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Film > Ghostbusters > Home Video > Ghostbusters 2009 Blu-Ray - "Slimer Mode" Picture-in-Picture and Pop-Up Trivia Track
Ghostbusters Blu-Ray 2009
"Slimer Mode" Picture-in-Picture and Pop-Up Trivia Track

Running over the movie are picture-in-picture interview clips and various factoids about the making of the movie and stuff associated with it. The newly recorded interviews feature Ivan Reitman, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Paul M. Sammon (film historian), Terry Windell, Joe Medjuck, William Atherton, Ernie Hudson, Michael C. Gross, Richard Edlund, and many more.

Here are some sample video clips and some random images (click for full size 1920x1080 images). If you like the low-quality copy here, buy the Blu-Ray in my store to get the high-quality original.

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The First Five Minutes
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Excerpts
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No Ghost Logo Discussion


Below are all of the still images used in the Slimer Mode displays, at their original 360x244 size (some are smaller). These are found on the disc in the files \BDMV\JAR\00005\composite1.png, \BDMV\JAR\00005\composite2.png, and \BDMV\JAR\00005\composite5.png. Anything not shown below is encoded as actual video.
   


EXTERNAL LINKS
These are all of the textual factoids displayed in Slimer Mode. The text can be found on the disc in the file BDMV\JAR\00005\gip_track_eng.txt. I cleaned it up and reformatted it into what you see below. The timecodes are what is actually coded in the gip_track_eng.txt file, with the correct hour timings and with the milliseconds removed. It may be a second or two off from what your player displays.

LIBRARY GHOST (0:09:58-0:10:17)
Known to haunt the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue. Classified as a "free floating, full torso, vaporous apparition". Known to stack books symmetrically - just like the Philadelphia Mass Turbulence of 1947.

NOT-SO-NORMAL NYC (0:14:27-0:14:59)
NYC earned the title as the world's most populous city in 1925. Currently NYC has a population of over 8 million people. With so many people living in one place, there's plenty of opportunities for ghost-spotting. NYC is often called "The City that Never Sleeps". As The Ghostbusters discover - neither do the dead!

DR. RAY STANTZ (0:15:03-0:15:41)
Referred to as the "heart" and "hands" of the Ghostbusters. Best described as a big kid with big ideas. Along with Egon, Ray is well-versed in the supernatural. Is a highly skilled engineer and mechanic. Once witnessed an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration. Roasted Stay-Puft marshmallows as a child at Camp Waconda.

FIREHOUSE HQ (0:20:15-0:20:47)
Located at 14 North Moore Street in N.Y. Purchased in poor condition at a high price because Ray liked the fireman's pole. Required significant upgrading to meet the Ghostbusters considerable power needs. Came complete with a garage, basement and upstairs living quarters. Janine Melnitz works on the first floor as the Ghostbuster's receptionist.

ECTO-GOGGLES (0:30:15-0:30:47)
Also known as a "Spectro-Visor". Helps track ghosts. Visually traces psycho-kinetic energy readings. Detects ghosts that are invisible to the naked eye. First used chasing Slimer in the Sedgwick Hotel.

SLIMER GHOST (0:31:56-0:32:20)
May be the result of a ritual summoning or side effect of some emotionally charged event. Harmless to humans, but physical contact can result in a healthy dousing of ectoplasm. Preoccupied with Earthly pleasures, namely eating. Favored foods include hot dogs, pizza, and ice cream.

PROTON PACK (0:35:32-0:35:45)
Sometimes referred to as a "positron collider". Pack's energy cell has a half-life of 5,000 years.

GHOST TRAP (0:42:05-0:42:34)
Captures and stores ghosts temporarily. Activated by a simple pedal switch. When opened, a magnetic force field emerges. Users should refrain from looking directly into an open trap.

DR. PETER VENKMAN (0:42:55-0:43:27)
Referred to as the "mouth" of the Ghostbusters. Known for his dry wit and pushy sensibilities. Has PHDs in parapsychology and psychology. Never studied in college. Has much experience handling ectoplasm.

GOZER (0:43:49-0:44:39)
Also known as Volguus Zildrohar, Gozer The Gozerian, Gozer The Destructor, and Gozer The Traveler. A supernatural shape-shifter able to travel through space and time, and across parallel dimensions. Allows its victims to choose the form in which it will destroy them. During the rectification of the Vuldronaii, Gozer took the form of a large and moving Torb. During the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex Supplicants, it became a giant Sloar. In 1984, Gozer appeared first as a woman, and then took the form of an oversized marshmallow man.

OLD CANDY STORE HAUNTING (0:44:45-0:45:11)
Located on 32nd Street in the Bronx. Haunted for the past 36 years. Ghosts include a non-threatening father and son team. The ghosts make their presence known through mischievous pranks.

CONTAINMENT GRID (0:45:15-0:45:41)
Located in the basement of the Ghostbusters headquarters. Stores all captured ghosts. Ghost Traps are inserted and cleansed of captured entities. Grid's storage capacity is limited.

TERROR DOGS (0:54:46-0:55:12)
Stone gargoyles come to life that can leap at their prey. Strong and fast, theppy can be mistaken for a bear or cougar. Gozer The Gozerian's demonic pets that act as his messengers. Host animals for Zuul and Vinz Clortho, Gozer's loyal servants.

ZUUL (0:55:39-0:56:16)
A demi-god worshiped around 6,000 B.C. by the Hittites, Mesopotamians, and the Sumerians. A minion of Gozer who helped prepare for his arrival. Also known as "The Gatekeeper". Could take the form of a monstrous "Terror Dog". Had the power to possess the living, and in 1984 entered the body of a young woman named Dana Barrett.

ECTOPLASM (0:56:20-0:56:46)
A term coined by French physiologist Charles Richet. A slimy residue secreted by ghosts. May help enable psychic ability. Possesses a texture and color similar to nasal mucus.

PKE METER (1:00:19-1:00:45)
A handheld paranormal investigation device. Locates and measures psycho-kinetic energy. Reads environmental changes caused by ghosts. Detects molecules of ectoplasm in the air.

VINZ CLORTHO (1:01:33-1:01:59)
Also known as Volguus Zildrohar, Lord of the Sebouillia. Served as "The Keymaster" of Gozer. Like his companion Zuul, Vinz could take the form of a demonic "Terror Dog". Was also empowered to possess the living.

ECTO-1 (1:04:30-1:05:01)
Transportation for the Ghostbusters and their gear. Originally a 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor Ambulance/Hearse. Purchased in poor condition by Ray Stantz for $4,800.00. Was refurbished and customized with anti-ghost weaponry and defenses. Features a signature siren wail that echoes through the streets of The Big Apple.

NEW AMSTERDAM THEATRE (1:09:51-1:10:23)
Located in the heart of bustling Times Square. Haunted since the death of Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl, Olive Thomas. She died in 1920 after ingesting a lethal dose of mercury. Her death is debated to be accidental or suicide. Her ghost can be spotted in one of the dressing rooms clutching a blue bottle of poison.

DR. EGON SPENGLER (1:10:48-1:11:19)
A genius in the field of paranormal research. Best described as humorless, frank, and matter-of-fact. As a hobby, collects spores, molds, and fungus. Referred to as the "brains" behind the Ghostbusters. Despite this, he once tried to drill a hole in his head.

TOBIN'S SPIRIT GUIDE (1:11:51-1:12:17)
A reference book for all things paranormal. Contains detailed analysis of famous spooks, specters, and hauntings. Entries include Zuul, Gozer, and Ivo Shandor. A permanent fixture on Egon Spengler's nightstand.

WINSTON ZEDDEMORE (1:16:22-1:16:54)
Known as the Ghostbuster who isn't "crazy". Best described as down To Earth and initially skeptic. Was once a demolitions expert in the U.S. Army. Loves "The Big Apple". Not a doctor, but can bust ghosts as good as the next guy.

NEUTRONA WAND (1:33:48-1:34:01)
Wand fires a proton stream capable of polarizing a ghost's negative energy. Crossing multiple streams may cause total protonic reversal.

STAY-PUFT (1:35:36-1:36:18)
Originally the cute cartoon mascot of the Stay-Puft Co., makers of America's favorite marshmallows. In 1984, Gozer The Gozerian transformed itself into a monstrous facsimile of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. He towered over the streets of New York City at a height of nearly one hundred and thirteen feet. Mr. Stay-Puft went on a violent rampage that caused millions of dollars worth of property damage. Its destruction called into question Stay-Puft's claim that their marshmallows "stay puft even when toasted!"

LINCOLN TUNNEL MYSTERY (1:36:24-1:36:56)
Lincoln Tunnel connects Weehawken, NJ and Manhattan, NY - The Ghostbusters' base of operations. In 1975, the tunnel was the scene of a mysterious disappearance. A husband and wife pulled aside to wipe off the windows of their car. The husband cleaned the front, while his wife cleaned the back. And... the wife vanished without a trace! An investigation into the disappearance found no evidence of foul play.

