Dan Aykroyd names his four favourite movies of all time: “I don’t know if they’re the best, best”
Many actors give their best and most iconic performances when they’re either heavily invested in the material or playing a character that exists as a heightened version of their real-life personality, and both are entirely true of Dan Aykroyd and Ghostbusters hero Ray Stantz.
The idea for the blockbuster supernatural comedy was born from the actor’s lifelong fascination with the paranormal, something that dated back several generations within his family. His father Samuel Peter Aykroyd wrote the book A History of Ghosts, his grandfather Maurice James Aykroyd tried to contact spirits through radio eaves, and his great-grandfather Samuel Augustus Aykroyd was a spiritualist.
Whereas the sceptical Peter Venkman was perfectly suited to Bill Murray’s sardonic stylings, then, Aykroyd’s enthusiastic believer Stantz was basically the actor playing himself, albeit backed by the budget and special effects of a major Hollywood production that evolved into a long-running cultural phenomenon that’s still going strong today.
That’s only a small part of Aykroyd’s impressive legacy, though, which includes his status as a founding – and Emmy-winning – member of the Saturday Night Live repertory, the star of comedy favourites like Trading Places, The Blues Brothers, Spies Like Us, and Coneheads, his Academy Award-nominated dramatic performance in Driving Miss Daisy, as well as his status as the co-founder of both the House of Blues music venues and Crystal Head vodka.
Based entirely on a deep-seated fascination with spiritualism that dates right back to his earliest years, it wouldn’t be unfair to operate under the assumption that when Letterboxd asked Aykroyd to name his four favourite movies of all time, at least one of them would feature ghosts in one form or another. However, that wasn’t the case, although the first to roll off the tip of his tongue is rooted in the fantastical.
1951’s sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still revolves around humanity being visited by beings from another world, which is only a degree or two away from spooky apparitions entering via another dimension. His penchant for character-based comedy, that’s been prevalent since his SNL days, is prevalent in another one of his picks, too, with Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove enduring as one of Aykroyd’s personal top picks.
Pivoting into drama, the star is of the opinion that Casablanca is one of the greatest films that’s ever been made and ever will be made, which is an assessment widely shared by cinephiles the world over. To round out his quartet, Aykroyd stuck with drama and plumped for William Wyler’s post-war three-hander The Best Years of Our Lives, which made Oscars history more than once when injured veteran Harold Russell ended up winning two Academy Awards for one performance.
Aykroyd still refused to be overly definitive, even if it was an entirely subjective discussion. “I don’t know if they’re the best, best,” he said. “But those are great ones.” That can’t be argued with, but The Day the Earth Stood Still and Dr. Strangelove stand out as the ones to have had a greater direct influence on his career than the others.
