, my friends. I can't work alone. In concert with them, I have created premises and projects and ideas that have become sketches or films or music. You don't ever do anything alone. I've been very lucky to work with great people."
Aykroyd took the plunge in the early 1970s, leaving Ottawa for Toronto. He worked at Second City's Old Firehall, the improvisational theatre, with other comic greats like Rosie Shuster, Paul Shaefer and Howard Shore. While in Toronto, he starred in a CBC children's comedy special called Coming Up Rosie. The show brought him to the attention of Lorne Michaels, a Toronto-born writer and producer who created NBC's Saturday Night Live and who later casted Aykroyd, then 23, and other Second City performers in the show.
Saturday Night Live started in 1975. Soon, 30 million viewers across North America were making a point of getting--or staying--home on Saturday nights to watch the show's crazy antics. SNL transformed the face of television. "It was a blast. Never to be repeated. Michaels took a chance on me. He took a chance on all of us. He didn't know how it would work out or if we could live up to the work or pace of the show. I think Lorne Michaels was my key connection. If I hadn't met him, I don't know where I'd be today."
What makes him tick> Who is the real Dan Aykroyd? "I'm just a normal, red-blooded North American guy who is a registered American alie, who has a spectacular woman for a mate and who believes that you should be good and beneficent to all living creatures...with the exception of mosquitos. And beyond that, I'm the kind of guy who liked to get eight hours sleep at night."
Loss of privacy is an easy price to pay for celebrity, he says. "There's no place I can go without being recognized. There's no hidden corner anymore. I'm public property. I realize that and I really don't mind the encounters with autograph seekers. I mean, what's to pay? But when I'm home, I'm home."
Kruk, part owner of Crooks restaurant and the rhythm and blues Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto and a former police officer, met Aykroyd in the early 1970s when Kruk was pounding the beat at 51 division and Aykroyd was runnig an after-hours club on Queen Street. "Dan comes back to recharge, to put his head back, to see his friends, to relax. Off duty! Get it?"
Aykroyd's time in Ontario with Donna, an intelligent, atttractive actress he met on the set of Dr. Detroit, is precious. They spend much of their time in long, leisurely swims or reading the hordes of books they bring. Aykroyd reads history, particularly Pierce Berton's works. And he has a fascination for mysticism (so Ghostbusters was probably no coincidence). They make time for water-skiing, visiting with friends and dancing until the early hours. Sometimes, they just take to the roads to tour around Ontario. "Every summer, we drive up the Perth Road to Ottawa, up to Bedford Mills, then come around by Quillon on the Quebec side and up to Fort Coulonge, where the road stops and everything becomes tundra.
"I visited Old Fort Henry in Kingston once. I got an idea from seeing the officers' quarters. I wrote a scene into Ghostbusters where I discover a female ghost in the officers' quarters and she tries to seduce me. It was eventually cut out--as lots of scenes always are. When I sit down to write, I write big. I've learned that nothing is impossible. You can write anything you want and the industry will do it. You always need the right elements, but ultimately the audience will decide. It's the only way to play. I don't deserve to have my phone calls returned if I don't produce entertainment that draws the crowds on opening night."
But he admits that he tries to leave town when his films open. If the weather permits, he comes up to his Ontario retreat. It gives him perspective, he says. "Donna and I sit by the lake and take stock. The lake has been here a thousand years and will be here a thousand years after us. It keeps me sane. It's my mental health tonic."
Donna is also his anchor. "Donna's my friend, my adviser, my partner, my lover. I like her around when I'm writing. I talk to her about what I'm doing, but I don't like her to read it. That's the private me. Thank God she understands and respects that."
A sequel to Ghostbusters is in the works as is another project, Dragnet, 1987. "I love my life. Research and write for six months of the year. Do a movie every two years. That's the pace for me. Writing is the greatest joy, the greatest liberty. And when they finance it--well!"