Rewatchables Reference

• Winner (Bill): Venkman gets slimed in the banquet room ('save me some'), then immediately into the most 80s movie montage you could possibly have. Ray Parker song kicks in, Huey Lewis's lawyers immediately go to work, we get Roger Grimsby (the Live at 5 anchor), early Larry King smoking on the radio, USA Today 'Ghost Fever Grips New York', Time/Omni/The Atlantic, Casey Kasem, the Joe Franklin Show, the Globe with 'Princess Di expecting again.' Bill: 'This is clearly the Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness needle drop. The only thing missing is Pacino in cruising just dancing in a leather jacket.'
• Bill's nominees also: Venkman working ESP with the two kids and favoring the blonde ($5 for $5 bucks negative reinforcement); the library scene; Sigourney with the groceries (eggs frying on the counter); the Rick Moranis party scene ('hey this is real smoked salmon from Nova Scotia, Canada — $24.95 a pound, only cost me $14.12 after tax, I'm thinking this whole thing as a promotional expense, that's why I invited clients instead of friends'); 'Are you the key master?'; the climactic stairs/blown-out-balcony sequence; closing credits with the Ghostbusters back to work in NYC.
• CR has two: Peter going to Dana's apartment for the first time with the turkey baster and just playing the piano ('it's Doctor Venkman, boys') AND the jail scene where all the prisoners gather around the Ghostbusters going into the mayor's office. Bill: 'I felt like that was the Trading Places jail — they just shot it in the same place with the same guys.'
• Van: The first call — Slimer at the Sedgwick Hotel, filmed at the Biltmore in downtown LA. 'It's almost the Ghostbusters origin story scene, where they're actually using their equipment for the first time.' The Biltmore has appeared in like 12 Rewatchables movies (To Live and Die in LA, In the Line of Fire elevator).

• Winner (Bill): The Ghostbusters montage itself — every magazine cover, every 1984 talking head.
• CR: Larry King taking radio calls while smoking. CR: 'This is where people ask me what's your ambition? I want Bill to give me a drive-time call-in radio show that I could smoke during.'
• Bill: Aykroyd's video camera, the osprey, the Twin Towers seen a couple of times.
• Bill: Gene Kasem (Casey Kasem's wife) — 'this was her moment between this and Cheers.' Plus calling someone a 'pencil neck' — peaked in the 80s, hasn't been said in 38 years.
• Van: They're Ghostbusters and they're immediately asked about Elvis. 'No one has any clue in the mid 80s how big of a fucking deal Elvis's death and potentially still being alive was. Front of every National Enquirer, somebody saw Elvis in West Virginia. Combined into one death — Elvis was every recent celebrity death rolled together.'
• Van: Tribeca being depicted as a 'demilitarized zone.' Tommy Alter has a bar (Walkers on Barrow) right across the street from the Ghostbusters firehouse — area is fucking beautiful now.
• Van: The EPA being the bad guys. (CR: 'That's come back around, kind of.')

• 'Don't cross the streams' — 42 years and counting.
• The use of New York City — 'just love how they use every aspect of the city,' the high shot down at Central Park, Joe Franklin in there, sunny every day. Van: 'The ethos of New York is a character of the movie. It seems like a story that could only take place in New York.'
• CR: The logo, the Firehouse, the Ectomobile, the Marshmallow Man, the uniforms — 'indelible pop culture symbols still. Kids are still doing this for Halloween. Got brought back during Stranger Things.'
• Van: The proton packs as signature equipment. Plus the brand placements still around — Cheez-It, Coca-Cola, Perrier, canned Budweiser. (Discussion of whether they were paid placements — 'big deal in the 80s but maybe not yet?')
• CR: The financial peril — Aykroyd taking out a 19% loan, Bill going 'you're not going to lose the house, everybody has three mortgages these days.' Ramis: 'yeah, but at 19%.'
• Bill: 'Yes it's true the man has no Dick' is still fucking funny all these years later. Iconic line delivery.
• The original SNL generation popping up in movies together — Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, Trading Places, Ghostbusters, Spies Like Us. Bill cites this as the precursor to Sandler's crew and the Apatow generation.
• 55 Central Park West — Dana's building. CR's nod to the Amanda Dobbins Award for Best Real Estate.
• Bill: The smoking — Aykroyd's dangling cigarette thing, no adhesives. There's a 59-second smoking supercut from the movie.
• Bill: Slimer was Aykroyd and Ramis's tribute to Belushi — they pushed the puppeteers to make him Belushi-esque, a party-animal slob. 'It's like they feel like that's how they got Belushi in the movie with this green slime.'
• Tavern on the Green seen from outside (also in Trading Places).

