No Really, Trust Us
No Really Trust Us, is the B-movie podcast for people who love B-movies!
No Really, Trust Us
'Ghostbusters 2'
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Joins us for a Very Special Episode™ of No Really, Trust Us! as we discuss the much maligned Ghostbusters 2! Prepare yourself for nerdy trivia, mangled quotes, and a love for villains with large foreheads.
Produced and Hosted by Ken Cornwell, Matt McNevin, and John Benedetto.
Edited by John Benedetto.
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SPEAKER_00Marry my daughter! Is she a prostitute?
SPEAKER_01The eyes of a dying giraffe could change a man.
SPEAKER_00We try make blood much big.
SPEAKER_02Happy birthday, monkey specter. No really trust us.
SPEAKER_01Uh I hope you enjoy the show. Welcome to our tenth and very special episode of No Really Trust Us. Today we're going to deviate from our normal format. Normally, we like to talk about undiscovered gems of the indie and B movie world that deserve to be lifted up. Today, we're going to talk about a movie that is actually pretty well known, but we still think deserves to maybe be lifted up a little bit. Because today we're going to talk about Ghostbusters 2. With me, as always, is Ken Cornwell and Matt, the Professor McNevin. Ken, introduce yourself to the people.
SPEAKER_00Hey, I am Ken Cornwell. I am a video producer and writer. A big movie fan. And, you know, before my memory failed me, I used to be a walking IMDB. But it's a little tougher these days, but I do my best.
SPEAKER_01Alright. And Professor, tell us about yourself.
SPEAKER_02Alright, suck in the guts, guys were podcasters. There we go. There you go. That's how you do it. Alright.
SPEAKER_03Except that podcasters never suck in the guts. So that's true. They don't have to.
SPEAKER_02We let the podcast, the guts come out of the podcaster. I'm Matt. I'm a video producer and sometime filmmaker. And Detto, I gotta say, is one of the only people I've ever met in my life who can match me for Ghostbusters Trivia. So this will be pretty exciting. So take it away, Detto.
SPEAKER_01And for the record, I can only match him at Ghostbusters Trivia. Any other movie, with the possible exception of Storm Swept, which will be our 100th episode. That's a preview. There you go. Is the professor has me housed. So I realized I didn't introduce myself. I am Detto. I am a filmmaker, video editor, writer in DC with these other chuckleheads. And yeah, Ghostbusters 2 has always had a special place in my heart. I think because I was I loved Ghostbusters, but I was a little young. And Ghostbusters 2 came out at exactly the right time for young Detto to really, really fall in love with the movie. One of the first cassette tapes I ever owned was the soundtrack. I mowed many a lawn to the sultry tunes of Bobby Brown.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, when we watched it together, Detto, me, Ken and we all watched it together. And I I was shocked at just how all the songs came back to me. Detto and I were singing along to every single we knew all the lyrics to every damn song because both of us wore out that tape when it came out.
SPEAKER_00And we may have listened to the soundtrack on the way home.
SPEAKER_01Yes, also I didn't know that. Soundtrack is available on Spotify. But also, I uh in more recent days, I I I have just started a tradition of watching Ghostbusters 2 on New Year's Eve because there are very few New Year's Eve movies that are worth a watch.
SPEAKER_02That that's a that's a thing, right? Because there's all these debates about what's a Christmas movie, what's not a Christmas movie. Oh New Year's Eve, yeah. New Year's Eve movies, not really as much of a thing, right? Nobody seems to care. Which is I guess everybody's busy on New Year's Eve, so they don't they don't want to watch a movie. There's a couple.
SPEAKER_01There's like a Seth Rogan one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. There's a really anti-backy, right? Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. There's a really terrible Gary Mar Gary Marshall called New Year's Eve.
SPEAKER_02Part of his ensemble, crappy ensemble comedy. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Wait, is is that like did we watch that for the rom-com class we took? That sounds big. Maybe. Is maybe not. Maybe I'm maybe I'm hallucinating. I might be having a chat GPT hallucination here. Yeah. Possible. All right. Well, we are already off subject, so good job, guys. That's recording time. Excellent. All right, for those that need it, here is the synopsis of Ghostbusters 2, courtesy of IMDB. Although with no accreditation this time, this is an incredibly anodyne synopsis. I love how I love how bland this is. The discovery of a massive river of ectoplasm and a resurgence of spectral activity allows the staff of Ghostbusters to revive the business. Like, great job, guys. That is a solid long line.
SPEAKER_02Really makes you want to do it, want to watch it. Yes.
SPEAKER_01But as we all know, Ghostbusters 1 was a big hit. It spawned a cartoon TV show, action figures, I don't know if a comic book came out then or later. And eventually Ghostbusters 2 came out to very mixed reviews, but we think it deserves a little more appreciation than it got at the time and since. So Ken, let's start with you. Tell us what you love about Ghostbusters 2. Well long talk.
SPEAKER_00That's great. I am approaching this from a slightly different point of view than you guys because I loved the original Ghostbusters. I remember the the Bobby Brown video being on MTV constantly, because at the time I was a big MTV watcher and it was huge. But I don't have that same nostalgia. Like I think that's the only time that I've seen it in the theater once when it came out. And I have never revisited it again until now. So for me, this is kind of a great new experience. I didn't remember almost anything about it. And I was I was very pleased with how much I liked it, especially the first half. Uh I I mean, I think the whole thing, the whole movie I enjoyed and was good, but I was really surprised at how good the setup was in the first half of the movie, how they bring the characters back together, how they reintroduces everyone, how they kind of bring the characters together in kind of new, interesting combinations. So I think it really surprised me how good of a sequel it is, how many things it does right. And it's really a surprise because you know the reputation, I mean I think it has a growing reputation now, but at the time it had such a bad reputation. Although I think it's a moneymaker, but it's really interesting, you know, when you look back now, it's really it's really it uh the the the movie's so much better than you would expect.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and the chief architect of that negative reputation is probably Bill Murray. He went on talk shows for years saying how much he didn't like it, and he was the main reason why there was not a Ghostbusters 3 while Harold Ramis was alive, because he had such a he didn't think he had a very good experience on 2 and didn't like the reception of it and didn't like the way the film turned out, so he was you know always the holdout in terms of getting back to Ghostbusters, so which is both like horribly disappointing on the one hand, because it's like how do you how do you not like this movie, but also like but also amazing that he's so good in it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like he's he's what like Bill Murray is what made me love these movies, right? Although in hindsight, you know, especially in the first one, I'm like, ooh, buddy, you're uh little sex besty, your idea of flirting is not aging well, but um, but yeah, no, it just it's that's all that dry humor, that like those offhand comments, you know, like and it's like he's just he's he's he's nailing the role. So it's like, yeah, how how could you have such disdain for this when you seem to be having so much fun? Yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_00Seems like it's such classic, such a classic Bill Murray reaction, though, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so like what like you said, Ken, like the the thing about the sequel is like I one of the things I love about this movie is how for the most part it manages to hit all the notes again but differently. There's a couple notes where it's like, all right, you guys could have tried a little harder. Like the whole Sigourney Reaver is the focal point of the supernatural stuff again. You at least kind of needed to hold a candle to that. You kind of had to at least say, like, oh, you you've still got resonance on the PKE meter from Gozer, and that's why Vigo wants your baby. That would have been interesting, yeah. You know, yeah, right? Like they there's some easy fixes there, and it's like, you know, and the whole like now, not only is she a world-class cellist, she's also good enough to restore a Gogan. Like, not just a painting, a Gogan.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01How talented is this woman? No wonder she dumped Venckman.
SPEAKER_00Like that was something we talked about that yeah, they there were easy ways that they could have they could have brought her back into the story as a cellist without having to do the go off in this whole angle where she's also a now suddenly an art restorer. Right, right.
SPEAKER_01But you know, in all honesty, like this is probably my biggest thing. I wish that I wish that we had had a love interest for Ray, who is the heart of the Ghostbusters. And Venckman and Sigourney Reaver could have just been they could have just been happily or unhappily married, right? Yeah, they could have just been partnered up and and like you know, she's now the you know, she has a different role with the Ghostbusters or whatever, right? Yeah, but that's that's minor. But like, you know, it's like everything else though, it's like, all right, we need a big bad, but we're it's gonna be completely different than the last time, right? We need uh we need a new weird nerdy guy. Okay, he's gonna be completely different. This time he actually is a creep, he's not just an awkward guy. Like this guy actually is creepy, right? We're gonna have a giant thing walk through the city, but it's not a bad thing this time, it's a good thing. Like they just, you know, they keep they they kept nailing that where it's like you're you get what you expect, but it's different. And I think that deserves a lot more credit.
SPEAKER_02Most sequels just do it again, so but that was the critical reception deadto that that they got dinged for was just doing it again. A lot of critics, and I don't know if you've seen the Cisco Niebert review, but it's available on YouTube. It's it's only like five minutes long, it's worth checking out. That's what they didn't like it, and that's what they didn't like. They didn't feel that they tried hard enough. And and from a screenplay standpoint, really ever almost every scene has an antecedent in the first film. You know, it's kind of that kind of thing. But I I agree, Denner, like it's it's a little it's a little more thought out than that. And what I what I really like is I really like the central metaphor of the slime. I thought that was a cool idea. And I think it's we talked about this when we're watching it, it's this it's an idea actually that probably gains more resonance today with like social media being a cesspool. It's like if anything's gonna create a river of slime, it's like we're we're living in a river of slime, but it's also pretty bad, it's also such a great time capsule for that point in New York where New York was considered to be this like v mean porno theaters on Times Square and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so like that's another thing I love about it. And so, you know, now seems like a good time to bring up I I stumbled across the Ghostbusters, the ultimate visual history written by Daniel Wallace. And one of the things they talk about is when they when they finally got serious about making the second movie, and there's a whole history there, they're like, Okay, cool, Dan Aykroyd, you know, let's work on a script. And he immediately was like went to his weird shit again. And apparently the very first draft had them going to Scotland and fighting fairies, and Dana and and Venckman had a kid, but it had superhuman reflexes because Dan Aroyd just had this idea that that would be weird and fun, and then eventually they're like, Oh, wait, New York is really important to this movie. Yeah, we should set this in New York, and I think they scrapped pretty much everything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and that in a nutshell is kind of the the issue with with the sequel, or really any sequel at this scale, which uh which and especially what happened here with all the studio politics and all the the background of it, which is like they work out like exactly what you said, like let's do something different, let's do something fun, let's do something, something that people won't expect. And then slowly but surely, or quickly in this case, that just gets beaten out of it, you know, either because of budget or because of executive politics or because of pressure or whatever. And we did just like, oh, well, let's do this because it's easier, or let's do this because it's cheaper, or let's do this because it's what we can do. Uh, so that seems to happen a lot with SQL development over and over, where you kind of start out with the the creators really want to try something, and they're just not encouraged along that line, whether through budget or through or through studio politics, and eventually it just gets watered down and watered down and watered down until finally all they're left with is well, how can we do a variation on what we already did? Basically, because that's what people want.
