If you were to hit up Dan Aykroyd for an interview in the year 2010, you’d have three primary topics to cover: alcohol (Aykroyd’s current endeavor is selling Crystal Head Vodka out of his RV), Yogi Bear (where he provides the title voice in Justin Timberlake’s own personal Norbit), and the main thing everyone wants to know about: Ghostbusters 3. Kudos, then, to Vanity Fair reporter Susan Michals, who adroitly zoomed through to conversation about the sequel by encouraging Aykroyd to conflate the other two topics — “Yogi would never consume alcoholic beverages,†he explained to her, “other than some honey and mead†— and then got him to drop the news that he’s now rewriting the script.
Perhaps that’s a good thing, since Bill Murray recently dissed Ghostbusters 3 writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg and their previous credit, Year One: “People who [saw it], including other Ghostbusters, said it was one of the worst things they had ever seen in their lives.†Dan, would you like to have the floor?
Last month in GQ Bill Murray said something that wasn’t so nice about Ghostbusters 3.
He was talking about the writers from Year One, and I think he was reacting to the box-office success and the general public view of the film, which in my view was a very serviceable comedy, and in the end I think they’ll make their money back. I think he was concerned that the writing on Ghostbusters 3 by these guys would not be up to standard, but I can tell you firsthand, I’m working on the script now and those two – Stupnitsky and Eisenberg – wrote Bill the comic role of a lifetime, and the new Ghostbusters and the old are all well represented in it … we have a strong first draft that Harold [Ramis] and I will take back, and I’m very excited about working on it.
Bill and Ted 3. Heathers 2. True Lies 2. Really?
Look, Hollywood is in love with any kind of nostalgia that can prove itself to be commercial. But it has to evolve. Now [in Ghostbusters 3] my character’s eyesight is shot, I got a bad knee, a bad hip – I can’t drive that caddy anymore or lift that Psychotron Accelerator anymore, it’s too heavy. We need young legs, new minds—new Ghostbusters; so I’m in essence passing the torch to the new regime, and you know what? That’s totally okay with me.
And why wouldn’t it be? After all, Aykroyd may get older, but the ghosts he gets paranormal blow jobs from stay the same age.
Dan Aykroyd Writing Ghostbusters 3 Script, Selling Vodka Out Of His RV [VF]