For him, it's become an annual ritual. Every summer, he and a few buddies buzz around the National Capital Region on their Harleys. Sometimes they stop at the Bank Hotel Tavern on Eddy Street in Hull to grab a quick beer. Or ride through the Gatineau Hills for a whiff of that clean Canadian air, not found in the Santa Monica Mountains. Unlink the Hollywood hounds who pounce on their star-prey seeking autographs or a candid Polaroid snapshot, people here ordinarily treat Ottawa-born Dan Aykroyd with the same reserved indifference they do of any of Parliament Hill's shining lights.
That is, if they notice him. It's been a while since Danny spent time here. His rise to stardom has secured his place as a bankable star at the box office. And the steps there have been well chronicled as part of our popular social history: NBC-TV's Saturday Night Live, the turbulent partnership with John Belushi, the commercial success of Ghostbusters, the musical jaunt with the Blues Brothers, the Emmy, and last year's Oscar nomination for supporting actor in Driving Miss Daisy. Dan, the class clown at St. Pius X School for Boys, and Dan, the Black Top Vamp (a mock motorcycle gang) immersed in Ottawa's hip culture of the 19602, has proven that he could, and did, make it.
So when he makes his annual pilgrimage home to spend time with his folks, he returns like the self-assured hunter carrying many prized pelts. Where Ottawa once brought him adolescent passion, it now offers him peace and a sense of accomplishment. Any anonymity here is more a blessing than a curse. For a guy who has crafted a professional life composed of various personas, the trip home, as one of us, allows, Aykroyd the opportunity to play a role he says he doesn't like playing for the cameras: himself.
The photogrph published 12 years ago in Rolling Stone Magazine showed a three-year-old Aykroyd astride a small motorcycle, carrying a toy machine gun and wearing a cowboy hat. Even then, Aykroyd seemed a renegade in front of the cameras, ready to serve up justice his way as an alien-zapping Ghostbuster or buffoonish Dragnet cop. But that's only what the camera revealed. In the intervening years Aykroyd has blossomed as a person. He no longer auditions 24 hours a day--success has afforded him the luxury of turning off the muggin in private. He is devoted to his family, and carefully guards his privacy. A student of criminology is his university years, today he is an observer of human behavior who revels in the polarities of characters on and off the set. He is spiritual in an unorthodox sense, and--despite the occasional Americanism that belies his years spent south of the border--still politically keen on Canadian affairs, particularly as they relate to his former homr, Quebec. And underlying these traits is a Calvinistic work ethic that has seen him make a prolific number of films in a short time, and ties him to a computer for six hours at a stretch in creative purgatory.
Not surprisingly, media interviews with Aykroyd have become increasingly rare. It doesn't hurt when a request comes from his old stomping grounds, particularly in the midst of a media campaign promoting his directorial debut in Nothing But Trouble (a prophetic title given the poor to fair reviews the film has received). Aykroyd directs, takes credit for the film's screenplay, and stars with many of his closest friends. Brother Peter, a writer/actor/musician, conceptualized the story, wrote two songs for the soundtrack and appears in a cameo role. So too do former Saturday Night Live colleague Chevy Chase, Second City alumnus John Candy, longtime buddy John Daveikis and Valri Bromfield, Aykroyd's first comedy partner in Ottawa. Aykroyd, as the 106-year-old judge Alvin Valkenheiser, gets to play the "Peter Sellers type of character, wearing lots of makeup, and walking and talking funny"--all the things he likes to do best.
Two days after Christmas, Aykroyd is busily putting the finishing touches on Nothing But Trouble. No time for a promo tour for this man. Once this film is in the can, it's off to Florida to begin shooting another entitled Friends, the story of two little girls who grow up best friends in a small Pennsylvania town. Both Jamie Lee Curtis and Macaulay Culkin (the whiz kid from Home Alone) appear. Aykroyd plays the local mortician.
