All language subtitles for Cleanin.Up.The.Town.Remembering.Ghostbusters.2019.720p1080p.BluRay.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]-English

- You can never tell
if a movie's

going to do well or not.

- We knew we had it;
it was a good idea.

But no one knew
we had a phenomenon.

- A love letter to our common
condition and to New York.

- Ivan decided to add
a hundred shots.

- The date that it's gonna open
is in, like, 3 1/2 weeks.

- You never know,
in this business,

how long something's going
to last

and whether it's just
going to me a trend, a fad,

or have some
enduring impact and, um,

as certainly as we see today,
it does.

- You know, I had a kind of
feeling that it was unique.

- In America, something
very unexpected happened.

"Indiana Jones" was outstripped
at the box office

by a picture called
"Ghostbusters."

- It's all the more surprising
when you realize

that Steven Spielberg had
nothing at all to do with it.

- That kind of comedy, with
those kind of special effects.

- To quote "Variety" again,

"Gags and special effects
scare pic misses its mark."

Well, I certainly wouldn't
go along with that.

It hits its mark, all right,

and turned out to be the
biggest jackpot of the year.

- And that crew,
that was so hot at that time.

- Did you expect "Ghostbusters"
to be as popular as it was?

- Yes.

- When that came out,
suddenly I was famous.

- I think anybody would have
to be very arrogant and say,

"I'm gonna do more than
$200 million

when only five films
had done that previously."

- So it gives you some idea of
how major a phenomena it was

and then repeat it
in subsequent summers.

- This was a real movie.

- And no one had done a comedy
on that scale.

- I didn't even know
what a BAFTA award was.

- "Ghostbusters."
- I don't know about winning.

I didn't think
I was gonna win.

I'm sorry if I'm not as calm
as some of the other winners.

It always seems like it goes to
the other guy, you know?

- I think we fully believed
that we were gonna carve out

a little niche in film history.

- It all starts with
this gentleman.

Dr. Samuel Augustus Aykroyd,
my great-grandfather

who was a dentist
in Kingston, Ontario.

Great-grandfather Sam,
as well as being a dentist,

was a psychic researcher
in the tradition of

the British Psychical Society
and the American Society

of Psychical Research, and um,
he, throughout his life,

was interested in the survival
of the consciousness

in mediumship, channeling,
afterlife voices,

where the dead really are
living, in terms of a presence.

You could go to Lily Dale
near Buffalo New York

and my great-grandfather was

the reviewer
of all the psychic acts

that rolled through town,

whether it be a channeler,
a mediumship,

whether it be a precipitated
painter like the Bang sisters

or the Campbell brothers.
And every Sunday,

these big, black cars
would pull up

and men and women
all dressed up

would come just like Sunday
to church.

There was an impresario,
my great-grandfather,

there was a showman,
Mr. Ashurst,

who became the family medium.

He was a gifted medium--
really, really gifted.

He could speak in Chinese
and Hungarian

and he made trumpets
fly around the room.

So my great-grandfather
watched

and he wrote about them,

whether they were genuine,
hoaxes,

whether they were
appealing or not,

and we found a trunkful
of his letters.

So his letters, his journals
were always in the family

when I was growing up,

and after I made my living in
comedy, I thought, why not mix

the real world of psychic
research, using the real work

of Dr. Wohl
and the Maimonides Dream Lab

and Duke University's
Parapsychological Department,

and use what was
really going on

in the science in terms of
researching

whether there is survival
of the consciousness

and whether there are, in fact,
such things as materializations

and apparitions and, you know,
take that jargon

and that knowledge

and make a good, old fashioned
ghost comedy.

- I don't believe in ghosts.

Or do I?

- The property
got the enthusiasm first

of Bernie Brillstein,
my agent, God rest his soul--

there's a voice I would like
to hear from the past.

How ya doing, kid?

Hi, kid, hi, hi, hi!

Also got the enthusiasm

of Michael Ovitz, the famous
agent who founded CAA.

Those two guys looked at this
and said, "This is, you know,

"we really have something here,
so let's package it

the right way and get
the right people involved."

- "Ghostbusters" started as

this sort of
very famous treatment

that was written by
Dan Aykroyd.

- I know Ivan from years--
he hired me as an announcer

on a television station
in the '70s

in Toronto, so I know him
for many years,

and the fact that Harold Ramis
had worked with him.

- The concept was so strong.

He had written it
in the early '80s

and it was set in 2012,
I think.

- It was a much
different kind of movie.

Danny always imagined
that John Belushi and he

being part of this
for a science fiction movie.

- Eddie Murphy, myself,
and John

were supposed to be
the original Ghostbusters.

- You know, it took place
in outer space,

sometime in the future.

- For a variety of
technical reasons,

there was a hole torn
in our reality envelope--

this is all in
a little prologue.

- We rip the fabric of our
dimension with the EMF waves.

That was the original premise
of the first movie,

that all of this electronica
around us is yielding a rift

in the interdimensional veil

between our dimension
and the next one.

- And the ghost energy that
flooded into New York City

giving rise to a new
profession, Ghostbusters.

- I was working with Ivan
and Danny Aykroyd sent over

a script, which was very long.

And my memory is that there
were a lot of Ghostbusters

and they were
sort of like plumbers.

- I can't believe I work for
a company called Ghostbusters.

- Sort of a blue collar job.

- And the team
in the movie was

just one of
many Ghostbuster units

and they thought of us
as like the Orkin men...

- ♪ To control your pests
Orkin is best ♪

♪ Call the Oslo the Orkin man ♪

- To show up
in this marked truck

and exterminate
the ghosts and leave.

- Had the proton packs,
had a Marshmallow Man--

mind you, it was one of
50 large illusions.

- Which necessitated
the Ghostbusters travelling

interdimensionally
into another world,

and that other world
would be

entirely a world
of special effects.

Like, the whole
last third of the movie was

one huge special effect.

- This was sort of
this extravaganza

that he had concocted.

- ♪ Fighting ghosts ♪

- Ghostbusters.

- Danny came to Needham
and they went to Art's Deli.

- I said to him, Dan, there's
a great idea here, but we--

you know, I really think
it should take place today,

you know,
in a contemporary time,

it should be in a real city,
on Earth, i.e. New York.

All this fantastic stuff
will be much more impressive

set against the reality
that we knew.

- But also it seemed like the
real comedy heart of the film

was in the juxtaposition
of these ghost janitors

taking the supernatural and
making it completely mundane

and setting it in a place
as grounded and gritty

as New York City.

- But that basic idea,

that wonderfully
brilliant idea, was there.

- Ivan had known me
since the Lampoon days.

Ivan said to Dan, "You know,
why don't we get Ramis?

"You guys can
rewrite the script

and he can play
one of the Ghostbusters."

And since John had passed away,

Dan had developed a friendship
with Bill Murray

starting way back when Bill and
I were in the Lampoon together.

- We said we gotta
get Murray in on this,

and we gotta give it to Murray,
we gotta give him the lead

and let him be the greatest
romantic lead that the world

has ever seen and he did do
that for us, he pulled it off.

- I was having a pretty
good time with the studios.

My first three movies were
"Animal House,"

"Meatballs" and "Stripes."

I called up the head of
Columbia Pictures

and I said, Frank,
I have this great idea

and it's gonna have Bill Murray

and Dan Aykroyd, it's called
"Ghostbusters," I want to bring

Harold Ramis in as a star
as well

and as a cowriter with Danny.

He said, "Well, come on in
and tell me about it,"

and literally a half hour
after this conversation began,

he said, "Well, how much
do you think it'll cost?"

And I had no idea
what it was going to cost

and I just picked
a very big number.

- I remember Ivan holding it up
and saying...

- I think we could do it
for about 30 million.

- He said, "You have $30
million, as long as you can

deliver it by June of 1984,"

and this was about May 1983

when this conversation
took place.

- We sort of dropped and said,
"Sure, yeah, sure."

- What we were facing suddenly
was here, in May of 1983,

was having to write
the screenplay,

basically find
an effects house

who could actually pull
the visual effects off

and cast it
and put it together,

and we had really zip,

we had to reconstruct
a script from scratch.

We went to Martha's Vineyard
together, Harold Ramis,

Dan Aykroyd and I,
and our respective families.

- Dan had a house on Martha's
Vineyard, he and John Belushi

when they'd gotten successful

each bought a house
on the Vineyard.

And driving up, when you hit
the edge of his property,

there's a military checkpoint.

I remember there was a barrier
that came down and it was

painted in military colors and
everything, and up in his house

he said, "Well, let's work
in the basement,"

which was painted camouflage,
the whole basement was camo.

- And so we would meet in the
basement every day from about

11:00 in the morning to about
7:00 or 8:00 at night,

and then go back
to our families

who were having
a great vacation.

- When you have a great idea,

when you really know
what you're doing

and you feel confident
about it and you're laughing

to yourself and it feels
really fresh--

I'm not saying these things
write themselves,

but there's just
a real easy flow to it.

So our first draft together
was written

in a relatively
short amount of time.

- And we just basically
pounded the script out

over a two week period.

- Very exciting and very
entertaining to play

in that area, as we did.

- It was so much fun and
it was so funny, but we had--

one of the first big changes,

which Ivan and I came to quite
independently

was that we wanted
the audience to experience

the journey from skepticism
to belief

because I'm a skeptic
and I thought,

well, if I were this character,

I'd need to be convinced
that these things were real,

and no one had any conception
yet of who those Ghostbusters

were because Dan's script
was very technical

and very abstract.

So if you'd read it
at the time,

you wouldn't see
much differentiation

or real specific
personality

among the Ghostbusters.

So the fact that they were kind
of really neutral was good

because it allowed us to put
our own character imprint

over each of them.

- You know, most scientists and
physicists from the '30s

and '40s and '50s, you know,
a lot of them are Germans

and Swiss and Spengler,
Stanz and Venkman seemed to be,

you know, us Swiss
and German Americans.

Americans, though, please,
absolutely, yeah,

new countrymen,
new countrymen.

- Ivan one day turned to me
and said,

"What if the Ghostbusters
were college professors?"

And I said, hey, I get that, I
used to teach at a university,

I understand what that would be
like, that's a great idea.

- So instead of making them
just janitors

or the guys who come

and get the termites out
of your basement,

we thought we'd make them
scientists.

- off, man,
I'm a scientist.

- Bill's specialty
was kind of psychology

and Dan was really into
the ghost stuff.

I was a theoretical physicist,
and we'd been hoping to see

something real and it seemed
like a great way to start,

by seeing that first
real manifestation

and the way we experienced it

and then providing
practical explanations

and creating the business.

It looked like it was going
to be funny and beyond that,

it looked like it was going
to be really fun to do.

- I think we'll take it.
- Good.

- You know, I was just looking
for the very best people

that could deliver this movie

that was much bigger than
anything

I had done in the past.

- I was already working
for Ivan,

my first film
was "Heavy Metal,"

and he came to trust me
as a producer,

and I was teamed
with Joe Medjuck

and we made a good team,

focusing on different areas.

But most of my focus in
"Heavy Metal"

was design and animation.

- A trip beyond the future

to a universe
you've never seen before.

- By the time "Ghostbusters"
came around, because animation

and special effects
are often...

- And we actually as a result

began working
in special effects

while the guys were still
writing the script.

- Ivan was making a comedy
first, not an effects movie,

so getting the effects work
together was

difficult in this time period

because Ivan was promising it
in almost half the time that

anyone at that time
was spending

on a special effects movie.

We had never done a special
effects movie, and there was

no special effects house
in town who could take it on.

- What we did was we went
Richard Edlund who had been

at ILM, we knew he wanted
to set up his own company.

- I was in hospital,
getting a back surgery

after having just lost
a project with Ridley Scott

that he'd gone to England.

I got a call
from Don Shay first

and then Michael Gross
to do "Ghostbusters."

Within a day of that,

I'd gotten another call
from Peter Hyams

to do "2010."

- He already had
an Academy Award

and he already had the skills.

Two studios kicked in the cash
and built a studio,

including building some cameras
from scratch.

- So it was very funny;

whenever we were visiting
they would cover up

all the stuff on "2010."

- I'd worked for Richard
on "Poltergeist"

and then "Return of the Jedi."

When we worked on that film, he
had asked, you know, "I'm going

to start a company,
would you like to join me?"

Which was, of course.

- They rented a space
down in Marina del Rey

and Michael hired
a lot of conceptual artists

and comic book artists
to start drawing ghosts.

- And because of my history
with "Heavy Metal,"

I said we could do
the same thing here.

Let's tap resources that have
no film history, and then

we'll figure out if they can
be implemented for film,

on top of which is a comedy.

So, should there be
funny ghosts?

Richard had these drawings
and concepts submitted to Ivan

and said, "No, not that way,
no, not that way.

Look at this way."

Then we'd bring
in the effects people

and say, we went further
with this.

How would you
make it a reality?

So implementing those
was very much my job.

- I mean, the first thing
I was trying to do was

to build the technology up
real quick so that we could

actually produce the movie.

And I had made a deal with Doug
Trumbull to take over a studio

in LA which had a lot of
65-millimeter equipment,

but it was just kind of
laying around

and it was like a parts bin.
- Right.

- And so I had to bring in
engineers, machinists.

- The animation department
was

basically
just a big warehouse.

They were literally building
and with Thaine and the guys

were building tables
at night and shelves

and animation discs
and various...