ST. MARK'S CHURCH PHANTOM (1:37:05-1:37:41)
Located where the original church established by Peter Stuyvesant once stood. Stuyvesant was an important figure in the early history of NYC. His nickname became "Old Peg Leg" after losing his leg in combat. Stuyvesant has haunted the church since his death in 1672. His ghost has been sighted by church attendees, visitors, and staff. You can still hear the sound of his peg-leg footsteps echoing throughout the building!
This is the full text transcript of everything said by the participants when interviewed back in 2009. The transcription was done by MrMichaelT.

IVAN REITMAN: You know, Ghostbusters was always this movie that was gonna team Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi together. And, you know, unfortunately, John Belushi passed away much too early. And this sort of 80-page treatment that Dan Aykroyd had written was sitting around for a couple of years and it was finally sort of resurrected and sent to me.

DAN AYKROYD: Ivan was one of the leading comedy directors at the time in Hollywood. He made Stripes with Bill Murray. I was supposed to join him on that film but I was writing Blues Brothers at the time. He knew my work from Second City, he knew my work from SNL. We had mutual respect.

IVAN REITMAN: So I read this treatment, and I realized it was a crazy treatment I mean, it went on, I think--It was set in the future. There were all kinds of teams of competing Ghostbusters. Impossible to make. It would've cost hundreds of millions, but it did have this extraordinary idea that there was this profession called "ghostbusting" that was much like firefighting. And I brought Harold Ramis into it as well to write it with Danny.

HAROLD RAMIS: In Dan's original script, I remember there was a little prologue that said the random mesh of microwave transmission had a torn a hole in our reality envelope, and spirits and entities from the other side were entering our reality through these holes, which was great. Danny's script started with the Ghostbusters already being in business. Uh, paranormal events were happening all over New York, and Ghostbusters was kind of an established franchise.

IVAN REITMAN: It was my idea to say, "Look, let's do a going-into-business story, but it's a kind of weird business." And bad things start to happen and they're called in as experts. And they sort of learn how to do this business.

HAROLD RAMIS: We invented a lot of Sumerian mythology to go with it, and that was it, kind of. It was pretty simple. Things are coming in, there's some evil force behind it and we have to go up against it.

DAN AYKROYD: Harold would throw something at me and I would throw it back and we sort of hit the basic beats of the story right there and we had it. It was just a matter of going away and executing it after that.

IVAN REITMAN: I remember going into the office of Frank Price, who was the...um, he was the chairman of Columbia Pictures and he wanted a new movie. I go into his office and I say, "Frank, this is the story." And I tell the story of Ghostbusters in about five minutes. And he says, "How much?" And I just picked a number out of my head, $30 million, which was way more money, three times as much, as I'd ever spent. He said, "You have 30 million. I want it June 10th."

JOE MEDJUCK: "Can you get it out a year from June?" And we sort of gulped and said, "Yeah, sure," not knowing whether we could or not. So Danny and Ivan and Harold began working on the script.

HAROLD RAMIS: Every morning, we'd meet at Danny's house, um, which, I'll never forget, had a military checkpoint on the driveway leading up to the house. And the basement was painted like a military bunker. So we would meet in the bunker every day and just laugh. We would write the most insane things that all seemed to fit into that film.

IVAN REITMAN: You know, I certainly wanted it to be funny. But I also wanted it to be scary and I wanted to be able to buy into the science fiction of it.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: To me, it's this wonderful combination of-- of geeky science and old-fashioned love story. Urn, and this wonderful balance of scientific information and-- and craziness.

WILLIAM ATHERTON: It was a very interesting mingling of something very childlike and something very sophisticated and something very cosmopolitan. And I had never seen anything kind of like that or heard of anything kind of like that.

HAROLD RAMIS: Bill's administrating a test, a psychological test--A parapsychological test on ESP ability to two student volunteers at Columbia. And he's arbitrarily giving electric shocks to an innocent victim. And we wrote that scene wondering how the audience would tolerate the hero of the movie being so cruel and our suspicion was they would really like it. And, in fact, they did. So when I watch that scene, I'm kind of amazed at the psychology of it operating.

JOE MEDJUCK: There were people who swore we'd never get the film done in time. That, you know, we'd never open in June of 1984.

IVAN REITMAN: We had 13 months to write, um, the movie, shoot the movie, create an effects house to be able to handle the movie, fine-cut it and get it into the theaters. And that's, I'd say, a remarkable process. So we were under the gun. You know, I felt like a ringmaster in a five-ring circus.

PAUL M. SAMMON: Most pictures that are of that size, a big-budget science-fiction or horror film with a big cast and a lot of effects, takes years to develop.

TERRY WINDELL: You also have to think about the time period when we were doing this. This was pre-digital, so the workload was pretty drastic. I mean, there was 200--I think we did 260-something shots. Multilevel, multi-pass photography. All shot in-camera and then all optically composited.

RICHARD EDLUND: It was a real packet of crazy, urn, shenanigans that basically were gonna be done and I had only ten months to complete the movie and the script hadn't been finished either.

JOHN BRUNO: At the time, effects films, you got a year and a half. At least, you know, 16 months. There weren't a lot of shots at the time. I mean, a visual-effects film would have 50 shots.

RICHARD EDLUND: And then Ivan, I remember, towards the end of the show we had, like, I don't know, four or five weeks left. He added 50 shots. And he wanted to add, like, about 80 or 90 shots. And I met him out in the parking lot with a samurai sword and said, "lvan, we gotta do the samurai cut." And so I talked him down from this outrageous number of shots that he wanted.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: As anyone knows who talks to Danny, he really knows his science. He really seemed to know this paranormal stuff and actually, I think, believed quite a bit of it. And I think that's where the real rigor of the story comes from, was that he found it totally believable.

DAN AYKROYD: My family has had a long-time interest in paranormal research, matters of the supernatural, the survival of the soul beyond death, um, the souls reaching back, the dead, those who have gone before, reaching back to help us, either through dreams or through intervention and inspiration to help us through life. Sometimes actually going as far as actually, you know, appearing in the form that they had in life, to the living. In my dad's time, my grandfather's time, they had seances frequently in the house where we spent summers, in Eastern Ontario. And around this house and around my dad's library were, you know, journals from the American Society for Psychical Research. And I picked up an article in there, and it was an article about quantum physics and parapsychology. Just an attempt to explain apparitions and how things can grow out of ether, materializations, how they might occur. And I just flashed, "You know, wouldn't it be great to use all of this real, uh, vernacular and really the knowledge and data of real paranormal research and combine it with the comedy in the likes of the ghost comedies of Bob Hope and Abbott & Costello and the Bowery Boys?" And so it was a marriage of those two things: my family's interest in the paranormal and just all these ghost comedies I'd been watching as a kid for years.

HAROLD RAMIS: The real comic edge came from the juxtaposition of the supernatural and the mundane, which was inherent in the concept of Ghostbusters. Danny had always seen them as ghost janitors.

DAN AYKROYD: Well, the idea is that it's, you know, an extermination job or it's a re-termination job, if you will. Uh, it's bug cleaning. It's industrial. It's... you know, that's why we chose to sometimes have a cigarette or a cigar, because you gotta get through the day. And it's hard work, hard, dirty, slimy work, you know?

TERRY WINDELL: The ectoplasm was the actual residual goo that was left, which basically is a product called methacyl, which is, I think it's psyllium husks, which is almost like powder. And when mixed with water, it turns into, like, a transparent gelatin and it's actually edible. It's actually in your Hostess pies when you bite open a cherry pie and the nice goo comes out. It's pretty much methacyl. So, you're pretty much eating ectoplasm if you eat a Hostess pie.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Peter says, "Egon, your mucus," pop-trivia for the Library Ghost appears. It reads, "Known to haunt the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue. Classified as a "free floating, full torso, vaporous apparition". Known to stack books symmetrically – just like the Philadelphia Mass Turbulence of 1947."

TERRY WINDELL: I remember the library ghost--They didn't wanna shoot her blue screen. They wanted this sort of in-and-out transparency. So parts of her would be solid, parts weren't. So they decided to shoot her against black and then let the shadows within her costume and everything go black, so that when you pulled the matte areas of her would be nonexistent.

RICHARD EDLUND: And so she just kind of dissolved off in the bottom part of her. And that worked out pretty well. Then we were able to then optically composite and nuance that-- her density in the scenes.

JOHN BRUNO: I added the little "Shh" thing, 'cause it was like, it's a library. Um, but in order to make it look weird and look different than anything else that was shot I decided to shoot the scene in reverse. So I had her act it out in reverse. If you look at the book she's holding, she basically turns the page. But if you look at it slowly, her hand is here and she does this and the page follows her hand over.

TERRY WINDELL: And then, of course, you know, she does this frightful change which was done with a pneumatic monster that was shot onstage and also shot against black that was composited in.