SPEAKER_00Sequels are hard, right? Because you're you're walking a fine line, you want to do something different, but you also want to do something that you know is reminiscent of the first movie, that that you know gives people what they loved about the first movie, and it's really hard to do both.
SPEAKER_02Like it's comedy sequels, especially are difficult, maybe the hardest sequel to do because comedy expends you know depends so much on the unexpected and being surprised. A sequel by nature is not gonna do that. So you've got to figure out how do I surprise people and make you laugh, but not be too far afield to make you weird, especially.
SPEAKER_01Right, right, yeah, because it's like it's such a fine line between continuing the story and retelling the story. Yeah, right, right, right, right. You know, you gotta give people what they love about the first one, but in a new way. And yeah, and I feel like Ghostbusters 2 does that so much better than a lot of sequels out there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, not to mention that the first the first Ghostbusters is maybe perhaps in the history of cinema, I would say, one of the ultimate examples of lightning in a bottle. Yeah. In the sense of like, that is not gonna happen twice, where you have everybody in their careers at just the right point, they're just the right amount of inspired, they're you know, working together really well, and you turn on the camera and it's just magic. And getting them back together again is not necessarily gonna make that happen, which you see kind of over and over again, especially with comedy sequels, where you get everybody better, get everybody back for Anchorman 2, and it just kind of lays there. You know, it's like it's not that they're less funny or that they're many less talented, it's just that you know the magic's just not there, and you can't make it happen, no matter how hard you try.
SPEAKER_01Although I will say that some of the magic was there because my favorite thing about Ghostbusters is the camaraderie between the three dudes, and then Winston gets added in and you know becomes becomes the fourth musketeer. And like, and I do think you do get that in the second one. Like, and it would have been nowadays, the movie would have started, and it would have been the same where like Ghostbusters is bankrupt, but they all would have been mad at each other, yeah. And you know, we would have had to do a whole arc about them forgiving each other. And here it's just like, no, they're still paling around, they're still hanging out, you know. Ray is still buying Vankman his ethically questionable magic books, like you know, they're working together, right? And then, like, you know, there's those scenes like the scene with the toaster and the slime is like so good, like they're just they're riffing off each other, or the moment where they're where Ray and Egon are debating what to get for dinner, and they're just like Ty, next again, you know, like and it's like these are friends, these are people who are friends, yeah. And that is what like what makes me love these movies so much.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree. This is I think this is one of the rare examples where the the magic did happen again. Because maybe because the chemistry is so good between them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's certainly not as powerful. I would say it's not lightning in a bottle, it's a strong current. Well, I think 20 volts in a bottle.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that speaks to something that I really wanted to talk about, which is built into the DNA of Ghostbusters, the first two, certainly, and why the original Ghostbusters and to a certain extent the second one work, and the 2016 one, for example, doesn't, which is, and this is from the commentary track on the first Ghostbusters DVD in Blu-ray, where Harold Ramis talks a bit about how the first film was made with second city principles, like second city improv principles, because a lot of these guys all came out of Chicago, and and the the the DNA of Saturday Night Live is also in you know the Lemming shows and the National Lampoon shows, and also the second city improv troops who fed that show and fed that ethos. And what second city principles meant was that what was important to Ramus and to everybody was to if you make the guy next to you look good, you're gonna look good. So it's more about kind of outward improvisation where you're trying to see what the other person needs and trying to help them make them look good, as opposed to scoring laughs for yourself, as opposed to the 2016 version, which is kind of made with sort of more Judd Apatau kind of principles, which are not, you know, not that they're bad or that they're they're any less, they're just different. Because in all the Judd Apatau movies, you'll see that there's a DVD feature called Lin Linorama, and it's just an endless, you know, outtake reel of all the lines that they threw out during the shooting, essentially. But what that very much indicates is that's a that's not a very second city style, right? That's all about how many lines can I throw out for me to get the laugh, and less about the ensemble and more about the individual sticking out. And when you just talked about Dead O that that's essential to Ghostbusters, is this camaraderie, this interaction, this improving together to create something together. And it doesn't matter if I score the line. In fact, many times when they were writing on Ghostbus on the set, they would give lines to each other. You know, Ackrid would wrote a line and be like, oh, that's a Bill Murray line, let's have him say this, or oh, that's a really good Egon line, Harold, why don't you say that, as opposed to trying to score lines themselves. And what that leads to is it leads to that camaraderie, it leads to people listening to each other more in the moment, as opposed to tuning the other person out and trying to think of lines, which you can sometimes see, especially in the 2016 version and in other those types of films. You just see that the the imp imp improvisers are just not listening to each other, and you don't get that at all in the first two Ghostbusters. They're definitely there together and playing off each other in a way that you can tell these guys have known each other, they like each other, they've been on stage together a lot, they you know really kind of had that camaraderie that you can't fake, and that comes from the philosophy of how they put it together, which I think is a pretty underrated part of you know that Ghostbusters films, essentially. Um something that I think a lot of the the the later franchise and the imitators kind of miss, which is kind of important.
SPEAKER_01And then on top of that, you have this fantastic supporting cast of all stars who all also like know when to steal the limelight and when not to. And like, yeah, especially in the second one, the number of times that Sigourney Weaver just goes and moves on, and like and it's like, yeah, this is a woman who is used to these clowns, and she's just like, Yeah, we're just gonna ignore that, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like yeah, and Andy Potts gets more to do. Yep, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's a plot. You know, the the new things I think really work the best, I think, in terms of like, you know, Janush Poha's a character works really well and always made me laugh every time he spoke when I saw it originally. So just made me laugh every time. Which apparently his accent is inspired by Miller Streeps and Sophie's Choice, which I thought was a really great little tidbit because he was in he was in Sophie's Choice with her.
SPEAKER_01So according to according to Peter Nichols himself, in my magic book, that's all him. That's yeah, the character was named Jason in the original Yeah, the character was just a normal white dude, and he just he just kept going with it.
SPEAKER_02And uh but story-wise, it's it's really it's actually a really smart choice of that because he's Carpathian, right? He's Romanian, so he would, you know, he has a connection to Vigo in a way, yeah, that you wouldn't have had otherwise.
SPEAKER_01Although they never which is funny too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You kind of get it, like you kind of assume that's the case. Yeah, yeah. But like you have that one line where they're like, Where the hell are you from? Up out of these side. But he does say he does say in the interview that he's like, yeah, no, I decided he should be Carpathian, and you know, which yeah, it makes total sense because then he would be seduced immediately. Because that is another thing I love about it. We do not, there's no hesitation. Right. Like he just goes, Yes, command me, Lord, but instantly on board. Like, I love that. Like you don't, you don't, you don't need to worry about feeling sorry for this guy.
SPEAKER_02Not wasted any screen time on that you know, moral quandary.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was another big takeaway from this book. It was really interesting how much they cut from the movie.
SPEAKER_02The production was kind of chaotic.
SPEAKER_01Yeah in terms of stuff they actually shot that they cut. Like apparently there was an entire subplot of Lewis, Tully, trying to trying to be a Ghostbuster. And he kept he keeps putting on the Proton Pack and keeps having run-ins with Slimer, trying to capture Slimer, and then and then eventually they become friends. And all they kept was that one little bit where he sees Slimer and then the bus thing. And apparently even the bus scene was bigger than that. The bus scene was supposed to be a whole thing where Slimer gets off the bus and gives him a pep talk. So wow.
SPEAKER_02So they'll make a better payoff when he fires the proton pack and the slime comes off, right?
SPEAKER_01But you know, honestly, I thought it was a good proton pack as it was. Like you didn't need all that. You knew, of course, this guy wants to be a Ghostbuster because he turned into a dog and they helped him. Like, why wouldn't you? You know, why wouldn't you want to do that? Yeah, but I didn't know.
SPEAKER_02The whole yeah, the whole ending was reshot. Like the last 25 minutes, like they did they did a lot of test screen or several test screenings that went very badly of people being confused because they weren't quite understanding the connection between the slime and the and the ghosts and everything and Vigo, that whole thing. So a lot of it was reshot to clarify it and to make it work. As Reitman said, there's a quote from Avon Reitman somewhere where he says they showed the ending and the ending just laid there and died. That's what he said. So they had to completely reshoot it.
SPEAKER_01And apparently, too, I think basically in the first version, there was only one round with Vigo. The Ghostbusters basically come in, they blast him, and that's it. Yeah. And they said they had they had torn down that whole set. So they had to rebuild the set. Whoa. That was another really interesting takeaway from this book. Way more of this movie was shot on soundstage than I realized. Interesting. Bankman's apartment is soundstage, which blew me away because I was like, that looks like such an authentic New York apartment. So it looks like a job there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And there, yeah, there's no actual New York Museum of Modern Art or whatever it is they call wherever she's working. Yeah. So they sh they shot it in an actual building, but then they did a bunch on the soundstage.
SPEAKER_02Well, the the production design, I think, is an underrated part of the first one, too. Yeah. Because they hired a production designer named John DeCure, who was a famous production designer at the time. He did a lot of pretty much all the Roman epics from like the 50s and 60s, he was he designed or had a hand in designing. So he was kind of older, an older guy. He was very expensive, but they what he did just in terms of setting the look of the film only, but also and what you're talking about, Ditto, of like so much that was built that you don't know. Like at the very end, when when they're cutting between establishing shots that they shot in New York City of the front of the building, and you know, a back lot where they have the mechanics that can rip the s with the street apart, right? And the front of the facade of the building. And the fact that you can't tell what was shot aside from the effects happening, really, but the look of it, it looks identical to where they shot it. That recreation, like, and that's something that's a craft of production design that I think is overlooked, of like that seamlessness between replicating real life versus a soundstage, that I don't think is recognized enough, you know, and I think that is a great example of it. You see it in the second one of of all the production design done to make it feel real and feel lived in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And then also all the stuff with like the you know, the slime and like you know, they they re they recreated the uh that that subway tunnel, right? The tile, and I guess they like they they they hand cut every single tile and like Wow Just it's just this book is amazing because it's just like you forget how much work used to go into this stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and Dedo, you I mentioned when before we started recording, you brought up a great point about just how like just like a tossed-off line in the script equals a shit ton of work that somebody has to do. Like that's a good example. Like, well, we have this we that that was a reshoot too of the the slime tunnel thing. So they they gotta build this so that it looks like a subway tunnel, and it's just a tossed-off thing that they gotta do in two days or whatever. Which is insane. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um where we want to go from here. So we'll edit that part out. Yeah, we're gonna.