The camera wasn't computerized,
it was a giant Oxberry, I mean,

it was just--it was, like he
said, it was just parts.

- And while the lawyers were
skirmishing, we had only

10 months to go until release,
and at that time, in '83,

it was budgeted at $5 million
for visual effects,

which was a really big effects
budget in those days,

and we were working with
incredible talents

like John DeCuir who was like

one of the great production
designers of all time

and Laszlo Kovacs
who became my lifelong friend.

- Laszlo was a dream, he was
a wonderful, wonderful man,

very kind, very generous,
came over here

in the Hungarian Revolution
in 1956,

and has a warmth about him
that's irreplaceable.

- We got started before we
were supposed to start shooting

and we said, let's go to
New York and do some scouting.

- I remember the first day was
technically a pre-production day

because I was trying to get
decent weather

in New York City in Manhattan.

Our official start of
principal photography

was the end of October.

I thought, well, let's do a few
days of pre-production shooting

while we have most of the cast
and crew around anyway

and we're doing
costume fittings,

we're doing rehearsals,

you know, people are going out

and buying equipment and
the designers are setting up.

Let's just get out on
the street and do some stuff.

- Someone's doing a standup
newscast in the street

and there's a guy behind him
playing with his beard,

and I think that was
the first thing we shot.

- The first day shooting was
a car crash because

some skeleton-like ghost had
taken over a taxi cab,

so we did a stunt
the very first day of shooting.

- The animatronic cab driver
wasn't even done at Boss Film.

It was basically my audition
because when I met

Richard Edlund and all
the higher ups at Boss Film,

they said,
"Okay, we got two weeks--

"we have to be in New York
City on location filming

"a fully animatronic
zombie cab driver.

"You go away and make it,

"and then go to New York
and shoot it

and if it works,
you could do the job."

And so I really did everything
on my own, I small printed,

I did the engineering on it,
I did the hair work,

I did the paint,
I did everything,

and it went really well--

it was actually a lot of fun.

I went back and they said,

"Okay, now you have a year of
torture ahead of you."

- And part of that day of
shooting, I said, well,

let's get a shot
for the montage

where they get more successful.

- I had never worked
in the heart of Manhattan.

So there they were,
all set up,

and I got into the jumpsuit

for the first time
and went out there and,

wow, this is really cool, I
mean, we kind of own the city.

- So I'm busy sort of setting
up some cameras, and I look up

and suddenly coming at me
are the three Ghostbusters

in full regalia,

and it was such a startling
image and it was such

an original image,
and I just got

this wonderful shiver
down my back.

It was just a great
first moment on the movie.

- I actually,
in all honesty,

had never really produced
a movie before.

- Here I am, associate
producing "Ghostbusters."

I had never been on
a movie set before,

and because my first film
was animated,

I didn't entirely know
how it all worked.

I'm fessing up to this
for the first time.

- I remember at one point I was
on the street with 300 extras,

yelling "Ghostbusters,"
and I thought I better learn

to do this really fast.

- And I came on the set,

having to pretend
I knew everything,

and it says "Producer,"

and I see my chair and my name,
you know?

And I go, mm-hmm, and I--

I'm looking around
and I didn't know

where to stand, I didn't know
half their jobs.

And somebody came to me and
said, "Tell me something that

has to be done,"
and they said,

"You better tell the First
Assistant Director,"

um, well, do that.

And I had to find out how
I could find out who and what

a First Assistant Director was
without letting on

that I had no idea
what I was doing.

- Probably had I understood
how big it was

and how difficult it was,
I would've been more effective

than I was because I'd never
done it before, I thought, hey,

this is what movies are like.

You always have thousands of
extras and special effects

and a deadline to make.

- I had more than one producer
who never knew his ass

from a hole in the ground,
and I know there were people

on that film who went,
"There's the asshole producer

who doesn't know
what he's doing."

But, fortunately,
I got through it.

- The very first note
of music you hear

is the blaze
of light from the star...

There was a revolutionary
synthesizer being released

at that time called the DX7

and it was the first
fully digital synth,

and the very first note
is a factory programmed sound

on this DX7, they're impossible
to get, and we managed

to procure one of
these synthesizers--

God only knows
what had to happen.

- Elmer Bernstein is a genius,

he did a beautiful job
on the score.

- That particular
"Ghostbusters" theme

that he wrote...

...was a style that he
had been tinkering with,

so because I had been
along for the ride

on a number of films,

I got to see
that particular style evolve

into a full-blown
thematic piece.

- He created this
very special classical sound

for that broad comedy science
fiction film that has this

sort of very historical,
romantic,

full orchestra score to it.

I don't think the movie
would've worked

without his score.

- My introduction
to this whole escapade

was the audition...
Square.

And I looked to this side of
me and there was this actor

chewing gum, just wildly
chewing gum, and I was like,

"Do you have any more gum?"

And he goes, "Yeah."

Little did he know
he handed me the part.

- I got the script
and I read it

and the ectoplasm
and the blood,

whatever, and the Stay Puft
Marsh--I kind of was like,

what the heck is this movie?

- They called me in
and we're doing the scene,

and the gum flies
out of my mouth.

And the whole room erupts

in this thunderous laughter,
but uncontrollable laughter,

and I am biting my tongue
so hard to not laugh--

I am digging into
some holy place within to

not crack up, because they're
all laughing, I'm in tears.

- The university, as everyone
now knows, is Columbia,

we saw
these Columbia landmarks,

but Columbia wouldn't
let us use the name.

- I arrive and I'm looking
around and I'm going, okay,

there's the table
and I'm looking for, like,

where's the electronic
equipment to shock me?

I don't like this.

And I'm like, what the hell
kind of budget film is this?

- I got up that morning, I knew
we were shooting that day,

and went to the set

and I was dressed in just
the clothes I'd worn,

and they were like,
"Oh, you look fine.

"Oh, you look great, yeah,
you don't need your hair done,

you don't need makeup,
you don't need wardrobe."

And I'm like, really?

- I basically, like, pinched
the hell out of myself

every time
that we had to do a shock.

I go into the restroom
and I basically got, like,

the continent of Africa
in purple...

all up my leg, with a big,
blue River Nile vein

moving right through it.

- So I-I've always wished

I had blow-dried my hair
better that day.

- And Laszlo walks in,
and he goes, "Good God!"

- It's amazing
how many people remember me

from being that librarian.

But--oh, I remember
the real librarian came around

and she looked at me
and she said,

"Oh, they always make us
look like that."

Isn't that terrible?

- We played with different
openings for a while

before we settled
on the library opening;

we played with
different versions of that,

all of which were promising
and kind of funny,

but the library
was really good.

I think I can take credit
for that.

- I hope we can clear this up
quickly and quietly.

- I was actually working
in the New York Public Library

on a writing project
and I looked up

and saw Bill Murray and Ramis,

they were scouting
the location,

and I remember looking at them

and thinking, I wonder
what they're doing here.

- I know how I got it too--
it was my scream.

I had a wonderful scream.

They said, "Suppose a ghost
were coming at you.

What would you do?"
and I screamed.

He laughed and said, okay,
the part's yours.

- The call time was about
5:30 in the morning

and I was in the makeup trailer
with Bill Murray

who obviously had not been to
bed,

and when I told people
about it was--

and I swear this is true--
they were much funnier, I mean,

what was going on between
those guys

from the minute
that you open up the door

to the makeup trailer
until, you know,

the end of the day,
was so hilarious.

And that's almost
intimidating,

that they were able to be
that connected to each other,

and of course,
that's the relationship between

the librarian and the
Ghostbusters, anyway.

- The idea was we could
only shoot in the morning

before it really opened, and
so we were supposed to be in

from six to 10 for two days
in a row,

and Ivan was really on a roll,
we completed all that

in under four hours
and didn't know

what to shoot, so I think we
broke for lunch and then shot

a scene we were supposed to
shoot a couple of days later.

- We shot the exterior first
when we were in New York,

and we used the reading room

of the New York
Public Library.

So the scenes where we just
entered and, I guess,

Egon is, for some reason, under
a table with a stethoscope,

listening at a table
for God knows why.

- They were stopping traffic on
Fifth Avenue to do this scene,

and there was a guy
who's like a street preacher

who was praying all morn--he
had this--he was standing on

a soapbox and he was going,

"All you Hollywood
are going to hell!

You're going to--"
and, you know, they made--

the production had to go
and pay him off.

- And then you wait weeks
to pick it up in Los Angeles

in the Los Angeles
Public Library,

which was us going
into the private spaces

of the library where
the public are not allowed.

Movies always have
that kind of discontinuity

when you're shooting them.

- And Ivan Reitman, of course,
the director on that,

when I was supposed to see
the ghost for the first time,

you know, he's not a scary man,
he was trying to scare me,

so he'd just go like that.

- Ivan's directions were
simple and concise--

look scared
and look more scared.

- You know, that's acting.

- An awful lot of the effects
in that sequence

are practical effects,
they're not opticals.

- You know, like the cards
flipping out

and the slime coming
down the walls.

- So the cards are actually
sent off into the air by little

air jets that were hidden
in all the drawers,

so the drawers open
and the air jets came on,

books going back and forth
from shelf to shelf,

those were hung on wires.

- You know, when they find
the vertically stacked books,

that was an idea Ivan had
on the way to work.

I think Danny
came up with the line.

- Symmetrical book stacking--
just like the Philadelphia

mass turbulence of 1947.

...do exactly as I say.

Get ready, ready--go!

- The librarian
was a really interesting task

because in one shot, and I guess
ultimately it was supposed to be

about 36 frames--
a second and a half.

- It's the first big scare of
the movie and I think it was

imperative to have a good scare
versus a comedic scare.

- An Old One transforms into
the most hideous, scary beast

that any of us there
could imagine.

Like, how do you do this?

Well, I'll make
the change over thing.

Take a replica of a human
and actually put

pneumatic devices in it
and make it distort.

Everything I did on that film
I wanted to walk a tightrope

between utter failure and
soaring success, so I thought,

okay, I can try it my way

and completely fuck it up
or just not try it at all.

- In ways I was like
a maitre-d at a restaurant.

That it was my job to make sure
everything went okay and that

all of the people at the table

had what they need to have
a good time.

I had to set up an environment

where they could do
the best work they could.

- Most of what I did to start
with was to build a mock-up.

We had the Foametix skins and
I would take a simple PVC pipe,

bend wooden sticks,
glue wooden screws,

and put something together

with our first rough skins
on a mold,

which were copies
of the original actress.

- I want her head to lower,
I want her shoulders to rise,

I want her deltoid or her bicep
to elongate from here

to her wrist, to elongate,
her fingers to grow.

I want her mouth to get bigger.

I want her head to flatten,
I want to do something again,

specifically,
for this six frame shot,

I mean, come on,
you're not gonna get it

if it's just going...

- Rolling,
do your bad thing.

- As we're building it,
I thought,

we cannot control this,
you know,

probably have to
have 30 puppeteers,

yet those 30 puppeteers

have to hit their marks when
the director says "action,"

for a second and a half
they have to do it exactly

and then it would never work,
I knew that wouldn't work.

- I actually had to go outside
our group of people

to get someone to mechanize--

- And I said, look,
here's our problem,

I want all these things
to happen,

but they have to happen
really quickly

and they have to happen
in tandem, in concert,

like a symphony.

- The mechanic,
John Alberti,

gave him the mockup and said,
"This is what Steve wants.

You can see how far this
pushes, how far that raises."

- It has to be the way you
and I worked it out

for months ahead in advance--

this has to change them,
this has to turn that,

this has to do that.

- And he then could then take
measurements and then base

his mechanical understructure

to move the rubber,
based on that.

- The eye was genius.

He figured it out so that
you--that one puppeteer,

one puppeteer--you could
sit back with a beer, smoking

a cigarette, and the director
would say "action"

and just go...

There's your librarian ghost.

- There was going to be a second
stage to the transformation

that would push out her muzzle
and there was these sharp,

like, monster-y teeth.

There's a lot of stills
around of me

sculpting the arms of
this demon coming forward

and then Steve Johnson
had sculpted the head

for that based off of
what we had done

for the first part
of the transformation.

- And then Richard was like,
"No, no second puppet.

No second puppet, don't break
the bank, Stevie, boy."

And I'm like, but it's almost
done, it'll be so much better!

He's like, "This is 36 frames,
leave it, just leave it."

- It was the right decision
because it's a great moment,

it happens fast and it has
the effect it needs.

- We were working on this film
for quite a long time

and someone said, you know,
there's a TV show called

"Ghost Busters"
which I didn't know.

- ♪ We're Ghost Busters ♪

- I'm Spencer, he's Tracy.
- I'm Carl.

- The title was owned by
a company called Filmation

that mainly made cartoons.

When we started shooting,

Columbia didn't want to make
a deal with them,

so we thought it might be
called "Ghost Breakers."

- Ghost Blasters?

- Blasters.
- Blasters.

Ghost Blasters.

Ghost Stoppers.

We're ready to believe you.

- Now we're good, keep your
focus right on the lens.

- We're dying!

- For a while we had all these
stamps we were supposed to use

for lab reports
and stuff like that

and we had all these
different names.

- We were doing one scene
where we had to put a sign up,

it said "Ghostbusters"
and then "Ghostbreakers,"

and that's when I phoned them
and said, we can't do this,

we'll never finish the movie.