MICHAEL GROSS: The ghosts at that point in the film had to be familiar. They had to be-- When you set the movie up, the first thing you don't wanna do is create a ghost in which people even question whether it was a ghost. But at that stage in the movie, which is the opening scene, the ghost should be very familiar. And if it was just a dead librarian who just went "Boo!" we probably could have gotten away with that. But he said, "Well, it's just that last second, let's make it scary."

IVAN REITMAN: When she turns, and we do a kind of change-o face in the most basic way, I remember, you know, right from that first screening that we had that, the audience really screamed in a legitimate way. I've since heard, you know, from hundreds of people who've seen the movie, about how frightening that--Much more frightening than I ever expected it would be. But I think it's what gave the comedy its foundation, that the movie was truly scary and truly funny.

HAROLD RAMIS: So, Egon. I created this character based on a look that I saw in a visionary architect. I saw him in a high-end architectural journal. And he was wearing a three-piece tweed suit that looked like it had been made in the '30s. And he had horn-rimmed glasses, or round horn-rimmed glasses, and a haircut that went straight up. Uh, and I thought, "Oh, that could be a great look for this character." So Ivan actually found a hairdresser named Peggy Semtob. I'll never forget. And she gave me this haircut that later defined the character. And I decided my character would never smile. He had no irony. He was completely humorless. And that was the intellectual ground of that character.

ERNIE HUDSON: Harold Ramis was the person that I would go to when things were a little confusing. [chuckles] So he would sort of-- He'd kind of explain things to me because those guys had been working together for a long time. I was really an outsider in so many ways. I mean, I'm an actor. They were, certainly, improvisational comedians. To a great extent, they had all the experience on Saturday Night Live and they had worked in Second City together. So they had a whole history. They were kind of like family. And, uh-- But Harold was kind of... I think Harold had a good overview of everything. I think it would've been difficult for Ivan Reitman, I think, to do his work without Harold. Harold was... Harold was the guy, I think, who sort of kept the balance.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Ray and Peter are outside on campus upon being fired, a Not-So-Normal NYC pop-up trivia appears. It reads, "NYC earned the title as the world's most populous city in 1925. Currently NYC has a population of over 8 million people. With so many people living in one place, there's plenty of opportunities for ghost-spotting. NYC is often called "The City that Never Sleeps". As The Ghostbusters discover – neither do the dead!"

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Ray asks, "Where are we going to get the money?" another pop-up trivia appears for Dr. Ray Stantz. It reads, "Referred to as the "heart" and "hands" of the Ghostbusters. Best described as a big kid with big ideas. Along with Egon, Ray is well-versed in the supernatural. Is a highly skilled engineer and mechanic. Once witnessed an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration. Roasted Stay-Puft marshmallows as a child at Camp Waconda."

JOE MEDJUCK: There were two firehouses involved. There was the firehouse in New York, which was a real firehouse and is still in use, and I drive by it every so often when I'm in New York, and that's the exterior. The interior is a firehouse in Los Angeles.

MICHAEL GROSS: The interior was an abandoned firehouse down in the Bowery of LA where there was an artist living upstairs. I shouldn't say abandoned. He had a loft up there and the downstairs space was empty and the thing almost matched. It was out of a tradition of firehouses. They were built, I think, in the '30s and '40s. And there was a template. I mean, a lot of cities built them. They all look alike. And we managed to find two that matched.

JOE MEDJUCK: It was a great look, 'cause it was old. It looked old. It looked used and, you know, it gave them pipes to slide down. It gave them poles to slide down. What more can you ask for?

IVAN REITMAN: I remember calling John Candy up to be the neighbor down the street with Sigourney Weaver. And he said, "Okay, okay. You know, can I play him as a German?" I said, "Well, you could, but it doesn't seem like it's a good idea." "You know what? I think you should have these big German shepherds." I said, "No, you can't have German shepherds. I've got dogs on the rooftop. It'll be confusing if you have these two German shepherds." And he never got the idea of the movie. So I called up Rick Moranis, who I also knew from my days in Canada and SCTV. And I said, "Rick, look, John Candy turned me down." [chuckles] I was very straightforward with him. And he said, "I'm the luckiest. This is such a great idea." He knew right away what was required. He played a big part in the sort of elaboration of the sort of accountant neighbor, and he was very helpful, and he was just great with Sigourney as well. And I love their scenes together.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: I can't think of anyone who has ever created a more loved, adorable goon, you know, in any movie.

HAROLD RAMIS: That was one of the first things we shot, I think, was the commercial 'cause we had to use it in playback. Um, it just made a lot of sense and we wanted it to look like one of those awful, local commercials.

JOE MEDJUCK: My favorite thing in it, which I didn't even understand at the time, was that Harold is looking for his mark. If you watch when they step forward and talk into the camera. Harold looks down. It's like he's a bad actor looking for his mark to see where he's supposed to stand.

IVAN REITMAN: And we started just doing funny stuff like, "Okay, remember to look down at your mark when you step forward." Just what would amateurs who were now doing show business for the first time? Again, the actors are so skillful in finding the little nuances of comedy that sort of lead to bigger effects from simple things.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: That was quite an effect, to see the eggs, um, start exploding and cooking, in fact, on the counter. And, um, that was really...You know, it's all those little touches of something so domestic that becomes totally spooky which I think people love. You know, Harold and Danny just chose these great things that, urn, would say it all.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Peter talks to Marty about the sign, a pop-up trivia appears about the Firehouse HQ. It reads, "Located at 14 North Moore Street in N.Y. Purchased in poor condition at a high price because Ray liked the fireman's pole. Required significant upgrading to meet the Ghostbusters considerable power needs. Came complete with a garage, basement and upstairs living quarters. Janine Melnitz works on the first floor as the Ghostbuster's receptionist."

PAUL M. SAMMON: Annie Potts, her receptionist or assistant to the Ghostbusters. They-- It's a clever characterization because she's very dry, and she's very still and she's very kind of sarcastic. And, in a sense, she's kind of the still counterpoint to all the manic energy of the Ghostbusters who are always flying around with their hair all...So it's an interesting characterization.

HAROLD RAMIS: In the script, there were hints that a romance was gonna develop between my character, Egon, and her character. There were vestiges of it left in the script but the stuff felt a little off the subject to me. You know, beside the point. And there's a lot of movie there so there wasn't a lot of room for a B love story.

WILLIAM ATHERTON: Every once in a while I'd look around at Annie Potts, though. Annie was always great, because she was always there. And, you know, Murray would tease Annie. And so she just had a way of cutting through. He'd be riffing something before a scene and you would hear Annie go, "Enough, Murray. Enough." She would start to do-- It was great.

PAUL M. SAMMON: Sigourney comes from a very, very broad and experienced theater background. Well before she got into motion picture work, she was on the stage boards and doing pretty well. And so when she heard about Ghostbusters she actively lobbied to get the part because she wanted to show that she could do comedy.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: I had done so much comedy in theater. Um, and then once I did the Alien movies people never thought of me for comedy. So opening up this script and reading this absolutely original, delightful, mischievous, you know, affectionate comedy so full of heart was really a delight and I immediately wanted to try to be part of it.

JOE MEDJUCK: Well, we all liked her. We'd seen her in movies. But we didn't know she could do comedy and made her audition. And I still remember on her first audition, her getting up in a chair and barking like a dog.

IVAN REITMAN: She suddenly stops and says, "You know, I should get possessed in this movie. Because she-- the girl, she's gotta get possessed. You know, like, I could be a dog." And she gets on all fours on my couch and starts, you know, wailing and barking like a dog.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: So I basically started to sort of jump around and, you know, grab the cushions and howl. And, you know, Ivan kept the tape going. I think I frightened him a little bit because, uh, [laughs] he was speechless at the end of this demonstration that I did.

IVAN REITMAN: And I'm sitting there with my mouth open as this beautiful woman is sort of just letting it all hang out. And I remember turning to Harold later and saying, "You know, I'm gonna hire Sigourney Weaver. I think she's just spectacular for it. She talked about being possessed. I think that's kind of a good idea." Um, because that wasn't in the script at all.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: I was, you know, a huge fan of Bill Murray's, actually, but I met him the first day they shot at the public library, and there Bill was in a suit and stuff and I kind of went over and introduced myself. And before I knew it, he had picked me up and was carrying me down 5th Avenue calling me Susan, which is my real name. And, you know, he's so unpredictable in a wonderful way and that was very good for me at the time. When we were shooting that scene where he comes to the house, I remember the first thing that happened was he came in and I think we just sort of played the scene and Ivan said, "Come on, Bill, I need something." You know, "Give me something else." And that's when he came in and did the piano thing. You know, the [mimics piano tone] "They hate that," you know. And it was just all we could do to keep all of us, the crew, et cetera, from cracking up in the middle of that take. And he really played it, I think, wonderfully. And what Bill would do--Because, you know, it was, like, my fifth movie and I really wanted to do a good job so I'd be, like, over in the corner, like, thinking Dana thoughts. And Bill would just come over and start tickling me or something. [laughs] I was never allowed to take it seriously at all. It was really a great--I loved working with him. It was wonderful.

