It was in the gonzo era of the ‘70s that we first came to know a skinny young comedian from Canada by the name of Dan Aykroyd. It was the golden age of standup comedy when nothing was taboo. Everybody and everything was fair game. If we weren’t at an underground comedy club watching Robin Williams go off the rails, we were getting high around the record player, listening to Steve Martin Get Small on vinyl.
The Second City improvisation comedy troupe brought its talents from both its original Chicago and its Toronto companies together with L.A.’s The Groundlings in 1975 and provided many of the performers who made up the Saturday Night Live ensemble. It included Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris and other Not Ready for Primetime Players that have since passed on to the great Friar’s Club in the sky, like Gilda Radner and John Belushi. The show, whose first host was standup royalty George Carlin, forever changed the landscape of comedy and late-night television.
“Saturday Night Live has been consistent with cultural iconography from then until now,” Aykroyd recently told L.A. Weekly over card tricks at the Magic Castle. “They’re still doing a great job. The writers and the cast are strong. It’s as vibrant and as relevant as ever.”
One of Aykroyd’s most classic and defiant skits at the time that has gone down in SNL history was taking on the holiness of culinary goddess Julia Child in the hysterical French Chef episode. It involved lots of liver and a kitchen knife wound resulting in a fountain of gushing blood that was orchestrated by comedian and former Minnesota senator Al Franken from underneath the table.
“Everybody loved Julia Child and she was a phenomenon at the time,” says Aykroyd. “They wrote that and I looked at it thinking it was just a cheap blood joke. But I did it and looked just like my mother when I was doing it. But everybody loved it, including Julia. My aunt was Helene Gougeon, a culinary…
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