You gotta clear that title.

So they paid some money
and cleared the title,

but gave Filmation the rights
to use the name "GhostBusters"

in a cartoon show.

- Starts Monday at 3:30,
only on channel 11.

- Hey, does this pole
still work?

- The firehouse,
we knew we wanted

a decommissioned firehouse.

- The firehouse was found right
on the edge of Soho in New York

in the beginning of Tribeca,
there's an intersection

at Varick and North Moore.

- It turns out
that's a style of firehouse

and the exterior of the
firehouse is in New York

and people are
very proud of it,

they drive by it all the time.

But the interior is actually
a very similar firehouse

in downtown Los Angeles.

- Built in the exact same year
as the New York firehouse,

so it was an excellent match.

- The Ghostbusters logo,
for instance, was easy.

- Coming to save the world.

- I didn't create that,
I just got it done,

and it was in Danny's script.

For me, it was just getting it
implemented, and it wasn't

a matter of doing a major logo
for a major film

for their ad campaign--

it was to do something
to put on their shirts

and on the sign
on the side of the car.

And we had a team of artists

already been working
in the effects house.

I went to the one
I knew the best.

- Greg Boats designed the logo.

- And I said, give me versions
of this logo.

And we just handed them over
to the art department.

- We wrote this character
of a neighbor

to whoever the woman
was in the building.

- We did want John Candy
in the movie, we loved John

and we'd all worked with him,
starting back at Second City.

- In fact, I have storyboards
that I did for John.

The party sequence where
the terror dog breaks through

the wall and I drew John Candy
through the whole sequence.

- He was a real favorite
of mine

and a good friend
and I remember

calling Candy up and saying,
okay, John,

I've got a great part,

and I sent over sort of
the first rough draft

that we threw together
so quickly.

He called back and he said,
"Well,

"I'm thinking of doing him in
a German accent

and he's gotta have dogs."

I said, dogs?
"Yeah, big German shepherds."

I said, but John, you can't
have German shepherds,

you can't have dogs at all
because part of the plot is,

you know, there's these dogs
on the roof and people

are gonna get confused

and the story
is complicated enough.

And he just got adamant that
he had to be a German person

and he had to have
German shepherds.

- John wanted too much money.

He kind of got agented
right out of the movie.

- And Rick Moranis, who was
working with him on SCTV

and who I knew
because I'm Canadian

and we all know each other,

I called him up and I thought
he might be a very good version

of what we were writing,

which is a more uptight kind
of nerdy kind of character.

Rick Moranis read it
in 24 hours

and called me back
and he said, "I'm so happy.

"This is the greatest script
I've ever read;

I want to be in it."

- Yeah, ghosts scare
the pants off me.

The polyester pants off me.

- Rick was there and great
and brilliant

and really had a great take
on that character,

so he became Louis Tully.

I'd say Sigourney was the
biggest surprise in the movie

for us and had
the most profound impact

on the finished product.

- You know, we had been
writing so quickly,

there was no female part,
really.

We knew there was a woman

in this building
on Central Park

that Bill Murray
comes to check out

because of stuff
that was going on there,

and we had the effects,
we didn't really have

any character,
we had no real role for her.

- We've been accused for years
of not writing good

female characters
because comedy at the time

was very much a boys club.

- Really met some wonderful
actresses for this part.

- Don't you remember me?

I'm Peter Venkman
from Ghostbusters?

- I am Zuul.

I am the Gatekeeper.

- My psychiatrist thinks
I'm losing my mind.

My friends think
I'm taking LSD

and I haven't even had the
nerve to tell my parents yet.

- Finally,
Sigourney Weaver walks in,

all six-eight feet of her.

- You know, I'm not sure
how they thought of me, um,

because I really hadn't done--
I'd done a lot of comedy

in the theater,
but not in movies.

I then had to meet
Ivan Reitman.

I remember I went out to LA
and I auditioned for him.

He filmed it,
which was the first time

I'd ever been filmed
in an audition.

- And she's talking about it,
and she finally says,

"You know, I should get
possessed in this movie."

And I thought, oh, my God,

am I gonna have another
John Candy conversation?

- I remember that I so wanted
to get the job that

I then became a dog toward
the end of the scene,

I'm supposed to become
a terror dog,

and so I was jumping
around and...

grabbing the cushions.

- Sigourney in kind of a short
dress and it's kind of sexy.

And she's baying to the moon
and I was so knocked out

that the woman who knocked off
the Alien was there

baying at the moon
in my office.

- I think I frightened him,
he said later

he would never show the tape
to anyone.

- And I turned around
and I remember calling up Dan

and Harold and saying,
you know, she was saying

she should be possessed and,

you know,
it sort of makes sense.

- And I did really feel that
I could do a good job as Dana

because I love the script,

I thought it was just
such a love letter

to our common condition
and to New York.

- Sigourney, she's this
very beautiful, statuesque,

very intelligent woman,

but she really is also kind of
a Margaret Dumont-like presence.

She has that kind of regality
that Margaret Dumont had

with the Marx Brothers, and I
thought, yeah, she could work,

she's certainly
an extraordinary actress,

but beyond that you know,

she would have the strength
and presence to just

not get bullied over
by the likes of Bill Murray.

- So she took it and
it made us want to be better,

just raised the whole level

and made Bill want
to be better.

And he came up with the idea of,
"I'm gonna prove myself to you,"

you know, the idea that she was
way too good for him,

which was so apparent
in everything they did

and said to each other.

- I am madly in love with you.

- I don't believe this.
Will you please leave?

- And the idea that he needed

to prove himself
was very important,

because it gave us
some rooting interest

in his character,
actually, winning her over.

- No kiss?

- I remember at the time
I had a Brazilian nanny

who was really cute
and she had

a very whimsical way of putting
herself together,

and I said, I've got
this funny audition

and I'd like you
to dress me for it.

So my Brazilian nanny
dressed me for it

and I went in and got the role.

- There's a scene where Egon's
working under her desk,

maybe she has eyes for him
a little bit,

she's trying
to be flirtatious.

- I bet you like to read
a lot too.

That may have been a bit of
an addition that we found

that there was a little
chemistry thing there,

it was like, well, why not?

- We actually explored
that relationship

in the original script.

- I want you to take this.
- What is it?

- It's a souvenir
from the World's Fair

in Flushing Meadow in 1964.

- And there's a little,
tiny bit of it in the movie,

but I started to feel it was
really wrong for Egon

to suddenly become
emotionally involved

in any way in the movie.

But Annie Potts
was so lovely to work with

and was so much in the spirit
of it, just really got it.

She's kind of a Southern girl,

but she put on that kind
of fake Bronx-Brooklyn thing

for the character
and it worked so well.

- A lot of casting people
wouldn't see me, they'd go,

"Oh, no, too, too New York,"
um...

And I was...I'm from the South,
I put on that accent.

I was--I was actually acting.

- She was really just a--

just a lovely part of
the team, I thought.

- We got one!

That line will probably be
on my tombstone.

- A call!

- We had this song and
my manager took this over

to Ivan Reitman, said,
"Do you want to do this movie?

There's a song, we think
you could do it."

I said, sure,
it sounds good.

I said,
let me see what's up.

He said, "I have no time
for that--

"I need you to take a look
at the lyrics,

"figure out
some appropriate changes

and fax this over to me."

He says,
I have about 30 minutes.

And, you know, you learn
in this business,

the first answer
is always "yes."

Then you hang up the phone
and figure out

how you're gonna do this.

So I finish what I'm doing
in 45 minutes or so

and fax these changes
over to Ivan,

and Ivan goes,
"Yeah, this works."

I thought the way they used
the song was brilliant.

You know, the Bus Boys
were all about and still are

a working class
thought process,

and the fact that they used us

right at the point they
finally got some work

I thought was like,
pure genius.

Huh.

- The Sedgewick Hotel was
shot at the Biltmore Hotel

in downtown Los Angeles.

- I was actually put up
for the man from the EPA,

the part that
William Atherton played.

And then my agent
rang one day and said,

"Would you like a booby prize?"

- Across from the Biltmore
Hotel in Los Angeles

is just a park,

but when you look out
the doors there you'll see

a whole cityscape
that was created.

What we did was we took over
part of the street and built

some storefronts that
we then saw through the doors.

- It was a sequence that should
have taken two, three days,

but they were working on
a deadline and had to get it in

that amazingly long night.

It was a very
difficult camera move,

and it required
precise timing.

Well, I was mister ex-RSC,
London Academy of Music

Dramatic Art prepared actor,

knowing my lines backwards
and forwards,

and timing it all out,

but then they put me down
with those guys.

- Did you ever report it
to anyone?

- No, heavens, no!
- No.

- And I'm just sort of
guestimating

when they're going
to finish riffing

and we would continually
be wrong.

And finally Ivan Reitman
got very annoyed,

in fact,
he yelled at me.

I can't remember now whether
it was Dan or Bill

who piped up and said, "Back
off, Ivan, it's our fault,

don't go on his case."

And to this day I think
I was a surrogate

for some frustration
because if I was Ivan Reitman

I wouldn't want to be yelling
at my stars either.

- I hope we could take care of
this quietly, tonight.

- John Daveikis and I designed
the movie in terms of

just the props in the car.

Of course, we had a fantastic
professional crew

of Hollywood props
designers and costumers,

but the basically ideas
for the pack,

the ecto,
that was Daveikis and myself.

He is a college friend of mine
and we drew up

all my concepts for me.

So when we walked in we had
the ecto, we had the packs,

we had the wands, the had the
technology of all those props,

we had the jumpsuits,
we had the whole look

of the industrial cleaners.

- In the script they were
shooting beams called

Nutrona wands
because you had a pack,

you had some sort of device
that went down to your wrist,

and these would come out,

they would--
you would press a button

and you would have
two beams go up.

- One of the lines is,
"Okay, make them hard."

So a physical prop had to be
able to click--

and then the thing
had to have an erection.

- A tube would pop out
at the end.

Ready!

- Which seemed to simulate
some kind of techno erection.

- And they are phallic, so...
- Right, exactly.

And it was not a film
that there was going to be

a subtle aspect of it.

- People always question the
yellow hose that was connected,

came out of the proton pack

and ran into a flanged valve
on our thighs.

And I don't know,
for some reason they made

the rubber tube yellow,
which suggested

that it was some kind
of catheter, I don't know.

But the proton packs,
there were several versions.

Whenever we were going to do a
physical stunt, it was actually

a rubber model of the proton
packs you could fall on

and not hurt yourself,
but nothing on it worked.

Then there was
the full version

which had all
the batteries in it

and powered up
the whole pack

and that probably weighed
over 25 pounds.

That got Murray
complaining a lot.

Bill's the--he's cranky
and he just would complain

all the time about
lugging those things around.

So whenever possible
they would--as soon as we were

done with the heavy ones
they would switch them out.

And they put a nice, deep hum
into the soundtrack

as the proton pack
kind of fires up.

- It shouldn't sound like
a light switch, it had to sound

like it was expensive
and heavy duty

and when it made its sound...

...something was
going to happen.

The idea that,
okay, they turn this on

and it actually takes time
to charge up, like,

the energy that they have
isn't available instantly.

- There's this really
nice set-up

that the equipment
had some danger,

some occupational hazard
associated with it.

And of course,
when we open on the poor maid.

- I was on the set
at that time.

We had loaded that cart
fairly heavily,

and we said we had to go
tell the lady

what was going to go happening,

and the director said,
"No, let's just do it."

- The first test of that,

she walks out with the cart
and when the guys shoot,

there's such a huge
sort of pyro explosion.

Scared the hell out of her.

- She ducked and covered,
which is fairly prudent,

and then she looked up
and said...

- What the hell are you doing?

- "What the hell
are you guys doing?"

Which is in the film.

- That was a natural reaction.

- The biggest problem with the
proton packs was--it was with

the wands as well--
was trying to figure out

how the beams would work.

They had to be animated,
we knew that,

and there weren't a lot of
animated effects around

other than a ray gun.

- This is all film-based
as opposed to

digitally-based
special effects.

- They had it easy, digitally.

But it wasn't,
it was all hand animation.

- In order to make the shot
work, you have to figure out

how to distract the eye
in an artful way.

- And we did all these boards
and everything,

and when Dan came in it was
like, starting about

the Nutrona wands and it was
like talking to a child.

And he started talking
about it, he said,

"You know, it's not a laser,"
he goes, he goes, "Imagine like

"an eight-year-old kid grabs
a firehose and turns it on

and just starts whippin' him
around the room."

- When you pull the trigger
for the first time,

the photo flashbulb at the end
of the wand would go off,

which the special effects guys

used as a reference
for when the beam came out.

- I wanted strobe lights
and interactive lighting

to tie things
into a physical set.

- So everybody had
these dramatic shadows

and the place was blowing up.

- Because you don't want
to have to animate,

you know, kind of flare--
you can do that,

but it's not as successful
as shooting the real thing.

- It's a bonding agent.

- So that's part of
understanding

filming tricks and cheats.

- The scene would be
storyboarded,

it would be five beam shots.

Ivan would cut together this
footage and it was funnier

and better and suddenly
there were 11.

And we said, we don't have
time, we don't have the money--

do it.

And John Bruno
was smart enough,

realizing the deadline
ahead of us,

to come up with a concept
that he knew

those people could deliver.