Time available only allows for a phone interview. Thirty minutes, his agent Susan Patricola had promised. More, if Dan decides. We speak for 45 minutes. "He'll phone you at 12 noon sharp--Winnepeg time," she said. I, like Aykroyd, am enjoying my holidays with my family. His parents have flown in from Ottawa to spend Christmas in Los Angeles. December 27 arrives and, at 12 p.m., the phone rings. I answer. "Is Chris there?" "Speaking." "Hi, Chris, it's Dan Aykroyd. How are you? What's the weather like up in Winnepeg?" For a few seconds, it's difficult to determine whether this is Dan, my old friend, or Dan, the mega star.
No airs, forget any pretension, but don't expect a laugh a minute. Dan Aykroyd is casual yet controlled. He knows what to say and how to say it. Flattered when you conjure the names of old cohorts at Carleton University, emphatic when you discuss an issue close to his heart. No loud belly laughs from this one. Aykroyd is soft-spoken and relaxed. Polite is a good word for him. I'm asked my opinion on things throughout the phone call. Gone is that wide-eyes kid kudo's to death by Rolling Stone. Danny has grown up. He turns 39 on Canada Day this year. He's been happily married to American actress Donna Dixon since 1984. (In fact, they secretly married while Aykroyd was filming Ghostbusters. The cast and crew only found out about it through reading the National Enquirer). He's also become a family man, with 18-month-old Alexandra occupying much of his time these days.
And then there is his financial success. He's been a millionaire since he was 27. "I'm in a partnership with the IRS, Chris. After fees for lawyers, agents, business management, federal taxes, taxes for the state of California and the City of Los Angeles, there isn't much left. It's like a piece of Styrofoam floating on the sea--rising and falling. But I've managed to save that first million for my little girl."
Nothing But Trouble won't plump up Alexandra's bank account a great deal, but Aykroyd is still excited about it. Just as Ghostbusters gave him a chance to expose his ideas on the powers of the paranormal, this film gives him the chance to toy with the powers of justice. The inspiration came from one of Aykroyd's many speeding offenses. "I was driving somewhere in backwoods Pennsylvania and was stopped for speeding five miles over the limit. The cop brought me back to the local justice of the peace. She had to be in her 70s or 80s wearing curlers. But after she made me pay for the ticket, she sat me down, where she kept me for hours talking over tea."
The result was an "American Gothic comedy--an Abbott and Costello film, mixing light horror with humor." It was written over the course of a year around Aykroyd's shooting schedule for Driving Miss Daisy. "The best scripts are ideally written over a month," he claims. "John Candy is great for this. He tells me that he will get so caught up in his writing--up to 16 hours a day--that his kids come and go to school, and he will still be plugging away at his computer."
Nothing But Trouble also gave Aykroyd the chance to dabble with darkness. "I get to play the villain for the first time. A guy who has absolute power over life and deathj. If he doesn't like you he could kill you." Such fascination with extraordinary forces prompted Harold Ramis, his co-writer for Ghostbusters, to tell Maclean's last year that Aykroyd "lives with one foot in the spirit world and the other in outer space." Aykroyd's maternal French-Canadian grandparents, the Gougeons, regularly held seances in their home and his father, Peter Sr., a former top government bureaucrat and civil engineer who worked for the NCC, regularly subscribed to a psychic research journal. Danny took that childhood experience and sought to expose if not legitimize, the parnormal on the big screen. Beyond the yuk-yuks of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and the cartoonish antics of Ghostbusters, there's a message of Aykroyd's spirituality carried within. "I believe in the supreme engineer--wherever he may be. I'm a lapsed Catholic, but I go to church occasionally. It doesn't hurt to go and meditate."
Nor does it hurt to ponder the human condition. Aykroyd studied criminology at Carleton University and stopped short of receiving his bachelor's degree. If nothing else, the experience helped his career. "I love studying people, how far out human behavior can be. I enjoyed my courses. One of the things university taught me was to sit down and be disciplined as a writer."
He could also have followed in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather, a Mountie. The Metro Toronto police department even called him back for a third and final interview in their selection process. Hindsight, however, leaves no regrets. "I have a few friends who were cops and they're still stressed out even though they've been retired for five years." But he still chums around with a few, co-owns a Toronto bar called Crooks (and co-owns another, X-Rays, on trendy Queen Street West) and has received various badges and even bikes from several police forces across the continent. In his mind's eye, police will always be the good guys in a world where there are "too many bad guys who have to be stopped."
