Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray return for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Returning with Bill Murray for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, comedy legend Dan Aykroyd reveals the actual scientific formula behind the success of the beloved ‘80s franchise.
Are you troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night? Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic? Have you or your family ever seen a spook, spectre or ghost? If the answer is “yes”, then who you gonna call? You know who to call.
Ghostbusters (1984), starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis as scientists-turned-ghost hunters, was a box office smash and cultural phenomenon. There was the hit Ray Parker Jr single, the no-ghost logo T-shirts, toys, video games, comic books and slime that drove parents mad. Three sequels, two animated series and one reboot followed.
Aykroyd, who suits up to return as Ray Stantz in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, tells Review that probing the paranormal is “the family business”. His great-grandfather held seances at the family farm in Canada. His grandfather read journals about the supernatural. His father wrote a book about ghosts.
“I was in the old farmhouse reading an article in the journal of the American Society for Psychical Research about quantum physics and parapsychology, and thought, well, I’m going to write up an old-style Bob Hope, Abbott and Costello, Bowery Boys, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis-type ghost comedy,” Aykroyd recalls.
“But we will do it in a way where it will be filtered through the real science and research that is being done all around the world and make it maybe more credible than some of those ghost comedies from the 1950s.”
The script imagined a future agency would capture ghosts throughout the universe. The ghostbusters were to be John Belushi, Eddie Murphy and Aykroyd. In April 1983, it was sent to director Ivan Reitman who suggested centring it in present-day New York as a “going into business” story and bringing in Ramis as co-writer and cast member.
When the film opened in June 1984, eight months after production began, it took the world by storm. Murray was the comedy lead with Ramis the brains and Aykroyd the heart. A fourth ghostbuster, Ernie Hudson, joined for a comedy caper that balanced science-fiction with thrills and terror. Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts and William Atherton gave star turns in key roles.
“Everybody is fascinated with ghosts and everybody likes to be scared and everybody likes to laugh,” Aykroyd explains. “The camaraderie among the cast, the chemistry and the intelligence of the writing, if I might say so, appealed to people. We were not talking down to people. We were elevating knowledge about research since the turn of the century.”
It will come as no surprise that Aykroyd is a believer in the paranormal. He has hosted TV shows that investigate the supernatural. But he has never seen a ghost. It has not, however, led him to doubt his beliefs.
“Not at all,” he insists. “Because I’ve heard and catalogued some amazing stories from very credible people, both friends of mine and not. It’s a real phenomenon. The spirits do linger.”
What made the original film magic was the dynamic between the principals and their relatability. Having been thrown out of their laboratory studying paranormal activity, they are down on their luck until an opportunity arises: an outbreak of ghosts in New York. They mix curiosity with humour and match fear with courage.
“Egon Spengler (Ramis) was the objective scientist, the hoax-buster, the realist,” Aykroyd explains. “Peter Venkman (Murray) was the promoter, the huckster, the PR expert. And Stantz, was the spiritual believer in anything. And then you had Winston Zeddemore (Hudson) who comes in as the observer, completely new to all of us and to the enterprise.”
The nuclear charged proton pack (don’t cross the streams), the flashing PKE meter, portable ghost trap and Cadillac converted Ectomobile (Ecto-1) with sirens blaring became iconic. And, of course, the ghosts. Who could forget the terrifying library ghost? Or the disgusting green gluttonous Slimer? And the madcap ending with the Keymaster, Gatekeeper, Gozer and the penultimate battle with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
“Before Ghostbusters, nobody knew what ectoplasm was and now the world knows what it is because of the movie,” Aykroyd suggests. “So, when you combine scares and laughs and interest in ghosts, the great cast and filmmakers at the top of their game, you’ve got something that will endure through the generations.” During a break in filming, Aykroyd took Murray to his home in the Hollywood Hills for lunch. “We didn’t know what we had,” recalls Aykroyd. “Nobody knows in this business.” But Murray, sitting poolside, had more than an inkling. He was sure it would be “one of the biggest comedies of all time”. And it was.
Aykroyd was already a full-fledged comedy star by the time Ghostbusters premiered. His career took off with the Second City theatre group in the early-1970s and as part of the original cast on Saturday Night Live (1975-79). He did notable impersonations of Julia Child and Jimmy Carter, was a “wild and crazy guy” with guest Steve Martin and performed with Belushi as The Blues Brothers. He was nominated for five Emmy Awards and won for writing in 1977.
