I left my interview with Dan Aykroyd having acquired the remains of his packet of Marlboro
"Take them, I don't really smoke much."
For more than an hour his fast, clipped delivery had disperesed the cloud of smoke he exhaled. This was the first direct betrayal of the discomfort he had felt in my presence. "Dan Aykroyd no longer speaks to the media," was the word out all summer. "Not since Wired."
The name Dan Aykroyd and the controversy over Wired may not be entirely familiar in Europe but mention John Belushi and the Blues Brothers in certain circles and people will shriek with the joy of enlightenment. In the States Belushi and Aykroyd appear, to many as inseparable as Laurel and Hardy. Alas the fat one died and the now not-so-slim Aykroyd alone bears the responsibility of being a self-confessed American comedy institution of ten years standing.
A teasing smile follows this moment's pomposity. "The definition of an institution, of course, is a personage or body who has to employ more than six lawyers, so I qualify."
He certainly needs a small corporation to handle the probable twenty million dollars share that he awaits from his latest project as a writer and actor--the monstrously popular Ghostbusters.
You don't require a medium to impart news of the year's paranormal box office phenomenon but I feel sure that few of those who have shared the experience will feel cheated by it. In other words, this movie is fun.
"Well, I certainly don't feel that I have to do a selling job on it," says Aykroyd. "I think Ghostbusters delivers what it promises: thrills, chills, romance and humour. Thirty million well-spent dollars of entertainment for four dollars can't be bad."
The huge costs, of course, were caused by the highly elaborate special effects--including the near destruction of Central Park West--but it is the humour and the deliciously dilapidaged presence of Bill Murray that make the movie. Murray along with co-star (and co-writer) Harold Ramis and director Ivan Reitman are all part of the breeding ground of humour that developed in America in the Seventies around National Lampoon magazine, drew on The Second City improvisational troupe in Chicago and came to roost on NBC's Saturday Night Live.
Aykroyd first came across Reitman back in his native Canada, acting in a few TV sketches for him. He then headed for Chicago and Second City. He was met at the airport by Murray who has remained his closest friend in the comedy mafia. At Second City Harold Ramis reigned, a reputed wizard of improvisation and the man who still remains arbiter of their humour. Belushi spotted Aykroyd in Chicago while scouting for a National Lampoon revue which Reitman was now directing in New York but it was not for a few more years that the two finally came together with the inception of Saturday Night Live.
This was an era of manic energy for Aykroyd. He and Belushi moved bunk beds into an office at NBC and occasionally, with John's help, Aykroyd carried a large proportion of the weekly writing deadline. The program was as essential viewing as That Was The Week or Monty Python had been in the UK.
"It was an incredible period of training," says Aykroyd. "Great video commando time. OUr personal life was nonexistent. Through 1975-79 I don't think I had dinner in my apartment once. That immediacy of writing a piece and performing the same week can't ever be reproduced although I still like to keep on the edge and the fact that the old team work together so often means that we can still get outrageous in the films. We need that to keep the humour alive."
This was also a period of crazy living, drugs and for Aykroyd, a flirtation with death on fast motor-bikes. They could do as they liked, these kings of comedy. When the Blues Brothers appeared, Aykroyd and Belushi rules in New York. Did a touch of obnoxiousness creep in?
"Well, there was the feeling that we were the hottest ticket in town, the sensation of owning the city. I don't think we were obnoxious." Adopting a diplomatic tone he continues:
"You could say we were ambassadors of a goodwill institution and depending on the good behavior of others we did that well, and shall we say that when we were on bad behavior we took full advantage of situations and the yieldings of other people." He laughs at this elaborate evasion. I'm sure they could be bloody impossible.
He demurs, seriously this time.
"I don't think I really gave people a hard time or had to for that matter. I had my fits of temper, sure. I remember once I had to let off steam so I punched all the ceiling tiles out in my dressing room and there was a five foot space above them. That eased the stress a little. You had to go a little crazy."
Which brings us to Belushi, who went more than a little crazy. In March 1982 he died of a lethal dose of heroin and cocaine--a 'speedball'--administered by an addict called Cathy Smith. The sad and sordid story has been relentlessly catalogued in the infamous Wired, a brutally depressing book by Watergate journalist Bob Woodward a (to be published in the UK by Faber & Faber next month.) The book was commissioned by Judy Belushi, John's widow, but since then she and virtually all those who cooperated in the project have vehemently disassociated themselves from Woodward and his book.
Aykroyd is obviously a prominent feature in the tale and spoke with anger on its release in June. After this initial outburst, however, he appeared to distance himself from the continued wrangle and, despite the surrounding success of Ghostbusters, avoided journalists.
As recorded by Woodward, he did his fair share of drugs but his personality was always solidly grounded. He had a happy, middle-class upbringing in Canada, parents who channelled rather than curtailed his energetic eccentricity. His father, with a "nicely absurdist sense of humour," and his mother, a creditable wit too, were the primary influences in a thoughtfully liberal environment. A sacking from a Jesuit seminary for "standard puerile misbehavior" seems to have been the only blot.
It was a lapse which did not lise him his faith however.
"I think the Ten Commandments are a good way to live. I drop into St. Pat's cathedral in New York from time to time because it's such a hallowed hall of holy hallelujahs! I don't mind having the splinters of the pews rub off. I have been known to get on my knees and pray and to light candles to my friends..." Including, presumably, one for the departed. Aykroyd clearly loved his friend Belushi and may have revered his raw brilliance but one senses a frustration at the implication that he can no longer be as creative without his professional partner.
