Once the characters had been addressed, each section of the script was carefully scrutinized. One of the first things to go was the entire finale of Aykroyd's original draft--an involved series of events which culminated with the three Ghostbusters being whisked into alternate dimensions. "In a sense, it seemed almost like two different movies," Ramis explained. "And while I think most people can accept the notion of the supernatural as being one thing, interdimensional travel to them is sort of a shadow area that relates more to outer space. It just seemed too big a leap for the audience to make." Aykroyd's ghostbusting technology was kept essentially intact, while other elements--such as the Stay-Puft marshmallow man--were retained, but with a shift in location or emphasis.
Since the film was to tell how the Ghostbusters became Ghostbusters, a back story had to be introduced. "It was my idea to set the guys as parapsychologists at a university," said Reitman. "I figured that's probably where they would be if they were really into that sort of thing." Reitman, in fact, was a persuasive influence on the script. Time was of the essence, and with Aykroyd and Ramis on the premises, hunched over their respective typewriters, it was relatively easy to make certain the project did not go too far astray. "There was no time for that. In the beginning, we were all locked up in rooms together--all day long, sometimes all night long. But even later, when I was involved doing a lot of other things, I would go in and spend half an hour, read what they'd done, make some suggestions, make some edits, disappear for half a day, come back, see a revision--and so on."
"Basically," said Ramis, "we worked out a new story that made sense to the three of us. Then, Dan and I divided up the responsibility of getting it down in screenplay form. Ivan, as always, was a good validator--which is a useful fuction for a writer. Often, people write in a total void, not knowing what the effects of their writing will be. With Ivan, we got immediate feedback. And his instincts were always good. As a writer, sometimes you'll put three good jokes in a dialogue scene where you really need only one. That doesn't sound too terrible; but after the first one the audience's tendency to laugh at the second and third is a bit diminished. Ivan always goes for the big laugh and then gets out, as opposed to hanging in there and milking it for more and more. I actually enjoyed showing him each scene as I finished it. Then I could either proceed with confidence or go back and fix it.
"Dan wrote, I'd say, about five times faster than I did. At the end of the first day, he had about forty pages and I had about five. But it was a good collaboration. Dan's great at creating funny situations, whereas my strength is more in the area of strong jokes and funny dialogue. Essentially, we wrote separately, and then rewrote each other--which is a classic way of play writing. Most people hate being rewritten--at least they hate being rewritten badly. But everyone likes being rewritten well. Ther are no auteurs in comedy--comedy has to be validated. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. When you're working with really good people, there's a natural ascendency of good ideas. No matter how much you insist on it, you can't convince someone that something is funny if they don't think it is. There's just no way you can sell a bad idea to smart people. And there's no way a good idea will not be recognized--that's how ou know it's a good idea. Dan and I had never worked together as writers--in fact, although we were friends, we'd never worked together at all--and I think he was pretty amazed that I could take what he'd written, hang on to the best of it, and then embroider it and embellish it and actually improve it."
As the script progressed, Ivan Reitman shifted his attention to other pressing matters. "I had told Frank Price that he was going to have to start spending money before he ever saw a word--which from the start, meant a commitment to all of us in terms of our various salaries, which were considerable. Beyond that, in order to deliver the film on schedule, commitments would have to be made in the area of production design and special effects. Under the auspices of Michael Gross, we hired a number of artists who were put to work doing sort of free-form designs for the various kinds of ghosts I could see developing in the story. Michael was also doing some preliminary research into who might be available t handle the effects. Obviously, we had to get someone who could deliver the special effects--both artistically and effectively."
"At first, we weren't sure where to turn," Gross recalled. "Short of spaceship models in space, Ghostbusters was going to involve every kind of special effects there were, from animated puppets and a man-in-a-suit monster to matte paintings and opticals--everything. Unfortunately, most of the major effects facilities were already booked. Dune was over at Apogee at the time, and Industrial Light and Magic was finishing Return of the Jedi and beginning Indiana Jones and Star Trek III. So that whole aspect of the project was very scary. Then we learned that Richard Edlund was planning to leave ILM and go into business for himself." Edlund--a preeminent member of the special effects community--was oneof the old guard at the Lucasfilm facility, having joined the organization during the Star Wars days. But after seven years and three Oscars--he has since garnered a fourth--the veteran effects supevisor yearned to be out on his own. Having already discussed with Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich the possibility of his taking over exclusive operation of their premier 65mm effects facility in Marina del Rey, Edlund found Ghostbusters to be the perfect project to initiate his move. With joint backing from Columbia and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer--for whom Edlund was also doing 2010--the Entertainment Effects Group facility was quickly upgraded with new equipment, staffed with a seasoned effects crew and launched into battle against a killer deadline. "We consider ourselves very fortunate to have been able to put that connection together," Gross continued, "because frankly, if the situation with Richard hadn't occurred, I don't know if we could have done the picture."