And if there was one thing
we kept adding to the movie,

it was beam shots.

- To come up with a look,
it was like rubberized light.

It was a signature look
to Ghostbusters.

- You know, how are we gonna
get four guys

to point these things
in the right direction?

- And it happens very quickly,
it's hard to see,

but if you look at this stuff
slowly you actually realize

often that there's
a blast at the target

and it shoots actually
into the gun,

so the energy's going out

and coming back in
at the same time.

- When they decided to actually
see the ghost, then it would be

difficult to shoot in
the corridors of the hotel

because it would be hard
to get as much light in there

as they would need for
some of the special effects.

So subsequently
they built those corridors

at Warner Brothers.

- Well, Slimer, you know,
started off as drawings.

And then Steve Johnson
sculpted it.

- The thing that was amazing
about getting the opportunity

to work at Boss Film

was that for the first time
there was a whole other

tool chest--optical effects.

You could do so many things
that were never, ever possible

on some of the films
I worked with people

like Rick Baker
and Rob Butina.

- The visual effects work
was done in 65 millimeter

where Laszlo was shooting
35 millimeter camera

and then that image would be
composited and then reduced

down to 35 in
an optical printer.

Each time you go a generation,
the quality drops,

and so when you do make
these dupes and copies,

the quality comes out to be
about as though

it was original at the time.

- John Bruno is a really
good friend of mine,

and John always wanted to push
for more and more and more

and more and it drove me nuts.

Whoopie!

It drove me out of my mind,
I'm like, really?

Seven sculptures? Seven full
scale

before you're gonna
say this is enough?

Now there's seven.
- Don't we have to actually

make the creature?

At some point we've got to
actually make it.

- Well, he looked
like a potato.

- He's an ugly
little spud, isn't he?

- I think he can hear you, Ray.

- But what John was pushing for
on the Slimer character

because he knew it was going
to be double exposed,

a lot of the detail's
going to go away because

it's double exposed
in the film.

He was gonna art direct that,
he was gonna control that,

so the first few sculptures
of Slimer were subtle,

they were much more realistic,

and John just kept
coming over, he said,

"How can you make it
more insane?

"How can you make people
look at this

and have their eyeballs
pop out of their heads?"

And I loved working with John,

but he was
a tough taskmaster.

- Sort of a lime
fluorescent green.

It was kind of a color we came
up with so we could see

in this art directed room.

- I, to this day, credit
Richard Edlund coming up with

the technique to actually pull
that off, to get an amorphous

blob that's incredibly
cartoony and animate it,

to fly it around and do
all of these things.

I, you know, being this crazy
artiste wanted to do it

an almost impossible way.

I originally wanted to do it
with these really long,

skinny arms that were
mechanical, it wouldn't have

any performer inside it,

so it would not at all
look like a human.

Richard just looked at me
and goes,

"You're out of your... mind.

"Stick a guy in a suit
and let his legs come out?

We'll film him
and use his real arms."

Now, the thing that was really
interesting about that

was I thought,
okay, if Richard said

that we can remove
his legs optically,

that means...

I can make other things black
and stick them all

around the character and he'll
just have to remove them too.

But I sat there
and I thought to myself,

I knew what the movie
was about,

I mean, it's about insanity,
it's about cartoon characters,

it's about Tex Avery,
and so I thought,

well, you tie a string
to a piece of rubber

and you pull it with a cable,
it's 12-feet long,

you're just gonna get that.

And I thought to myself,
a cartoon character,

when they smile, no,
no, no, no, no,

their faces actually deform

and inflate
and their heads flatten

and all these insane things
happen, and so I thought,

we're gonna put him
in front of a black stage.

If we can remove his legs, we
can remove as many puppeteers

as we can get around him.

The way Slimer worked is there
is a performer, a guy named

Mark Wilson who was actually
in charge of doing

the mechanical aspects
of pulling it all together.

- Do that slime stuff, Mark.

- They did a life cast on me
to sculpt the arms over

and to position and figure out
the proportions of the head

and where my head would fit
inside the costume.

- He looks through the mouth,

there's mechanical eyes
up here.

His arms come through
the stomach of the thing,

wearing rubber gloves,

and then his legs
just stuck out of the butt.

- So it's almost like
a Japanese Go theater

where everyone's in black
and this is

shot against
the black background

so you could only then see
the green Slimer rubber.

- And I wore a black duvetyene
skirt for about month

which I have grown beyond.

- So what we ended up
doing is

I designed
all of these wrinkles

concentric and going back,
you know, and his huge smile,

and then a performer in
a black suit could go behind

the character
while we're filming,

and reach his arms into handles
on his cheeks and go...

And you'd just get
all these free muscle.

- Okay, Mark,
just more--

cartoon animated
kind of quick, jerky.

It looked really good
like that.

- I had a strap under my chin

which went into
a fiberglass helmet.

So by moving my head,

then I could make the Slimer's
head change direction.

- In order to keep it
from just drooping

on the performer's body,

we'd put a series of
concentric spring steel bands.

What that also did was
an amazing bonus

that we didn't
necessarily expect--

he would make his body
just jiggle around

like a cartoon character
might do.

- And it also didn't kill Mark,
so that was good.

- ...just bring your hands
forward, don't flail them.

- All Slimer was shot at the
Boss Films shooting stage,

which was, I think,
just one door over

from where we were
building the costumes.

- This was pre-radio controlled
server motors,

these were
all cable controlled.

- There'd be cables
coming up under the costume

and those cables go to about
a half a dozen puppeteers

who have levers that connected
the cables, and they're

pulling on those levers to make
the various things work.

Well, these people
have to work in unison,

it's almost like a band.

- It wasn't until we actually
got on the stage

and started shooting him that
we realized how funny it was.

- Shake your butt, turn around
and shake your butt.

Turn all the way around

like you're digging
in the room service cart.

- Slimer was intended to be
the spirit of John Belushi,

kind of to complete the team.

John Belushi had died
by that time.

- Definitely that's John,
no doubt.

- The guys said, "Do you want
him to look like John Belushi?"

No, no, no.

- I was writing a scene
up in the hotel scene,

what became the hotel scene,
it originally was a guest house

in Greenville, New York,
like a bed and breakfast

with this couple
that was terrorized

and we had to go up there,
upstate, you know,

and I was writing John's line
when I heard he died.

- We watched
John Belushi movies

and we watched "Animal House"

on video, in particular,

and watched all of
his facial expressions,

and they're actually
in the performance,

and there are things, you know,
that Belushi would do

with his eyebrows in the early
scene, things like that,

and I loved that, so I managed
to get the eyebrow expression

as the puppeteer.

- Some tricks on Slimer
is he rarely moved.

He is on a big cart
and along with him on the cart

are the various other
puppeteers.

- Even though I might
be moving and gyrating,

the option was either
to move all the puppeteers

and the puppet
or to move the camera.

It was obvious that moving
a camera on a dolly track

became much simpler.

- And higher!

- Because Richard
basically pioneered

the motion control thing,

the way you get
a spaceship to move,

you don't move the spaceship,
you move the camera.

- Hands out more, Mark.

More wide--good mouth,
great mouth.

Cut! Whoa!

- I do remember that
on the stage

Ivan actually voiced
that creature.

- That's going to be.

- I was shoved in right behind
the puppet with my arm

through the back of his head
into the tongue.

Mark, totally blind, because
he's hidden inside the suit.

He had to pick up this plate,

dump it into the creature's
mouth over the tongue

while I do these tongue things,

and all of this food is going
down, dropping onto the back

of Mark's neck, all this slimy,
chilly, jelly food.

And we get the shot,
we're all cracking up

and we hear from inside
the puppet...

"Get me out of here!"

- Since it was
such a frantic project,

we were cutting corners

and doing things as fast
as we possibly could,

and one of the shots that
we needed was for the ghost

to fly around the chandelier.

- I did sculpt a miniature
Slimer, like this big.

- And so instead of using
the big one,

Gary shot a couple
of scenes with it,

they cut the film together
and they wanted another shot,

and all of a sudden we couldn't
find the little guy.

- We were all sitting
in the room, talking,

what could we do,
what could we do?

- We're sitting there, looking,
and there's a bag of peanuts

and we're sitting there,
munching on one.

Gary picks up a peanut
and looks at it,

and the next thing I know,
we're spray-painting it green

and he's shooting a peanut
going around, and I'm like,

this is... this is either
gonna work or we're gonna lose

our jobs when we try to
pass this off.

We shot it, we didn't say
anything, we went to dailies,

cut it into movie, Ivan looked
at it and it was great.

- I went through the garbage
when they were throwing

stuff out and I have that
peanut, that green peanut.

- Slimer, by the way,
got the name Slimer

when he says,
"It slimed me."

That kind of stuck.

It was the Onionhead
until that moment.

- The original script,
it was a much bigger role,

the character came at the very
beginning of the movie,

he was really
a part of the team.

He had just gotten
out of the Air Force,

he was a demolitions expert,
a Major at the Air Force.

So he had all of
this background history

which was really kind
of cool and I was really

looking forward
to playing that.

- What happened was we wanted
to bring in a new Ghostbuster

midway through the film.

- We wanted a character
that was not experienced,

who was naturally going to come
into the story a little later

and would function
for the audience

to answer the questions

of what was going on
in New York.

- To revive the audience's
incredulity, you know,

someone who represented
the audience,

couldn't believe
all this was going on.

And we wanted him to
be actually more physical,

more competent than we were,
like in a military way.

So we created a character

who had all kinds of
military training.

And then we thought, let's make
him African American,

it just seemed like, you know,
it just--I don't know why--

our social conscience,
in a way.

It just seemed right.

If the movie was going to be
widely seen we thought,

you know, this represents
a kind of inclusiveness

that we wanted to express.

You know, when you can make
statements, why not?

- I first heard about
"Ghostbusters"

on an elevator
at Cedar Sinai Hospital

in Los Angeles and I had went
to visit a friend

and I got on the elevator

and Ivan Reitman was on
the elevator,

and we had, like, 12 floors
to sort of travel together

in that silence after "hello"
and so he says,

"I'm doing this, um,
this movie 'Ghostbusters'."

- I said, oh, great,
you know?

Then he said, "But there's
nothing in it for you."

And then later on I found out
there was a part

that they were casting
a Black actor in,

but I think he thought I was
all wrong

for the part because I'd done
a movie the year before

called "Spacehunter,"

but that character was
sort of bigger than life.

My head was shaved,
the voice was kind of

very demanding
and commanding, you know,

it was a very different
character and I think

he sort of saw me that way.

- He had come in earlier
and just auditioned

and there was this sweetness
to him that I just loved

and I just cast him.

- He seemed like
the perfect guy

and physical and fit,

which none of us really
were supposed to be.

- It wasn't until we got ready
to shoot the movie

that had been rewritten,

and it totally changed.

- We wrote, like,
the best lines for him.

He was turned on, he was like
the best written part

in the movie, had so many
funny things to say.

And when we turned
in the draft,

Ivan Reitman, he said,
"You can't give all these lines

"to the fourth guy, you know,

"you gotta give these
to Murray, you know,

distribute these lines among
yourselves, you know?"

And a lot of it went to Bill's
character, I have to say.

- And somebody dropped
the script off at the room

I was staying in at the
Mayflower Hotel in New York

and it was actually the night
before we started shooting.

You know, the character
originally comes in page six

and now he's on page 68,

which is really hard to--for me
to sort of come to grips with,

I mean,
I wrestled with that a lot,

and I was shocked
because we had rehearsed

for about three weeks.

And the next morning
I went to the set

and talked to Ivan about it.

The PAs on the set
didn't recognize me,

so they didn't know that I was
in the movie and I was sort of

in a hurry to get to talk
to Ivan, and so--

but they wouldn't let me on the
set because they wanted to know

if I was working on the movie,
so it started off

being a little frustrating.

And...
but it all worked out.

The first week was difficult.

- Yeah, there was a lot of sort
of kind of silly, cynical talk

about, um, why he was
in the movie,

but he was in the movie
because he was really good

and he functioned perfectly
for the story needs.

- Harold Ramis was
my sort of saving grace.

Harold, throughout the filming
of "Ghostbusters,"

whenever there was things that
I had difficulty understanding,

and there were times,

Harold was always the guy
I'd sort of go to and go,

man, what is--and he'd go,
"Ernie... it's okay."

And I think I learned a lot
from Harold, in the many years

since I learned how to just
sort of go with the flow

and things may not turn out
the way you think they will,

but sometimes you just have
to ride it out

because things will be fine.

- Welcome aboard.

How are ya?

We're the Ghostbusters!
- Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters!

- We didn't have a music
supervisor in those days.

Gary LeMel, who was head
of music at Columbia

at that point, did a lot
of this with us.

So we needed a theme song
and we tried a couple

that didn't quite work, there
was one we even had, it was

a teaser-trailer that came out
around Christmas.

- Ghostbusters--Coming to save
the world this summer.

We're ready to believe you.

- And Gary LeMel said, "I'm
going to bring in this guy,

Ray Parker,
and show him the movie."

- Part of it came about
because I was dating this girl

that worked for Gary LeMel...

and I knew Gary LeMel from the
Barry White days because I did

all the Barry White records--
I played guitar on them--

and then I got a call
from Gary

because there was just gonna
be one segment in the film

at the library scene,
I think it was

20, 20 seconds long, and they
just needed like a theme song,

opening number with the words
"Ghostbusters" in it.

