This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio on Here's the Thing. We'd like to draw attention to the fiftieth anniversary of Saturday Night Live. In those fifty years, some of the most famous names in comedy, films and television have passed through Studio eight
h at thirty Rockefeller Plaza. However, as is evidenced by Jason Rightman's film Saturday Night the most enduring names who performed on the show of the original cast from nineteen seventy five Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, John Belushi, and Loray Newman. And after fifty years of SNL, the one who has had arguably the most interesting career
of them all is my guest today, dan Aykroyd. Whether conjuring the state puffed marshmallow Man, jamming an entire fish into the basmatic, or dancing wildly to soul Man, few people are more enjoyable to watch than dan Ackroyd. His prolific career skyrocketed when he became the youngest cast member of the inaugural season of Saturday Night Live at just
twenty three years old. Ackroyd's tenure at Studio eight h Berth iconic sketches about Julia Child, Richard Nixon, and of course the Blues Brothers, which evolved into feature films and a touring live band. Dan Ackroyd is also the screenwriter behind the classic comedic films Dragnet, Cone Heads, Spies Like Us, and of course Ghostbusters. He reprised his Ghostbuster's role of Race Dance just this year in Ghostbuster's Frozen Empire. If that weren't enough. He's also the co founder of the
House of Blues music venues and Crystal Head Vodka. The suttle and humble comedian he is Canadian, after all, is an Emmy winner as well as a Grammy and Academy Award nominee. I wanted to begin by asking how a young and gifted Akroyd almost missed his calling and ended up on the path to the priesthood.
Well, that's a fun question.
What happened was my parents wanted me to have a little better education than the public school system at the time there in the Ottawa Hall area and the Gatineau area and on the Ottawa River up there in eastern Ontario, at our capital city. They wanted a stricter education. So they took me into the seminary and they sat me down in front of Father Leney, the Saint Pius, the tenth minor preparatory seminary for boys. So in I go with father Loney, and my mom's sitting there, my dad
sitting there. They really want me to get into this academy, which was an excellent school, by the way, I ruined it when I was there. But so he says, well, Dan, in the Newfoundland accent, the Nova Scotia accent, or the rural Ontario accent slightly Irish, those all are well, Dan. Now, so we understand your father and mother tell us that you see a vocation for yourself in the priesthood. And of course I had no intention ever of doing that,
but I had to please my parents. And here was my answer to father Leney.
Ah why yeah, yeah, yeh yes maybe.
And then after three years there, where I was a horrible class clown and drove the teachers crazy, they let me go in grade eleven and they wrote a letter to my parents and it said, we believe your son is no longer suitable for the priesthood, their loss, their loss. Well, my mother didn't like one of the teachers who was kind of hard on me, but he should have been. I was a bad class mate. My mother kind of tore a strip into him, so she was happy when
I left. And then I ended up, thankfully, I ended up failing mathematics and having to go to a summer school. Had I not failed in Grade eleven at Saint Pias in math, had I not been failed by the teacher who didn't like me, you didn't like me, he failed me, I would never have met one of my best friends, David Benoa, who I know today. We met in summer school. So life takes those beautiful, beautiful turns. Yes, yes, but no priest stood for me, No priest for me. I got thrown out. You got thrown out.
Yeah, well, obviously you got thrown out because you had to be liberated so you can go to your next level of study, which was deviant sociology. You and I have some really strange overlapping things here, which we're going to get to. But tell us a little bit about what you were after in terms of the deviant sociology calling.
So, after pious, I went to Saint Pat's which was a progressive school, and it had an item there that I had never really known in class before, and that is the female. So we had mixed co ed school there, and that was where I started to get into drama. We did murder in the cathedral, we did Carousel, we did our carnival at called and we did all kinds
of great plays. There was a teacher there named Brady Long And I know you have an influential teacher in your life or several, probably yes, And he was the most influential in my life. He saved me. In Grade twelve, I got into more trouble at that school with my friend Harvey. We were kind of a duo there and a little bit of a trouble mainly because of the doing the acts in class. You can't do that in class. They're not there for the entertainment, you know. We learned that.
So the drama bug bit me there in that in high school. Then I had to figure out what to do for a living, so I went I had worked for the Canadian Penitentiary Service in the Solicitor General's Office of Canada. I worked at the Penitentiary Service for a summer as a clerk five, and so I was very interested in that corrections and how it's done and classifications. Now why well, because I suppose I wanted to understand deviant behavior myself for what it was in myself and
my friends and other people. And so I loved working at the Penitentiary Service because I got all the statistics of every prison across Canada, how many people were there. And I wrote a manual for the signature of the Commissioner at the time on the deployment of weapons in a riot by prison guards. And I thought, this is an interesting world. So then I went to Carlton. I took sociology, I took deviant psychology, I took criminology and a few other abnormal psych I think too. And I
lasted at Carlton for about three years. But then Valerie Bromfield, who's in the new SNL movie, which is great, by the way, was my partner and she almost made it under the cast of the show. But she was in Saturday Night Live. She did a stand up. I don't know whether she caught it, but Jason Reitman depicts her in the new movie. She was my partner, and she said, there's no way you're going to be a prison guard. No, No, You've got a gift for comedy and that We did
stuff together. We had our own show, fifteen minute show called a Change for a Quarter on the cable show. We did it with robot cameras and one operator. And that's what we brought into Lauren Michaels a two inch thick videotape. Remember they came in a briefcase of videotapes, So we give that to Lauren and that's what got us hired for the special he did and then got me known to him for when SNL came along. So it was Valery who yanked me out of Carlton from criminology Studies, which I liked.
I had great instructors. She dragged you to where Toronto were New York Toronto.
We had a great duo. We loved Nicholson May and we had some great sketches. We were hired by Second City, we were working together. We had a big, strong career in comedy, so she was quite right to haul me out of there.
I don't know.
I'm finding out more about the penitentiary system in Canada now, and it's on the surface, it looks organized, But it's not.
It's disorganized.
It's a bad world in there, in those places, particularly the big prisons, where I probably would have ended up working with you Ba and criminology. And then because I was a good writer even then with essays and that. You know, writers own the world, you know that, Alec. And you know in professional world, in the police world, the ones who rise up to chief in that are the writers who could write up reports.
Right now. The woman that took you to Toronto, what is her name again.
Valerie Bromfield, brilliant, wonderful to We had a lot of fun together.
You worked with Lorne. You had some interaction with him when he did Heart and Lorne Terrific Hour. Correct, you work with him on that show.
We gave him that two inch videotape.
He looked at that and he hired us for a summer special on the Heart and Lauren Terrific Hour called the Great Canadian Humor Test.
And that's where you met him.
Yes, in sixty nine, that's right, and Lauren saw and Valerie and I something there and hired us and I played in that special. I was twenty one at the time, and I played characters over sixty you know heavily made up.
Yeah, right, and so there Laurene put us on and there we were.
So when you go to it seems eventually you end up crashing the SNL audition. You say to yourself, I can't wait in line here. You said, by the time I do the song, it's not going to be till seven o'clock at night. You cut the song, you go in and do a fast routine. Correct.
Well, I said, you know, I'm just gonna scrub the audition. I'm not here to audition. I'm here to say a load of Lauren that I knew before before. So I walked in and I went in and teach the line.
It's true.
There was a line as if they were lining up for a movie tickets source pos event, and so I walked right up and I just kind of said a quick ColoAd of Lauren, A quick coloada Davey Wilson. And I was in the room for no more than a minute and a half, and I turned around and then walked out after that, because he knew me from before, and I said, wow, And they say, going to work. I was with a friend of mine from Toronto who had come down with me. And we had a song
in that and I said, this song will die. If we do this song here, I'm telling you, we will die. We will never work in show business. We'll be recommended against by Lorne. And then I got the call. I was with Candy when I got the call. We were opening the Second City in Pasadena, California, and Candy and I had just driven in his Mercury Cougar, his late seventies Mercury Cougar, all the way across country and so we made that and then Lauren said, come in for
the final round of edition here. We want to put you on tape. And I said, well, I got this job Second City. He said, well, you know, come on in. We really think we could work something out something like that. I went, I did the auditions, and then yeah, I got the words. Some time after that, I was back home in Canada when I heard.
I read a quote where you're walking down the street with Chevy and he's getting assailed by people. They're all yelling Chevy, Chevy, Chevy. And you said to yourself, I saw what Chevy was exposed to and thought to myself, I don't want that.
Oh no, absolutely, I for sure said I knew. I didn't want that, and now one of the joys of aging. I was at a restaurant the other day and the young woman was, you know, a local student, probably about twenty two twenty three, no clue who I was not, right, Thank you, Thank you for that type of anonymity.
I love and I didn't want it.