DAN AYKROYD: The first weeks in New York when we were shooting and just there with, you know, being around the firehouse and seeing the set, you know, that's when it really felt we were starting a movie, you know. And what really made it real and what made us all happy that it was real was when Bill Murray actually showed up to shoot on that first day because no one had heard from him for weeks before. And, you know, Ivan was saying two days before, "I don't even know whether he's gonna show up." And he did, on time.

JOE MEDJUCK: We brought him, you know, directly off the plane, put him in his Ghostbuster uniform, which I think he'd never worn before, and shot a scene with him.

PAUL M. SAMMON: Bill Murray, who was famous for improvisational work, today even, it's a bit difficult to really pick apart exactly how much of his character and his dialogue as Venkman in Ghostbusters is actually improvised.

IVAN REITMAN: So often Bill would come up with a particular line and then-- and maybe four other lines that weren't necessarily appropriate, or it was just too much. And there was this sort of writing and editorial process that was going on with each take.

HAROLD RAMIS: Bill Murray is one of the most inspired improvisational actors ever. I did six films with him, and I could never say that his contributions didn't put those movies over the top in a really basic way. So we would shoot the script or we would immediately abandon the script or start riffing on the script. And we all wrote well for each other.

MICHAEL GROSS: Everybody thinks they can write Bill Murray, you know? They watch him on the screen. They go, "He's sarcastic." And they write these sarcastic lines that have no heart. And Harold knew how to, you know, give him heart. I mean, you never dislike Bill, you know, and you don't wanna dislike him. And that takes a lot of work when he's being sarcastic. You know, 'cause it's too easy for him to be cynical, too easy for him to be nasty, and he never was.

PAUL M. SAMMON: The Ecto-1, which of course is the, uh, sort of the fire truck of the Ghostbusters, that car was literally one of a kind. They-- Most motion pictures always have backups to their props. I mean, think about it. It's only, you know, sensible. Uh, you're gonna dirty some up. You're gonna break some others, you know. So you wanna have backups in case something goes wrong. They didn't have a backup for the Ecto-1, so they were very, very cautious while they were shooting.

JOE MEDJUCK: And I can't believe it made it through. I mean, I remember once we were shooting in New York and I walked by, and it was just sitting there on the street with no one there. I mean, someone could've stolen it.

ERNIE HUDSON: The Ectomobile just never ran very well. I mean, I remember we were in Central Park, you know, the little crosstown traffic that goes through and we held traffic up when the car broke down. And we had to get out and try to push the thing.

MICHAEL GROSS: But it was a '59 Cadillac hearse, and a '59 Cadillac couldn't be better. I mean, it really represents that period. It's the last of those low, station wagon style ambulances and hearses. And all we had to do was junk it up, in effect, you know. It had lots of Dan Aykroyd-ish technology.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Egon asks the Hotel Manager if he ever reported the disturbances to anyone, a pop-up trivia about the Ecto-Goggles appears. It reads, "Also known as a "Spectro-Visor". Helps track ghosts. Visually traces psycho-kinetic energy readings. Detects ghosts that are invisible to the naked eye. First used chasing Slimer in the Sedgwick Hotel."

TERRY WINDELL: Ivan, when we shot the plates for the hallway sequence, I think it's the first time they actually fired the guns and they blow the hell out of the maid's cart. And he decided not to tell the maid the full impact of the cart being loaded with pyrotechnics.

JOHN BRUNO: So when they did the very first take, this poor actress, this poor woman, she walks out of this room pushing this cart, they turn around, scream, there's lot of lights flashing and they set off these charges which blew the hell out of everything that was on the cart.

TERRY WINDELL: She was on the far side, so she obviously was safe but he wanted the real reaction to the noise and the flash that was gonna happen. And so they rolled action and she's waiting for, "Pop, pop!" And this thing lights up and blows up and she hits the deck. And the next thing, she gets up and says, "What the hell are you doing?" and that's in the picture.

JOHN BRUNO: Her reaction was real. That's exact. She said that. Ivan liked the line and said, "That's in the movie."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When the Chambermaid asks, "What the hell are you doin'?", a pop-up trivia about the Slimer Ghost appears. It reads, "May be the result of a ritual summoning ot side effect of some emotionally charged event. Harmless to humans, but physical contact can result in a healthy dousing of ectoplasm. Preoccupied with Earthly pleasures, namely eating. Favored foods include hot dogs, pizza, and ice cream."

HAROLD RAMIS: Oddly enough, the character Slimer, in Dan's head, was based on John Belushi. A gluttonous, clumsy, destructive ghost. One amazing thing about Belushi that all his friends knew was that he was tremendously sensitive in a lot of ways but he was often physically unaware of his surroundings. So he'd be the person most likely to knock over your china cabinet or fall through your coffee table or whatever. So, Slimer is that kind of ghost and obviously, John was a glutton for a lot of things.

MICHAEL GROSS: Slimer wasn't called Slimer until there was a cartoon show. And the cartoon show came before the sequel and after the movie, and that was years later. So when we were doing the movie, he was called Onion Head. And all he was was a big smelly thing that went around and was horrible to look at. But that was also, because of where it was in the film, one of the few creatures we thought could be humorous.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: Slimer, who's just, you know, irascible but adorable. You know, he was--It's so great they created something that was scary but goofy. And something that there was actually real heroism in them fighting.

RICHARD EDLUND: Slimer, as we called him, the Onion Head was actually a guy in a suit. And he was like a big--He was like this big, and his arms stuck out the sides. And we shot him against black and because he was so bright green, we could draw a matte from him.

JOHN BRUNO: We had built a suit where it was waist-up and we had a mime that wore black tights. And so his butt or the bottom of this character was right at his waist, and the arms came out right there. So when they hung down, it just looked silly. And the tongue was operated by another guy in a black costume sticking his arm through the back of the suit and operating the tongue. When he was flying up in the rafters inside the hotel, the first test was a lime-green peanut put on a little gimbal on an animation stand. And it was motion control and it spun around. We did that as a test. We painted a little mouth on it as a joke.

TERRY WINDELL: Which in turn, we were gonna have a very tiny Slimer sculpted. And, you know, the concept was to see if we could get away with having just a one-and-a-half inch Slimer, um, because the scene was wide enough where he was up in the chandeliers if we could get enough detail in the little sculpture. And so we painted the peanut, shot it, we composited it into the shot and sent it to Ivan to get an okay for the size and scale, and he just approved the shot. So, there's literally a shot--Even though we did the rest of them with the little Slimer, there's literally a shot where it's just a peanut going around the chandelier and no one's the wiser.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Ray admits, "That's my fault. I did that," a pop-up trivia about the Proton Pack appears. It reads, "Sometimes referred to as a "positron collider". Pack's energy cell has a half-life of 5,000 years."

JOHN BRUNO: The neutrona wands--The original sketches that I got were little wrist things. Dan Aykroyd had written that they press these buttons in their wrists and they sort of come out and there's these big hoses. It's a nuclear generator. First it was just the practical side of how do you do it. I got four characters with eight beams, and it's like, "Why don't they just have a gun?" And the other problem we were gonna have was four guys pointing these things in the right direction, you know, imagining if they're pointing in the right place. And I said, "They'll never point them in the right place so let's just make it crazy, so that once it's connected, it's like a fishing line."

RICHARD EDLUND: And so we came up with an animated style for the neutrona wands, where the—where the beam would shoot out and it would hover. And it was funky-looking, but very kind of funny. And, uh, you know, there was something about it. We talked about rubberizing light. It wouldn't have been funny if it had just been a straight beam. It's like a laser beam. Everybody's seen that already.

TERRY WINDELL: We wanted a certain amount of warmth and we ended up using contrasting colors. So we had this sort of amber orange glow and then we wrapped it with, you know, cool blue electricity. So, you sort of had the whole spectrum in there.

JOHN BRUNO: And then I had to talk--Dan Aykroyd showed up one day, and he said, "Well, how do they work? Explain it to me." And I said, "They have these knobs and these knobs, what they actually do--They actually don't shoot anything out, since they're catching things. They're sucking in atoms. So, you could actually point at this wall and pull the paint off the wall."

TERRY WINDELL: The ghost traps, that was another device where it was a lot of fictitious technobabble that Dan likes to come up with that's wonderful. Which basically equated to, "When this thing opens up, you know, there's this huge brilliant explosion that then reverses itself from an explosion into an implosion, sucking all matter in the near vicinity into it, uh, resulting in the ghost being caught."