Now, it's unfair now because
you've heard the song,

but if you could imagine
writing a song...

♪ Ghostbusters, we wanna--♪

...it just really
doesn't sing well,

it's a horrible,
horrible word to sing to.

I think I recorded maybe
a minute and 15 or 20 seconds

of it and it took me 2 1/2,
three days, which is all I had,

and it was one of those things
where you get your money

if we get some music
in two or three days,

otherwise, the deal's off.

And so I was completely worn
out tired and I turned it in.

- And I remember we were
adding the music at the time,

we put this song on
and we went nuts, we said,

that's it, this is perfect.

- I remember
the hardest part for me

was putting the words
in the song,

and I remember the part of
the "Ghostbusters" movie

where they had a solicitation
with a phone number.

Ghostbusters.

- And the night before
I turned in the song,

I was half asleep and on the TV
comes this insect commercial,

like these... exterminator
guys who were gonna

get rid of insects for you.

And if you just
close your eyes like this

and you're real sleepy,
the insect guys looked to me

like the Ghostbusters guys.

And they had the phone number
on the bottom, but I was like,

whoa, that's it,
it's a commercial, you just go,

"Who you gonna call?"

And the people scream,
"Ghostbusters."

- Ghostbusters.

- Dan drove the Ectomobile,
we followed in a follow truck.

We didn't have any permits,
we put the guys in and we just

said, we're going all over
the city and doing schtick.

- We had all of this material
that was shot in New York City

and around, and we had
to figure

a way of making it a montage.

- They'd just jump into the car

and they'd go to
Rockefeller Center.

- I came up with this idea
of using these newspapers

and magazine as ways
of transitioning from

one live action shot
to the next live action.

It's a part of the creative
process of putting together

a montage and you try to make
it as difficult as possible.

- The guy walks by and stares
at him, and that's me.

- Driving around that city
in those ridiculous outfits

with the logos everywhere,
and in that ambulance.

- And we only had one
Ectomobile.

And just having one of them--

and it was an old car,
it was insane.

- Ours was not
the best running car.

- It didn't even dawn on me,

you know, you gotta have
two of everything, you know?

And we left our AD
Peter Giuliano,

and he did the helicopter
shot on the Ectomobile.

The car conked out
going across the bridge.

- So we're pushing it,
you know,

pushing this thing down
Seventh Avenue and, you know,

so you're running around,
getting everything set up,

you know, pulling back for
an action, helping Rudy push

the Ectomobile and then
running back to Ivan's side,

it's just sort of coasting--
it was supposed to be driving

but it's coasting
down the street.

- I think we just fixed the car
enough to just do this.

We need to get this shot
and get it running for this.

- And when you make the shot
in a car, you only have

a certain amount of street
that you can control.

But once you've done the shot,
then you have to drive

all the way around to come back
to where you started

and in the city of New York,

it's all one way streets
everywhere.

- And Ivan tells you,
"Get in and drive the Cadillac

"out of the firehouse,
come around the corner

and give me two passes,"
I mean... you know.

- So we did a lot of driving
around in that ambulance

as the Ghostbusters with Danny
driving with no cameras around

anywhere, so no one was even
aware a movie was being made,

but they'd see that ambulance,
"What the hell is that?"

- The Ectomobile, I came up
with that fairly early on

that was on the little preview
reel I made up for Ivan

in the early part of
the picture.

The thing went...

Yeah, it has that vaguely
European sound to it.

I made that

from a leopard howl
that was edited and then

reversed and played backwards
and the speed was changed,

I mean, keeping in mind
that there was no digital

manipulation in those days,

it was all razor blades and
splicing tape sort of thing.

- Our philosophy, sort of,
on the movie, was to combine

the physical effects
with the optical effects.

- Dan Aykroyd's asleep
and suddenly his belt buckle's

being undone and his pants
are unzipped.

- That was a Stuart Ziff job,
wasn't it?

- Yeah.
Be careful how you say that.

- What?

Yeah, but I mean--

- You don't want to call that
"the Stuart Ziff job."

- Stuart Ziff was the rabbi
of the group.

- Yeah, he was.

- We worked very hard on that--
that was added on--

I had to hire someone, Al
Coulter,

to make that whole mechanism.

- Little bits of wire

and some strap springs
that curl up

and pull apart, bend it
and tweak it and yank on it

kind of stuff and then,
of course, condoms,

air inflation device
and that's,

I guess, important to the gag.

- That was a long sequence,

that was not meant to be
a dream sequence.

We built that set
and worked out a whole scene

with a voice prompt.

- Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson
drive out to Fort Detmerring

and they trying to find
the Fort Detmerring ghost.

- And there's
a Revolutionary War ghost

and Danny gets the blowjob
and the whole thing.

- As they're looking around,
it's late at night,

and Dan Aykroyd falls asleep
and then this ghost appears,

you know, bathing him
in magenta pink light.

Wakes him up
and unzips his pants

and makes him cross his eyes.

- I'm not sure what was going
on, I mean, he was having

a wonderful time with a ghost.

If you're gonna be haunted,

that's the kind of ghost
you want to be haunted by.

And because my insecurity is,
how come he gets to be the--

hang out with the ghost?

What about me?

So I got over it, I'm okay.

- Once the film started on
that ascent up, if they gave

that the amount of time
they originally thought,

it would've broken that pace,
it would've broken that ascent.

So consequently,
it just got edited down.

- And once we were cutting it

and knew it was going to be a
montage,

it was like I had to run back
to the tech house and go,

you can cut four scenes,
you can cut four scenes!

- I don't know where they get
these guest conductors.

You know, I always felt like
each partner I had

in a scene was, was so
brilliant at what they did.

- I don't think that
my character is good

with competition, at least
the way I played him.

He's pretty in touch
with his inner child.

- It was one of
the first scenes I shot,

I think it might've been
the first scene.

Having it sort of start at
Lincoln Center

was a wonderful place
to begin.

We had a good time
and I thought Timothy Carhart

did a great job,
you know, snuffling.

- I didn't know how cool the
movie was going to be because,

you know, they don't say,

"Tim, come to the set,
you know,

"a month before your turn

and we'll show you everything,"
they don't do that.

You just show up
when your job is.

- It was a fun place to do a
scene and it was the beginning

of what I feel is one of
the great things about

"Ghostbusters," which is such
a love letter to New York.

- Sigourney's
a real straight shooter

and of course Bill is so not.

I shot a couple of days before

I did my first scene
with Bill.

It was like, well, isn't Bill
supposed to be here?

What time is Bill's call?

Anyway, Bill missed his call
by some hours,

so much so that we had to
start shooting that scene

with a stand-in.

And then he came in
and he clearly didn't know

what the scene was,
he hadn't looked at it.

Bill was very willing to just
improvise that scene.

But you can't now improvise
the scene because we've already

shot half of it, so you kind of
have to do the lines.

He was a little embarrassed
about having been that late,

so he was amusing everybody,
but not me so much.

He was like, "What's wrong?
What's wrong, Annie? Come on."

Ghostbusters,
what do ya want?

I said, nothing's wrong,
I would just like you to stand

on your fucking mark
and say your fucking line!

And then I'll be fine.

And as I recall,
the crew applauded.

- It's a good job, isn't it?

- I'm Walter Peck.

I didn't do any deep
background work

on the juvenile life
of Walter Peck.

I felt I had my own juvenile
life that was perfectly fine

to draw from,
I didn't need anybody else's.

I lived in New York
and I went and I met them.

I'd kind of known them
peripherally

because I'd worked with
Gilda Radner in New York.

So I'd met all of them then
and it was a ver--

I mean,
they were iconic comics.

When I talked to Harold
about it

and I talked to Ivan about it,

I knew that I can't
compete at being funny,

I have to play this--I have to
play this like "Antigone,"

you know, I have to be
a male Margaret Dumont,

that's how I thought of it.

I certainly wasn't a comedian
and I wasn't going to be able

to compete with them
on that stage,

which would've been stupid.

And so they taught me
the character, essentially.

The character's part of
the architecture of the story.

They need a foil, a bad guy,
or some kind of antagonist.

Theoni Aldredge, who was
a great costume designer,

I'd known her from
the Public Theater,

and so we sat down
and she said,

"Well, what do you want to do,
what do you want to look like?"

And I said, well, I wanted to
make it visually significant.

I wanted a dark blue kind of
suit, I had a little

Phi Beta Kappa pin that's very
hard to see but it kind of

anchors you, and Theoni helped
me a great deal with that,

just kind of putting
the right kind of pinstripe,

the right kind of tie,
and I grew a beard for it.

And I took a deep breath
and I hoped

it would kind of work out
and I'm the scene stealer.

You could have it your way,
Mr. Venkman.

- Sigourney Weaver,
she's in her apartment,

various things happened,
she sits in the chair,

this hand breaks through
and grabs her and, like,

another hand breaks through
and grabs her over here.

Well, the shooting of that,
puppeteers underneath

with these claws
would reach up.

- There were three puppeteers,
very techy guys.

I had to really kind of
encourage them to not be afraid

of hurting me or, God knows,
they would not offend me

if they grabbed me here,
they had these big,

rubber puppet hands anyway.

- Of course this is
Sigourney Weaver, and they just

wouldn't do it with
the right amount of force.

- What happened in the first
couple of takes was...

You know,
try to find where they could

grab her without being,
you know, rude.

- She looks down at the
puppeteer in the middle of

the thing and she goes,
"Go ahead, make my day."

- And then the next take,
wah, grabs her leg.

Ah, the other arm
grabs her breast.

It was a take that went
into the next shot.

- They were all so sweet
and so like, "Oh..." you know.

- But there was something
very powerful, particularly for

the actors because they really
did experience what finally

the audience was going to see
to a great extent.

- Those were a problem.

They were called terror dogs
almost arbitrarily because

they could've been lizard
creatures or gobbledygooks,

I mean, they had things
they had to do

like run around
and be terrible.

So it had restraints,
it had to exist on the ground,

it wasn't a floating
ecto-whatever,

so they had to be scary,
they couldn't be silly

like the Onionhead.

Because the laughs
of the scenes

were not based on it
being silly.

- I think
the biggest thing was

are these damn things gonna
work was the big question

with regard to the terror dogs.

- So we kind of took the
"terror dog" term literally.

I took it to some artists
and said,

interpret it as a mad dog,

and then we kept on moving
through that and they just

morphed into something
that's a cross

between a lizardy creature

but acts sort of like a dog.

- By the time I got to
"Ghostbusters" a lot of

the concept drawings had been
done already and I think

everybody was pretty much
snow-blind with all these

really good but totally
diverse interpretations

by Berni Wrightson
and by Tom Enriquez

and by a few other people.

It was like going though
the Louvre.

They finally settled on one,
a design by Tom Enriquez,

which looked like a bit like

the "Forbidden Planet"
Id monster,

but with four legs and horns.

As a concept, very good.

Then they made a maquette
of that which Michael Gross

presented me as something
that was animatable

and I didn't think it was.

It was very cartoonish,
I mean, it was

a totally legitimate
interpretation of

that initial concept sketch
of Tom's.

I was asked what my design
would be, and so I sculpted

my interpretation of it,
which is

more anatomically valid.

A few notes were given
and I made some changes insofar

as the anatomy was concerned,
not much.

Richard wanted him to be more
muscular, more weightlifter-y.

I think the original maquette
was a little better but--

because I think I made him
too, like so many Americans,

he got too big,
you know, he got too fat,

he's a little chubby.

But that's okay,
'cause it's a comedy.

So it looks part Tom, part me,
part, you know, Harryhausen.

- I definitely
asked to be shown.

Of course, my first
conversation with Ivan

about the terror dogs was that
I could just put on a suit

and be a terror dog.

He thought that was about
the silliest idea in the world.

But I was from the theater,
you know, so,

"I can be a terror dog."

- The terror dogs
were made in many scales.

Whenever the terror dog
would run,

that was a stop-motion puppet,
and the original one

was sculpted by Randy Cook
and ultimately he did

the stop-motion animation.

- But I, you know, oversaw
the sculpture of not only

the small one,
which I sculpted myself,

but the big one,
which Mike Hosch led off on,

that he and Linda Frobos
were working on at night,

and I remember the last
two or three nights

before it had to be molded,
everybody weighed in--

Steve Johnson and Linda Frobos
and Mark Wilson and myself,

maybe Billy Bryan, I don't
remember--a lot of people

started, you know, doing
the final detail on the face,

and the way we made
that work was

Polaroid camera,
little model,

stop-motion model,
big model.

And I just kept taking
Polaroids, matching Polaroids

of the two until I couldn't
tell the difference

and then we were done.

- And they had to somehow be--

look like something
that could be in a statue.

- It's supposed to be that
the stone statue came to life,

but the only way
we could do it in a hurry

was it was in there
and claws its way out.

- And this is actually
what you see underneath.

And the eye, if you notice,
there are wires here,

this was the actual prop

and there was
also a little push rod

operated via air, and it would
push through this little hole

and that's what broke away
the plaster.

- Sometimes the simple stuff
works even more effectively

than more elaborate things that
we're used to seeing right now.

- And because that was Randy's
gig, I just really wanted

to go see if he was
gonna fuck up or not.

- The terror dogs in the temple
were one of the first things

that we had to shoot,
long before the mechanics

could be done for
the inside of it.

