They are both big, funny know-it-alls, so it seems kind of inevitable that Dan Aykroyd would wind up providing the voice of a digital Yogi Bear in the new 3-D movie based on the beloved TV cartoon, opening Dec. 17.
Unlike the blowhard bruin, however, the Canadian performer, writer and entrepreneur really does know a lot of stuff. The eclectic, erudite one from Saturday Night Live's original cast, Aykroyd, 58, co-created and starred in such classic comedy franchises as Ghostbusters and The Blues Brothers, helped found the House of Blues music-club chain and is a big player in the Dominion's wine and spirits industry.
And he can talk a blue streak about almost anything authoritatively - while often putting you in stitches.
What's your personal relationship to Yogi Bear?
I've been watching it since I was a kid growing up in Hull, Quebec. After walking to school and back four miles over a frozen creek, up a greasy little mountain, across a bad highway, through a neighbourhood of tough kids who used to throw my books around.... It was a very arduous journey. So the joy for me was to come home on Wednesdays and watch Yogi Bear at 4 o'clock.
Nostalgia aside, what do you think has kept the ol' picnic-basket napper popular for so many years?
People love gentle larceny. They love watching someone get away with things and defy authority, and that's certainly what Yogi's always up to.
Your wife [actress Donna Dixon]and three daughters are Americans, and you're a naturalized U.S. citizen. But most of your business now appears to be in Canada.
I live in Canada in the summer and some time in the fall. We're going there for Christmas and New Year's. I would say one-third of my time is living in L.A. with my family, making sure that I'm on the school patrol and all that, one-third is in Canada with the family, and one-third is on the road promoting Crystal Head Vodka.
That seems to be working rather well. You've sold more than a million of those skull-shaped bottles.
It's the stuff in the bottle. I mean, when you've got the government of Newfoundland still producing the world's cleanest vodka for you.... It's like Hyman Roth in The Godfather telling Michael Corleone, "Finally, we're in business with a legitimate government!"
Too bad you can't say that about the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which has banned selling the bottles in the province's stores.
Well, it's just the social-responsibility panel said they don't like the skull reference. But it's based upon the crystal-head legend of positive empowerment and enlightenment. We're hoping that the Ontario government sees their way to making a lot of money with this, because they will!
But, you know, it's inconvenient for me because I drink a lot of it, and I have to go to Watertown, N.Y., to buy it.
So where do you stay when you're in Canada?
My family has had a farm since 1826, and I stay in the same farmhouse that my great-great-grandfather built. It's in the Thousand Islands, near Lansdowne, Ont.
When you were growing up, your father, Peter, was in Pierre Trudeau's Privy Council. A lot of your data storage/spewing ability came from watching him work, right?
He and Michael Pitfield were the main pens of the federal government. I watched him take stacks of documents, maybe three or four feet high, and go through them within three hours. Also, I studied criminology and deviant psych at Carleton University for four years. I learned how to write essays and how to do research. That really taught me how to organize my thoughts. And I'm just a voracious reader about science, technology, biographies, the paranormal - all that just interests me so much.
Enough about trivial matters. Is there going to be a third Ghostbusters?
We have an excellent script. Really good, probably one of the best comic scripts I've ever read. We've written [Bill]Murray the role of a lifetime. It's just a matter of, now we've got the plans, but the Meccano set is disassembled. The bolts and paint and struts have to be held together so one day we can make the movie.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Special to The Globe and Mail