"That's unavoidable. Our association was so close. But I'm doing different stuff now and I had done things on my own when John was still alive. I maybe only saw him four times in the six months prior his death. That's not to say I didn't need a substantial healing period following it."
There is no doubt that the latter extremes in Belushi's life were hard for even his closest protectors to handle.
"You have to understand that John's appetites were far bigger than the average man's," he wearily explains.
"I simply don't have those kind of appetites and I deal with depression and despair in different ways. I used to think that tempting fate, living recklessly, was the thing but that stopped for me long before John's death. I'm living the way I've always lived which is in moderation. Of course I did drugs but I have to say that I think cocaine is a divisive element in our society. It is psychologically and physically destructive. I'm just going on other people I know who do coke still and I can't be around them any longer because their eyes glaze over and they talk too fast, thinking they are saying things with profundity and insight and there is nothing there."
When things got too crazy for Aykroyd there was always the discipline of writing to straighten him up, the combination of solitude and activity clearing his mind.
Nobody could claim that Belushi's life was a nosegay of sweetness yet the remorseless diary of drug use in Wired causes impatience in the reader as well as sadness. But why had Aykroyd objected so to the book?
Scene of some of those times was the Blues Bar, a private bar owned by Belushi and Aykroyd in lower Manhattan where the two comedians, cruising on the success of the Aykroyd-scripted Blues Brothers movie, held court with the new showbiz aristocracy.
"It was a fantastic place to throw parties after Saturday Night Live. We had incredible people there. One night, for instance, Mick and Keith and Dave and Paul (Jagger, Richards, Bowie and Simon) were all playing music at the top of their talent! John and I just revelled in all that."
One of the controversies at the time of the release of Wired came from the suggestion that Woodward had been hired to write the book to find out if there was anything suspicious surrounding Belushi's death. It was mooted that Cathy Smith was a police informer. She had been released immediately by police after they found the body despite the fact that she had the lethal needle and syringe in her bag. Back in May, Aykroyd was quoted as complaining:
"Woodward completely skirts the issue of the police probe up there. He wimped out completely on it."
I questioned Mr. Aykroyd on this and--dare I say it--he did much the same. Understandably he realises that this, like so many famous tragic deaths, is going to haunt those left for rather longer than is comfortable. He wants John to rest.
"I don't know what Judy expected to gain by hiring Woodward. I always thought it was a mistake to hire the man who impeached the President. That's not because I believed in Nixon, but Woodward's history made it obvious he was going to dig up dirt and haul people down. He was out there to undermine and destroy. I think that's basically what investigative journalism is all about. Finding targets and picking them out."
But what about the investigation he had alluded to before?
"What was there to find out?" counters an increasingly uncomfortable Aykroyd.
"That's between Judy and Woodward. There was no question in my mind that John fell in with some bad people with bad drugs and he was being a bad boy."
The subject is clearly closed.
At the time of Belushi's death Aykroyd was working on an idea for a movie for Belushi and Bill Murray. The movie was ironically about ghosts. Ghostbusters was adjusted accordingly and one can only speculate what Belushi could have done with it. Still there is Murray as the lecherous sceptic (sic) Dr. Venkman. and Aykroyd too. Sometimes it is easy to overlook the quality of his work. He is an extraordinarily selfless performer always giving centre stage to his co-star, be it Belushi, Murray or that other graduate of Saturday Night Live, Eddie Murphy, with whom he teamed in the occasionally hilarious Trading Places. It is worth looking at this film again. It shows the strength of his character acting as well as the gems of wicked caricature such as his outrageous Rasta. Eddie Murphy sparkles but it is Aykroyd who provides the rock from which the gems come.
"I think it is true that I am the best set-up man in the business," he says without managing to sound in the least self-satisfied.
"I adored Trading Places, it was such an A-movie and Eddie was sparkling! I'm lucky that the people I tend to work with I know so well. We all understand each other. There are no explanations needed. I like to accommodate other people's gifts and I know how to make them look good which is gratifying. I get enough of the fuss and attention as it is, sometimes too much. Basically I'm just delighted if I can get a script produces. Performing is a bonus for me."
At the moment, Aykroyd is working on four scripts to add to what he calls his "little contribution to American humour," a catalogue of over ten films, five record albums and a hundred live telecasts. He finds it a refreshing thought that most of this has passed us over on this side of the Atlantic and there is some challenge in establishing himself there without the cult chain round his neck. He doesn't have to top such moments as his suave TV anchor man who would turn to his partner Gilda Radner (sic) and ask: "What's next you unspeakable slut?" (sic) We do not see him at his most exciting in Ghostbusters but the appeal is evident.
"I just wanted my boyish enthusiasm to emerge for a change. The chubby adolescent who never grew up," teases a relaxed Aykroyd, able to lay his hard-lived past on one side.
He now has a conventional marriage to American actress Donna Dixon and the seriously stable nature of his personality is free to surface. The closest he comes to dabbling with death comes in his fascination with the paranormal. Ghostbusters may be a comedy but Mr. Aykroyd does not take his ectoplasm with a pinch of salt and is a proud, card-carrying member of the American Institute of Psychical Research. He can tell a mean ghost story. It follows that he already has one in mind for the GB sequel. Next on the agenda however, is a spoof spy movie likely to co-star former SNL colleague, Chevy Chase.
"It will be a sort of portrait of Republican madness," he says with gleeful anticipation, proving thankfully that commercialism has not turned him to complacency. I look forward to him bringing his old satirical edge, not to the demons that haunt us from beyond, but those that live in our midst.