So I suggested to production
that we build dummy dogs,

basically no substructure
at all--

"dogs," we call them--
these, these puppets

had no eye movement,
they had no mouth movement,

they had nothing.

- And then an electric carving
knife like you'd carve

a turkey carved out the inside.

- So that a puppeteer could
get inside each from below.

I reasoned that we could
get our wide shots with them,

and then they could go in
later when the proper puppets

were made and do inserts.

- You know, there are
these big mass of rubber,

as they were kind of forklifted
on to the location.

- The puppeteers had to get
inside these things

and find out if they could
breathe and if they wouldn't

get poisoned by
the residual urethane aroma--

"bouquet," we call it.

- There was a male and female,
or a large horn, I guess,

and a little horn.

- We had two puppets
with interchangeable horns

that were otherwise
virtually identical.

- So he asked me, he said,
"You know, you're a girl,

"you're a female puppeteer,
and I know this is gonna be

"a little bit weird,
but do you think

"if I put a female puppeteer
in the temple dog

that Sigourney turns into that
it will be more feminine?"

Well, just so you know,
the answer is "yes."

- They had a little TV set
so they could see

what they were doing--little,
tiny, itsy-bitsy TV sets,

the finest Radio Shack
could provide.

- When you climbed into it,
you were strapped into it

like a racecar harness.

- You could actually lean into
them and pilot them, you know,

turn the heads
and have them lean.

- It took a lot of
upper body strength.

- The floor of the actual set
was built four feet

off the ground,
so if the director said, "Hey,

I want the terror dog over
there," the grips would cut

a hole in the floor and
the puppeteer would come from

the bottom and we'd put
the sitting terror dog on it

and also cables went under
the floor to all the people

with levers to operate
the cables, you know, to make

the cheeks move or whatever,
the eyebrows move.

- And the first time we
reveal it, he opens the door

and throws the jacket and it
lands on this thing.

Well, I'm the guy
that was throwing the jacket

and it kept missing.

Ivan was there and he was
getting really mad.

I did a lot, I mean,
to the point where,

"Okay, if you can't make it,
somebody else is gonna do it,"

and with the last shot
I got it.

I think I did it like 15 times
because I kept missing.

It seemed easy.

- Because we had him really
shaking it off, and he goes,

"No, no, no, no, we want it--"
Randy would say, "No, I want it

more of a head--"
like that kind of a thing.

- The movements were very
minimal, which was

sort of echoed in
the animation as well.

- Stop-motion animation is
you gotta be nuts to do this.

- Then it was on to
the animation stage.

Doug Beswick made the armature
based upon the creature

which had already been built.

It's always better to build it,
you know, build the armature

first and the creature after,
which our drawings were quite

accurate because we used to do
elevation drawings,

right top and side and front.

- Why don't you go over and
pet him on top of the head?

- Gunnar Ferdinandsen did the
mold, which was a work of art,

he was the preeminent
mold maker of, you know,

in every shop in the business.

I'd grown up
making my own mold,

you know, I made my own molds
and boy,

those are sloppy stuff,
but he and Richard Ruiz,

you know, did it right.

I remember
the Central Park thing

because I wasn't there
to oversee it.

No measurements were
taken of the thing.

- This was one of those cases
where we had to just

shoot something that wasn't
there and make that work.

- And that was a nightmare
because it took a long time

to figure it out because we
had no dimensions, it wasn't

match moved,
it was we had to make up

a match move,
complicated thing.

- You only had one crack at it
because it took him at least

a day to shoot it and it took
him a couple of days

to sort it out.

- We had no time left,

didn't know
how it was gonna turn out.

We get back the next day
for dailies...

The whole set has been struck,
the terror dog's there,

the blue screen against which
he was shot

has gone off to Metro
for "2010,"

no retakes
and the film didn't--

wasn't to come back for
another couple of hours

so I was... nervous.

As it worked out,
it was okay.

I would've done it over for

the simple reason
that the blur

of the camera cancelled out
the blur of the puppet,

so it's got that flaw to it.

Well, what are you
gonna do?

- There was never a situation
where we said,

we can't deliver that,
we have to cut it.

- I think we only had 140 shots
was the original number,

and then when we had about
three or four weeks left,

Ivan decided to add
a hundred shots.

- The time constraints,
the changing of the schedule.

We had people working
seven days a week,

I remember they rented some
condominiums across the street

from Boss Films

so people could see
their families occasionally.

- It's great when you work on
the weekend because you get

paid overtime, but if people
work too many weekends

they get completely burned out

and then the quality of work
goes down,

mistakes are made.

- When Ivan came over
to add these shots,

I met him in a parking lot
with a samurai suit.

- Is that true?

- I said, Ivan, we need to do
the samurai cut.

You know, we can't possibly do
a hundred more shots, you know,

you have to be reasonable here,
you know,

I mean,
the guys are bleeding already.

And then we went over
by $700,000, you know,

then they started griping about
that, even though they had

added all these shots
in the last minute, I mean,

there was blood in the shoes
of the optical department.

- We actually shook everybody
up in the business

and they cut six months off
your post production schedule,

which is, well, if they could
do it, anybody could do it.

- Considering what
they could do then

and what they could do now

with the limited resources
that they had back then

was beautifully pulled off.

- What I loved was that Dana,
you know, was this sort of

"normal" person
and then becomes Zuul.

It was the kind of thing
I'd done in theater,

sort of transforming
completely,

um, within 10 seconds,

but in movies you're not
usually encouraged to do that.

I had a brilliant
makeup artist

and we worked for a long time

to get my hair... like that

and lots of kind of
phosphorescent makeup.

He did just a great job
and finally, I did look like

I'd stuck my finger
in a socket

and turned into someone else.

Between the wind and the light
and the makeup and everything,

my beautiful dress
that Theoni Aldredge

had made for me, this sort
of orangey, flamey dress,

I felt quite possessed
and it was a lovely feeling.

And then every now
and then Ivan would say,

"Just, you know, do a little
bit less, you know?"

If you give the editor stuff
like that, grotesque stuff

like what you're doing,

he's gonna want to put it
in the movie.

- When we shot it,
that first day,

it was shot in City Hall

and it was either the Mayor's
office or an alternate office,

I remember Mayor Koch came in
to visit for a moment,

he was then the Mayor
of New York.

- Every once in a while Bill
would get on a roll and that

unity that they have, and you
really can feel outside of it,

and so trying to jump in
the middle of all that improv,

and they had worked together
in that sort of medium.

I came from strictly acting,
I mean, I came from theater,

but they were,
you know, just...

let it roll and see
what happens.

- Bill Murray said, "You know,
they should know each other

and they should be on a first
name basis, the Cardinal,"

and he said,
"Your name is Lenny,"

so that was improvised,

that was not in the script.

And the Cardinal and me
being pals, which was such

a New York thing, you know,

that was Bill Murray's
inspired notion.

- They gave me the line about,

"I've seen shit
that would turn you white."

I think they were doing me
a favor, I'm not sure.

I get that a lot,
"Hey, Ernie Hudson!

"Say that line, you know,
in the Mayor's office,

you know,
you know, you know."

And then they won't say
the bad word

because they want me
to say the bad word.

I have seen shit
that'll turn you white.

I love the line that Bill
Murray has where he refers to

Bill Atherton as dickless,
which Bill, I'm sure,

has really learned to
appreciate over the years.

- Years later I see William
Atherton, and I say, you know,

uh, God, you know,
"Ghostbusters" was amazing,

right, I mean, you know?

I said, I walk down the street
and people yell,

"Yo, Egon! Hey, Brainiac!"

Really big effect
on all our careers, right?

And he said, "Yeah."

- I'm walking down 46th street
and the Criterion Theater's

there and they were--
and "Ghostbusters" was playing,

and all these buses
are out in front

and all the kids
are coming in from camp.

So I'm walking by the buses

and about
800 really young kids

leaning out the window, going,
"Hey, dickless!"

- Not so good for Bill.
- Then I started to laugh

because, um, it wasn't true.

- Gratefully,
Mr. President.

- It was kind of like Barnum
and Bailey, they were like,

we were all grounded in the
room, there were a lot of us,

we were all yelling, and we
just--I remember Bill just

kind of riffing and just
playing off the camera.

It was kind of like,
well, you're on the Titanic

and all of a sudden Abbott and
Costello were there, you know,

and what are our last minutes
on earth going to be like?

- I was just
going with the text.

The text always begins
everything,

and there was something
so New York about it,

and I remember Ivan Reitman,
the director, suggesting that

I do certain very broad things,
you know,

and I said, no, I said,
they're the comedians.

I should be
as realistic as possible

because I'm the base,
I'm the reality base,

I am the skeptical one.

I am the New Yorker,
"Who are these Ghostbusters?"

I mean, come on.

- It was a lot of fun,
but it was like throwing it all

up in the air and just
kind of going with it.

So it was terrifying
and wonderful at the same time.

- We had this massive location
on Central Park West between,

I think it was 66th and 67th
streets, and so it's also

where the traffic not only goes
north and south in the city

but east and west.

The city, when they finally
realized what we wanted to do,

panicked and revoked
the permit.

When they did it, it was
the day we were shooting

at City Hall
and all of a sudden

we couldn't find
Bill or Danny,

and for an hour we couldn't
find them.

And then they reappeared and
they said, "We just talked with

Mayor Koch because we're at
City Hall," so they went to see

the real Mayor
and he's gonna fix it

and we're gonna be able
to shoot.

It was fantastic.

- The location was 55 Central
Park West, which is just

up the street
from the Mayflower Hotel

where I was staying,
so I could just

roll out of bed and walk
up to the set.

I think in the movie we changed
it to 550, which doesn't exist.

- And that building had
graduated color, as if you look

at it from a crowd
in the park,

it starts darker and gets
lighter as it goes up.

It's really a beautiful
Art Deco building.

- We realized that every time
we were in front of

the real building,
in New York, looking up,

we had to put a top on it.

And then if you were
looking down on it,

it had to be a matte painting,
so there were all these ways

we had to deal with
the top of the building.

- Then we had this big crowd
scene and were all the extras

in New York, they're very
professional people,

it was all
this theater people.

- And all the different kinds
of New Yorkers

selling t-shirts and all that,
it was,

it was a very
meaningful scene.

I grew up in New York and I was
born here, and I have to say

that I can't watch
that scene without crying,

just to see all the different
New Yorkers there.

- I like that shirt.
- Ghostbusters! All right!

- It had been the first movie
that I did extra work on,

I think it was four days,

there were two night shoots
and two day shoots.

Bill Murray
was a clown, he was--

came and talked to us
between takes.

I was very much into the New
Romantic kind of movement,

and my roommate and myself
sort of fancied

that I looked a little bit
like Tom Bailey

from the Thompson Twins.

I literally looked like
I had put a bowl on my head

and cut it around there
and my roommate at the time

would color it for me
this bright, crazy red color.

The name of the color
was Red Penny.

It was the '80s!

- What was interesting
about the movie is

we kind of had to do
the ending first.

- John DeCuir
designed the set piece,

this sort of post-wreckage.

- We never broke ground
in Manhattan.

In other words, we had
a street, couldn't dig a hole.

So when you see the scenes
where there's a half a cop car

in a hole and a bunch of
cement coming up, whatever,

that's all built above ground,
and it worked perfectly.

And the amazing thing is
New Yorkers who were going by

thought it was real.

- And the person who was
meeting me for brunch

came in and said, "Are
you guys shooting here?

"You got a real problem because
there's been some sort of

"cave-in on the street,
the police are here,

I don't know how you're gonna
be able to shoot."

So I thought, well,
that looks realistic.

- We discovered how you could
paralyze New York

by chopping two trees down
at the right place.

- We had to stop the traffic,
move the set dressing out,

shoot two takes,
put the set dressing on,

open up the traffic.

- Closed New York down,
that whole section,

it was a nightmare.

- The horns were honking
back to infinity, I mean...

- I was thinking, my God, they
really were able to do this.

Who's the location manager
for this? Who has he bribed?

This is New York.

Who's just got a lot of money?
You know?

Somebody's done
very well for this.

- At one point
we shut down traffic

in three-fourths of Manhattan.

The traffic would back up all
the way across Central Park

to the East Side and all the
way down to Columbus Circle,

which would then create a
traffic jam on Eighth Avenue,

Broadway and Seventh Avenue
and 59th Street,

which are major
traffic arteries.

So people down past 35th Street
in Manhattan would be stopped

for no reason
they could figure out.

The word would spread out,
"Ghostbusters."

- So what John DeCuir did,
quite brilliantly,

is back in LA reproduced
the front of the building.

- The front of Sigourney's
building on the street level

was just incredible because it
was made to vibrate and shake

as if it's in an earthquake.

- And we had a big pit
with hydraulic lifts.

- So that whole sections
of pavement would tilt up.

- And then we just
had to match it.

- The idea of a rooftop temple
came to us--we didn't really

know where the final
confrontation was gonna

take place and I remembered
a book called

"Rooftops of New York,"

and New York has the most
extraordinary rooftops--

there's temples and there's
chateaus, you know,

architects--it was
a little conceit, I guess,

during the great era
of the skyscraper building,

was to put something
kind of interesting on top.

And I remembered
a skyscraper in St. Louis,

where I went to college,
that had a replica of

the Temple of Halicarnassus,

one of the wonders
of the ancient world.