And I was sort of, you know, with Chevy there, enjoying watching him grow and watching his fame and his talent expand. And you know, he was my biggest fan at SNL. He was my biggest point. He was him and o'donnau Right and Lauren as well, of course, but those two guys lobbied for me heavily, and then Franken and Davis as well. I highly recommend the new SNL movie. It plays like a suspense film, does it really?
Well?
Yeah, because they didn't know where where they were really going to go on the air at at eleven thirty, and you know, I remember just kind of being down among in the bleachers and before I was supposed to go on in the home Security sketch with Garrett, and I was just thinking, well, you know, maybe this works, maybe it doesn't, Maybe we go on, maybe we don't. But you know, I saw a good price on a nice big snowplow up there where I could get some contracts.
And you know, I've got some sand on my property.
I have actually a commercial.
Level grade of sand and a load on my property up here, and those contracts pay very very well.
You like living up there, huh?
I love it? I love it well. I'm here only part of the year.
I'm here mostly in the summers, and then go to Massachusetts and then I've got a home in the US Virgin Island, or my partner as a home there that I bunk in with her and our two kids. But you see, with the snowplow, I'm serious, I would have gone back because I would have had no career if I didn't get into SNL none. I couldn't go back to Second City. I wasn't going to go back to Toronto. I was looking for those county contracts, you know, where you're selling tons and tons and then you have a
fleet of trucks. And believe me, you know, I have a friend up here who is the wealthiest guy in the county, and it's because he builds all the cement barriers for the highways. He has a car collection of two hundred and he's really an archetype. He's a spectacular human being, and he made his living with his hands, you know. So that's where I would have been headed. But I'm glad the rote that my life took and
I loved working at SNL. I'm so grateful for having had a career in film and for all the things I'm getting to do now.
Well, in four years goes by. You're there seventy five through seventy nine, and then after four years you leave. And there are some people in the business who you know. You look at them and you say, you're doing a series, let's say, and getting paid a lot of money. And I'll tell some of my friends, I say, you ride that horse till it drops, you know what I mean. They're never going to have that good again. Whereas for you, who win an Emmy for writing, You're one of the
stars of the show, and everybody admires you. Everybody just is crazy about your talent. When you leave, was that your decision? Did you decide it was diminishing returns, there was no reason to stay any longer.
No, In fact, it was because Blues Brothers spilled over a couple of months in Chicago, and we couldn't go back to work, and we saw that we would have to be with Blues Brothers, you know, getting it through post production and all the things that needed to be done to get it released, publicized and all that. So we couldn't go back because we couldn't do both. But we did the movie, and we knew we couldn't commit to SNL, and we were both ready to kind of
go in a way. But had Blues Brothers not existed, had I not written that, or had Judy and John and I not conceived that or originated that, I probably would have done another couple of years, if not more, at SNL. You know, it's video commando time. You know how hard it is. You're almost a cast member yourself. But I did enjoy it, and I could could have done another couple of years there, I think, right.
Come seventy six, you do Love at First Sight. Come seventy nine, it's mister Mike's Mondo video. And then you do nineteen forty one, you're out of there. And then you proceed from nineteen eighty on, from Blues Brothers on to make a hell of a lot of movies, a hell of a lot of movies. Did you settle into a place eventually where the movies were home? This is what you preferred was making films?
Well, I liked playing different roles, and of course a lot of those movies, you know, I was really only played the principal lead in about thirty if you could check and see that. So the others were guest shots or like Indiana Jones and a Temple of doom.
Who wouldn't want to work for Lucas and Spielberg.
So I talked my way into that one, right, And then there were some that I conceived of, I wrote, I think I I had eight screenplays made in the eighties, and wow, even today, I think people will be happy with that that record. Some of them, you know, they were just neat roles and opportunities to travel and work with different directors, and I did enjoy it.
But my real home heart for work.
And as you speak of it, is the writing part of it. I love writing more than anything. You're left alone, you know, you do three hours in the morning you write, I need to have lunch, and then three hours in the afternoon, go pick up a kid from school and write at night, and after nine hours you come out with seven pages and then you're you're moving on so and you you know, it's just your own devices, the air, the air around you, and your mind and a blank
screen or a blank piece of paper. That's really what I'd like to be doing more of and always did enjoy.
But I did like playing the roles.