IVAN REITMAN: I remember we never had a great finish for the Slimer ghost in the hotel, which is the first time they act as true Ghostbusters in full regalia. I remember sitting in front of the banquet room that they all came out of as--And I didn't know what line was gonna come out of Bill's mouth each time. Finally, I came- What was it? "He came, he saw, he kicked his--" "We came, we saw, we kicked its ass" seemed to be the best. I remember not thinking it was such a great line when we were shooting it. I knew we needed an applause moment, that it was due, because that sequence was gonna be so good. And it needed kind of a button on the climax. And that's finally the one we went with.

IVAN REITMAN: Really, to do a montage, we couldn't sort of--Because we were making the ideas up as we went along there was no way to permit it.

JOE MEDJUCK: Yes, we had no permits. We just said, "Let's go shoot some stuff."

IVAN REITMAN: The actors were actually driving the Ectomobile. The crew was in a little panel truck, um, and we had a walkie-talkie. We would drive up to Rockefeller Center, which never gave permission for anything. And I'd say, "Okay, just jump out of the car, give me two minutes to set--get the camera out. As soon as it's out, I'll go, 'Go.' Jump out of the car, run all the way to the back. Come back holding packs." And we had a special-effects guy in there just adding a little smoke, liquid smoke, to the outside of the trap, and they would just run back and we would get that little piece.

JOE MEDJUCK: There's a shot at Rockefeller Center where the three guys come running forward, there's a policeman chasing them, a security guard, and he's a real security guard trying to chase us out because we're not supposed to be shooting there.

IVAN REITMAN: The security would say, "I'm sorry, where's your permit? You're not supposed to shoot here at Rockefeller Center. Please leave." I said, "Okay, I'm sorry." And we'd just get back into the truck and we left. We never got into any real trouble and we shot all over the city doing that sort of stuff.

IVAN REITMAN: So, the script was designed for the three comedians that had worked together forever, and I kept saying, "You know, we need someone to talk to who could ask the questions that the real audience could ask." So that we can get through some of the sort of very elaborate scientific data that was the quasi-science that was the center of this movie. And so we needed kind of an outsider. Somebody more naive and just a regular guy. And Ernie Hudson came around. He was one of the people who auditioned for it. And I just--He had this lovely quality about him.

JOE MEDJUCK: He was meant to be, like, the really down-to-earth guy with these three slightly crazy people. "What do you think of-- Even if they're college professors, what is this stuff about chasing ghosts?" We wanted to have someone in there who would be a little skeptical.

ERNIE HUDSON: He is sort of the everyman. I mean, he's kind of--The other guys are a bit more zany. Winston is sort of very practical, but I think he is meant to be that. He's meant to be the balance there that allowed them the room to sort of go off and be sort of these odd characters.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Peter gives Janine the Brooklyn job payment, a pop-up trivia about the Ghost Trap appears. It reads, "Captures and stores ghosts temporarily. Activated by a simple pedal switch. When opened, a magnetic force field emerges. Users should refrain from looking directly into an open trap."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Peter compliments Dana, a pop-up trivia appears about Dr. Peter Venkman. It reads, "Referred to as the "mouth" of the Ghostbusters. Known for his dry wit and pushy sensibilities. Has PHDs in parapsychology and psychology. Never studied in college. Has much experience handling ectoplasm."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Dana asks, "What's Gozer?" a pop-up trivia about Gozer appears. It reads, "Also known as Volguus Zildrohar, Gozer The Gozerian, Gozer The Destructor, and Gozer The Traveler. A supernatural shape-shifter able to travel through space and time, and across parallel dimensions. Allows its victims to choose the form in which it will destroy them. During the rectification of the Vuldronaii, Gozer took the form of a large and moving Torb. During the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex Supplicants, it became a giant Sloar. In 1984, Gozer appeared first as a woman, and then took the form of an oversized marshmallow man."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Peter tells the Violinist he still looks very pale, a Not-So-Normal NYC pop-up trivia appears. It reads, "The Old Candy Store Haunting" and "Located on 32nd Street in the Bronx. Haunted for the past 36 years. Ghosts include a non-threatening father and son team. The ghosts make their presence known through mischievous pranks."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Ray demonstrates the Containment Unit to Winston, a pop-up trivia about the Containment Grid appears. It reads, "Located in the basement of the Ghostbusters headquarters. Stores all captured ghosts. Ghost Traps are inserted and cleansed of captured entities. Grid's storage capacity is limited."

JOE MEDJUCK: One of the things we always said about Ghostbusters and we still tell it to writers is if we ask people to believe one unbelievable thing, let's make everything else the way it would really be if that unbelievable thing existed.

TERRY WINDELL: We realized we wanted it to be very realistic yet very absurd, if that makes any sense. When Dan Aykroyd spoke about the sequences in the film, it was very much his vision. There was a very childlike quality to the way he described things. And if you think about how a kid thinks about these fantastical things in their mind, it's very real, even when it's completely absurd. And, you know, there was a point where you could talk about, "Should it go a little campy because of the nature of the content, the story?" And we felt really strong that it should be as real as possible and within that reality, the absurdity would actually be funnier.

WILLIAM ATHERTON: He's a very humorless, driven, professional person. He's the consummate bureaucrat, and his life is bureaucracy and that's the idea. And he's kind of everything that we've all had to deal with at Motor Vehicle. The one thing that did help me was Theoni Aldredge, who was a great costume designer, one of the greats in the world. And when we were going over it to begin with, we decided that I would never change my clothes. Every time you saw Peck, it was Peck. I had my blue suit, I had my Phi Beta Kappa pin right here. I had the beard. So, there wasn't any kind of movie, "Oh, well, we'll change the sport coat or something." There was a uniform of him, and it remained constant. And it was great visually because no matter where he was, that's who he was. So he could come and go and come and go. It was always the same.

ERNIE HUDSON: On some level, I think most of us feel that there is something else going on beyond our physical senses that is operating, that is there. I think kids especially are very tuned into that. And so, here's a movie that addresses that.

HAROLD RAMIS: The paranormal is a great field of inquiry, and I had been married to a woman who was crazy for all things paranormal. And I'd been indoctrinated by her and remained skeptical throughout. So that was kind of a good posture, for one of the writers to be a skeptic 'cause Dan was a believer.

DAN AYKROYD: Many critics and skeptics would say that the study of the paranormal and supernatural is pseudoscience if science at all, but the fact of the matter is that there are some very serious and very really credited researchers in the field. Statistics prove that there is something there to telepathy and to psychokinetic movement. Being able to move an object across a table, it's recorded. Uh, how it's done and the science and molecular story behind it is one that's just a mystery.

MICHAEL GROSS: We did this scene where there's a chair and she sits down and three hands come up and grab the chair and swings around, goes through the wall. Well, that was all shot almost in post. I mean, we had struck the set. Um, we'd already destroyed the set, the scene was over but we didn't have that shot. The reason we didn't have it is the creature department hadn't even finished building the hands yet. And we had some concept drawings and they put some quick stuff together. And I remember being there that day and, uh...There's nobody on the set, it's just a chair and Sigourney sitting in it, and we had a false bottom under it. Under the stage were three puppeteers. Each one had an arm. One came up this way, one came up this way and one came up between her legs.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: Well, it was an interesting day because it started with, um...Uh, you know, there was that door to the kitchen and Ivan really wanted it to kind of undulate and stuff. And so they were, the puppeteers, some of them, were back there doing that. And then there were three puppeteers, one with--You know, each had one of these ghouly arms and they were so sweet because they didn't want to violate my space as an actor. At the same time, Ivan really wanted them to grab me in my private parts, et cetera. And so I had to really tell these very shy, sweet young men and say "You know, look, I'm fine, I have a leotard on. You know, you've gotta go for it. Um, go ahead and grab whatever you can." And they were still so polite and so nice about it. Um, I actually opened a drawer last summer and saw one of the arms in it that I guess they'd given me as a little memento.

TERRY WINDELL: The terror dogs was, you know, it was...Part pit bull and part Tasmanian devil was a lot of the discussion, and, you know, everything in between.

BERNIE WRIGHTSON: The terror dogs were, uh, still being developed when I came in. Uh, I remember they gave me some drawings by some of the other artists. Uh, different concepts. And the drawings by all the other artists ran the gamut as well. Uh, there were designs that really looked a lot like dogs. And, of course, they said, "it's too much like a dog." So they'd take another pass at it and it came back, you know, looking like a dragon. Uh, so then they'd be told, "Uh, yeah, this is cool, but it's too reptilian." Seeing the terror dogs in the film, the finished film, they looked exactly like what they're supposed to be. They had that great combination of funny and scary.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Louis claims he might have a Milk Bone, a pop-up trivia about the Terror Dogs appears. It reads, "Stone gargoyles come to life that can leap at their prey. Strong and fast, they can be mistaken for a bear or cougar. Gozer The Gozerian's demonic pets that act as his messengers. Host animals for Zuul and Vinz Clortho, Gozer's loyal servants."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Dana/Zuul answers the door, a pop-up trivia about Zuul appears. It reads, "A demi-god worshiped around 6,000 B.C. by the Hittites, Mesopotamians, and the Sumerians. A minion of Gozer who helped prepare for his arrival. Also known as "The Gatekeeper". Could take the form of a monstrous "Terror Dog". Had the power to possess the living, and in 1984 entered the body of a young woman named Dana Barrett."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Peter asks Dana/Zuul what they're doing, a pop-up trivia about Ectoplasm appears. It reads, "A term coined by French physiologist Charles Richet. A slimy residue secreted by ghosts. May help enable psychic ability. Possesses a texture and color similar to nasal mucous."