So I thought, well, why can't we
have this incredible rooftop,

you know, as the setting,
and it looks like a mock temple

but turns out to be
a real temple.

- John DeCuir liked to build.

John DeCuir
really liked to build.

John DeCuir had built
half of Rome

three times for "Cleopatra."

He liked to build.

This didn't frighten Ivan,
it frightened me.

- It was his design
of the gates, you know,

and what happened at the top
of the building.

None of that was really clear
in the screenplay.

We had ideas of sort of stuff
going on and gargoyles

at the top of the building,

but he was able to bring it all
together very quickly.

- So Ivan, on one hand
didn't want to spend the money

that John DeCuir
wanted to spend to build,

on the other hand, Ivan hated
having to depend on how

those special effects locked
him down so he couldn't turn

the camera around because every
time it's another effects shot.

If he could build it,

it gave him a lot more freedom
in shooting.

- And the freedom was
very important with people

like Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis,
Bill Murray,

these remarkable,
inventive actor-writers.

- And there was so much shooting
to be done up there, Ivan felt

if we could build this thing,
throw in some razzle dazzle,

special effects later, if we
could build the heart of it

so I could shoot from
all angles,

and John DeCuir
took on that challenge.

- It was in one of the largest
stages in Los Angeles,

Stage 16 on the Burbank lot.

Shelly Kahn, actually, the
editor, once told me a story

and I didn't believe him,

where he said, you know,
that stage got so big because

William Randolph Hearst was
doing a movie and they took

an existing stage
and they lifted it up

and built underneath it,

and I thought, this is the
silliest story I ever heard,

and then about two days later
and I was watching a documentary

on television about Hearst
and it showed them doing it,

there was newsreel footage
of them lifting this stage

and making it a story higher.

- This tremendous sound stage
is too small to hold the big

ensembles planned by Warner
Brothers for "Cain and Mabel,"

a new musical production,

so they're making it
35 feet higher.

- So now the stage is 96 feet
taller and he filled that--

that set went right to the top.

- The first time we walked on
that set was like, wow,

really spent some money
on this thing.

- Even Steven Spielberg
came down to look at this set,

which was very unusual
because he was used to

working on his own
humungous stages.

- I've got a press release
for the set,

I mean,
it was an amazing set.

- That was a peak day, to look
at what they built and it

just got me,
you could write anything

and they'll build it,
huh, yeah.

All it takes
is time and money.

- Man, I've never seen anything
so ambitious in a movie,

I mean, it was so beautiful,
first of all, and I thought,

wow, I'm really
in a movie here, you know?

- I just remember climbing up
because we had to shoot

some of the electricity plates
and climbing up,

like, a wooden ladder.

It was initials and dates,
and I said, oh, if you're

up here to you get to carve
your initials and dates?

And the person, the stagehand,
who'd take us up gave us

this huge, dirty look
and he said, "You know, those,

"those are initials of people
that have fallen

out of the perms."

- So it was a very big set,
filling up a stage,

there was almost
no room to move.

On top of that, we were always
smoking it up and adding wind,

so it was a desperate place
to be sometimes.

- They wanted to bring
the Statue of Liberty

out of the East River,
for one thing,

which they wound up
doing in the second one,

and instead it was
the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

- Yeah, I mean, come on,
the Marshmallow Man--

I don't even know how Danny
thought that up.

- Stay Puft Marshmallow Man
was there from the beginning.

- The Marshmallow Man occurred
halfway through Dan's

original draft and things got
bigger from there.

- When I actually
started on the picture,

there was a number of drawings
done already.

So there was kind of an idea.

We know he's a sailor, we were
going with the idea of a guy

in a suit, which I think made
Ivan really nervous.

- Linda Frobos had gotten
a job on "Ghostbusters,"

she was sculpting,

and they asked her if she knew
someone who could build

a Marshmallow Man and play it.

She knew I'd done Shakespeare,
so it was an obvious lock.

The drawings
were already done.

The designer's head developed
images and they knew

how they wanted it to look,
they had me do some maquettes.

- The sculpting made it
look kind of silly

and we made it fatter, I mean,
we thought the fatter it was,

the funnier it got.

- And the first suit that we
made was soft foam throughout.

The whole crew was
very excited

about that first test
because it was

80 percent there, but there was
one little problem that

as it walked toward the camera,
my legs were squeezing

the foam together
and it looked like a vagina.

We had to change that,

so we spent some time thinking
about ways to firm it up.

John Bird came in as a
consultant and he recommended

that we make
a fiberglass body,

and that frightened me--
I didn't want it to be

a fiberglass body, I didn't
want to wear a fiberglass body,

I didn't want to have to have my
arms straight out to the side,

cutting on the edges
and things like that.

So I worked with
some other foams

and we got some
and we developed it.

The L200 internal structure
that we eventually used,

that was the right one.

- We showed the test that we all
thought was great, but remember,

this was like a Styrofoam,
yellow foam caked suit

with the head on it,
which wasn't painted,

it wasn't finished
to look like marshmallow,

and that's when Ivan said,
"I can't believe it.

I'm basing my whole movie
on this thing."

I remember he was nervous a lot
of the time because nobody

had ever done
anything like this.

- It was risking a joke
on something very different,

and though his career
wouldn't end,

but he would be judged by it
if it didn't work.

- It's either gonna work or
we're never gonna work again.

- There was only weeks before
doing it in which we were going,

crossing our fingers, saying,
let's hope this works,

because if it doesn't work...

- And I gotta give him credit,
they're committed,

it's gotta work.

- There was a discussion
about how big

should the Marshmallow Man be?
- Yeah.

- We really--it was
a big mystery, you know,

how big the Marshmallow Man was
supposed to be and going to be.

- 150 feet, 200 feet.

- Somebody had said 125
and somebody had said 100.

- You know, Ivan just said,

"Okay, I'll tell you
how tall he is.

He's 112.5 feet,
that's how tall, that's it."

- When you get artists
together,

you just start to
work off each other,

which is the beauty of
Team Marshmallow Man.

We had Linda Frobos, who did
most of the sculpting of

the faces, and then myself

and a couple of other
really great folks

that were to assist Bill
in the construction of it.

- And there were just
these sheets of foam,

just big sheets of foam.

People were cutting the foam,
they were drawing out lines,

and they were cutting them
in specific angles

to get the right,
you know, spheres,

so it's almost like
pattern making,

like you pattern make a dress.

- It had to have a zipper
so that the performer could get

in and out, so the zipper was
always on the off-camera side

so that at any angle that
they shot, he looked seamless.

- So there were all these
multiple suits

and there were layers
and layers of foam,

which when people were
exhausted,

they would go and sleep on,

I guess we'd been
working all night.

- I looked out through
the mouth, so it was about

6-1/2 feet tall
because I'm only 5'8."

If I were taller I would have
had to use more foam.

- The inside of the real head
was made out of fiberglass

and there would've been the
eyes in those and mechanisms,

you know, to make
the cheeks go up

or maybe make the mouth open.

- The really fun thing was

I puppeteered
the Stay Puft Man's mouth,

so that was the really
coolest job.

- Discovery face,
eyes to the right.

One and two and three and go.

- There was a foam spring belt
inside that, when I moved,

there was a little bit of action
transferred to the outside.

- I was always talking with
the DPs about, you know,

how to make sure that
that Stay Puft Man...

loft looked just right.

- The direction is, "We need
you to look really heavy

"because you're really big,
but really light

because you're a marshmallow,"
so I said, what?

- As I was walking, I would
say, "Boom, boom, boom,"

in order to time it properly,
you know, and we were

over-cranking so that when
played back it looked slower.

They would tell me how fast
they needed it, take that down

by X percentage and then
I'd try to translate that

into a version of
"Boom, boom, boom."

- Filmed this guy
at 72 frames a second

where we ended up
with something that

an animation walk cycle
called a double bounce walk,

something that
Mickey Mouse did.

It looked really silly,
sort of...

sort of a '30s cartoon thing.

- When we were in the thick
of it and deadline was just

coming down and it was
very stressful, like,

are we gonna make it,
are we gonna make it?

I'm driving down Crescent
Heights towards Sunset

and I see a "Ghostbusters"
billboard,

and the date that it's gonna
open is in, like, 3 1/2 weeks

or three weeks, maybe, I don't
know, it was really soon,

and we still hadn't shot
the street scene, we still

hadn't shot Stay Puft
on fire, and I'm pretty sure

we hadn't shot the building
blowing up,

and there was the billboard
and it was like,

how is that gonna happen?

- I was afraid it was gonna be
ridiculously hot inside

the suit, and it was,
except that because

it was hollow and flexible,
when I waved my arms,

I got air in and out
of my mouth.

- Imagine that you got a big
sheet of foam

like in your mattress

and you have to live in there
under hot, hot, hot lights,

and it's a giant foam thing
and then you have to walk

and sort of dance in it,

and you have to do that
over and over and over again

and it's foam and you sweat
and you're inside this thing

day after day after day.

- Look at some of
the backstage photos,

sometimes you'll see my--my
assistants like this.

- And Bill was a very
well kempt guy,

you know, but... you know.

- So there's a scene of me
going, ooh, dear, you know,

like this, like pretending
it's really bad, really foul,

but it wasn't.

- He would take that
"Ghostbusters" head off

and it was like, whoo, baby!

And they did actually
some really great things

on "Ghostbusters" where they
made it safe for him

by putting air conditioning,
like, literally we would

shove an air conditioning tube
up his butt, you know,

to make sure that he was cool
inside the suit.

- So the interesting thing,
for me, about the size

of the Marshmallow Man
was setting the scale of

the miniature so we could

build the environment
around him.

We built a miniature
of Central Park West

with the road and a bit
of park beside it

for the Marshmallow Man
to march up.

- And there was a split down
the middle of that set

and it was a big set,
very long street set,

and so as Bill walked down
that street,

the cables followed him,
and we were pushed

underneath the stage
on a little wooden dolly

that they'd made for us
with a monitor

that also
had the cable running down,

and we were puppeteering
as they rolled us down.

So it was very sort of
low-tech, did the job and it,

quite frankly, is one of
my favorite movie memories,

I think, because there we
were, you had your monitor,

it was happening above you
and you could hear Bill

stepping above you and, and you
could see it and you were,

you know, puppeteering
and you really felt like

you were in it,
and somebody was pushing you.

It was just--it was fun,
you know?

- There was a storyboard that
was originally drawn for it

that showed a police car
getting crushed

and we were ready to do that
and we had actually started

on that but decided
not to do it.

We were also joking about
maybe the Marshmallow Man

could pick up his foot
and you'd see

the squashed police car
embedded

in the bottom
of his foot, you know,

it would've been
kind of funny.

The only time I could really
remember in my career

where the production designer
of the film--in this case

John DeCuir--provided
construction drawings of

the miniatures to be built and
it was up to us to create it,

and we had to create
the upper two-thirds of it

but we didn't build it down
to the ground--

enough for the Marshmallow Man
to climb on, basically.

- And you look in the window
and you can see--actually they

had characters in there
and they were doing

very interesting things.

- And if you look
in this window,

you could see two people
gettin' it on.

If you look over here, look at
that, look what's in there!

We got a picture of... the
agent that they hate the most,

his picture's in the window,

"That's the part that's
gonna blow up first!"

- It is a moment that we all,
in those days, looked for.

Our own little private
set decoration moment.

- No, you can't see it on film,

but that's how they got
a lot of the pressure off.

- Well, during
the earliest phases,

I was hoping that
we weren't really

going to have to burn
the suit.

I thought there's going to be

some artificial way
that we could simulate it.

Richard kept saying, "No,
we're gonna light it on fire,

what do you think?"

Now, I didn't do the burns,
we had stuntmen.

We only made 18 costumes
and we only burnt 17 of them.

- Thaine Morris had come up
with some sort of scalable fire

that only lasted
for two seconds.

- I was so busy at that time
that I hired Joe Viskocil

to help me with Stay Puft.

We worked out a way
to load him and coat him

with flammable material.

- It was the start of some sort
of chemical reaction and it was

a slow, little, tiny flame
so the first two seconds

would actually work in scale,
because fire doesn't scale.

- Well, the actual EPA came in
and talked to us about

the different
environmental hazards

of everything we were doing,

and it put the fear of God
in me, I mean, foam on fire

is a dangerous thing,
you know,

and there's a guy inside the
suit and we had been taught

by the EPA that the fumes
that were going to be

coming out of the suit
were dangerous.

- It really set off
some really noxious gas.

- But the guy in the suit,
it was very frightening.

- That's--it's a hard thing
to do, is to get in there

and to volunteer

having yourself be
put ablaze.

- First person inside the suit
that was just kind of stunt card

Thaine was working with.
- That's right.

- So we had him on a scuba gear

with a hose running up
his pant leg.

He was quite safe
inside this suit.

- The guy had never
done this before.

They lit him on fire
and he just sort of got scared

and fell to the ground.

- We put him out,
ruined one $20,000 suit.

So we put him in the suit
the next night,

same thing happens,
he goes down.

Okay, so what's going on?

"Well, I can't see,
I'm afraid of fire."

Why did you sign up
to do this anyway?

- Actually, I think
he just couldn't hear.

- So that means
we're in a panic,

we've got one suit left.

So there's a guy in town whose
name is Tony Cecere.