• Bill: When they're going up the stairs of the building at the end and there's that one shot where it just seems like 100 floors of stairs above them. 'When we get to 20, let me know — I'm going to puke.'
• CR doesn't have a specific shot but praises László Kovács, the Hungarian DP who came up under Bogdanovich and then defined the look of '80s New York comedies and dramas — Legal Eagles, Ghostbusters, Mask, Say Anything. 'The transition from gritty to people having advertising executive jobs.' All the New York crowd scenes and exteriors are great.

Ray Parker Jr.'s 'Ghostbusters' theme song over the Bustin' Makes Me Feel Good montage. Bill: 'This is clearly the Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness needle drop' — the closing credits version with the band back to work in NYC also gets a shoutout.

• Bill: Winston (Ernie Hudson). 'It's not an Ernie Hudson thing for me to do that. I just don't really understand why he shows up halfway through the movie.' He never has his moment, character isn't fully nailed. Bill compares him to a trade-deadline NBA pickup: 'It's like we need a shooter. Here's Caris LeVert. Now he's on the Pistons. They're like, great idea, Caris LeVert will get them. And then you never figure out how to use Caris LeVert.' Wanted one more scene where you're told why this guy needs the job — 'his wife just died' or something. CR notes Ernie peels off 'I want to speak for myself' in the mayor's office and Venkman/Aykroyd react like 'oh my God here we go.'
• Van: Couldn't think of a weak link. 'I'm not going to give it to Ernie Hudson on this goddamn podcast. I really thought about this.' Eventually concedes Hudson is the obvious answer if forced but doesn't think it's pronounced enough to warrant criticism.
• CR: Walter Peck. 'Not because I don't think William Atherton is basically the prick of the 80s — he could have used either more juice or a slightly earlier appearance. Or his whole thing is just two scenes and everything that happens could have happened by accident without the EPA throwing off the containment grid.'
• Bill's bonus 'Rose from Titanic' award for character who sneaky sucks: Egon. Harold Ramis made the choice to never smile as Egon. Bill: 'Crack a smile, maybe get two jokes in there or something.' Van defends: 'He's the brain of the operation.' CR: 'You need a Ringo. He's George.'

• Ghostbusters 2 as a money grab. 'None of us feel great about it.' Three more sequel/reboot movies all 'shameless money grabs across the board.' The all-female 2016 Ghostbusters is 'one of the worst movies in the 2010s.' Van really tried to woke himself into liking it: 'Hey, the writer, the director, all of them together — it just didn't fucking work.' The Jason Reitman ones get split votes (Van enjoyed the first sequel with the goo under the city; CR not impressed: 'why is this a Ghostbusters movie?').
• Bill: This was a really tough movie for cable for about 15 years because of pan-and-scan — filmed wide, looked tight on square TVs. Now with widescreen TVs it's a great watch again.
• William Atherton claims he became reviled after the movie. People would yell 'Hey Dickless!' at him. 'And then he's like fuck it, doubles down and does Die Hard.'
• Van: Some of the establishing shots look 'boarded' — animated, rendered, matte paintings (especially at the end). 'That stuff never ages well.'
• CR: Peter Venkman using his position as a professor to extract sexual favors out of students and clients. Bill: 'I just thought that was part of the job.' Van's question: when Venkman tells Ray to come back in 'an hour, an hour and a half' with the possessed Dana, does he think he's about to fuck? Van: 'If that's the case, that aged store the terribly. And by the way — an hour and a half, told you nine minutes. That's the floor.'
• Streaming services counting down to the next show during the closing credits — 'Amazon's counting me down in the bottom right corner because it's about to send me to the next thing, and now I really want to hear the ending.' Van: 'This is the fucking shit, bro. Fucking can't stand it.'