SPEAKER_00So the question maybe for you, Professor. Yeah the reaction to the movie at the time, at least critically, was pretty bad. I looked up the interestingly, I looked up the cinema score and it was an A-. So audiences liked it, right? Critics didn't like it, it had a lot of bad buzz and was a kind of a troubled behind-the-scenes very much. And I think you know some stuff about this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that I mean, all of that was colored, you know, by the development of this, which did spill out into kind of mainstream coverage. This is right around the time, you know, kind of early to mid-80s is right when kind of quote-unquote film industry stories started getting mainstream coverage, which was kind of started by Heaven's Gate. When Heaven's Gate had its disastrous production and release and just became one of the biggest bombs, so big a bomb that it destroyed United Artists basically, and and basically bankrupted the studio, which nobody thought that was possible. Nobody thought one film could bankrupt a whole studio, but it did, and so that became popular. So, ever since then, more and more like industry stories kind of blowing up. And since Ghostbusters was a huge film and there was a lot of interest around it, people started sniffing around about like, hey, where's the sequel? What's gonna happen with the sequel? So anytime there was a little movement on the sequel, it got coverage, and you know, the backstage politics of it essentially were what happens with a lot of studio politics where a new regime comes in, so Columbia had a whole new kind of leadership come in. You know, David Putnam took over for Frank Price, Frank Price was the guy who green-licked Ghostbusters. So, what you have is you have egos involved where if he just greenlights the sequel, they get credit for it, right? That's not his film, right? He had nothing to do with it aside from just inheriting it. So he wants to put his stamp on it, and he didn't like Ghostbusters very much. He was pissed off at Bill Murray because he was being a pain in the ass. So he there was a rumor that he was wanted to do it but recast some of the parts, which he says never happened, but who knows because that was a story. So you have all these egos involved, and now, of course, because the first one's so successful, the people who created it have more power. So, and you know, Murray's becoming a bigger and bigger star. Dan Ackroyd has his own Star Rising, although he had some bombs that he had to deal with. Harold Ramos was becoming a big Hollywood player, and uh Ivan Reipman, of course, now responsible for two of the biggest comedies of all time in Animal House. He produced Animal House, didn't direct it, but produced Animal House and directed Ghostbusters. So he's a huge guy now. So you have kind of the Indiana Dance 4 problem, where you have these huge egos and they all have to agree. They all have to agree on what the approach is. And if one of them says no, you gotta kind of start over or you gotta work on them until they say yes. And that's basically what happened is like as I said before, they tried to start out doing something a little different, and then through politics and through just you know, other people try and say, I don't want to do that, let's do something else, and it just gets beaten down and beaten down, beaten down until finally, you know, four or five people have to say, All right, fine, let's let's do it. And then they do it, and it's not as exciting as they hoped it would be. And you kind of feel that. I mean, you you I you know, I agree that Ghostbusters 2 is kind of a little more malign than it should be, but there you you do there is the kind of you do kind of feel the spark of inspiration a little dulled or a little a little a little it's kind of snuffed out a little bit from the first one where the first one feels so exciting and you know and they're charged it charges up for it, and the second one does feel a little yeah, maybe a little rote.
SPEAKER_00Which is natural because yeah, the sequel is never gonna be as exciting as the original. It's just by definition part of the by definition, right?
SPEAKER_01One of one of the other I was gonna say just one last thought there. One of the other really interesting tidbits from this book was that one of the problems they encountered when trying to figure out what they want to do for the sequel was they felt like the cartoon had really taken a lot of great ideas. Oh, interesting. And they were like, you know, what are we gonna do? Like this cartoon's been running for a while now. Yeah. But I do wonder if, like, you know, maybe we would have had a more interesting sequel if the cartoon hadn't already done the cool stuff, like go into the into the trap, the containment unit, and you know Right.
SPEAKER_02That's a really good point. Can we talk about the effect of the cartoon on this film? Because it is kind of a a significant thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02How big how big into the cartoon were you, Deb? You were, I guess I assume you were pretty big into it, right?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I was yeah, I love huge, huge. Yeah, yeah. Huge. And also, like I don't think I don't think children of this age or or or the like, I don't think they appreciate how frustrating cartoons were because like they were like they weren't serialized, but they had a certain order to them, right? And they always showed the dumbest episodes, and they almost never showed the good episodes, and you just didn't know, like they didn't show them in order. Like, I don't know what the rhyme or reason was, but whether it was Transformers or G.I. Joe or Ghostbusters, like trying to catch that episode of the Dino Bots on Transformers was virtually impossible, right?
SPEAKER_00They just didn't, they just didn't care.
SPEAKER_01Kids aren't gonna notice. I I mean that's the that's the honestly the most optimistic, the more cynical one is they knew that like they wanted to keep the kids watching and they wanted you to tune in every day to like hope it's gonna be the cool Som Hain Ghostbusters movie or show and not the dumb slimer episode, you know.
SPEAKER_02Like and as we mentioned when we watched it, the the cartoon is the reason why the second Ghostbusters car is the Ecto 1A and not the Ecto 2, because the reason why it's called that is because the Ecto 2 was from the cartoon, which was a helicopter. So the helicopter on the cartoon was called the Ecto 2. Although and to match Canon, they had to call it the Ecto 1A.
SPEAKER_01According to the book, there are shots in the movie where the car has Ecto 2 on its license plate.
SPEAKER_02Oh, interesting. Yeah, interesting. So that was maybe a reshoot, perhaps.
SPEAKER_01When I do my New Year's Eve rewatch, I will have to see if I can verify that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, see if you can find it frame by frame and just see if you can find it. The other thing that the I think the maybe because of the success or because of the cartoon, maybe had an influence on the tone, because it's a much more family-friendly film. Whereas the first one, you know, there's no ghost world sex jokes in this one. You know, it's like it's a much more the first one had a much more kind of adult sensibility, and this one had a much more kitty-friendly sensibility, and I think part of the reception may be part of was attributed to that as well, of people who were maybe a little older who were fans of the first one and were expecting something a little more adult and got something a little more kid-friendly. Whereas me being kind of right around the right age for it, it was perfect for me because I'm like, yeah, this is this is what I want.
SPEAKER_01Which also that is the path of every successful 80s movie, right? It's just the only difference is that Ghostbusters was PG in the first place, but like Rambo, Robocop, like they all started as these cartoons, too. And they got and and they got and they got kittier and kittier as it went. R rated cartoons.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Um I wonder too if there was an issue with this being the end of the 80s, the 80s were the era of the sequel. Yeah. Maybe there was probably some sequelitis uh fatigue, sequel fatigue going on at this point.
SPEAKER_02Uh well, it's interesting, just in terms of that's a really good point, Ken, because actually 89 is a really if you want to look at the history of like, you know, American cinema and and marketing and everything, 89 is a real turning point in terms of Cultural Zeitgeist and in terms of how the where the business is gonna move. Because it's significant to mention that Ghostbusters 2 opens one week before Batman, which was you know, they originally wanted to open Ghostbusters 2 July 4th, but they bumped it up. They wanted to bump it up the 23rd, then Warner Brothers announces Batman comes out the 23rd, and they were like, hell no. So let's push it up a week. And that's part of the reception too of Ghostbusters 2, which is like Ghostbusters 2 comes out a week before it doesn't do it does well financially, but doesn't do well receptionally. Batman comes out and it's wiped away. Like nobody talks about Ghostbusters 2 that summer at all. It's all about Batman. And from a box office standpoint, you know, Batman's the big big winner that year, number one. And if you look back at the history of number one box office movies for the year, the pre- Do you guys want to guess? I don't know. We can play a little game. Do you want to guess what the number one worldwide box office film for 1988 was? 1988. Yeah, year before.
SPEAKER_01When Harry met Sally.
SPEAKER_02That was 89. But damn it. But you're on the right track, Deadto. The answer is Rain Man, which is can you today imagine huge number one blockbuster being a two-hander drama that wins best picture?
SPEAKER_00I mean, this is not gonna happen so much now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so 89 is kind of when the comic book kind of blockbuster and that kind of blockbuster sensibility really starts to take hold. And that's the last time that ever happens. For the if you look at the rest of the all the way up to today, the number one box office movie is never a film like Rain Man ever again. Until now, we're at the point where it's it's hard for those films to even get made, let alone do well at the box office, where Rainman happens today, it doesn't get made, or it becomes a streaming movie, you know. So it's a real kind of significant change that year uh in terms of box office.
SPEAKER_01Two great little tidbits from my magic book. Uh, number one, in reference to Ken's theory about sequelitis. So the chapter on Ghostbusters 2 actually opens with it's not going to be called Ghostbusters 2, promised Bill Murray in March 1989. We'll we'll burn in hell if we call it Ghostbusters 2. I've suggested the last of the Ghostbusters to make sure there won't be anything like a Ghostbusters 3. So I thought that was hilarious because clearly Bream Murray was wrong.
SPEAKER_02I was none too happy either.
SPEAKER_01Or overruled. Yeah. But to your point, Professor, about Blockbusters is that another really cool bit later on about the special effects is Ghostbusters 2 is the last movie that ILM did that had zero digital effects. Oh and at the same time as they're working on Ghostbusters 2, they're working on the Abyss down the hall.
SPEAKER_02And also that same summer, or not the same summer, it came out in in Thanksgiving. It was supposed to come out in summer, but got pushed back to come out in November, was Back to the Future Part 2, which has among the first digital effects that ILM did. They did wire removal on the hoverboards, which was one of the first digital effects that they did for a film. So yeah, we're in an interesting tr transition time too from effects as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Where digital is about to kind of overtake everything within a few short years, which certainly and one thing that the first film is legacy is their their effects weren't as great as they could have been because they were so rushed in making it. And it's it's funny that they didn't really learn that lesson because Ghostbusters 2 was rushed even more than the which uh you'd think you'd learn that lesson.
SPEAKER_01But I will say overall, I feel like the effects hold up. Like, yeah, I think so. You know, like you you look at you look at Highlander with some of the lightning effects, and you're like, oh, you just drew that with a pen. You know, whereas like here, the Proton packs are are pretty legit, and like they were using explosive rope in the walls that was going off as the guys are waving their proton guns around and then they're matching that to the, you know, like I think part of it is that those practical effects just age better in general.
SPEAKER_00So they're always actually there, right, right, right.
SPEAKER_01Another another great tidbit is uh the same actor who played he was he was the Statue of Liberty because he was really tall and skinny. Uh he also plays one of the Scoleri brothers, the skinny one, and he is the jogging ghost in that in the montage. Wow, interesting. I just thought that was cool. Like, and I'm sure that you know, I mean, I'm I know that stuff happens all the time. Yeah, you just you just rarely get it flagged.
SPEAKER_02But he was the Doug the Doug Jones of that era, just like he wasn't supposed to be all those things.
SPEAKER_01I think he was hired just for the scolari role and then got these other gigs, uh these other you know roles. Um but that's the other thing. I was like, you don't even think about that. You see the scolari brother effects, and you're just like you just you just don't think about how they made that. You're like, oh, it's probably stop motion, or it's like, no, those are dudes in prosthetics, you know, filmed and then added in post, so they're flying around the room and they're doing all sorts of other crazy effects to them and stuff like that. But you know, those are dudes in makeup. Like that's yeah, they have a whole thing about how on a miniature stage, you know. Then they have these complicated prosthetic machines that like make the faces look bigger and and crazy and stuff like that. It's just it's just mind-boggling how much work went into all this stuff that you just don't think about nowadays, because nowadays you're just like I'll the 3D model of the head and I'll do whatever I want with it, you know? Right, right. It's it's that's really that's really nuts to me. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's pretty amazing. And yeah, and you can also like just capture magical moments that you wouldn't have gotten ordinarily just because of the way the makeup falls, or because of the way you shoot in super slow motion and the the way the the smoke in the room kind of moves, it like creates something that you could never create digitally because you wouldn't think to do it. Um That's another that's another great example.
SPEAKER_01When the Statue of Liberty torch explodes, right one of the one of the embers flies at the camera. That wasn't planned. Right.
SPEAKER_03But it looked awesome.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so they kept it in.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Yeah. Cool. So I got I this is completely random, no segue here. But one of the other things I love about these movies, and I know like they get flagged because, like, yeah, in some ways, they do not hold up, right? Like Venckman's line about you know, you'll never get a green card with that attitude, like that's not funny anymore, unfortunately. You know, but what I do like is just the casual, arguably non-toxic machismo of these guys. Like, never once in the second movie do they need to be talked into saving the day. There's no there's no refusal of the call. They are just like, oh, we got another angry god to deal with. I guess it's Tuesday. It's so great, right?
SPEAKER_02Like, it's just like they Well Ditto, I mean the question ultimately is who you gonna call, really.
SPEAKER_00If you're going to and then if you're gonna answer the call, you gotta jumping off of that, there's also no we all they all get in an argument and they all go their separate ways, only to come back together at the end, right? Which is such a cliche now. Yeah, it's yeah, it's refreshing that they don't do that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And with also with like the new kind of ever since Force Awakens, the kind of legacy sequels now. Why do why yeah, why do they all have to start that way? Why do all the characters I loved as a child have to be freaking miserable? Yeah, like it's like, come on!
SPEAKER_01Yeah, one of many reasons why I absolutely abhor Ghostbusters Afterlife. You don't have to get into that just yet. Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's it's just like these guys are just like, you know, uh, yep, this is what we do. We're exterminators, and this is just a big bug. And I will say, no, though the counterpoint to that is one of the one of the weaker parts of the sequel is a the almost carbon copy version said that instead of getting arrested, they get committed. Yeah, that's that's kind of lazy.
SPEAKER_02See what the mayor is the same.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and as we were talking about during the viewing, like the fact that everyone needed to be convinced again. Yeah, not a single person was like, oh, so Gozer's back, and they're like, no, it's not Gozer, it's a big ugly dude in a painting, you know, like and then and then maybe they could be like, wait, that doesn't make sense, and they're like, You're okay with the Mesopotamian god?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And also like they famously saved, famously saved New York City in the first movie, and now they are totally on the outs. But like, but like harder.
SPEAKER_01Well, it is and it isn't though, because look at all the moronic denial of facts that we have in our own society now, right? Yeah, like I'm actually shocked we don't have 9 11 like complete disbelievers at this point. We have the conspiracy we already have the conspiracy people, but we we haven't quite gotten the crack pads or just like 9 11 didn't happen. Oh, didn't happen, right? We're gonna get there, right? And like, and the same thing with this. I could absolutely see people just being like, no, what are you talking about? They just they just blew up the building, right? Right. And so that it it it's actually somewhat plausible, but the mayor's gonna know. Right. And that's again, you could have just had him be like, dude, like, you know, we're still not finished paying for the last one. You gotta, you gotta do this better, or you know, just something a little different, you know? Yeah. But at the same time, like everything else about it works. So it's okay. And then the other thing is it's like it's just so funny how how much lower the stakes are in this one. And that is just that is a fascinating decision on their part. Like, yeah, and in the way I kind of like it because I'm so tired of you know, every single threat is a world-ending threat, and yeah, there's gonna be a light shooting into the sky arbitrarily. Um so at least here it's just like, yeah, okay, New York's gonna suck, but it's probably gonna it's probably gonna end in New York. Um but at the same time, it's like, yeah, it does feel it does feel a little anticlimactic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So but I was they even get the they even get the Statue of Liberty back in place at the very end. That's right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but one of my one of my hands-down favorite moments in the sequel, and and this just this just so encapsulates the the relationship the guys all have with each other, is when Vigo possesses Ray, and they just they just don't take him seriously at all. And I was like, that is that is we all have that one friend, and if he gets drunk and he's like, guys, I'm mad at you, you're like, I just don't care. You know, like and it's like that is Ray. Everyone's just like, hose him, you know, like that's so great. That is so great. Like, if he had possessed Vanckman, there might have been a problem, right? Right, right, you know, love that part. Yeah, and yeah, like even the even the end where it's like even though Yanosh was a creep, he still doesn't suffer, you know. He's still I mean, you could argue they use an unethical uh form of mood alteration, but um no different than a heavy dose of L C D. It's fine. Sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or Prozac or something like that. Whatever so often.
SPEAKER_02L C D L C D But yeah, I mean it's just overall, like all the you know, things that people don't like about it were largely the result of just circumstances really outside their control in terms of like the whether the studio politics or whether they're just kind of forced into, well, we've gotta write it around this budget and we've gotta you know work it into this template we already have and make these people happy. Um, because as much as audiences say they want something different and something new, they sure don't support it with their wallets. You know, it's like every time something new and exciting comes out in the tanks, you're like, well, you you asked for it, you got it, and now you don't want it. So like that drives me crazy too. So it's like if they did have it set in Scotland, it wouldn't have been successful, probably, you know.
SPEAKER_01So and there there are plenty of comedies where the sequel could have tweaked the setup and it would have been it would have worked. Like Hangover 2, you should not have been missing the same guy, right? Right? It should have been a different guy missing, yeah. So the first guy could now be the straight man, and everyone else is like, yeah, this happened last time, and he's like, What do you mean this happened last time? Right? Right, that would have been funny. Horrible bosses too, make them the horrible bosses, yeah, right? Like, which they kind of do, but they don't. Like they they they don't take it far enough. They instead give them horrible mob bosses, which is just you know, but in Ghostbusters 2, I don't know how you do that, like unless they all die and they become the ghosts and now they're getting busted, which that's not that's too far, you know. Maybe they could do that now, but you know, like I think you I'm glad they didn't just bring back Gozer, but we maybe could have had a more interesting villain than Vigo, you know. Although, side note, the actor who played Vigo, really weird, interesting dude.
SPEAKER_02The the visual guy, because the voice is provided by Max von Seito. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So the actor Wilhelm von Homburg, who I did not realize was also in Die Hard.
SPEAKER_02Really?
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. He plays henchman James.
SPEAKER_02Oh, holy crap, he does! Yeah. Is he the guy at the in the who takes over in the like in the lobby? Maybe. Like the American You're so oh that's right.
SPEAKER_01Since I did not actually believe that Die Hard is a Christmas movie. I don't stop.
SPEAKER_02Don't start that art. Is yeah, it's the same face. If you just put longer hair on him, holy crap, it is. I've never made that connection before. I have not either. Oh, but yeah, I'm not sure. But I knew everything about Ghostbusters, but I didn't.
SPEAKER_01He was apparently a very troubled man. He he was a boxer, also apparently famously bisexual. He's pretty sure I don't see this on the Wikipedia page, but I'm pretty sure in the original article, he actually spent a good amount of time. He was a minor celebrity in Muscle Beach in in Venice, Venice Beach, back when that was like a big thing in the early uh early Schwarzenegger days and stuff like that. But he's got a yeah, his his father may or may not have been a Nazi. Oh jeez. Yeah, he spent time the California's notable Venice Wait Pen, where he became acquainted with future film star Arnold Schwarzenegger. They were professional wrestlers at one point. So yeah, it interesting biography on that guy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So did he do much else besides die hard and Blasbusters too?
SPEAKER_01Not filmically, no. And he sadly spent the last years of his life effectively homeless and died of cancer. So no. Yeah, not the happiest of stories.
SPEAKER_02I thanks for bumming us out, Dead of the Foundation.
SPEAKER_01Alright, sorry. Uh we'll get to the walk-in awards soon. That's right. Okay. Actually, his back. His list of credits goes all the way back to 1965. Wow. But I don't you guys might recognize these movies. I don't recognize these movies until we get to Die Hard. So he was in Knight of the Warrior in 1991.
SPEAKER_02Everyone's favorite in the Warrior.
SPEAKER_01He was in some TV, he was in Gunsmoke, The Invaders, the Wild, Wild West. But yeah, apparently he was very upset that they didn't use his voice. So he also was not a fan of the movie.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Or at least it's gotta be tough for an actor when they decide in post to W. Especially with the David Powell situation. Max Bonsaido.
SPEAKER_01And they said they said the reason was that is uh his accent was just so thick, at least in the book. I'm pretty sure the article I read back in the day, I wish I I wish I could have found it, said it was like his voice was also not really not really fit for the talkies.
SPEAKER_02So he speaks in diehard if that's the same guy, so it's not oh all right.
SPEAKER_01Maybe so, yeah. Or maybe that's dub too. But yeah, but as I mentioned while we were watching it, that is a hell of a good job with the dub. You would never know what he's talking. Even even watching it and knowing you can't tell when it's not him talking.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And the voice fits the face, too. You know, it's like it looks like that's what he would sound like.
SPEAKER_01I also I just I love what a diva Vigo is. Like it's just like it's so now is the season of evil. It's like, okay, queen, you know. He's gonna slay. Like uh, but I also I also love how impatient Yanosh gets with it. He's like, yes, yes, I've heard.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we that's a great bit. Yeah, yes, I know this.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_01All right, well, do we want to do we want to do walking awards or do we want to talk about how much we hate the other movies?
SPEAKER_02Or we can do a budget game too. Oh, we can do a budget game, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let's let's talk a little bit about the other movies.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And then let's talk well before we get there, let's let's talk about one thing about what happened after Ghostbusters 2, which is the because it seems like tortured development kind of followed Ghostbusters throughout its life as franchise life, which I guess happens with all big franchises, you know, it happens with Indiana Jones and all that because the stakes are so high and there's so much money involved. But the development of Ghostbusters 3 was its own kind of long and tortured history with multiple versions of it. The most significant and the one that came closest to happening was called Ghostbusters 3 Hell Bent, which was where it was essentially a parallel dimension of Hell that looked like New York City. So it was called Manhelton instead of Manhattan. Yeah, that's a bit of a I was with you until that. And so they had to kind of traverse Manhelton, which was a kind of flip alternate version of New York City.
SPEAKER_01I feel like this is an entire setup just so Bankman can say, I thought we were in New Jersey.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. There was New Jersey jokes in there that Aykroyd and Ramis worked on, which came close to happening in the early 90s, but then you know, again, Bill Murray didn't want to do it, so it just kind of fell apart. And there were a whole bunch of other versions that Aykroyd worked on and hired other writers too. But really, when Harold Ramis died, you know, Ghostbusters 3 died with him, basically. I mean, he's such a yeah integral part of the DNA of it. And my thing was the thing that bothered me about the 2016 one was that I think they grossly underestimated how much he's how beloved he is by both other people, you know, comedy fans in general, but Ghostbusters fans specifically. And if you're gonna do another Ghostbusters, you've got to somehow deal with his passing in some way. You've got to address it directly or some something. And what I liked about Afterlife is maybe they went too far in it in the way they did it in Afterlife, but that's one thing I liked about Afterlife is they put that front and center, which I think was important.
SPEAKER_01Alright. So I will say that probably the only moment in Afterlife I liked was when his ghost showed up and the other three guys were like, What the fuck?
SPEAKER_02Like I cried, I cried like a little girl. Yeah. That was great.
SPEAKER_01I would argue that I I personally I didn't need an acknowledgement of his death in in the 2016 movie, Answer the Call. I needed an Egon character. There's no Egon character.
SPEAKER_02They kind of try to do it with Kate McKinnon and that she's weird and science-y, but it's not the same.
SPEAKER_01She's basically they're they're basically all a pastiche of Vankman and stance.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Except for except for she like her blanking on her name, the black lady from Leslie Jones. Yes, Leslie Jones, who's clearly Zedmore, you know, which also was was lazy as shit, right? Like make make her the Egon. Like, let's change it up here, right? But yeah, there was no Egon character. Like Kate McKinnon was trying to do it, but it she was too weird. You gotta have a straight man. You gotta have, you know. Ghostbusters arguably has like three straight men, which is yet they all get to not be straight at times. From a comedy point of view, we're not getting into sexuality here.
SPEAKER_02Right. So, yeah, anyways, yeah, and the whole blow-up with the with the you know, women in Ghostbusters, it's like there was a there was a cartoon called Ghostbusters, was it Extreme Ghostbusters that had a girl in the Ghostbusters? It's like nobody cared. It's just like the it got caught up in all that political crap with the Trump and Hillary election and everything, and it just got sucked into that, which was kind of unfortunate.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and also it's like on the one hand, I I kind of like that they made the bad guy an incel, but in their hand, like that's yeah, that was interesting. I like that, but that's not what Ghostbusters is about, right? Right? Like, that's like it's about ghosts. Like, it's about busting ghosts.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and making the logo the big band at the end.
SPEAKER_01Oh that's the shit I'm talking about. That's that's the difference between because clearly there, they were like just like in afterlife, they're like, we gotta have the stay puff somehow. Yeah, I will say the VFX of the logo coming to life were really cool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because it was like the effects are great, it's it's the biggest budget of all the Ghostbusters.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, but just like that one in particular, it was like it was like fabric, but it wasn't, it was just it was a really neat, and I'm sure some poor VFX guy was like, I can't believe I didn't get any credit for this. It was just like it was a material you don't usually see on film realized, like in in CGI. Um, but that being said, clearly it was it was fan service. It was like, well, we don't want to do Staypuff, but we're but what if we make the logo who looks like Staypuff into the you know a Staypuff S monster? Like, no, that's that's weak sauce. Like I mean, but also making a bunch of mini Stay Puff Marshmallow men also crappy, like also lazy and also and also dumb. Just stop, just stop with all that, like yeah.
SPEAKER_02And the other thing to go back to development for a second about the 2016 one is we we also know we have a much more detailed blow-by-blow of the development of that film because of the Sony hack, right? If you remember when the interview came out, there was tens of thousands of emails that were released. And if you ever want to go down a rabbit hole, just start reading those things because you read those and you're like, wait a minute, this is how studios are run? Like, this is insane. Some of these emails are nuts, like in terms of like what you thought was a good idea or how you went. It's like, what is wrong with you people? This is so dumb. And these are in charge of like billion-dollar corporations that are uh tasked with entertaining the masses. Come on, guys, get it together.
SPEAKER_01And and as you guys know, the most unforgivable thing for me about the 2016 movie is that you literally have it set up in Ghostbusters 2 when the woman on Peter Venckman's show says the world is gonna end on Valentine's Day 2016 because an alien told her. How do you not use that? Like mess. Oh my god, that would have that would have validated so like even just from a writing point of view, that's your starting point. You've anchored it in the world, now you go from there. But the fact that they couldn't even decide was this a reboot or a sequel just tells you everything you need to know.
SPEAKER_02The market confusion of that, that and again, the the first teaser trailer really confused that because they they played up the association with the original Ghostbusters a lot, and ultimately it had nothing whatsoever to do with that. And I think that pissed off a lot of people, too. That kind of bait and switch there, where you're like, oh, I thought you were gonna honor the original, and it's okay to ignore it, like it's okay to just do your own thing, but don't tell me you're gonna do that and then do something completely different. Like that's marketing, but bad marketing.
SPEAKER_01It was a requel, which is just disaster.
SPEAKER_02Not a legacy sequel, but a requel. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Side note speaking of requels, uh, but but admittedly successful ones, I learned very recently the reason Evil Dead 2 is the way it is, not a comedy, but the fact that it starts off as basically the first one shrunk down into 15 minutes, and that's because when they made the sequel, they didn't have the rights to the first movie. So they couldn't use clips, yeah. So they had to basically do their own rehash. And like previously on Evil Dead. Yeah, and so most people are like, I think it's Bruce Campbell who said just start the movie from when Ash goes flying out of the cabin. But then Sam Raimi is like, no, no, no, no. It's just that Ash Ash's brain got so scrambled, the second one is how he remembers things, and the first one is what actually happened. So you have two you have two up to competing things. But I always that always baffled me, and I would always very quickly forget it because the second one is just so much fun.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But every time I'd watch it, I'd be like, wait a second, why is he doing this?
SPEAKER_02And the whole tone of the the more slapsticky tone, the direct result of Sam Raimi being put on trial in Britain for for the first one.
SPEAKER_03Oh, fair enough.
SPEAKER_02Because of the whole video nasty. He's like, I'm not going to jail again, so we're gonna make this three stooges like it. Yeah. So less intense than the first one.
SPEAKER_01I wonder, I wonder how he fell about Evil Dead Rise.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I liked Evil Dead Rise. I liked it well enough.
SPEAKER_01We got another one coming, so I just mean in terms of you know, look what they're getting away with now.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, yeah. Indeed.
SPEAKER_01I actually haven't seen it, so it's pretty good.
SPEAKER_02The sound mix is great, like the the soundtrack is amazing.
SPEAKER_01You can really hear the cheese grater.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. It really really gets under your skin towards no okay. I'll retire back to my my lair after that one.
SPEAKER_01Back on track. Alright, so we've we've covered the two six uh 2016 movie. Yeah, yep. Quick quick side note.
SPEAKER_00Uh do the fact that that Bill Murray and Terra Ramis had a falling out in the 90s had to have impacted why there was no sequel for a while.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Yeah, and that that's so stupid, that whole like Remus Murray. It's so sad to it. They finally made amends on his deathbed, but like, come on, man. Like that was that was so depressing.
SPEAKER_01Would you would you care to tell the less informed audience what the feud was about?
SPEAKER_02I no one really knows. Like it was just Bill Murray being Bill Murray. Right.
SPEAKER_00He was I guess it was partly because he was an asshole while they were making it. Yeah, it was just Bill Murray was an asshole.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And and Ramus rewrote the script to play into his charming assholeness. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because he knew him so well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You mean when Bill Murray invented Adam Sandler?
SPEAKER_02Invented the Adam Sandler persona. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00One of my favorite Bill Murray stories is when Sophia Coppola asked him to be in her movie, which I'm forgetting the name of. Lost in Translation. Lost in Translation. She had trouble tracking him down because he doesn't have an agent. So she finally tracked him down. They had lunch. He said yes, he'll do it, but she did not know for sure if he was gonna show up, if he was actually gonna be in the movie, until he showed up on the set.
SPEAKER_02That story is told multiple times from people. He just has a phone number you call. And if he hears your message, maybe he'll show up. And that could be a hundred and fifty million dollar movie, or it could be a ten thousand dollar indie that he'll just you know, Jim Jarmers would just call him, hey, come show up. Can you come on? I have this part for you. He's like, alright, I'll show up. I think I think Zombie Land was another one. Like they didn't know he was gonna show up for sure until like the day he just shows up on set. Okay, I guess we're doing the Bill Murray cameo then. Yeah. Which is just insane.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, you know, he can afford to live that way. I guess. That's right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I guess if you if you can get away with it, it's it's uh it's the best. Although it seems like he's not getting away with it as much anymore because of the whole as he's and sorry thing. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01Alright, well, so yeah, so I was just I I I cannot I cannot keep my mouth shut about how I feel about Ghostbusters afterlife.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all right, so here's where we kind of we we kind of rip the starter and get Ditto wound up, and you take it, Deadto.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, and and this is because as I've expressed, I feel very strongly about the camaraderie and the friendship in the first two movies. And I understand that with Harold Remus being not with us anymore, you do have a bit of a narrative problem. But the laziness to just be like, yep, they all had a falling out because he decided Gozer was coming back is is so inherently bad. It's just it's so dumb.
SPEAKER_02And nonsensical, too. And nonsensical. What would they not believe him? Like it just doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_01Like, I can't even I can't even think of a good analogy, but like imagine if in Predator, first of all, okay, imagine not everyone died in Predator, right? So like imagine like imagine they survive Predator, and then a year later Arnold is like, hey, I think there might be another Predator, and his friends are just like, You're crazy, dude. I'm never gonna talk to you again. Like, no, they'd be like, oh shit, I'm gonna get my guns. Like, you know, and so like it's just it just throws out the entire heart of the first two movies just out out of sheer laziness, just so we can justify why Harold Ramis is now or was out in a farmhouse out somewhere in the middle of nowhere, also because that was a video game, that like there was a reference to that in the video game, like and then that does that just unlocks a whole other slew of plot problems that I don't even have to like nerd out and get into. But that to me was just absolutely unforgivable. I will say we had the movie ended where Gozer shows up, we have Stranger Things, I mean the young Ghostbusters fighting Gozer, and like we're losing, and then old old Ghostbusters show up and they're like, Don't worry, we got this, and they whip out the painting of Vigo, and they're like, Go get her, Vig. And Vigo like steps out and fights Gozer, that maybe would have saved the movie.
SPEAKER_02There you go. That's some fanfiction there for you.
SPEAKER_01As it was, it was just fan service. It was just awful. So did not see the newer one. I am baffled by anyone who thinks in today's modern climate change. Fearing times that winter makes a good bad guy. Like, I am baffled by that choice. Like, hey, we might never see snow again. Ever. Let's make a movie about how bad it would be if it's snow. Like, but they're frozen with fear, Deto. And it's kind of like it takes place in Miami where it's not supposed to get snow. It's New York, which has famously rough winters. Right. It's just like, what Studio Exec who never left LA thought that was a good idea for us.
