I grew up in the 80s and, due to my incessant pre-ironic intake of Hollywood action movies, I didn’t really have a litany of realistic role models. Arnie was my hero, but he was a one-off. You might as well want to emulate a mountain, or a skyscraper, for all the good it would do you: at least you’d get the accent right. I loved Burt Reynolds in The Cannonball Run, but he had a moustache. I was six. It just wasn’t going to happen.
Away from humans, the movie characters I felt an affinity with were mostly monsters. I have no idea what this says about me. No matter how hard I try, I can’t justify wanting to be a huge, unknowable allegory for the psychological damage rendered to a nation by nuclear war. So that rules out Godzilla and Mothra, even if the latter’s loyalty to her fairy charges is something from which we can all learn.
So instead, as I matured into an insular, lanky, nerdy poster-boy for being an only child (now is probably a good time to acknowledge that I do have a sister - hi, Lucy - but she didn’t come along until I was almost 10: the damage was already done), only one non-monster hero abided – Dan Aykroyd. Particularly, the Dan Aykroyd of Blues Brothers. It was the film I watched more than any other, and the film that got me into trouble when I lent a VHS tape of it to my childminder’s son in 1986. Apparently, it has swearing in it.
I internalised The Blues Brothers and its myriad lessons from a very early age. Wearing sunglasses at night is cool. Soul and blues music are brilliant. Nazis – particularly Nazis from Illinois – are rubbish. Many laws, rules and regulations can be ignored if you’re raising money for Catholicism. Carrie Fisher will destroy your home with high explosives if you break up with her. All the important stuff to live your life by.
It was as Aykroyd, playing Elwood, the loyal sibling waiting in his car at the prison gates, that I saw myself – not the other, garrulous one, played by John Belushi, though my dad still calls me Jake in reference to Belushi’s character. Elwood was the quiet one, speaking only when he needed to, something I imagined I did myself. In reality, I couldn’t shut up. Elwood was a superb driver, even able to make a car rear up and jump over craters caused by falling Nazis. I couldn’t drive. Elwood had a brother, a kindred spirit, with whom he was happy to join on a journey almost guaranteed to end in incarceration. I was an only child (again, sorry Lucy).
Throughout my childhood, Aykroyd was one of a holy trinity of actors, alongside Chevy Chase and John Candy, whose films we watched as a family, regardless of their individual merits. The imperishable Ghostbusters was lapped up alongside films that some fools considered less essential, such as 1941, Spies Like Us and Dragnet. Sadly, despite the latter, Dan Aykroyd’s rapping career never took off.
Aykroyd was considered naff long before the execrable Blues Brothers 2000, which, confusingly, came out in 1998. But I can forgive him that – and, indeed, much of his post-80s career. In the guise of Elwood Blues, he had a huge influence on my worldview, from being haunted and fascinated by the cityscapes of America – Aykroyd said that Chicago was the true star of Blues Brothers – to inspiring a life-long love of American music. Not bad for a Canadian.
• Why I’d like to be … Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation
• Why I’d like to be … Chewbacca in Star Wars
• Why I’d like to be … Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird