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: Once I turned into Zuul, um, which I thought--I pictured Zuul as a kind of Helmut Newton monster woman. And, um, Ivan kept saying to me, "You're scaring me now. A little less, a little less." You know, 'cause I was... And anyway, we got into the scene, which is, I think, my favorite scene in the movie, where he comes over and I've already been, uh, possessed. And I thought the dialogue in that scene was just so funny. You know, um, "There are already two people in there already." And, you know... All the dialogue in that scene was great. And I had to climb into this contraption which was like this, urn, I don't know, this kind of metal, uh, little form that then went up in the air, and it was quite comfy. And lots of wind and light effects and everything. And, um, uh, it was just one of those funny scenes where you go, "Wow, I'm really in a movie." You know, it was just a lovely experience. And I thought the thing worked really well. I really did go around in circles and it was, for one of those things--You know, it would probably all be done by CGI right now. But it's much better, I think, actually, for actors to be able to keep being themselves and have them work it out in another way. So there I was, I was able to spin around and still be in a scene with Bill.

IVAN REITMAN: I felt it was very important to ground the whole Ghostbusters story in a reality that we understood. And that an apparition occurring in present-day New York is much more interesting, much more humorous and much more effective than something weird happening in outer space in a time and place that we don't understand.

HAROLD RAMIS: I always thought the movie had to be set in New York. It was such a part of the movie. Partly because of the attitude of New Yorkers. People in New York have seen everything. So to surprise or upset a New Yorker, you have to go pretty far. So that seemed good. There's also this great skepticism about New Yorkers. So it seemed like a great setting for it.

IVAN REITMAN: You know, people talk about the Woody Allen movies as being sort of the quintessential... Representing the quintessential movies about New York. And they do, certainly. But I think Ghostbusters sort of holds its own place as being the sort of quintessential New York of the 1980s.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When the Police Sergeant speaks to Egon, a pop-up trivia about the PKE Meter appears. It reads, "A handheld paranormal investigation device. Locates and measures psycho-kinetic energy. Reads environmental changes caused by ghosts. Detects molecules of ectoplasm in the air.

HAROLD RAMIS: The idea here was that we would be working with almost homemade stuff like a used car instead of a new car. Where we'd be doing a start-up company borrowing money from a bank, and be able to create a new automobile. It made total sense we would rent an old firehouse and buy a used car. There's even one device, uh, we're testing. Rick Moranis, he's got a colander on his head with electrodes plugged into it. It was that kind of low-tech stuff that actually became funnier and more intriguing than any kind of slick, new high-tech stuff we could design.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Louis/Vinz talks about the Sloar, a pop-up trivia about Vinz Clortho appears. It reads, "Also known as Volguus Zildrohar, Lord of the Sebouillia. Served as "The Keymaster" of Gozer. Like his companion Zuul, Vinz could take the form of a demonic "Terror Dog". Was also empowered to possess the living."

ERNIE HUDSON: Ivan was, um, I think he was very aware of, um, the talent that he was working with so he really allowed that space. You know, I think he's sort of the ringmaster who just sort of allowed people to do, to bring, you know.

HAROLD RAMIS: It seemed like Ivan just had this touch that he knew how to, uh, exploit what we did and let us run. He really learned to trust improvisation and learned to trust our working style so it was a really fine collaboration.

DAN AYKROYD: He loves actors and he loves heart and he likes genuine quality in a performance so he's not gonna let you hit a false note so he's very effective with actors that way. Uh, he also knows how to handle scope and large C.B. DeMille-style productions, so he has a sense of the macro and the micro. And also, he's got an amazing writer's sense and an amazing sense as a storyteller.

MICHAEL GROSS: What Ivan always did was he grounded it and kept his comedy not just believable but friendly. You had to like everybody. Either because you identified with them, or because they just were part of lvan's core values. You know, his family values, his--You know, he can be as hip as the next guy but he was much friendlier and warmer and accessible in his comedy. And I think that is the-- is the foundation that all the silliness can be built on and all the action will be built on. It never gets away from there.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Ray turns on the radio in Ecto-1, a pop-up trivia about Ecto-1 appears. It reads, "Transportation for the Ghostbusters and their gear. Originally a 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor Ambulance/Hearse. Purchased in poor condition by Ray Stantz for $4,800.00. Was refurbished and customized with anti-ghost weaponry and defenses. Features a signature siren wail that echoes through the streets of The Big Apple."

WILLIAM ATHERTON: You know, when you're younger, you wanna be cool. You don't wanna be the bad guy. You know, you want the girls to like you. You want everything, you know? And this changed that, and it was a tough little transition. I mean, I have a story about that, and Ivan thought that I was irritated because, you know, people started poking fun at me and, you know, there's certain lines in the movie that got kind of harsh. I lived in New York and I would do a lot of work with Joe Papp, public theater, and I was beginning my career on the stage in New York. Having a great time, and I was going out on the street uh, afterwards, going home, and all these buses were pulling up in front and "Ghostbusters" was playing. I went, "Oh, that's interesting." So, I'm walking down the street, I'm thinking about Chekhov and all of this and I'm going in front of the buses. And as I go in front of the buses about 800,000 kids lean out the window and go, "Hey, pencil-neck." And I went, "Oh, well, I guess my life is gonna be a little different now." So, I was able to really change my career after that because after that, I did Real Genius and then I did the Die Hards and they were all a certain kind of character that kind of began with Peck. And so, you know, it was very fortunate.

TERRY WINDELL: There was an actual sequence that didn't make it into the film. There was discussion of actually seeing inside the ghost vault.

MICHAEL GROSS: We did conceive that at one point, you were gonna look inside the grid and see all these ghosts trapped inside this kind of Riker's Island, you know, prison environment or something. And they would all be in there kind of sad. And two things happened. One is it wasn't really necessary. It was time-consuming and expensive. And we didn't wanna take pity on them too much. So we had to walk this line about not feeling bad for the ghosts, and so it was better not to see them after they're contained. It was better to guess what was in there, you know.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Louis wanders around Broadway, before the hot dog cart scene,  a Not-So-Normal NYC pop-up trivia appears about The New Amsterdam Theatre. It reads, "Located in the heart of bustling Times Square. Haunted since the death of Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl, Olive Thomas. She died in 1920 after ingesting a lethal dose of mercury. Her death is debated to be accidental or suicide. Her ghost can be spotted in one of the dressing rooms clutching a blue bottle of poison."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Egon talks about the Temple of Gozer in jail, a pop-up trivia about Dr. Egon Spengler appears. It reads, "A genius in the field of a paranormal research. Best described as humorless, frank, and matter-of-fact. As a hobby, collects spores, molds, and fungus. Referred to as the "brains" behind the Ghostbusters. Despite this, he once tried to drill a hole in his head."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Egon tells Peter it's the building, a pop-up trivia about Tobin's Spirit Guide appears. It reads, "A reference book for all things paranormal. Contains detailed analysis of famous spooks, specters, and hauntings. Entries include Zuul, Gozer, and Ivo Shandor. A permanent fixture on Egon Spengler's nightstand."

PAUL M. SAMMON: It is interesting that Ghostbusters not only benefited from that solid script and that wonderful cast and those great special effects and that amiable vibe that just makes it all worth sitting through but it also had a great song, a great theme song. And people still, "Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters." I mean, that still just resonates.

HAROLD RAMIS: I like to take credit for the theme song 'cause I think I said to Ivan at one point, "We should have a song that sounds like the old TV Batman theme." So I said, "if we had a song where people actually shouted 'Ghostbusters' you probably would get the whole audience shouting 'Ghostbusters' at the same time." Um, so word went out, Ray Parker came up with it... and it became a hit.

JOE MEDJUCK: And we said to Ray, "We... We don't want many electronics. We want it to be an old-fashioned, you know, rock 'n' roll." He basically ignored us and came in with "Ghostbusters" as it is. And we got it right away. As soon as we played it, we said, "This is the one."

PAUL M. SAMMON: The soundtrack for Ghostbusters, you talk about the music for Ghostbusters, people immediately think Ray Parker Jr. They don't think Elmer Bernstein, and that's unfortunate. Elmer Bernstein was truly one of the legendary classical Hollywood composers.

JOE MEDJUCK: Elmer Bernstein had a long, distinguished career before he did Ghostbusters, actually. He'd only begun to do comedy with Animal House because he was friendly with John Landis, but Ivan met him then. Ivan got him to do the score for Meatballs. And then he did the score for Stripes, which is a great military score.

PAUL M. SAMMON: So Reitman and he already had a working relationship. And he provides a great score for Ghostbusters, because it's both jaunty and symphonic, it's both ominous and it's lighthearted, and he captures the mood of the story perfectly.

PAUL M. SAMMON: Atherton, years later, runs into Ivan Reitman and he says, "Oh, how are you doing, Will?" And he says, "I'm so sorry I did Ghostbusters." He goes, "Oh, you're not serious." He goes, "Yeah, I am serious." He goes, "Why?" And he says, "I have spent the last 10 years having to put up with people calling me dickless."

WILLIAM ATHERTON: The mayor's office was mostly improvised. Bill improvised all the time and you just kind of went with it. But his contribution that day was "dickless." That didn't-- That wasn't there. And, "The man has no dick." That wasn't there. I would have shot myself in the foot if I had tried to compete with Bill in that trying to be funny or to try to play it like that. My only way of doing it was to play it as straight as possible so that he could riff, and it's still around. I mean, you know, it's amazing. I walk down the street in Madrid and they'll come up about Peck. It's one of those fascinating things.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Winston approaches the Mayor's desk, a pop-up trivia about Winston Zeddemore appears. It reads, "Known as the Ghostbuster who isn't "crazy". Best described as down To Earth and initially skeptic. Was once a demolitions expert in the U.S. Army. Loves "The Big Apple". Not a doctor, but can busts ghosts as good as the next guy."

IVAN REITMAN: This would be the first time I was shooting in New York. And I came to really believe in what I thought would be true which was the people you see on the street every day in New York were gonna play a very important, uh, role in this film. I was able to get these extraordinary performances out of literally hundreds of people, and I don't think I could've made that film anywhere else and had it have the kind of fervor and reality and energy that those real New Yorkers brought to their roles and brought to the movie.

HAROLD RAMIS: We were running around New York in this ambulance with the ghost logo on it. And people had no idea what that was but they were seeing it, it looked like an emergency vehicle of some kind. So, word started to spread through New York. "That's the Ghostbusters." And people would go, "What's Ghostbusters?" "I don't know." So... But we were there. We became a real presence in New York. The worst aspect of it was shooting anything in New York often involved blocking traffic. And when we were shooting the big scenes on Central Park West, uh, apparently, we shut down traffic. Two-thirds of Manhattan went into gridlock.

TERRY WINDELL: When they shut down Columbus Circle, you know, I think that pissed off a lot of New Yorkers. I remember Michael Gross telling me right after that happening, he went into a couple of local bars, you know, thinking, "Great, we're shooting a movie here in New York." And when he heard what people were saying he didn't dare say he was involved with the film 'cause I think people wanted to kill everybody for shutting down, you know, I think it was-- I don't know how many hours of traffic backed up on those shoots.

JOE MEDJUCK: Dan Aykroyd, we were actually-- not quite in the middle of a scene, getting ready for a scene, and he saw Isaac Asimov walking on the street. He went running over and said, "Mr. Asimov, Mr. Asimov, my name is Dan Aykroyd. I'm a big fan of yours." And Asimov said "Are you responsible for this mess that's here?" And Dan, who was very responsible in that the whole thing was originally his idea, was a little taken aback.

ERNIE HUDSON: But, um, whenever we worked on the streets of New York, people loved Bill Murray. There's, um-- He has a connection to them. Uh, it's amazing watching traffic stop and people would, um, just stop the car in the middle of the street and jump out, and, you know, run over.

HAROLD RAMIS: Bill and Dan were enormously popular in New York for having done Saturday Night Live. So everywhere we went, people would greet them and I was a little bit known from Stripes, but, uh, that was part of the fun was what was happening around the movie. If we wanted to have lunch at 10:00 in the morning people would open restaurants for us. If we were shooting at night and had to have dinner at midnight they'd keep the kitchens open. They just loved Bill and Dan.

IVAN REITMAN: Right in the very first treatment there was a drawing of the no-ghost symbol that became the logo for the movie.

MICHAEL GROSS: The no-ghost logo was in Danny Aykroyd's original script. I take credit as having art directed and designed the original logo but I did not conceive it. We had it on the uniforms, so we had it while we were shooting the movie but long before any post, long before any advertising promotion, etc.

JOE MEDJUCK: And, in fact, long before we had the rights to the title of the movie. We didn't-- hadn't cleared the rights to the name because there had been a TV show called Ghostbusters and we weren't sure whether we were able to call the movie "Ghostbusters".

MICHAEL GROSS: We tried "Ghost Breakers" and we tried every ghost combination there was and "Ghostbusters" was the only name that had the resonance to it. So here we were in New York and the boys were gonna show up in the Ectomobile to go into the apartment building to do battle with Gozer. They step out of the Ectomobile, and there was 500 extras and they were all shouting... what? And literally, three days before that, we were saying to the studio, "They're shouting... what?" [chuckles] And they said, "I think 'Ghostbusters.' Any day now." Well, it came time to shoot. We said, "Screw it, we're shooting." And Joe was on the phone saying, "Did you get the rights to the name 'Ghostbusters' yet?" They said, "No." He goes, "Well, you better get them." And he took the phone and you could hear people in the background going, "Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters." And they said, "Yeah, guess we'd better."

PAUL M. SAMMON: So in a sense, all of those crowds, those extras, those New York extras sitting there yelling "Ghostbusters" saved the title.

PAUL M. SAMMON: Danny was very specific about saying, "I'm gonna design this thing, uh, that'll be kind of like a portable nuclear reactor that we'll call them proton pack that we'll put on our back."

DAN AYKROYD: They were very heavy so they--To look that dangerous and effective, I guess, they had to stick a lot of heavy stuff on there. Bill hated wearing them. We had a rubber version but it didn't look as real so we basically wore those big heavy damn things through the whole--through all the shooting.

RICHARD EDLUND: The terror dog was done two different ways. One with a stop-motion puppet and then we had a full-size, uh, puppet that basically stood there and was operated by about ten people with bicycle cables to make his mouth open, his eyebrows move, his hands, you know, have him--All these different motions that made him look alive. Then we have the other shot where, um, it was a transition from--And this was before the morph, when Sigourney became the terror dog. You know, and that was done with kind of, like, a dissolve with a wipe. And it was before the fabulous morph digital technology that we always pined for.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: This was my fifth movie, and I don't think I knew enough about movies to realize that with a big picture like this they would actually have special effects. They would actually go to a lot of trouble to, um, you know, have the whole transformation into these terror dogs that would be done by FX. So, I mean, as far as I knew, I'd have to do half of it, you know, like the human half, and actually when we got to that scene, um, where Rick and I are turning into the dogs, we were sort of writhing and... Um, 'cause we didn't know, you know, there was no definite point where you turned into a dog. You know, we were just shooting the buildup to it. And lvan-- So, I was there and I was, you know. And Ivan came up and he said, "You know, Sigourney, you probably shouldn't do all that grotesque stuff because the editor will wanna use it." [laughs]

IVAN REITMAN: Gozer was kind of an interesting problem for the movie in terms of Gozer had to make an appearance prior to it becoming, uh, the marshmallow man, and so how do you personalize that? What kind of person looks like a supernatural being? And there was lots of stuff being thrown around.

TERRY WINDELL: You know, originally, in the script we talked about getting Grace Jones to be the Gozer. And she had this, you know, the classic flattop beer-can hairdo which everybody knew about. [clears throat] So that was actually scripted. "Aim for the flattop," when they were trying to shoot the Gozer.  And, of course, when things didn't work out, uh, we were trying to decide, you know, Ivan and-- They were trying to decide who else they could get.

PAUL M. SAMMON: They actually thought of Pee-wee Herman, Paul Reubens 'cause they were gonna have Paul Reubens actually come out in a suit very similar to the one he wears or used to wear as that character Pee-wee Herman on the TV show. So everyone thought that was a great joke, but I think cooler heads prevailed [laughs] as the varying conferences and meetings and the film itself evolved and the story started to take different directions and shapes. And I honestly think they had a much better idea with going with this model, um, because it is such an unusual visualization of an all-powerful deity. Reitman cast her because of the way, essentially, she moved. He thought that she moved very unusually and very sinuously and that she used her whole body, and her body language was not only sensual but it was powerful.

IVAN REITMAN: You know, we put her on wires and sort of made her do these sort of elaborate acrobatic things. I was very impressed at what she was willing to do and what she--And, um, then we just sort of dubbed her voice.

HAROLD RAMIS: New York had all this incredible rooftops. Uh, they're almost like--And a book came out called Rooftops of New York 'cause some of them looked like chateaus or Bavarian castles. There's all kinds of strange rooftop stuff going on in New York. And we thought we could create one of those amazing rooftops as the portal for all this ghost energy coming in to New York.

IVAN REITMAN: And sure enough, we started building this thing on Stage 12 at Columbia, which was then the largest stage in America. And it was way up in the air. It had a painting, 'cause that's the way you did things in those days, 360 degrees to the set, so you could be up there and look in any direction and you felt that you were in Manhattan.

RICHARD EDLUND: Because there was so many lights and the set was so huge and the temple was covered all the way around the set with a backlit painting of New York, you couldn't--uh, we couldn't-- We had to turn the sprinklers off. You know, because the lights were so hot up there they would've set off the sprinklers which would've ruined the set.

IVAN REITMAN: To light this extraordinary 360-degree site and to light this extraordinarily large stage, one of the largest stages ever built, used more power than there was on the entire lot of Warner Bros. Columbia. We had to bring in power generators. We had to close down all other shooting while we were doing some of these effects. It was by far the most complicated and elaborate thing that I had ever done before or since.

JOE MEDJUCK: The set was so big there was hardly anywhere to put the camera. And in fact, there's one shot in the movie in order to get the camera far enough back we had to open the stage door and, you know, put blocks up and take the camera all the way out the stage.

DAN AYKROYD: So, it was a magnificent set. One of the best I've ever seen. You come in in there and they pull it off for you. You've written it, you know, and it's a paragraph and it becomes reality. There's no business like million-dollar make-believe. It's a... It really brought it home to me that day, that set. Vivified it, you know, more than any other time, I think, in my days out here as a working professional.

PAUL M. SAMMON: The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, in effect, is like the quintessence of the success of Ghostbusters because it's an absolutely absurd idea. As this giant corporate logo come to life that's going to be the destructor of the world.

HAROLD RAMIS: It's just, you know, a giant marshmallow man, please. That was in Dan's original script and it occurred, like, not even halfway through the script he had this enormous special effect walking through the movie and things got bigger and crazier from there. And one of the first things Ivan and I agreed when we looked at the script was it can't get bigger than that. That's really-- It should be placed at the end of the movie. Once you've seen a giant marshmallow man walking down Broadway, that's about it.

TERRY WINDELL: And that was sort of the Godzilla concept and so with that, we had the marshmallow man was, you know, a guy in a suit that interacted with a lot of miniatures. RICHARD EDLUND: Bill Neil, who was the cameraman in the shot, lit it with all kinds of little small lights which is the way it would be lit, you know. Because actually, uh, we shot that--We shot him against a blue screen, you know, the marshmallow man. And the marshmallow man was about five-and-a-half feet tall. The guy that played the marshmallow man was not a super tall guy.

JOHN BRUNO: And we tried some tests and we put him up on a platform and we got really low 'cause he had to be a certain height. We started, I think, we tried it at 48, 72 frames a second, 96 frames a second, and he looked pretty good at 72. He had a nice weight to him. So I showed this test to Ivan, and he got really-- He was kind of morose, he was like, "Are you telling me that this is the end of my movie? This thing is gonna be the end of my movie?" And I went, "Yeah, yeah, but, really, Ivan, it's gonna be funny." I don't think he ever trusted it.

JOE MEDJUCK: Ivan was always concerned that the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man wouldn't be as big a payoff as people might want after all this. That it would seem too cute or too silly.

IVAN REITMAN: I really was worried that it wasn't gonna fly. Would the audience sort of keep going with it or were we gonna lose them? You know, fortunately, I really believe in screening my films so we had a very early screening of Ghostbusters literally three weeks after we finished shooting. And, you know, frankly, the story worked really well and the comedy was the comedy and the comedy is great. But I'm sitting there waiting, "Oh, God, how is this Marshmallow Man thing gonna work?" And we had the very first shot, which was this goofy head, marshmallow head, bobbing around against the skyline. And they went nuts. They started applauding. And I said, "Oh, my God, it works. Thank God." At the end, supposedly after the Stay Puft Man explodes from being set on fire you see a wide shot of Atherton on the street and all the stuff just drops on him. And he had no idea that they were gonna hit him with that much stuff.

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Ray tells Peter it was nice working with him, a pop-up trivia about the Neutrona Wand appears. It reads, "Wand fires a proton stream capable of polarizing a ghost's negative energy. Crossing multiple streams may cause total protonic reversal."

PAUL M. SAMMON: At the end, supposedly after the Stay Puft Man explodes from being set on fire you see a wide shot of Atherton on the street and all the stuff just drops on him. And he had no idea that they were gonna hit him with that much stuff.

WILLIAM ATHERTON: And I knew I was gonna get slirned. And I saw this great big bag of whipped cream. And I went, "Okay." Thinking, you know, "It's a big bag of whipped cream." And I went up and I asked one of the ADs, I said, "You know, how much does that weigh?" He said, "I don't know, it's about a hundred pounds." And I said, "It's a hundred pounds of whipped cream?" "Yeah, but it's whipped cream." And I said, "You know, the only test I passed in junior high was you have a hundred pounds of feathers and you have a hundred pounds of sand. What weighs more? They weigh the same." So I said, "Would it be too much to ask if somebody could kind of stand under here? Or could we test this to see how heavy it really is?" And so everybody went, "Oh, man, okay. All right. Yeah, the actor is unsure about it. Can we have a stunt guy stand in?" So the stunt guy's in and they zipped it out. It came down and knocked the guy flat. [laughs] Just knocked him. And I went, "You know, well, maybe-- maybe 75 pounds."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Ray asks everyone if they're okay, a pop-up trivia about Stay-Puft appears. It reads, "Originally the cure cartoon mascot of the Stay-Puft Co., makers of America's favorite marshmallows. IN 1984, Gozer The Gozerian transformed itself into a monstrous facsimile of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. He towered over the streets of New York at a height of nearly one hundred and thirteen feet. Mr. Stay-Puft went on a violent rampage that caused millions of dollars worth of property damage. Its destruction called into question Stay-Puft's claim that their marshmallows "stay puft even when toasted!""

POP-UP TRIVIA: When they start breaking Dana out of Zuul, a Not-So-Normal NYC pop-up trivia appears about the Lincoln Tunnel Mystery. It reads, "Lincoln Tunnel connects Weehawken, NJ and Manhattan, NY - The Ghostbusters' base of operations. In 1975, the tunnel was the scene of a mysterious disappearance. A husband and wife pulled aside to wipe off the windows of their car. The husband cleaned the front, while his wife cleaned the back. And... the wife vanished without a trace! An investigation into the disappearance found no evidence of foul play."

POP-UP TRIVIA: When Dana comes to and recognizes Peter, a Not-So-Normal NYC pop-up trivia appears about the St. Mark's Church Phantom appears. It reads, "Located where the original church established by Peter Stuyvesant once stood. Stuyvesant was an important figure in the early history of NYC. His nickname became "Old Peg Leg" after losing his leg in combat. Stuyvesant has haunted the church since his death in 1672. His ghost has been sighted by church attendees, visitors, and staff. You can still hear the sound of his peg-lef footsteps echoing throughout the building!"

IVAN REITMAN: There was an anticipation. It was--These guys were at the height of their careers in terms of being acknowledged as comedy masters. And there was something very fresh about this idea of mixing comedy and science fiction and scary stuff all in one. Uh, so we had a pretty good feeling that it was gonna be big.

HAROLD RAMIS: We really strongly felt that we were going to top Animal House and that it was going to be the most popular comedy of all time when we were writing it. And I remember Dan was already counting the merchandising money. He said when he'd done The Blues Brothers he'd turned down some merchandising stuff, he said, 'cause he didn't want his face on every lunch box in America. And then when we were doing Ghostbusters he said, "Now I do want my face on every lunch box in America."

MICHAEL GROSS: When it came out, we knew we had a hit. Now, what we didn't know is that we would have a phenomenon. That you can't guess.

DAN AYKROYD: We assumed it would open and run for the two or three weeks that a movie ran at that time. And that, you know, it would do good business and people would see it. But, you know, to be running number one I think for 12 or 13 weeks, you know... Ultimately, I think we all ran away and just--I went home to the farm and buried myself, you know, in motorcycling for the summer, and Billy took off. And we all-- we just escaped from the world once it got that huge.

JOE MEDJUCK: I think it catches a group of comedians at the sort of height of their powers. I thinks it's a concept that everybody understands. You know, people, somewhere deep down--There's something very basic about the idea of ghosts.

TERRY WINDELL: There's sort of a childlike wonderment with the film that goes from not just the story and Dan Aykroyd and what he imparted, but all the way through the process of how everybody on the team took on the task. Because the task was impossible from the onset in terms of how much work it was and the things we were trying to do. [clears throat] And no one, you know, looked one way or the other. We just went straight ahead and did it.

PAUL M. SAMMON: I think, really, what people responded to in Ghostbusters was its soul. It's one of those films that's alive on its own. And it's got a certain energy, and it's got a certain upbeat quality and it's just infectious, and I think that really caught on.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: It had a lot of laughs. It had some good, you know, juicy scares but there's so much heart in the movie. And I really think that's why it continues to be watched by kids and loved by so many generations.

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