Meanwhile, Ivan Reitman and Joe Medjuck were hastily assembling the remaining key members of the production unit. One of the first to sign on was three-time Oscar-winning production designer John DeCuir. Among other things, DeCuir would devise and supervise construction of the Gozar temple--one of the biggest indoor sets ever built in Hollywood. With studied inputs from Edlund and DeCuir, Ghostbusters' seat-of-the-pants budget estimate was refined and adjusted to just under $30 million. In the months that followed, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs joined the group, as did costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge and editor Sheldon Kahn. "Meanwhile, we were still hashing out the script," said Reitman. "After our first draft, we had the story pretty well locked in. We knew basically how we were going to have them start out and where we were going to go with them, but what took us several more drafts to work out were the details. For the longest time, the movie never really got going until the hotel scene--which was around page 40. Then we added the library ghost, which got us off much earlier in the film; and by the time we started shooting, the ESP scene had been written in, which was very funny and got us moving right from the beginning. The hardest part though, was deciding what was going on in that damn appartment building on Central Park West. The whole Keymaster-Gatekeeper idea came very late, and we struggled with it all the way."
Theone key person who had essentially no input into the script was Bill Murray. "The whole script came together in about three months," said Reitman. "And during that period, Bill was off in India--almost unreachable--shooting The Razor's Edge. So he hadn't read anything since Danny's original screenplay. He called me once from the Taj Mahal, just to say, 'Hey, how's it going?' I told him we were pushing for an October start date--just a week or two after he was supposed to get back--and he said, 'Okay, I'll see you then.' And that was about the extent of our preproduction discussion--until about a week or two before shooting, when he flew in to try on some costumes and then disappeared to Paris for a few days of last-minute photography on Razor's Edge.
Harold Ramis was present at the Bill Murray 'script conference' in New York. "Ivan wanted me with him, so we drove out to La Guardia. Bill flew in on a private plane, an hour late, and came through the terminal with a stadium horn--one of those bullhorns that plays eighty different fight songs--and he was addressing everyone in sight with this thing and then playing a song. We dragged him out of there and went to a restaurant in Queens. I've never seen him in higher spirits. We spent an hour together, and he said maybe two words about the whole script. Then he took off again. But it was trust. Ghostbusters was the first film he'd ever committed to without fighting like crazy, and he'd just decided we couldn't fail--which is certainly not to underestimate his part in the film. Bill's really great at thinking on his feet; and on the set, he probably gives more than any comedic actor around."
With a final script at last in hand, Reitman and his production team gathered in New York in late October for a week of preliminary second unit work, followed by three-and-a-half weeks of principal photography. The main unit then reassembled back in Los Angeles for an additional nine weeks of shooting on The Burbank Studios soundstages and at various area locations. When the show wrapped in early February, Richard Edlund and his crew had less than four months to complete nearly two hundred postproduction opticals. "The day we signed the contract to make Ghostbusters," said Michael Gross, "we knew it would be a race against time. We also knew all the problems that were ahead of us. And I don't think there were any surprises anywhere down the line. There could have been horror stories about shooting on the streets of New York, but there were none. The Gozar temple set was monumental, but it was delivered on time. And the effects were staggering in their scope, especially given the time they had to be completed in. But they turned out wonderfully. Across the board, we saw an amazingly talented group of people work very hard--and deliver."
In its first three weeks, Ghostbusters broke Columbia's 'best opening weekend' and 'best opening week' records--a portent decidedly heartening to Ivan Reitman and the others concerned. Almost as pleasing was its widespread critical acclaim. But with prints and advertising and other attendant expenses, the production had to gross more than $80 million before it could be considered profitable. In other words, the film needed to be among the fifteen or twenty most successful releases of all time just to break even. Spirits soared in succeeding weeks as Ghostbusters not only continued to hold its own, but actually increased its boxoffice take from week to week. As the summer progressed, the hit became a certified phenomenon--easily outdistancing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins in the race for boxoffice supremacy. By late August, the film had climbed into the rarefied 'top ten' list of all-time box-office attractions, eventually settling comfortably into sixth place. When the final count was in, Ghostbusters had grossed more than $225 million--making it the most successful motion picture of all time.