SPEAKER_02That we're doing uh Mr. Freeze's plot from at Man and Robin, basically.
SPEAKER_01Some dude who grew up in San Diego was just like, yeah, snow is terrifying. Like a bad guy who snows. Like just horrible. But I didn't even see the movie. Maybe it's awesome. I don't know. Yeah. It's not.
SPEAKER_02It's not all right. Anyway. I can't even discuss it because I don't remember it. So it gave you brain freaks. But yeah, but I I I liked Afterlife more than you did. All the stuff you mentioned bothered me. But also, I was I'm just kind of like when it comes to Ghostbusters, kind of just helpless by made helpless by my own nostalgia. Which is and and to give an example, like when I really engage with the movie was when I'm watching it, and the new characters are fine. Like it's it's well directed, it's reasonably well written, like I like these characters well enough and everything. But I'm like, okay, but it doesn't necessarily feel like a Ghostbusters movie, even though it has you know some of the references to the to the earlier. But as soon as the Mackenzie Grace character, she has the Proton pack, right, and she's out in that field or whatever where the big where the build the run building is, and she switches it on, and it's the same sound effect from the original, that sound of like that that of the of the the pack turning on. And that my my the hairs on the back of my neck kind of literally stood up because I'm like, oh my god, it's back. It's like that sound that I loved, that that lore that I loved, that that style that I loved is back. And from then on, I was like, Alright, you got me. All you needed was a sound effect to get me back in. I could do a whole rant on the nostalgia of sound effects, especially when it comes to like Star Wars or something, about how almost just like music, it's as like it just kind of bypasses your intellectual capacity, it just like gets into the nostalgia sensors of your brain. Um, and then from then on, I was in. I really liked it from that on. And like I said, I cried when he when Harold Raymond showed up at the end.
SPEAKER_01Like, I hear what you're saying, and and yeah, absolutely, but like for me, they you know, they seem to think that that's all they had to do. They just checked the nostalgia boxes, they didn't worry about the plot holes, they didn't worry about how they're just ruining like and what kills me is like you know, we're living in a time where everyone wants a shared universe, but this movie this movie took all the fundamentals of the universe and just cut them to ribbons for the sake of uh making the movie work where it was, right? Like, and it just just it just bothered me so much that yeah, it's cool to hear that noise and stuff like that, but like it it it it just tore the heart out of the out of the first out of the films, and it's like so to me it does not exist because I refused to I refuse to live in a world where Venckman and Stance gave up on Egon because he dared to say, hey guys, we the job might not be done, you know? Like I also I also think it's stupid as hell that like Gozer is back, like that's it's also lazy as shit and and incredibly dumb. But more importantly, it's just like that's not how they would react. It's just yeah, hell, I mean, we all we all know old people, they all want their like they would probably be freaking psyched, and they'd be like, cool, we get we get our gl we know glory again, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we can put the packs back on, right? You know, like look at how many boomers want to hate communists, like yeah, it just sits back to the laziness of like what we talked about already with like the legacy sequel movement of just why just why why do you have to make everybody so goddamn miserable? Why can't we just have the camaraderie that we had you know before and just kind of take the next step with it?
SPEAKER_01You know, that is that is a very good point, right? Yeah, it's like I don't I don't want my heroes, it's not it's not grown up, it's not mature to think that like Han and Leia are getting a divorce or you know Luke or Luke Luke is a miserable old fucker, yeah, you know, like it's just no, it's just it's just incredibly cynical.
SPEAKER_02Well then too, and it's also the the Ryan Johnson thing of like subverting expectations, right? Well, here's the thing it's very easy to subvert expectations, it's not that hard, despite what people think. It's very easy to think of things, all you gotta do is just do the opposite, right? Well, what if you know, instead of Luke being uh a noble hero, what if he's like a miserable old bastard and wants to shut down the force and wants to wants to go and die? Okay, yeah, that's unexpected. That's interesting, but is it satisfying? No, it's not. Like it's hard to make, and that's what gets into the issue of of sequels and and and engineering a sequel that's satisfying. It's hard to make something that's unexpected dramatically, but still satisfying for an audience. That's really hard to do. And if you don't care about satisfying an audience, then you can do whatever you want, but you're gonna pay the price for it, which is what kind of Last Jedi happened. Which is it's a it's an interesting script, it's a good script, but it's not as the the eighth part in a nine-part series, it's the worst possible thing you can do because it just kind of cuts everything off and gives you nowhere to go, and you know, is not satisfying and just is not what you need.
SPEAKER_01It also seemed like he somehow managed to do it without telling Disney. Yeah, yeah, right. Nobody nobody cared, seriously.
SPEAKER_00They seem just as surprised. Yeah, and it's hard to play. No, Rise of Skywalker is just a disaster.
SPEAKER_02Well, as long as I'm on the podcast, I'll find a way to do it at some point.
SPEAKER_01Well, I know I know I know that our 20th episode is gonna be the Ewok Christmas special.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. An Ewok Adventure.
SPEAKER_01But no, but I I will say I did actually like the climactic battle between Luke and Kylo. I did too. Yeah. I thought that was cool. And I but I I also fully acknowledge that if I was 13, I'd be left with nerdy blue balls. Because at 13, I would absolutely want to see the lightsaber duel of the ages. But yeah, you know, I forget how old I was when I saw it. Let's when did that movie come out? How long ago? Oh, which one? The the middle one, the one we're just like, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that was 2017.
SPEAKER_012017. So that was eight years ago. Yeah. So I was I was all of 41. I was like, that was okay.
SPEAKER_02Sorry.
SPEAKER_01That was a that was a good way to do that, right? Like some rooted expectations, but it was also satisfying, and it was also true to the character. Yeah, right. That was the best part. It's like, oh, that is what Luke would do, right? Yeah. So I agree. Like I actually really liked what uh Ryan Johnson was trying to do. Yeah, me too. I just respected it, yeah. I wish he had been given the full trilogy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like I like that one the best of the three.
SPEAKER_02It's by far the best film of those three. Yeah, yeah. It's it's uh from a screenplay standpoint and from a crowd, it's just it's the best movie. But it's the best movie, but it's the worst movie for the franchise. Essentially, it's like a franchise. Yeah, and it's also like you know, sequels also have the one last thing, just like has the bad rap of like like pleasing an audience is a bad thing. It's like, no, it's like you're making for Last Jedi, like, or you're making the seventh sequel in a series, right? There's no reason for this to exist. The original Lucas inspiration is gone, right? He he told his story, we're done. So the only reason to make these is because people want them. So why not just give them what they want? Yes. Like, don't that's not a sin, you know, to give people what they want.
SPEAKER_01I want a sexy lady Luke Skywalker.
SPEAKER_02Well, um, where's Mary Jade, by the way, to get into Star Wars nerdy stuff? So that's a whole other podcast. That's Google Mary Jade. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, what I was gonna say was we're gonna get back to Ghostbusters now. Yes. And since we've all agreed that the sequels don't actually exist, how how would you guys do a Ghostbusters 3? And you can choose to have the original cast or start from scratch. Ken, let's start with you. Jeez. I didn't even have to be a good idea. Yeah, inbounds for that one, Deddo. I know. Yeah, well, I just came up with it. Well, all right, go do a bump of cocaine.
SPEAKER_00Just merely make it the 80s. Yeah. Uh so direct sequel to Ghostbusters 2. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And any like right after? Yeah, you can do it as if the original cast is still alive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Or you can do it. You can do it with a whole new cast.
SPEAKER_00Well, I would want I would want the the original cast, I would want the cast back. I wouldn't want a whole new cast. This is terrible. I'm not gonna come up with anything good.
SPEAKER_02Well, I would just say, like, uh to you can still keep thinking again. The thing that would be interesting that they haven't dealt with and that the that Venckman even says in in the first film, when he says, you know, the franchise rights alone will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams, that idea hasn't really been explored about Ghostbusters being a franchise, being everywhere, being across the country and being around the world or something like that. Um, and that would give you, I think, a lot of narrative opportunities, not just for different stories, but also for different people, different casts, right? You know, what is what does Ghostbusters look like in LA versus New York, you know, in terms of different types of cities and and different sensibilities and different and you can have different comic voices in there that contrast with the original um set, and different types of styles and different types of of ways to go about telling stories.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I think that going down that road would be interesting to me. I'd want to see, you know, more about outside of New York City, what is what is this world like, and also like how the world deals with it too, because it's very localized and we don't really get much of a sense of the rest of the world. Um, and so I think that's what good sequels do, I think is they they expand out from what the original inspiration was to kind of deepen it and making it a little more interesting and a little more expansive than what you get in the first one.
SPEAKER_00Great point, actually. And maybe, you know, we talked about how important New York is to these movies, yeah. But maybe this is the movie where they go to LA and it's a very LA specific kind of a threat. And the real the way people react the way people who live in LA react differently to all the different ghosts that they encounter, there could be a lot of there could be a lot of comedy in that. Yeah, or Chicago.
SPEAKER_01So yeah. Well, think about it, like LA, like, I mean, yeah, and this might be one of those cases where you're getting too into the weeds about the plot ramifications, but like someone in LA is gonna want the ghost of Frank Sinatra or the ghost girl, you know, to be in their movies, right? Like, and you could if you did a modern version, you could be like, you know, oh, suddenly this company is doing this great AI, and everyone's like, How are they doing this? And it turns out they're right, they're enslaving the ghost. Maybe the Ghostbusters have to rescue the ghosts. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00Maybe there's some kind of a meta story where they're making a Ghostbusters movie, a movie. Okay. I think they're I think they could do it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the other genuinely interesting development from the the Tortured Ghostbusters 3 development, which was our Ackered was working on an idea about the kind of large the large collider, the super collider, like CERN and the Hadron Collider, with that created parallel universes, and that would be interesting. I would like to have read that script or seen that script where that was kind of the central part of it. Uh, because I remember him at the time giving interviews where he was very excited about it and talking about the the ramifications of parallel universes and was very much in keeping with his original treatment for Ghostbusters, which is insane, by the way. If any of you guys have read like summaries of that, yeah, it's bonkers crazy. There's like different planets and different dimensions, and it's it's crazy. Um, so maybe not quite that far, but that idea of bringing in the parallel universe idea, I think, is something you kept coming back to, which I think would be interesting.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a good I'll tell you.
SPEAKER_02Um I I have a feeling the whole reason we started this, we did this episode is so we can get Detto's Ghostbusters pitches.