I got to work with so many great people like Robbie Williams, Robbie Coltrane and Terry Davis, the terrific director. We worked on House of Mirth. I wor got to work with Gillian Anderson and Laura Lenny and Anthony Naplaglia and film, so of course I'm going to take parts like that. It was more driven by wanting to work with these great actors and we did some really good
work together. I got, you know, Driving This Days. I got to work with Jessica and Morgan and that was a beautiful five star release.
And you got nominated for that film.
Yes, sir, best supporting alongside Peter O'Toole and Marlon Brando. They were best supporting and Denzel. Of course, we all knew that Denzel would get it. So that I had the most relaxed and wonderful night at the Oscars that year because I knew that I didn't have to make a speech.
I wasn't gonna win.
It was going to be Denzel's performance in Glory in Glory, but then Daisy won Best Actress for Jessica and Best Picture of that year, and so you know, Morgan and I, even though we were both dominated, we were you know, we were thrilled for them and for everybody else in the room.
Musician, writer and actor dan Ackroyd. If you and conversations with the incredible minds behind Saturday Night Live, check out my episode with Lorne Michaels. When it's over, describe how you feel after the very first show.
I was the same way then that I am now. I only see the mistakes, and I tend to wear that up until about the second drink at the party. Even last week's show takes me really through midway through Sunday.
Just take me a couple of days. I can get over it now in a day.
Because you're always hoping that everything's gonna work the way you were hoping it was gonna work.
To hear more of my conversation with Lornemichaels, go to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the Break, dan Ackroyd shares how he came to play music professionally on stage with the godfather of soul himself, James Brown. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Dan Ackroyd is known for his iconic roles as Bell dar Conehead and one half of The Two Wild and Crazy Guys with Steve Martin, but his dramatic work is not to
be dismissed. You may have seen him in My Girl, House of Mirth or his Oscar nominated role in Driving Miss Daisy, directed by Bruce Beresford. I wanted to know what he appreciated the most about the direction on Driving Miss Daisy.
I loved Bruce's thoughtful way he took the actor through the process.
That was beautiful.
You know, I can also work with someone who is say it faster, say it's slower. You know, let me give you a reading there, no problem, just tell me what notes to play.
But I like it spare. I kind of like that. Yeah, do it faster, do it slower.
Just the mechanics of it and where I'm left for my own devices.
When you leave the show, and you go make movies. Music is a big influences. The Blues Brothers of this is a huge hit for you, we get into House of Blues for you and your you know, your music cred is significant. Did the Blues Brothers contain everything you had to display musically? Did you want to do something other than that? Because that was like a sketch that became a music act Did you ever want to sing on Broadway?
You know, we became Elwood and Jake because we were actors. We had written scenes, sketches, and we had written this movie, and so as actors we had to be musicians and dancers and vocalists. So that's where we learned sort of how to pull it off. I've always said that John and I were great frontmen, with the real talent being in the backup line behind us. And that's what Jimmy and I are today. Brother Zee and myself.
We do go out.
I've got a concert next week. We play all the time. We have a great R and B band and one of the top R and B reviews in the world.
And you enjoyed that.
Oh my god, I think now if I can't be writing, I think that's what I like to be doing most. So yeah, so I had to kind of perfect well not pfoult. Still learning on the harmonica, but I did play on all the records, that's all.
That's all me there for more or less.
And on the movie I played, and so I learned the harp as an actor being a harmonica player and then a dancer and a vocalist.
But it stayed with me.
Of course, we did open House of Blues, and I got to jam on stage with James Brown five times. He opened five of them with me. I got to sing with him, I got to be good friends with him. I got to jam with Little Richard in Chicago, got to sing with his section, and jam with and so many other great artists. Had a great time there. House of Blues of course, still going in eleven cities. It's owned by Live Nation now. It is a beautiful place.
If you've never been, you know, they've got millions of dollars worth of folk art and incredible to Louisiana menu. And I'm a consultant, so I do brag on it a few times, but so coming to it as an actor, still doing it, and I don't think I'm gonna play guitar or oregon. I don't think I have that talent. I have minimal talent that gets me by. It's the strength of my backup line and my people behind me who really pull off the act. So we're ludic ridiculous
front men. You know, Cab Calloway and Mononi Harris. We take from them. They used humor to kind of lead the band, and that's what John and I did and what Jimmy and I do, and you know it still works. Nobody goes away unhappy because we do songs no one's doing anymore, Junior Parker songs and Lowell Fulson songs and people you've never heard of, but boy do they swing.
I envy you.
I envy you.