Tony has spent his entire life
burning himself up.

- A friend of mine called me up
and said, "I've got this show

that we're doing down here
in Santa Monica," he said

it was a low-budget show
and he needed a fire burn on it

and wanted me to come down
and do a fire burn on the show,

and he wouldn't tell me any more
about the show other than that.

And I had done
some research on it

before I went down to see him
and found out

that it wasn't
any low-budget show

and we adjusted
my price accordingly.

- The suit was built for a guy
that was about 6-foot tall.

Tony's about 5'4",
he's a little guy.

- I was more concerned with
whenever you catch Styrofoam

on fire, it tends to completely
burn up all at once,

so before I got ready
to do the fire burn,

we took a piece of the foam

that the Stay Puft man
was made out of

and we set it on fire
and we'd seen that the stuff

wouldn't burn,
which made me feel safe.

So I put my fire suit on and
was inside the Stay Puft Man--

- The action is to walk over
to that apple box, step up on it

and slap the top of that church.
"Yes, sir."

- I had to rehearse several
times because they wanted me

to go up a building a certain
way and they wanted one hand

to hit here,
one hand to hit here.

- We were ready to go,
we light him up,

he walks over,
steps on the apple box,

steps up on the thing,
slaps the top,

backs off the apple box,
squats down,

stands up again, steps up
on the apple box,

slaps the top of the church.

- And I think it was the second
take, the head got hot

from the fire on the outside
of it and the head split open,

and inside of the suit where
I was at was on fire too.

- When we finally got him
to stop, the pink skull

under the Stay Puft was
all that was left on his head.

The suit had burned
clear through

to the polyurethane foam.

- What happened
on the inside,

the glue that they used to
put it together, all the glue

on the inside of the head
started burning.

- We just stopped, you know,
went over, put him out.

He goes,
"Well, I could've kept going,

I wasn't feeling any heat."

- Imagine waking up in bed
at two in the morning,

looking over at my wife
and saying,

he didn't have his tie on.

Joe Viskocil, the pyro guy,

he had the bib and he was
loading flashbulbs

into the bib
and putting squibs on it

and little spark generators,

and I said, he--you gotta
put that tie on there.

He said, "I just--
I don't want to mess it up,

I'm gonna lean on it and I just
don't want it messed up."

I said, okay, all right,
okay, we'll get it on there.

And then put the guy
in the suit, light him up

and then realize
a few hours later

that that one little step
got skipped.

We had just seen
the screening of that shot

and there was applause
all around.

I had to go to Michael Gross
to admit to him that

as nice as the shot looked,
there was a part missing

and we would have to
do it again.

- And he said,
"There's so much else

"going on in that shot--
we've got Nutrona wands,

"we got the guys standing up
there, we got flashbulbs

"going off--probably
no one will notice it.

"But if they do,

who should I charge
the $30,000 reshoot to?"

I pointed.

- When anybody makes a movie,
the first thing they're gonna

tell you is it's the most fun
if you get to blow stuff up.

- So we worked pretty closely
with Thaine Morris

on constructing a blast chamber

for them to go to
the temple to go up in.

- John had something
very specific in mind

and he had these photographs

where you saw these plumes
that spidered out

in these quadrants like that.
- Yeah.

- He drew that on
the storyboards.

- And it was made so
we could do multiple takes.

- The inside of it
and all of the framework

were quite strong steel.

- It was way overbuilt,
so there was really no chance

it was going to do anything
but blow the doors out,

which is what we wanted,

so Thaine could go up and put
his bomb inside and we'd just

stand back and watch him
blow up our building.

- There was four, not three,
bombs in that building.

- And so I said,
where's the best place to be?

- I said, behind me.

- I said, great, and we set
the camera up and we had

all this acrylic
that was for safety purposes,

didn't shatter and all that.

Here we are, we're getting
ready, camera's going,

"Speed!"

And I'm pressing my camera
and everything explodes.

I got smacked
right in the forehead.

- One of the few times
I've ever hurt anybody.

- This is where the blood just
starts coming down and, uh,

what had happened is that
this little bench blew up,

went in the air,
came right through the glass,

bounced over and knocked me
right in the head.

- The shot he got was
his camera was with terpene,

the crossing fireball
with the bench

right in front of the camera,
out of focus.

- When Ivan saw that he wanted
us to reshoot it because

he was--he was actually
really pissed.

He said,
"They'd have been killed,"

and I said, well, yeah,
isn't that the joke?

Because here's the drawing.

That's when everybody started
using storyboards

as documents--hey, we said
we were gonna do this,

it looks like that,
that's what we did.

And so sort of ended up
re-cutting the rooftop scene

just before it blows, each one
dives out of the way.

- There was a big bag of the
shaving cream and I was gonna

stand and it falls on me,

and I went, well,
you know, how much

shaving cream is in this thing
you're gonna--that's gonna

fall on me, and they said,
"Well, you know, I don't know,

you know, maybe 75 pounds,"
and I said, wow, that's a lot.

And they said, "Well, it's
shaving cream," and I said,

you know, I remember from
junior high school

that 75 pounds of feathers
and 75 pounds of lead

is the same 75 pounds.

Okay, Mr. Sensitive,
so let's get a stunt guy,

show him that it's all right,

and so they put the stunt guy
underneath and they open

the shaving cream and they
laid out on the stunt guy...

just laid him out.

And I said, well, that's what
I'm worried about for me.

- And Ivan and Joe were up on
a truck and they saw me coming

and he goes, "Gross, get up
here, this is gonna be great!

Get up here,
this is gonna be great!"

- And so they--they made it
a little less

and I went and I did it.

- I get up in the truck and
they drop the marshmallows,

it was unbelievable.

- And they dumped it on him...

once.

- We headed for bed, we got the
shoot until I think it was 10:00

at night and at 10:00 at night
our best friends,

the New York City police,
became our worst enemies,

they said, "Yo, get this stuff
off here! Move it, move it!"

You know, just like...

- So we decided this movie
has to be screened.

We're testing cards,

just so the marketing people
know where its strengths are.

At this point,
regardless of that,

you got a finished movie
pretty much.

- At that time, Seattle,
Washington was the place

that everybody goes,
the studios.

- Screening is clearly we have
a hit, clearly we have a hit,

and we're scoring
in the 90s,

we're scoring unbelievable.

So we run back onto
our private jet,

we whiz it off
to go back to LA,

and everybody's got
a pile of cards.

So everybody's going,
"Here's one!

Best fuckin' movie
ever made!"

"Best movie ever, ever!"

It was--and we were throwing
them in the air, deliriously,

I mean, realizing,
this is good,

this is so good.

- It was wonderful to see that
first screening and to hear

the laughs and to
just know we had something

that the people
were gonna love.

- I really don't remember

the first screening
of "Ghostbusters."

I do remember
the wrap party, though,

we can't get into that here.

- What was cool was that we were
there and the crew was there,

but there's a lot of people who
hadn't seen any of the film--

there's administration--

- People that had worked on
the live action often have

no idea what the film
is gonna look like.

- I just couldn't believe how
good it was and how exciting

it was to be
a part of it, I mean,

you wait for the credits.

- And that's when we learned
that not everyone's names

were put in the credits.

- My wife at the time
turned to me and said,

"So where were you every day
for a year?"

I really--I went, I was there,
I worked on the picture.

- It was totally random--

I submitted a list of everyone
who worked in the film.

- There were 160 people who
worked on "Ghostbusters"

who were also at in
the Boss Film, of those

I think about a hundred
did not get credit who worked

on the film, and I mean, really
worked, like 20 hour days,

like six or seven day weeks.

- And people who did
major things were deleted

from the list and people who
did insignificant things

were on the list.

- For whatever reason,

the studio said you could only
have so many credits.

I don't know if they were
running out of letters.

- And then we had a wrap party
on a beach and Richard

tells me right there,
"I've taken out an article

"in 'Variety' and I've named
every single person

that worked on 'Ghostbusters'
whose name was left off."

You know, if he's apologizing
to me, he's apologizing

to every single person
that he left,

and I thought that took
a lot of integrity.

- But I didn't see the movie,
until, I think, we premiered it,

and I went to the premiere
and it was just real crazy.

- We were just so wide eyed
ourselves at--

couldn't believe it, I mean,

the Marshmallow Man
looked so real to us,

we were just like, oh!

- The big film of that time
that everybody was anticipating

was "Indiana Jones
and the Temple of Doom,"

so were kind of off the radar

and the word started to get out
on these test screenings

that it was funny.

We were shocked as anybody.

- You're driving down the street
in your Trans Am and Ray Parker

comes on singing because
everyone's digging your movie

and it was a great feeling,
it was a fun movie to work on.

- It was this rough edged,
"devil may care" picture

with a lot of great comedy
actors and crazy monsters.

- When you get people like
Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray,

Harold Ramis and Ivan Reitman,
all these incredibly

funny people that don't have
huge egos that just wanted

to win and make the best thing
they can.

They're thinking about
every detail, every nuance of

the story and the script and
the performance, the comedy,

and the highs and the lows
and the arcs.

So they get together
and they co-create,

and I think that group of people
co-created a masterpiece.

- And the whole town benefitted
from it--it was stimulating.

- We didn't really, I don't even
dare think that that year

we would be the biggest movie
of the year.

But we thought it was gonna be
good and I think, to be honest,

I think I thought
it was gonna be classic.

- At a certain point,
when I think we were number one

at the box office for,
you know, I think it went on

for five or six weeks
in a row.

- It was certainly a good way

to start out your career
in the movie business.

- Robert Goizueta, the ex
chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola,

he didn't like the movie

until he saw the $250 million
blip in their revenue

and he was very happy.

- You know,
it's hard for me to say

because it's so
incredibly competitive,

but I thought Ivan did
an amazingly good job.

- You know, mixing genres,
particularly with comedy--

horror-comedies, science fiction
comedies--are particularly

hard to do because one of the
genres tends to sort of weaken

the other one, and we happened
to get away with it.

- Even people in the industry
who were jealous of us

had to go,
"Oh, well, you know,

you gotta be happy
for these guys."

- The empowering message
of "Ghostbusters" is that

no matter what monsters
we create in the world,

that if we have the courage,

the tools and the technology,
the talent

and the fortitude, we can
deal with pretty much anything.

- Are you troubled
by strange noises

in the middle of the night?

- Do you experience feelings of
dread in your basement or attic?

- If the answer is yes,
then don't wait another minute.

- Pick up the phone
and call the professions.

- Ghostbusters.

We're ready to believe you!

♪ Fighting ghosts ♪

♪ Proton blast ♪

♪ Zapping ghosts ♪

♪ We'll be fast ♪

♪ Fighting ghosts ♪

♪ Proton blast ♪

♪ We'll be fast ♪

♪ Take it slow
(Oh I could see you baby) ♪

♪ No no no ♪

♪ You can't see them,
you can't see them ♪

♪ No no no ♪

♪ You can't see them,
you can't see them ♪

♪ No no no ♪

♪ You can't see them,
you can't see them ♪

♪ No no no ♪

♪ You can't see them,
you can't see them ♪

- You're not giving me
enough chance

to drink between the shots.

Take it down a minute.

- Oh, my God, I'm worth
the price of New York!

- The guy in the hardhat
ended up being my son's

English teacher and my son ended
up getting into an Ivy League

school and majoring in English
because of that guy.

- Paparazzi guy, this guy Steve
Sands, who's sort of famous

in New York, he's--you know,
you confront him and he's just--

he knows karate
and doesn't really.

So he's really
giving me a hard time

on Central Park West.
There was an extra,

a fairly large man
dressed as

a Hasidic Jew who just got
fed up with Steve, grabbed him,

carried him across
Central Park West

and then threw him
onto the wall.

And then he came back and said,
"That man was very irritating,"

I said, "Yes, the man
was very irritating."

- ♪ Let's make some ♪

- ...comes out and tells someone
or something like that

and he said, "No, you weren't!"
And then I go...

See?

All of a sudden they say,
"It's true, it's true,

you really were!"

- ♪ I'm a little Ghostbuster ♪

♪ Sigourney is my name ♪

♪ This picture cost
a lot of bread ♪

♪ So let's hope
it makes the same ♪

♪ I played the damsel
in distress ♪

♪ And we know
what that entails ♪

♪ An icebox put the moves
on me and I woke up in ♪

♪ Dog entrails ♪

♪ I was attacked
by leaping eggs ♪

♪ And molested by a chair ♪

♪ Levitated more than once
and I think that is fair ♪

♪ Blown away and barbecued,
devoured by a terror pooch ♪

♪ I crawled out of his
haunches and Pete Venkman ♪

♪ He gave me a smooch ♪

♪ I think in
every dangerous scene ♪

♪ I had some part to play ♪

♪ My thanks and my affection
to special effects ♪

♪ You really blew me away ♪

♪ You really blew me away ♪

♪ I've always felt
so much support ♪

♪ And humor in this crew ♪

♪ To each and every
single one of you ♪

♪ I'd like to say
"Thank You" ♪

♪ Our cast is an ensemble ♪

♪ Ernie's nice
and Anne's a honey ♪

♪ Ivan's always quick to laugh
but Bill Atherton and I ♪

♪ Are never funny ♪

♪ I have a crush on Harold
and Danny is a dream ♪

♪ Moranis is my demon
and Ivan ♪

♪ He always makes me scream ♪

That will do.