SPEAKER_01It actually wasn't. I actually just I actually just pulled this out of my ass while we were thinking about what to say. But uh no, alright, so so here's my big pitch, and I will, and and I think it dovetails nicely with yours, Professor. And this is this is a larger thing about me, which I know you guys have heard me say before. Stop remaking movies, stop sequeling movies, give me crossovers. I want Ghostbusters 3 to be Ghostbusters versus Evil Dead. How fucking amazing would that be? That would be cool. We can we can we can throw in Bruce Campbell, that would be the dream team, but you could also like start from scratch if you're doing a multiverse thing, you know, or Ghostbusters versus the Conjuring, or you know Ghostbusters and Men in Black. I personally would prefer to keep it uh supernatural rather than aliens, you know? That's just because like then you then you're just going full comic book. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I just think like give me give me crossovers. Yeah, that's that's how you start making stuff. And since 90% of IP is owned by five studios, like this is very doable. I don't know if I don't know if I don't know who owns Evil Dead.
SPEAKER_02Is it maybe the Warner Brothers family, I think? Like I think Brian essentially eventually at some point.
SPEAKER_01No, so Ghostbusters versus Evil Dead might not happen, but I guarantee Winescape maybe.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Sony has other properties that we that the the the busters could bust, and it would be it would be amazing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? So that's my that's my big pitch.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Okay, some sort of crossover.
SPEAKER_01Some sort of crossover, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Ghostbusters conjuring. That's kind of I'm actually picturing it now.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00There you go. The Warrens wandering.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, or you know, we do have a sort of crossover, and and Aykroyd has given an interview recently where he acknowledged this is canon.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if Aykroyd is the final say on any of it.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, he did create it, so well, you know where I'm going, Deadto, right? Okay, the the Casper cameo, right? So in the beginning of the 1995 of Casper, there's a sight gag where Dan Aykroyd with a mustache, by the way, which is just weird. That's just I just think that was weird. He's got his Ghostbusters get up, his race stance name on his jumpsuit, and comes out and says, Who are you gonna call? And he says, Someone else, and then he walks away. He has acknowledged that that is Ghostbusters canon.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I don't know if we care about a Ghostbusters Casper crossover. Emotion. They don't accept it. But what about okay, what about Ghostbusters?
SPEAKER_00Ghostbusters meets Beetlejuice.
SPEAKER_01There you go. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like like there's there's some good, there's there's some good shit out there. Yeah. Like there you go. Ghost Ghostbusters versus the ring.
SPEAKER_00Well, I feel like the thing about Beetlejuice that I like is I feel like it's on the same the uh the ring or or evil dead, like the violence level is probably too off-kilter.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if that's the right word that I'm looking for. Whereas like I feel like Beetlejuice would mesh really well. Yeah, in terms of the PG sensibility.
SPEAKER_01Although I do feel like I feel like you can make Evil Dead work because Evil Dead has gotten campier and campier. Yeah, and slash sticky. Not so I'm not talking, like obviously, I'm not talking Evil Dead Rise or the Modern Ever Dead, yeah. Or the other I'm talking about like Army of Darkness level, Evil Dead, yeah, and like and you so you can do a lot of stuff off-screen, and you just replace blood with slime. You so you can still have some real gross things, but like, you know, it doesn't have to be like actual viscera. Yeah. I think I think that could absolutely work. And of course, then you get then you get Bruce Campbell with a shotgun or with a proton damage to his arm, you know, like that would be amazing. That would be that would be pretty awesome. So just put it out there in the universe for all our all our ones of listeners to that's right.
SPEAKER_02Go go think about that for a while. Go write that fanfiction.
SPEAKER_01Alright, well, I think now it's time to play some games. Yeah. Some games. We're gonna start with the the budget game. Cool. Professor with his absolute encyclopedic brain is going to run the budget game.
SPEAKER_02Very well. I think we can do a franchise budget game, right? We can go film by film if we need to. But to start with, I do, and I remember this number because I'm a giant freaking nerd. So I do have a specific number of the budget for two. Now there was competing sources, some have a range of it, but I think this specific number is would be pretty close to what it was. And just for reference, I'll give you the the first one. The first one budget budget was $30 million in 1983 and 84, which was a lot of money then. That was quite a bit. Yeah, exactly. And that's the other thing about the Ghostbusters, too, is like they part of the sequel development was they would say still wanted to keep the budget down. That was the other thing that held it back, which was they were all willing to do it, but they were all gonna take their full price. So, like Murray wanted 10 million, they all wanted 10 million, the budget was escalating just to pay them to come back. So you're talking 50, 60, 70 million dollars in 1988 or 89, which was just cost prohibitive, that just wasn't gonna happen. So they got the budget down by having them take a little less money up front, but took a piece of the back end to pay them that way. So 30 million was the first one. Do you want to guess what the budget is for Ghostbusters 2? Daddo? With with because you've done some extra research with the book, so you have a whole lot of you know, all about the physical production of it in there.
SPEAKER_01But I'm also a horrible student. So I actually I actually feel like I read at one point that they said that the budget was supposed to be the same. It was supposed to be 30 mil. But I'm assuming that didn't inflate, so I'm gonna go with 40 mil. Okay. 40 million dollars, Ken.
SPEAKER_00I think it's more than that. I'm gonna say 60.
SPEAKER_02Good guesses, both. 37 million dollars was the vote. So you almost got it right on right on, Deb. The range that I saw was 30 to 40 for the most part, but the specific numbers I was probably it was probably 60 with PA, Ken. Yeah, and 60 was the number it was starting to get up to, Ken, which is when you know, when they were paying everybody full price up front. Yeah. And they said, no, we can't do that. So they kind of scaled it back by having them take less money up front and just get some back end money, essentially. So they all took they all have back-end deals to get to get the movie made.
SPEAKER_0037 mil now would be such a bargain.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's like an episode of streaming TV now. It is 37 million dollars.
SPEAKER_01That's five minutes of Apple TV.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. So the movie was, even though it didn't do as well as the first one. I mean, how many movies did do as well as the first one? Because it was a giant monster hit, but it, you know, it made a significant amount of money to cover that budget and to cover the expenditure. So it did okay in the end. Um, do you want to guess the budget for the 2016 remake or requel or whatever the hell we want to call it?
SPEAKER_01I like requests.
SPEAKER_02In 20 requel in 2016 dollars.
SPEAKER_01150 million.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Ken. Uh uh 149.99.
SPEAKER_02You are both correct. I found a range. The specific number I found was 144, but the range I found was between 144 and 154 because they also did a lot of research. So you guys are right on. Yeah, so you guys are right on. Awesome. Um and then do you want to try? I'm gonna skip Frozen Empire, we're not gonna do that one. Do you want to try Afterlife? The budget. Budget for Afterlife. I have a specific number for that one.
SPEAKER_01Budget for Afterlife is zero dollars because it does not exist.
SPEAKER_02It's well then Ken, you can play, right?
SPEAKER_00It is less. I'll give you that.
SPEAKER_02It is less.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna say 120.
SPEAKER_02Okay, do you want to try Deto or just doesn't exist?
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna go with an even Hundo.
SPEAKER_02It's 75. So the price of the 2016. And that was the big lesson was that the 2016 movie made a decent amount of money, but if the budget wasn't so inflated, it would have done fine in terms of profitability. Um, so when they did another Ghostbusters, you're like, okay, you'll do it, but you're not gonna go over a hundred, or you're not gonna go as high on the budget, we're gonna keep the budget down.
SPEAKER_01But they cut it in so half. They cut it in half. That would almost that would almost be enough to make me like the movie if it was remotely good. Wow. Yeah. Indeed. All right, well, so related, I just it occurred to me I wanted to throw out a couple little factoids about the movie that I know that we never got to from the book that I just thought were delightful. The first of which being the courtroom scene. Was shot on a reused set from Legal Eagles. Oh.
SPEAKER_02The Ivan Reitman directed Legal Eagles. Wow. I haven't seen that movie.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And then other little interesting tidbit, not necessarily budget related, Baby Oscar was played by two twins. Henry and Hank Duschendorf. Oh no, wait, that's I think the same thing. Henry and William Duschendorf. But do we know what celebrity they're related to? Oh I don't think I do.
SPEAKER_00No, I don't either.
SPEAKER_01Alright, I'll give you a hint. Duschendorf is not a clue. Is it a fake idiot name? That's right. No, I don't I don't really know what the story is there. But they are, according to my magic book, they are nephews of Country Roads John Denver. Really? Yes. That's amazing. Yeah, and there was no explanation to that. They just they just throw that in there. There's no explanation to how that happens. No context.
SPEAKER_00John Denver born John Duschendorf?
SPEAKER_01That's definitely possible. Maybe. Maybe Duschendorf is how you say Denver in German. I'm looking this up right now.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say, we have to look this up now.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and and lastly, as you know, we do know that Jason Reitman is in the movie as the obnoxious kid. That scene in the in the what appears to be a brownstone is actually shot on the third floor of the firehouse. Okay that they never used. And one other relative of the cast has a cameo. Do you guys want to guess who the psychologist is related to when they're locked up in the uh in the psychological?
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's Brian Doriel Murray.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's Bill Murray.
SPEAKER_02Bill Murray's brother.
SPEAKER_00Oh, right. Yes. And you you see it. He looks yeah, he sounds just like Bill Murray. Yeah, but it's a little grout a little scratchier, but yeah. It never occurred to me. So John Denver born Henry John Duschendorf Jr. There you go.
SPEAKER_02How about that?
SPEAKER_00I don't make this shit up. That is some good trivia.
SPEAKER_02Or Deutschendorf, I guess is how you say it. Deutschendorf.
SPEAKER_01Duschendorf. You're making me laugh by saying it that way. Depends on what part of Germany you're from. That's right. There you go. How about that? I'm sure I'm forgetting others. So, like, really, listeners, I high if you're a Ghostbusters fan, highly recommend Ghostbusters The Ultimate Visual History by one Daniel Wallace. It's got a ton of great interviews, it's got some really in-depth research. Nice great photos, tons and tons of sketches and visualizations. Like the original concept of Vigo is like straight out of an anime. It's like it looks like it's from One Piece. It's crazy. Like, I was like, how did you get from that to what we have? You know? Uh so it's it's real, it's really cool to see. I'm not normally a big coffee table book fan, but this one was absolutely worth it.
SPEAKER_02So a place of honor next to your Ghostbusters poster, right? Which you have a framed Ghostbusters poster.
SPEAKER_01I do. It's actually directly above my computer. So I'm actually looking at it as I talk to you guys.
SPEAKER_02There you go.
SPEAKER_01Last but not least, it's time for the Walken Awards. This might be a rare movie where like it doesn't actually need Christopher Walken in it.
SPEAKER_02No, no.
SPEAKER_01That being said, we're gonna play the game anyways.
SPEAKER_02So the movie though, not as quotable as the first one. It feels like the original Ghostbusters is maybe one of the most quotable movies of all time. It feels like every other line wound up on a t-shirt in the 80s.