That sounds like so much fun. But you never thought of Broadway because you're such, You've done live, You've got the stamina, fort you've got the strength for it, and the power forth. There's so many great roles over the years. I can think of you for you to have played decade after decade, but you never did a Broadway show, did you?
No?
But I love the form and I love seeing great performers. And Patty LuPone I got to know on driving Miss Daisy. I try to see everything that she's in, so I do love watching it. But Alec, I just don't have the time to do Broadway. But I love the Forum, and I admire those performers, and I've thrilled when I can sit in a New York Broadway theater as it can only do in New York City.
Now, the Best Supporting Actor, the winner, as you mentioned, was Denzel and it's you, Danny Iello and Do the Right Thing, brandawin Drywhite Season and Marty Landau and Crimes and Misdemeanors. I mean, I can't believe the fucking company that you're in here. I mean, you were nominating for Best Supporting Actor with these guys who are like the giants of acting.
I worship Marty.
Landau worshiped, and I think Danny Iyello Do the Right Thing is one of the twenty five greatest movies in history as far as I'm concerned. Oh, and there you are with these guys. Did that make you feel different about movie acting? Did you want to pursue straight acting and more or comedy was always where you were more comfortable.
Well, comedy's much harder than straight acting. Point because you got to keep that ping pong ball above the red lion. In comedy, you know, straight acting, you can lay back a little bit. Yes, I was confused when I said Peter O'Toole because he was in a movie that I made with Stephen Frye.
And again, thanks, I'm going to turn down that. No, I'm going to Stephen Frye.
It was called Bright Young Things, Vile Bodies, Bright Young Things, it was called and O'Toole was in that. So I was in a movie with O'Toole, even though we didn't act together. I love the community. And of course that night, as I say, I was so relaxed because I looked at these other names and thought, nice to have the nomination, but I'm not going to clinch this one tonight. So I was so relaxed. And then I knew Denzel. I
think we all did that scene in Glory. Those scenes were spectacular, and I got to give him a hug and meet his mom. So no, I look, I'm nothing but grateful for having been able to work in this community and be with all the people that I have worked with and just enjoyed it so so much, and it's something I don't do too much anymore, and that's fine,
but I do really love the community. And of course to have been nominated in that company, as you say, as I look back on it, now, wow, that is impressive.
Well, I have you in a category with a few others, but not many for sure that you can do anything. You can do anything. You can do drama, you can do comedy, you can do very subtle quiet comedy. You can do your throwing the bass into the blender. You can do stuff that's sicill, outrageous and nutty, you know.
I mean, you can play in every key. And when I see in your work is I see someone who Then in terms of that, you decide to get off on a little detour here and take a little service road here into sales and products that you manufacture and sell. Describe your forays into the alcohol beverage business.
Well, we started with I don't know if you know the brilliant entrepreneurs, JP Dujoria, Paul Mitchell, Hair Systems is this company, and Patron Tequila. I live with a sober partner for five years now. She's been sober, so I'm spending a lot less on wine. I've saved tens of thousands of dollars in wine. So I drink a lot less. But I'm fortunate in that I can moderately drink alcohol, and in moderation I don't have a problem.
I don't over abuse it. I can go for.
Days without it or weeks if necessary. And I don't have a jones there, which enables me to sell honestly and truly. So we have a beautiful home that my ancestors settled it two hundred years ago on the farm there, and it happens to be on a cliff on a lake, and I have this dock there, and then there's the
whole culture of stopping by for sunset drinks. And I like tequila to make a nice sunset drink with a tequila, you know, margarita, and we could only get in Canada, if you can believe this, we can only get two brands of tequila.
That's it.
Now there are hundreds out there. So I went to my friend JP owned Patron Tequila. We were at the House of Blues bar in Los Angeles, and he said, have you try this this tequila, And of course I'd only tried the two brands in Canada. He poured me a beautiful smoky, silky, satiny shot of Patron and I said, JP, how can I get this up to my little government liquor store up there in Canada. I'll bring a few cases for the summer. He said, well, Dan, you'd have
to bring it to the whole country. I said, well, okay, let's do that. So he appointed me the importing agent for Patron Tequila and we grew that across Canada into the number one luxury brand. It still commands lots of luxury sales up. It was bought by Baccardy there a while back, so I'm out of it now, but that taught me the business. So that's where it started. And
then I started to look at vodka. And I started to open vodka bottles up and they either smelled like Chanelle number five or they were there was no smell, or were they tasted like a cat's tongue.
And I don't men mention other brands. I thought, what's going on here?