"They're really more friends than parents," says a more subdued Aykroyd. "I feel sorry for people who haven't kept up a good relationship with their parents. What they gave me most was their great sense of humor and a good solid upbringing. They taught me to give my fellow man at least 10 minutes before I decided whether to have anything to do with them." And though Aykroyd has often flirted with the bad boy image, it was never more than an excuse for acting.
Danny, says his father, has always been a "hard-working sort." Thanks to dad, no doubt, who bought him a lawn mower for his 12th birthday. One of Peter Sr.s proudest memories was when he was asked to help construct the Ottawa Ski Club at Camp Fortune. He relied on then seven-year-old Danny to serve as the rod-man in laying down the parking lots. That strong work ethic continued when Aykroyd got a job at 14 (he lied about his age) slugging away up north for Public Works. Dan proudly maintains, "I've since always held down a job."
Since his early days with Ottawa Little Theatre's children's group, Aykroyd has shown he is "very imaginative and one who has good instincts...to grasp the nut of a problem," says his mom. Lorraine and Peter Sr.'s friends became Dan and Peter Jr.'s friends and the boys would often sit and listen to them, particularly the occasional National Film Board filmmakers who wojld drop by and discuss their craft. Despite the 3 1/2-year age difference between Peter and his older brother, and the fact they attended different schools (Peter went to Lisgar Collegiate while Dan, thinking he might have been "priest" material, went to Pius X), the younger sibling hung out with Dan and their mutual friends. "We had this mock motorcycle gang called the Black Top Vamps. We would ride around Hull ...raising hell." It mattered little that they had no motorcycles.
Caught up in the 1950s revival movement that hit the late '60s, the group spent many a night driving around town in their psychedelic purple schoolbus. Self-styled leather-jacketed Fonzs, complete with greased back hair, the rag-tag band included such characters as George da Teef and Ray the Green Beret. "These guys were definitely not part of the Pius X crowd," Aykroyd chuckles. "We'd go on these shopping sprees, taking advantage of our poverty and the lack of rules at Loblaw's. Whenver we could, we would steal a few steaks and share them."
Aykroyd's prankishness had surfaced long before. Father Bob Bedard, who taught him Grade 9 English Grammar and Grade 11 history, laughs when he pictures teenage Dan, the "chief class clown" who was always pulling off practical jokes. Father Len Lunney, pastor of Divine Infant Roman Catholic Church in Orleans, taught Aykroyd English and Latin. He recalls leading a field trip to the Parliament Buildings shortly after a bomb had gone off in a public washroom and security had been considerably increased. No sooner had the Pius X group arrived when Aykroyd, armed with a briefcase, loudly announced he hoped no one would find the bomb contained inside. "Within seconds, there were security guards and Mounties all around him."
Despite "earnest thoughts" about becoming a priest, Aykroyd realized after a month of Grade 9 at Pius X, he no longer thought so. "I and the school administration came to a mutual agreement." Grades 12 and 13 were spent at the Oblate-run St. Patrick's High School on Heron Road. It was girls, girls, girls during those days and Aykroyd was hell-bent on auditioning for several local high school theatrical shows. Geoff Winter, CHEZ-106 FM's morning man, appeared with Aykroyd in Stardust--the Musical at the all-female Immaculata High School. "We were the only two males in the show at the time." But Aykroyd credits his St. Pat's experience as perhaps the first time he seriously considered the stage as a career. "There was a teacher there; Brady Long. He saved my ass and exploited my acting talents.
Back then, Aykroyd simply took life one day at a time. "I was just trying to get through school and not get tossed out." (He was ejected from St. Pat's after mimicking an English teacher once too often, but Long negotiated his return.) Responding to his parents' wish that he receive a university education, Aykroyd studied hard at Carleton while holding down various part-time jobs. One involved driving a courier truck for the post office. "I have fond memories of cycling up McArthur Road at 4 in the morning to Rod's Service Garage (which held a mail service contract). I had a route near Carleton which was ideal. I would park the truck anywhere on campus, grab a class, return it and hitchhike back along the Rideau Canal."