SPEAKER_01But I there are some there are some gems that I absolutely love. One of which is Vigo, Vigo, Vigo, you've been a bad monkey. Which I say I still to this day say that, and people look at me like, what the fuck are you talking about? Uh and then also like right right there at the same time is Johnny, did you back the wrong horse? So good. So good. But of course, nothing as good as when someone asks if you're a god, you say yes. You say yes, anything along those lines.
SPEAKER_02Back off, man, I'm a scientist. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so she's a dog. Yeah. Yeah. But Ken, do you have any nominees for a Walken Award?
SPEAKER_00I do have one. Speaking of the Deutschendorfs, I really enjoy when Venckman is talking to the baby, and he says, You're short, your belly button sticks out too far, and you're a terrible burden on your poor mother.
SPEAKER_01No, that's a good thing. Because he's putting him down. That's yeah, that's when he's putting the baby down. Yeah. Yeah. Solid. Yeah. I'm trying like on the one hand, I think Yanosh as Walken's.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was gonna say pretty much all of Yanosh's lines could be a Walken award.
SPEAKER_01But at the same time, they're also just they're so good already, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But my my favorite being, why am I drippings with goo? That would be probably my favorite. Is why am I drippings with goo?
SPEAKER_01My favorite is my favorite is everything you're doing is bad. I need you to know this.
SPEAKER_02It's I need you to know this, is the thing that that really makes it, essentially. Uh um, let's see, do I I I just kind of like wrote down stuff that I remember. I didn't go back and look at just like something stuck in my mind. And what one that I just like the way Murray says it, and I think Walkin could really nail this is do you know how weird it is out there? Where Bankman goes, have you been out there? Do you know how weird it is out there? And just Walken going, Do you know how weird it is out there would be great.
SPEAKER_01Um actually, you know who would probably like the Mayor's Aid played by Kurt Fuller. Kurt Fuller, yeah. Good walking swap.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, everybody's favorite late 80s asshole. Yeah, you know, most famous probably for No Holds Bard, where he's just he's just insane in that movie. He just goes completely over the top and is not maybe we'll do that on this podcast one day of No Holds Bard. And this this one just made me laugh because it's so random, and I didn't even get this at the time when I was a kid, but now being a film nerd, when Venckman is trying to entertain Oscar and he says, I have some Laura Antonelli tapes if you want to watch them. I know. At the time I didn't know what that meant, but now it's just so random and weird that even Cisco Neeber had to acknowledge that was funny.
SPEAKER_00So I also know who Laura Antonelli is anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I also really like the bit about the the Joe Namath sweatshirt where he's like he's like, I got this from a girl who says she got it from Joe Namath. We don't know, we don't wanna know.
SPEAKER_02And I do like Louis Tully's line, I had a roommate, but my mom moved to Florida.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that is good. I'm I'm honestly shocked how little he's in the movie.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it does feel like he was cut out, right? Yeah, and you mentioned that's whole subplot, he was in fact cut out, right, Dotto?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he was, yeah. But uh, you know, and he was huge at that point, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that's yeah, this is the same year as Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Yeah, so you know, he's blowing up in a in a well, so he was a pun for the sequel. Yeah, it's a sequel to Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Um, he was you know in two blockbusters that that summer.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, I mean he was he was this huge, massive star.
SPEAKER_02And now I can't believe it. Speaking of sequels, oh yeah. Coming back for Space Balls 2. How about that?
SPEAKER_01One we might actually be excited about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I can't tell you how excited I am about it. I was kind of indifferent to it before, but holy shit, if he's gonna be in it, I can't believe it.
SPEAKER_01I uh Mel Brooks is so old.
SPEAKER_02You better shoot that yogurt cameo before I know it's hard, it's hard to believe how it's gonna be funny.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, even though it's how much is he actually involved in it?
SPEAKER_02I mean, I think it's just a name only. Like supposedly it's Josh Gadd and a couple of the other writers who actually wrote it. I mean, sure, he has some input on it. Yeah, I will say, yeah.
SPEAKER_01That doesn't necessarily make me feel better.
SPEAKER_02Well, there is history of the world part two, which was not very good and not very funny.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I really liked History of the World Part two, but that was maybe full of dick jokes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there you go. But the the teaser trailer that he introduced, it was his part was funny where it's him on camera just saying, you know, we wanted to make you know it was the the joke was you know, everybody wanted us to make a sequel, we had these great ideas for it. He's like, but we made this one instead, which made me laugh. So I think it's still there if he's if he's written properly for him. So I'm I'm gonna be optimistic.
SPEAKER_01Side note, I remember as a kid, it took me a longer time than I should admit to figure out that there is no history of the world part one. Like, I saw History of the World Part two, probably younger than I should have, and then I was like, this was hilarious. I want to see the first one, up and down the video shelves, could not find it. Finally figured out years later, oh, that was a joke.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just like Jews in space at the end, right?
SPEAKER_01Speaking of jokes, because I've got IMDB page open and they're playing the trailer, but that bit when they do their commercial and they're like, you mean the commemorative Ghostbusters mug and balloons for the kid, and then it says limit one per family. One per family. That is just hilarious. Like, I don't even have kids, and I can't imagine the trouble that would cause the family though, you know, with kids who want Ghostbuster balloons. So yeah. All right. Well, I think I think you know, everyone already knows that they should trust us about Ghostbusters 2. Um, I will say, you know, it's funny because you know, the consensus is it was critically panned and and people don't think it's as good. And and I've certainly seen I've certainly seen that echoed recently. If you go to the IMDB page and you look at the reviews, every single one of them starts with, I don't know why people say this movie is bad. It's awesome. You have to go down like seven reviews before you finally get to one that's like, this is actually not good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'm hoping about that. You know, cinema score A- So people actually watch the movie, they like that.
SPEAKER_02And Ken, you you are our control group on this, right? Because I am you are not immersed in in Ghostbusters the way we are, and you hadn't seen it in a very long time, and you had fun with it. So, like, if you don't trust us, trust Ken, right? Trust me.
SPEAKER_01And this seems like a good time to tell our faithful listeners that we're shifting the format of the podcast for the next season. We're just gonna do every episode of the Ghostbusters cartoon.
SPEAKER_02This is now a real Ghostbusters podcast, which I'm on board with.
SPEAKER_01And then we're gonna do what what was the other what was the other show called?
SPEAKER_02The the knockoff but it wasn't a knockoff show, it was actually called Ghostbusters. Well, you know the story behind that, right? Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Universal had the rights.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, go Google that.
SPEAKER_01It's a whole thing because there was and the original Ghostbusters?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there were the the filmation still had the rights to the Ghostbusters, so they just did an animated show based on that, but it's completely different from the Ghostbusters that was successful.
SPEAKER_01So it is actually based on the movie, the one the where the rights came from. There's actually a gorilla in the movie.
SPEAKER_02Well, in the TV show from the that was based on the TV show, the TV 70s. No, it's a TV show from the 70s.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay. All right.
SPEAKER_02So but yes, all that stuff in that cartoon is at all. The dematerializer. Oh yeah, it's a whole thing.
SPEAKER_00So two different Ghostbusters cartoons.
SPEAKER_02So just really quickly, like and you're so old. When they were making yeah, when they were making Ghostbusters, the the one that we know, the 84 one, there was some question as to whether they could call it Ghostbusters.
SPEAKER_00Oh the cartoon existed or the movie.
SPEAKER_02Yes, it was a TV show from the 70s, done by Filmation, a live-action TV show. Okay. That had two guys, two older character actors. I don't remember their names offhand. You guys can Google it and find out. And they had a sidekick, a gorilla sidekick, just a dude in a monkey suit. Okay. And they had ghost busting equipment. It was different technology. They had something called a dematerializer that he just held up and shot at a ghost, and they dematerialized.
SPEAKER_01They drove a car that was very reminiscent of chitty chitty bang bang.
SPEAKER_02Yes, a chitty chitty bang bang like car that had like gadgets and stuff on it. Total. Yes. And it was a kid's show. It wasn't all that successful. It lasted, I don't know how many episodes, but not very long, and then just disappeared forever until Ackroyd had the idea and he wanted to call it Ghostbusters, because that's what it is. They had the even had the no ghost logo and everything. But legally, they were unsure if they were able to call it Ghostbusters. I don't know what they would have called it if they couldn't. And I think there was some kind of deal worked out where they could use the name.
SPEAKER_01So at one point, this maybe this is in my book, but I didn't read the first chapter. I skipped ahead to Ghostbusters 2 because I knew we were recording this. But I read I read a story somewhere once that basically someone someone had taken took over Universal or whoever had the rights, and they were friends with either Reitman or somebody at Columbia. And they were shooting the climactic scene. And the person on the other end was like, okay, fine, you can have the you can have the right. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Back in the old days when everybody was friends.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just pick up the phone and call somebody.
SPEAKER_01So, but yeah, it was. I remember that's the other thing. Every once in a while, you know, like this is back in the day of TV Guide, right? You're like, what's on? Oh, Ghostbusters. It's the bad Ghostbusters. So the cartoon starred someone named Pat Fraley and Peter Cullen.
SPEAKER_02Of course, because Peter Cullen was in every pretty much.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I don't know if that meant they were also in the TV show. They looked like they might have been.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, that so they reboot, they did an animated show in the mid-80s when Ghostbusters got big because they wanted to cash in on the name. And I wish I watched that show too, for that reason. And then watched a few episodes. I'm like, nah, this is not Ghostbusters, and so stopped watching it. So it didn't last very long. It was interesting, but it wasn't Ghostbusters.
SPEAKER_01I'm looking at some stills here. The face animation is surprisingly good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean they put a lot of money into it. I mean, it's the same, they did Masters of the Universe, you know, so it's the same kind of art team and and design.
SPEAKER_01So I just got to a still of a guy who is blatantly Adam.
SPEAKER_02Yes. I'm sure they reused, they must have reused some animation cells and did everything to cut down costs. So, but it's basically the same team that did Master of the Universe did that as well.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I I dare I say I kind of wish the Ghostbusters movie had a giant gorilla in it. I guess he's an average-sized gorilla. He's not a giant gorilla, he's a very normal-sized gorilla. Uh all right, well, okay, so yeah, April Fools, we are not in fact doing the Ghostbusters TV shows. We are going to go back to where we talk about our favorite independent B movies, obscure movies that you haven't heard of that we think deserve a look.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But this is something we want to do once in a while, where we take a bigger movie, maybe once every ten episodes or so, if only so people will actually listen.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02People to talk about a movie people have heard of and seen as opposed to something they never heard of and will never watch.
SPEAKER_01Right. So assuming we get through another nine episodes, you just might get a very special episode of No Really Trust Us. Until then, thanks for listening. Tune in next week when we go back to a obscure movie you haven't heard of that we hope you'll like. Bye everyone. Thanks for listening. If you've got a movie that you love and you think more people should know about, drop us a line at no really trustus at gmail.com or on Instagram at No Really Trust Us. Don't forget to rate and subscribe, and we'll see you next time.