Why do these vodkas either taste like nothing or they taste bad? And I come to find out that many alcoholic beverages add three fusel oils. They add glycerine, and they add lemonine, and they added more sugar to mask the alcohol smell, mask the alcohol taste, make it taste like either nothing or be odorless. And I thought, well, what fun is that in a cocktail? So we devised with John Alexander full Package, which is our skull. Crystal
Head Vodka's the name of it. We're in seventy eight countries. We've sold millions of bottles, and we have the skull made by Johnny. And when I saw the skull, I just went, I know what to put in this. He designed it, just drew it up one night at his place there and he said he always thought that a skull would make a good tequila vessel, which it would. And we went ahead and did a vodka because I thought, beautiful skull. You can't put a polluted substance in that
beautiful bottle. So I took all the oils out. Are vodka has no additives, no glycer and no sugar, no lemonine. Bartenders love it and that's why we've been able to sell so well and be still alive in a very very competitive market because we're stripped down. We're a pure spirit, and we have notes vanilla and ease peppercorn.
We've won metals all over the world.
Where do they manufacture the crystal heads?
We have two lines of glass. We have a line of glass in France and we have a line of glass in Italy.
And you know what, we're having fun.
And what's fun is things like going down to Pennsylvania, getting right in there, into the warehouse, and I signed a thousand bottles there the other day, roughly close to that, and met some really really great people who move the product who are down there. And boy, do I get a sense of where a country's at or where a society's at when I get down into where real labor
is being done by people who do this work. Because it's all about family and so the people in the warehouse, I met the PCLB board the other day, the salespeople that I'm working with. It's just great to see people who are doing real work in an age where a lot of young people now don't want to work. They want it instantly. Actor and comedian Dan Ackroyd. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend I'd be sure to follow. Here's the thing on the iHeartRadio.
App, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come Back. Royd reflects on the passing of his close friend and writing partner John Belushey, I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the thing. Dan Ackroyd grew up in Ottawa, Canada, in a rather unusual home, so much so that it inspired his father to write the book A History of Ghosts, The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts and Ghostbusters, which chronicles the family's interactions with the beyond.
I wanted to know if Ackroyd's upbringing an exposure to the paranormal was influential in the conception of the movie Ghostbusters.
Oh sure, yes, my great grandfather Sam, who's profiled in the book. It's called History of Ghosts. It's more about trance mediumship. But yes, my great grandfather Sam. He was a dentist and he was also kind of the local reviewer of are normal acts that would come through the town of Kingston in the late turn of the century and then in the nineteen twenties. And in the book, of course, we mentioned the Fox Sisters and the Bang
Sisters who were precipitated painters, and the Campbell brothers. They were precipitated painters. They would sit in front of the canvas about maybe a foot away and wiggle their fingers and an image would appear on the canvas. So is it a hoax? What's going on? Who's painting in behind it? My great grandfather, they weren't hoaxes. Those two, those four siblings were true phenomena. And my grandfather was kind of the vetter in town here. He was kind of he'd
see what was real and what wasn't. Levitators seances, and that he would have saoss himself.
We had a family medium.
So I grew up in summers in this old farmhouse where they had these seances, and they had journals from the American Society Psychical Research lying around and Fate magazine, and you know other cottages had McLean's and Look magazine and Colliers in these and we had all psychic books there, which I it. From eight years old. I was reading this stuff. And so essentially the Acroids are spiritualists. That's my religion. If you wanted to pegny with a religion.
We are spiritualists. We believe not only that the spirit and the soul and the energy, the atomic energy of the soul survives after death. We believe the consciousness and identity of the being survives to reach back and communicate with us here. And I don't know if you remember John Edwards on CBS. He was a very talented medium, and there are many others.
Who do it well.
So History of ghost talks all about it. But I believe the consciousness and the identity survive and you can reach them. They touched back sometimes to help us, and so that's my belief.
So yes, I grew up with all of that and was.
In the old farmhouse one afternoon reading a journal about quantum physics and paranor own researching, and I thought, well, let's do an old style ghost comedy. Abbot Costello, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Bowery Boys, they all did a ghosted and I thought, we'll do We'll get some of the guys together, We'll do a ghost comedy. But it will be based in the you know, in the real vernacular of the real science taking. And Harold was not
a believer. Harold Ramis my co writer on Ghostbusters, not a believer at all. But he knew all about my monodes dream lab, the research at Duke University, all of the research William Roll and the cards.
