A sequel-saturated summer rapidly approaches and your motion picture studio faces competition such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon II and Star Trek V. It's late, it's hot and you desperately want a big slice of the summer box office pie. Who you gonna call?
Columbia Pictures intends to call on the services of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and company to scare up soem hefty box-office when it unleashes Ghostbusters II at a theatre near you. The studio's dreams of summer glory seem well-founded, since Ghostbusters II has already generated the same sort of interest and excitement as its blockbuster predecessor. This Ghostbusters fever has bitten both the general public and the actors on the set. If you listen to funnyman Dan Aykroyd, Ghostbusters II is big...real big.
"It really sunk in what a phenomenon we created the first time," says Aykroyd, describing the massive crowds which formed and clung to the production during the New York locations we used in the sequel. "All of us were overwhelmed by it."
So why all the fuss? Sure, the first one did a tidy $240 million here in the states alone, but that's not it. And there were the requisite merchandising exploits: Ghostbusters dolls, backpacks and sundry accessories, but we're still unsure as to why the film left such a mark.
Maybe America is just one big kid. "The thing that should be comforting is that it had probably the biggest built-in audience of any sequel ever," says Ramis, who co-wrote both the old and new movies with Aykroyd. "On the other hand, we don't want to look like fools and put out an inferior movie."
This would seem unlikely. Reitman, producer and director of the original Ghostbusters has assembled virtually all the principal talent from the first film. Along with the aforementioned come Sigourney Weaver, Ernie Hudson, Rick Moranis and Annie Potts. They all decided to participate in the sequel, and that's no minor task, considering the scheduling nightmares such a top-heavy project would entail.
It's Reitman's first stab at a sequel, yes, but he does have at least thirty million dollars to work with. In addition, the Canadian-born director is blessed with a prefab audience so surely he must be at least somewhat relaxed.
"No. It's much worse...much scarier," counters Reitman when it's suggested that his movie is destined to pack movie houses. I found this the most difficult experience because with an ordinary film [a non-sequel] you have an element of surprise that you can count on. Now all we have are extraordinary expectations and we can only fail."
The director laughs, allowing that even though many key people have returned, other equally important steps need to be taken to ensure that this massive endeavor is a success. Like finishing the picture. But alas, here we are in April and a short sequence with Ramis and Aykroyd is being filmed even thought the release date looms.
"This is ridiculously tight," laments Reitman, citing the miniscule post-production, "it's much tighter than I would have liked." Reitman, who will take a vacation once the film's released, provided he doesn't collapse first, had an unusually frenzied shoot. You see, he was overseeing post-production on Twins as he prepped the Ghostbusters sequel. "I purposely didn't prepare anything," says the director, fiddling with a particularly stubborn bottle of mineral water in his trailer, "so I could not be tempted into working again very soon."
So here in the eleventh hour on Stage 15 at the Burbank Studios, Aykroyd and Ramis putter about in a lab over the fire station where they once conducted the business of ghostbusting. The shot picks up with Aykroyd on the phone as he learns from Weaver that her bathtub has viciously come alive with malicious intent towards her and the infant.
"That's great!" shouts Aykroyd, a businessman's first response. He then thinks a little. "I mean, that's terrible," he says softly. Now the hard part. Aykroyd must then say, "major slime-related psychokinetic event" very quickly to Ramis without throwing his tongue into a seizure. After a number of frustrating takes, the former Saturday Night Live star articulates the cumbersome line, thus setting up what just may become the catch phrase of the sequel.
"Do you think there's a connection between that and the...mood slime?" asks Aykroyd to Ramis as the latter fiddles with the computer. "Is the atomic weight of Cobalt 58.9?" deadpans Ramis and the pair are quickly out the door.
Harold Ramis has an enviable track record. Whether writing, co-writing, co-starring in and /or directing, this SCTV alumnus has been responsible for Animal House, Stripes, Back to School, Caddyshack and National Lampoon's Vacation.
And Ghostbusters, of course, which grossed nearly a quarter of a billion dollars... "That's a nice number, isn't it," Ramis asks, a smile emblazoned on his bespectacled face. With the script so crucial to a movie's performance, be it critical or commercial, how did he and Aykroyd come up with a script that would please a director as tough as Ivan Reitman? When do the writers know if a scene is actually working?
"Well, you don't know," says Ramis, "we do the best we can. I work on the word processor and Dan paces or sits and makes phone calls," Ramis laughs. "We just hammer it out," he continues, "then we read it back until it sounds good to us and then we try it on Ivan. If it's acceptable he'll let it go so we can move on to the next, or if it's really a disaster we'll go back in and fix it right then."
While Aykroyd was off making My Stepmother Is An Alien and Loose Cannons (which is due out this fall and co-stars Gene Hackman), Ramis shaped the results of their numerous story meetings into script form. Like nine drafts worth.
And when was the screenplay finally finished? "Ummm, yesterday," laughs Aykroyd. The actor is snared on the set between camera setups and a slew of phone calls that had backed up on him and now needed attending to.
"Well, actually Harold and I did the bullwork at the computer, but it was Ivan, Harold, myself and Bill who were the onces behind the story really," explains Aykroyd, a still-detectable Canadian accent wafting through. And, like Reitman, Aykroyd harbors nary a delusion of box-office grandeur. "We feel like we're starting from square one. We assume they don't exist" says Aykoyd of the masses who anxiously await the Second Coming of those poltergeist-exterminating funsters.
"We have no preconceptions, we have no assumptions and presumptions about the success of this film based on the last one," his vocal inflections ever so serious. "We're going in there like we're trying to sell a completely new movie," adding that this film would need to stand on its own without the viewer ever having seen the original.
Well, practically anyone over the age of six months saw the original, and this became very obvious to the cast and crew as they attempted to film their little movie without attracting too much attention. The problem was a logistic one--they were shooting in New York City. "It's always exciting in New York," says Aykroyd who was clearly taken aback by the Ghostbusters phenomenon. "It's like being a modern folk hero," says Ramis, also tickled pink by by massive fan turnouts, "some people didn't know my name but they'd cheer me on the street. People would hold their children up to us to be blessed and would drag them down wearing all the toys and stuff. That was a pretty great feeling."
Aykroyd sums up the general good will and camaraderie of the shoot in his own way: "It's good to be with the family," he says donning his lab coat for another take, "it was like making a Bowery Boys picture, really."
A very expensive Bowery Boys picture.