“I learned to listen to my fellow performers,” Aykroyd recalls of his SNL days. “I learned to trade off their energy and not to deflect it back, not to deny suggestions of improvisation. I learned to sit down in a room with writers and collaborate, hammer out a script and then execute it. I learned that if you contribute to the team effort, everybody is going to look good, including yourself.”
He formed a close friendship with Belushi, given full expression in legendary musical adventure comedy The Blues Brothers (1980). (Aykroyd still performs with The Blues Brothers band.) More collaborations with Belushi were planned, including Ghostbusters, but Belushi died of a drug overdose in March 1982.
“I had him with me for eight years,” Aykroyd recalls. “He was a natural comedian due to the fact that he grew up in an Albanian family that was always trying to make their dad laugh. He and his brothers Jimmy and Billy, and sister Marian, were always trying to get a laugh out of Adam. So that gave them a comedy mission.”
“John was very well read. He was very physical – he was an all-state football player. He loved theatre and, with his Second City training, used all his natural abilities for voices and faces and physical contortions. He took the humour that he grew up with and honed it into great movies like Animal House (1978) or The Blues Brothers or Saturday Night Live. He was a natural.”
In a string of films, Aykroyd partnered with other legendary comedians such as Murphy in Trading Places (1983), Chevy Chase in Spies Like Us (1985), Tom Hanks in Dragnet (1987) and John Candy in The Great Outdoors (1988). He says the collaboration with director John Landis, including The Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) with Jim Belushi, has been especially rewarding.
He also made his mark in a slate of critically-acclaimed dramatic films that began with an Academy Award-nominated performance in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), and others such as My Girl (1991), Chaplin (1992) and Pearl Harbor (2001).
“If you look at Tom Hanks, John Candy, Bill Murray, all of them great comedians, but great actors as well,” Aykroyd notes. “All comedians have to have acting chops. And mine came through on Driving Miss Daisy with, of course, the proper direction and a great script. After that, people started to see me in a different light. That opened people up to the perception that, hey, I could maybe do a little more than a goofy buddy comedy.”
The ghostbusters returned for a hugely profitable sequel in 1989 that saw them out of business but called to duty to combat a returned to life Vigo the Carpathian hellbent on global domination. There was a stand-alone reboot, Ghostbusters (2016), with an all-female spectral fighting team. Then a third sequel, Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) directed by Jason Reitman, son of Ivan, who also co-wrote it with Gil Kenan.
This film catapulted the original story forward, led by Paul Rudd (Gary Grooberson) and Carrie Coon (Callie Spengler). Callie is the estranged cash-strapped daughter of Egon, who inherits his Oklahoma farm after his death. Her children, Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), discover their grandfather’s ghostbusting past and accidentally release a trapped ghost. Soon the small town is terrorised by poltergeists.
The original ghostbusters made cameos in Afterlife, which represented a passing of the torch to a new generation. Spengler appeared as a ghostly apparition at the end of the film. (Ramis died in 2014.) It was perfect. What made it another critical and box office success was being faithful to the original films with familiar callbacks and innovations such as the Mini-Pufts.
Frozen Empire, written by Kenan and Reitman with Kenan directing, picks up where the last left off when the Ectomobile was seen driving towards New York. We find Gary, Callie and the teenagers adjusting to life as a blended family living in the famous Tribeca firehouse and capturing ghosts in the five boroughs. Zeddemore runs the Ghostbusters business and research laboratory, Stantz is found in his occult bookshop and Venkman is, well, Venkman. Patton Oswalt and Kumail Nanjiani join the cast.
It is an enjoyable blend of fond memories and new adventures, with a cracking opening scene, and a clever story about an ancient artefact that unleashes a frosty “death chill” portending a second ice age. It is thrilling to again hear the original score by Elmer Bernstein and song by Parker. There are new and old phantasms. And we see an expanded role for Stantz who is enjoying his “golden years” doing what he loves.
“Ray is a lot like me in that he is a believer,” Aykroyd says. “He wants to believe. He does not want to shut down the beliefs that other people have. He has a doctorate in parapsychology. He would also want to look for the hoaxes and make sure that people are telling the truth. But where there is truth, an actual something happening, he believes like me.”
Ghostbusters:Frozen Empire is in cinemas Thursday.