That's where that comes from.
Billy with the cards, the Star of the Cross that was from the research was doing it being done at Deane Mercy in the paranormal department Allos. Yeah, he knew all about you know, Zachariah Sitchen and the Sumerian gods, so he was well versed in that. So we came to write that he had a great body of knowledge there, and of course I had my spiritualist side, and that's how it all came about. The first mention of ghostbusters in film in America is in a movie called Scared Stiff.
I think it's with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and the woman asks Dean Martin at one point, well what are you guys, and he says, we're ghostbusters.
So of course I remember that and that helped to put the title to it.
I love Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in that movie, just aside from the paranormal reference. Jerry Lewis basically he runs down these stairs in this old castle in a piece of physical comedy and dexterity. That is that Buster Keaton would be proud of. Just mind blowing that piece
of physical business. So yeah, there were a lot of precedents for ghost movies, and I just said, let's do one and use the real science and make these guys paranormal investigators, the three of us, Spangler, Stance and Venkman and Zetemoa.
And you wanted Belushi to play Vankman. He was your original cast from Veankman.
Yeah, I was writing a line for him when I heard that he died, you know. And I was at one fifty fifth Avenue in our offices, and I was at the typewriter and I was in the middle of a line. And then Bernie was on the phone there, my agent, and he told me what had happened. And I ran down the fifth Avenue to Judy's to get to her before she heard it on the media. And I passed a new star in the truck, just like
in an old movie. They dropped the wire bound headlines, and there it was Belushi dead at thirty three, and I had to tell her and that was you know, And now Judy is with him. I am hoping conjoined with their energies twirling in the afterlife or wherever we do go.
We just lost her.
And now she's been and terred near John, and she had to say goodbye to him too early. But now their spirits are joined, and that gives me some comfort because of my belief.
Now do you think that was johnsone who everyone who was important in his life? They were kind of holding their breath. They thought that something like this might happen. Did you worry, as his dear friend, that this is something like this was possible?
Well, once cocaine came into the picture, which it did so heavily in the seventies. There the cocaine that we flushed down the toilet, hid from him, took from him. We tried to stop the dealers from getting to him once that came in and he once he enjoyed that, and he enjoyed it, he did.
That's where it turned.
That's where we became really really worried when the powders came in there. And of course they were pills to supplement, you know, to get to sleep and wake up in the morning. So it was pharmaceuticals that killed them, no doubt over the long term. And then of course by that bad episode at the Marmont where the woman hit him up with a speedball, which was a heroin cocaine combination. No, he was a smoker, so his lungs were a bit weak.
He'd been drinking. I know that she did not want to kill him anymore than I did, and she did some time for it, and I'm sure she regrets it for the rest of her life.
Yeah.
Now, what about UFOs when you're talking about because I literally I was telling my producers on my show that I saw a UFO. I was laying on a dock on a lake in upstate New York. And as we were laying there, myself, my daughter, a couple of my nieces, a friend of theirs, and all of a sudden, right over us, I see something that literally resembles in its dimensions a stop light. It's a black brick like you know two thousand and one and Onnitor three large green
lights that resemble a stop light. And literally, as were laying down, the thing moves over us. And as it gets in our vicinity, it's like maybe fifty feet in the air, it's not that high up, and the sun's almost down now, and the lights go on. You literally feel and the green lights light up over us, and it moves very slowly over us and then it passes us, the lights go out and it takes off and goes shooting into space.
I saw this. I believe you.
That is a spectacular sighting.
Yeah. And the dimension of it.
I would have to guess that the body of the object of the spacecraft was probably from what I could tell from where I was, it was probably fifty feet by twenty feet across or something, you know, length wise fifty and the green lights come on and then they go off.
That is a spectacular Alec that's a spectacular sighting.
In Ireland saw that as well.
No one would admit to seeing it. They were afraid to admit they saw it.
Okay, well I did see that is a spectacular sighting. I totally believe you. I've had people talk to me about orbs, triangles, deltas. I've seen four of them myself, vivid on ambiguous sighting. No question that this is hyperadvanced technology operated by intelligent beings that are not from this Earth, or this is not earthly manufacturer. We don't know about it. There's nothing on the Earth that could do what the
objects that I saw did. There was a young Soviet scientist named Nikolai Kardashev, and there was a meeting I believe in this in the seventies over there at one of the space centers, and he proposed a tier model for three types of civilization. Type one has harnessed everything on their home planet, all of the energy on their home planet.
