Busting it out
Spirits of his late friends are never far from Dan Aykroyd‘s heart
If it wasn’t for a drug-related tragedy, the Ghostbusters story could have turned out a whole lot differently.
Dan Aykroyd, the creator of the franchise that turns 40 this year and has made more than $1bn over four movies so far and countless TV and video game spin-offs, originally conceived the roles of the spook-chasing scientists for himself, Eddie Murphy and John Belushi.
Indeed, Aykroyd was working on the screenplay when he heard that Belushi, his hard-partying friend, Saturday Night Live co-star and the Jake to his Elwood in The Blues Brothers, had died of an overdose of heroin and cocaine during a big night in 1982 in Los Angeles.
“I was writing a line for John when my phone lit up and my agent called from California saying that he died that morning,” says Aykroyd, still sounding a little wistful more than four decades on. “I was typing up a line for him, for God’s sake.”
Aykroyd says he still misses his friend, who was one of the first people he met when he moved from his native Canada to Chicago, where they both worked at the Second City comedy club. The double-act for which they are both best known, The Blues Brothers, continues to this day as a live act with John’s brother Jim. Aykroyd cemented his love of the genre by establishing the House of Blues chain of music venues, which he sold to Live Nation in 2006.
“I think about him all the time,” Aykroyd admits. “Especially when I go into a House of Blues … I play with Jimmy, his brother, and we dedicate our shows to him every night.”
After Belushi’s untimely death, Aykroyd and his writing partner Harold Ramis turned to another former SNL graduate in Bill Murray for the first Ghostbusters and a pop culture phenomenon was born. Not only did the original film’s blend of horror, comedy and action earn critical acclaim and top the US box office for 13 weeks in the US summer of 1984, it became a genuine pop culture phenomenon, with its theme song hitting No. 1 for Ray Parker Jr and inspiring a tsunami of merchandise bearing its now famous “no ghosts” logo.
Its runaway success at the box office – it was the highest grossing comedy ever on release – spawned three direct sequels, including Frozen Empire, which opens next week, and the 2016 female-driven reboot.
Aykroyd admits he had no idea when he was writing it that he would still be talking about Ghostbusters after all this time, but in hindsight thinks the success makes sense.
“Everybody loves ghost stories, everybody loves to laugh and everybody loves to get scared,” he says. “So, when you put all that together, you have something that endures for this long. But when we were making it, we had no idea what we had.”
Although there was 32 years between Ghostbusters II and its direct sequel Afterlife – which reinvigorated the franchise by introducing a younger cast that included Carrie Coon, Grace McKenna and Finn Wolfhard as the descendants of Ramis’ original Ghostbuster character Egon Spengler – the flames of the franchise were kept burning with a successful animated series, countless video games, theme park rides and fan conventions.
Murray had been underwhelmed by his experience on the second film and resisted attempts from Aykroyd and director Ivan Reitman to lure him back to play the anarchic parapsychologist Dr Peter Venkman for a third time. It probably didn’t help that he and Ramis had fallen out on the set of their beloved 1993 comedy Groundhog Day – they reconciled just before the latter’s death in 2014 – but Aykroyd says it wasn’t the rift that stymied another Ghostbusters movie with the original cast.
“I wasn’t a part of that conflict or that friction, and we were very busy doing other things,” he says of the long delay. “I don’t know that it put the brakes on a new one then because Ivan was very busy, I was busy, Billy was doing stuff, Harold was doing stuff. It was more that we were quite occupied in our individual careers.”
Frozen Empire, which continues the adventures of the new cast, with the original players Aykroyd, Murray and Ernie Hudson in supporting roles, is the first Ghostbusters movie without the direct involvement of Reitman, who died in 2022. His son Jason directed Afterlife and co-wrote Frozen Empire, but Aykroyd says he dearly missed the presence of the fellow Canadian he had known for 50 years and to whom the new film is dedicated.
“It was in his blood and his bones and I’m very sorry he’s gone prematurely,” says Aykroyd.
After setting the events of Afterlife in rural Oklahoma, Frozen Empire returns the Ghostbusters to their spiritual home of New York – even if the movie was actually shot in England. A full replica of the famous Ghostbusters headquarters was built on a sound stage and pulling on the overalls again as the paranormally obsessed Ray Stantz and being on that set with his former castmates was a joy for Aykroyd.
“I always get a twinge when I walk into the firehouse,” he says.
“It was really emotional. Billy and I, we see each other from time to time and it’s always fun hanging with him. But it was a true joy to be working with Ernie, who’s so solid as an actor and so much part of the Ghostbusters myth.”
As for Murray’s almost legendary status as one of Hollywood’s great oddities, famous for his outlandish interactions with the public as well as supposedly only being reachable by answering machine, Aykroyd says that his body of work speaks for itself.
“He’s one of America’s greatest comedic leading men,” he says. “His contributions in Afterlife and in this movie are solid, so (I admire) his professionalism, his charisma, his ability and talents as a writer and a quick thinker. And his anarchistic streak as well, I like that about him.”