While performing in Carleton's Sock n' Buskin Drama Guild and various theatrical productions, Aykroyd met Bromfield, the impressario who recognized a comic talent. They formed a duo, Aykroyd's first serious attempt at show business, in 1970. She saw something in him few did and persuaded him to go to Toronto where he met Candy, future Ghostbusters producer Ivan Reitman and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels, and wound up with the theatre troupe, Second City. Two years later he produced, wrote, and acted in a 15-minute cable-TV comedy series, Change for a Quarter, and appeared in the CBC-TV children's show, Coming Up Rosie.
It was then off to Chicago, where he joined the Second City troupe there with Belushi. In 1975, the future Laurel and Hardy of their generation were signed on by NBC to appear regularly on Saturday Night Live. Together their stars took off and, four years later, they left the small screen for the larger one and formed their musical partnership, the Blues Brothers. They even bought houses together on Martha's Vineyard--Aykroyd still has his--and Dan had written the main role in Ghostbusters as a vehicle for Belushi. But before they had a chance to catch their breath, Belushi died of a drug overdose in 1982.
Almost nine years have passed and Aykroyd has slowly recovered from the shock of losing his best friend. "I think about him a lot. But John got caught up in a tremendous wave of cocaine that was, and still is, everywhere. It was hard to talk to him about it. But the last summer of his life, I thought I had turned him around. But he went back to L.A. and started hanging out on Sunset Strip. It did him in. I definitely miss him."
Belushi's death hit the entire Aykroyd family hard. "John spent a summer with Danny writing the Blues Brothers movie at our place near Kingston," recalls Peter Sr. "He was like all of Dan's friends, one of ours too." It was doubly hard for Aykroyd with all of the media coverage of his friend's sordid demise. Cathy Evelyn Smith, Belushi's companion charged with his death, opened old wounds as recently as last summer when she told Hamilton Magazine that Aykroyd was a "spineless worm" who worried about his career when he realized that his meal ticket was gone." However, Aykroyd's brother Peter dismisses the vitriol for what he recognizes as her own ugly predicament. "She happened to be there at the wrong time. I don't think you can really put all of the blame on Cathy." Dan, he says, feels much the same way.
Although Aykroyd freely admits he "researched every pill available" in his university days, he shunned heavy narcotics and he doesn't even smoke today. "I'm a beer and wine man." Aykroyd Sr. figures his son was spared from the excesses of success because he always possessed "exceptional maturity". He's not changed at all. He's still a very good, straightforward and kind person. I've seen him approached for autographs and he never snubs anyone." Helen Gougeon, Dan's aunt, agrees. "The proof is in the pudding. He still has his old friends. He never moved away from any of us." Family and friends recognize how special their relationship with Aykroyd is, and those who see all sides jealously guard that privilege. When contacted by telephone, old Ottawa chum David Benoit, now a lawyer practicing in Lafayette, Louisiana, deferred any comment. "I value my friendship with Dan and I would prefer to keep that part of my life confidential."
However, Peter is willing to concede having witnessed behavioral evolution on the part of his big bro. Peter's voice, louder and deeper than Dan's, boasts of his proud sibling connection. "When we were growing up, Dan always had a lot of things going on. There were always so many phone calls to the house. He was a popular guy and I think that people knew that he could be very valuable to them." Today, the two are practically neighbors. He and Aykroyd own the house Peter lives in, and Aykroyd maintains an office there, out of the public eye. Dan says that Peter is part of his "Creative enterprise. It's good to have an ally out there." Since they see each other more often than the rest of the family, Peter has noticed a tremendous growth in Dan's attitude. "Dan now functions on a truly professional level. He has managed to channel all of his creative forces into his work. He's more of a relaxed individual now."
But superstardom doesn't prevent the two from going out on the town whenever they're together Ottawa. The few who spot Dan aren't a concern. In Aykroyd's own words, "It's different out there in California. Sometimes Donna and I may be out shopping or standing in line for a movie. Five people could approach us and then the crowd could grow to 20, at which point, we try to push our way out of their. But people are accustomed to that sort of thing in L.A. It's not unusual to run into Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith at the car wash." Does it bug him? "I kissed goodbye to my my anonymity when I did Saturday Night Live for the second year."