That's a type one civilization.
Type two have harnessed all of the energy in their solar system. Type three have harnessed all of the energy in their galaxy. So what if a type three individual approached you and said, we're here now and we want you to operate for us on this planet. I've just written a book with that premise because I've seen four and it inspired me to write this book about if you had to have contact, willingly or unwillingly with such
a powerful group of beings, what would you do? So these things they've been coming going like taxis for centuries. One of the British Aerospace a minister there, Lord hill Norton.
I believe he.
Said the twenty three different species and twenty three different types of creatures had crossed his desk in intelligence briefings. My theory is that they're tourists and this is such a beautiful planet they come by to take a look. You can look on your search engine sting ray UFOs
and you'll get pictures of these basically two seaters. So I can see somewhere in another dimension or galax or a planet, a couple with one of these in their driveway or garage on another planet or galaxy saying let's go down to Earth for a few hours.
It's a tourist thing. Now, there are some great books.
There's one called UFO, The Governments for Extraterrestrials Here and out There by Garrett Graff Graff Garrett Graff UFO. That's a great book than Lewis Alexandro's book Imminent. He worked for the Pentagon, so did Chris Mellon his sponsor over there, and Alexando who did work for the Defense Department and
has written this great book Imminent Debt. He believes that this is a threat that because of their interference with nuclear weapons over the years on our planet in multiple bases, that they know about our nuclear capabilities and they don't like them so much, and that they could shut down all of our weapons basically with the hit of a button and neutralize any defense that we have so they believe Chris Mellan and Lewis Alessando that the Defense Department
should be more alert. And right now there is an office open for military and even civilians to report. It's the All Domain Anomaly a resolution office, so anomaly and all domain meaning water and on air, So that exists in the Pentagon. Now they're very seriously interested in this subject.
One last question. You look at the show, you look at them coming to fifty years. This season is the fiftieth season, and obviously one couldn't have a perspective where you could predict fifty seasons back in nineteen seventy five when you started. Does it surprise you that it's gone on for fifty years?
I guess a little bit. It's surprising, and any venture other than soap operas for something to go on that long in television and television venture maybe right Coronation Street, you know, or about Days of Our Lives. But an executive told Lauren a few years ago said, this is like the Today Show. This is an institution and it's never going away. And well, Lauren was gone from it for a while, but then, of course it's his guiding hand and his sensibilities that make it what it is.
It could clunk along without him, but I don't think it would be what it is now, and I don't think it would endure another ten years without him.
In the years I've gotten to know him. On one level, Lauren was somebody who knew how to handle different regimes of executives in NBC television, to teach them the fact that whatever you replaced my show with is going to lose money. LIKESNL may not be monetizing the timeslot as much as you'd like. And there are people who I know for a fact they view that as a pelt.
They view that as a scalp. They wanted to prove their acumen as broadcast executives, and one of the things they wanted to do was to kill and euthanize SNL and bring on the next great thing that could tickets place. And Louren has lasted for fifty years because he's taught them all that that's a mistake. You know, this show it's always going to make money.
It sure would be a mistake.
And more importantly, it is the most effective and high quality political satirical.
Organ in the country and we need it.
And also the intelligence of the writing has always been very high. Anything that would come after its going to definitely be few notches below and it'll never be what that is.
So here's too, hopefully as.
Long as Lauren wants to do it, and then even beyond developing new talent that comes up. I've mean, I agree with the executive to toll Lauren, this is like the Tonight Show, this is like the Today Show, Saturday Night Live.
We'll never go off NBC. We will have it forever.
Now, are you going to make any movies? You got any movies coming up?
I don't think I see anything on the horizon. I'm going to do some of these concerts with Jimmy, I'm going to work on the brand and we're doing some kind of a relaunch. We've all all new expressions coming out. I'm going to go work on the road as a humble beverage alcohol salesman happily. So I'm going to concentrate on trying to see my family as much as possible, all the members in the various scattered parts of the world they are at.
And of course I have written this.
Book that deals with what I was speaking about before with the UAP phenomenon. It would have to be a very special director or actor to approach me. You know, if Spielberg says, hey, we're doing a UFO movie. We want you to play an abductee or a general in the Air Force, well I would be there.
Thank you so much for doing this meeting my friend.
I will see you at the fiftieth I assume yes, I'll see you in February. Thank you, Alec.
My thanks to dan Aykroyd. Here's the Thing Is recorded at CDM Studios. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.