When traveling, Aykroyd continues to tell customs officials he is a writer, not an actor. Make that a writer of technical manuals for Northrop Aircraft. Aykroyd laughs when he says the company doesn't know that he is falsely associating himself with them. To spot Aykroyd in a crowd could be difficult. He often wears a fedora, dark glasses and shabby clothes when he's in town. It allows him to ride his Harley around Hull or visits friends who continue to live near his last house at 363 Daly Ave. Aykroyd will also often take a spin past his "Animal House-like university flat at 491 Metcalfe St. He remembers vacating the premises with his pals after the superintendant announced that the building would be torn down. "That's the way most of our landlords got rid of us."
There's also always time for a jaunt through the Gatineaus, a place his father always took him and his brother. But few close friends remain in Ottawa and Aykroyd spends most of his time with his family at his trailer home near Loughborough Lake, between Westport and Kingston. Neighbors respect his privacy and he, in turn, rewards that loyalty by occasionally playing the harmonica at some of the local bars.
The same principle applies to personal appearances. "My time is blocked out in terms of writing till the mid-'90s, "says Aykroyd. "Besides, I have a family now." Quite simply, he avoids appearances like the plague, preferring to send a cheque to a fund raiser rather than attending. He's generous, though. Recently, he and Dixon mugged it up in a Revlon ad, where they gave Ontario a plug as their residence and waived their fee for a charity for their choice. Father Bedard, now with St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, says his star pupil sent a cheque for $1,000 to help defray church renovation costs.
The emotional links to Canadian soil crop up in other ways. Aykroyd continues to follow the "Quebec situation" with great interest (both he and Peter speak French). One of his many to-do ideas is a film project to be set in Canada, about Americans invading Quebec to quell a rebellion protect U.S. hydroelectric interests there. It stems from a story he heard about a defence policy that sat on former U.S. President Richard Nixon's desk during the October Crisis. "The American government was wondering how feasible it might be to send in the local National Guard from the states of New Hampshire, Vermont, New York and Maine to prevent further action by the FLQ. It's the kind of movie I would like to convince Costa Gavras (director of Missing) to direct."
It it ever came of the ground, it would be a stylistic first for Aykroyd, but not his first foray into the political arena. During last fall's Ontario provincial election campaign, he helped six-year friend and Tory candidate John Goodchild in the Kingston and the Islands constituency. Goodchild's Hollywood ally took part in an afternoon hayride that trekked from Kingston's working-class northern quarter to a downtown park. The event was dubbed Ghostbuster meets Gritbuster and had Aykroyd signing autographs for the crowd of mostly kids for nearly two hours in the sweltering late summer heat. Although the candidate placed third on election day, Goodchild remembers being amazed at Aykroyd's cool that afternoon. "He simply didn't scawl his name. He asked each kid what his name was and then wrote, 'To Christopher...Keep plugging away at school...Best wishes, Dan Aykroyd,' in perfectly legible handwriting."
Aykroyd credits much of his drive to his parents. "Mom still says that I should have finished college."
Fifteen years spent growing up in Hull and Ottawa have given the now L.A.-based creator a closet full of faces and voices from which to mix and match his many characters.
"Remember Irwin Mainway, the sleazy toy salesman on Saturday Night Live? Well, I'm sure I've met a guy with half shades and a pencil-thin moustache somewhere in Ottawa. And Judge Valkenheiser is definitely a composite of some of the farmer I've seen in the Ottawa Valley near Kingston."
Aykroyd doesn't rule out returning to Ottawa, or at least the nearby vicinity, one day after he has tired of his grueling filmmaking and writing pace. In the meantime, he's content to spend as much time as he can alternating between his summer home in Massachusetts and his Ontario trailer. And it's still a treat ot visit old haunts and old friends, like the one near Kazabazawa. "K-a-zee-a-b-a-zee-a-w-a-," spells Aykroyd. Ottawa's homegrown celebrity may have relinquished a few Canadian trademarks to his American locale, but his heart still floats somewhere close to the Ottawa River.