• CR (the actual hot take): Ghostbusters is the best movie ever to come out of Saturday Night Live — including non-sketch-based ones like Trading Places, Anchorman, Bridesmaids, Wayne's World, Tommy Boy, Elf, Happy Gilmore. Has to have at least two SNL people and an SNL sensibility (so Inglourious Basterds doesn't count even if Mike Myers is in it). Has to be relatively close to when they were on the show. Closest competition: Trading Places, maybe Anchorman. Craig: 'It's also lasted the test of time better than any SNL movie. Blues Brothers is more culturally expired.' Bill: 'In my house it's really only Belushi.'
• Van #1: 'What right do the Ghostbusters have to put ghosts in jail? Are the Ghostbusters the fucking police?' Hypothesizes his Uncle Mark coming back from the dead and getting incarcerated. The Ghostbusters run a 'nuclear powered private prison for ghosts' funded by private transactions with property owners. The library woman was clearly her job — she was shushing people, she used to work there. CR: 'This is where the EPA comes in.' Van: 'Yeah, I would be more of a social outreach kind of ghostbuster — pro ghosts, friendly ghosts, like how can we help you guys?' Bill agrees: 'That's gotta just talk to them and get to a good place with them.'
• Van #2: Dana is a gold digger. 'Dana very clearly dissed Venkman when he first came to her apartment.' What changed? She saw him on TV. 'Venkman became a small business owner, he became a celebrity. And even when he comes up the next time, when she sees him, she smiles.' Bill: 'I respect it. She's a classical violinist, she's tall, she's hot — Bernard King made a run, Lawrence Taylor, Eastern Europeans at the wine, Gordon Gekko at the goddamn... she's got options.'
• Bill: If Sigourney Weaver and Kathleen Turner had switched movies in 1984, everyone wins. Sigourney does Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile (better fit for her unleashed-romance-novelist energy), Kathleen Turner does Ghostbusters 1 and 2 — and when she's possessed, 'I think I'm dead. I have a testicular explosion.' CR: 'What is leading you to want to improve Ghostbusters by 5 percent?' Bill: 'It's a hot take.'

• The big one — new category: the 'Eddie Murphy and Ghostbusters award for Biggest What If.' Aykroyd seems adamant that there were always four Ghostbusters and Winston was going to be Eddie Murphy (they had just done Trading Places together as he was writing). Reitman says no, that wasn't a serious thing. Bill: 'I almost felt like he was trying to be nice to Ernie Hudson. I'm going to believe they went hard after Eddie Murphy. If he's in this movie from the beginning, it breaks my brain.' Van and CR push back: there's not enough screen time for Murphy and Murray, the movie revolves around Murray. CR: 'You can't just let Eddie Murphy cook from the SO. Just like A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts.' CR's compromise pitch: 'It would be really funny if Eddie Murphy played Walter Peck — like he just had two scenes.' (Bill's analogy: this is Phil Jackson Lakers with Nash and Howard and Dwight all stacked — 'not enough basketball.')
• Venkman casting candidates (per the internet): Michael Keaton (Bill: most interesting and plausible — 'he's basically this in Gung Ho, and Billy Blazejowski from Night Shift is one of the funniest characters in the history of anything'), Chevy Chase (Bill doesn't believe — Chase claims in 2018 he turned it down; Bill: Chevy and Murray have had a weird relationship for 50 years), Tom Hanks (Bill doesn't believe), Robin Williams (Bill doesn't believe), Steve Guttenberg (Bill: 'no way'), Richard Pryor (Bill: 'no').
• Egon casting: Christopher Walken (Bill: 'chews up too much scenery'), John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum (Bill: 'really good choice — I think he turned it down per the research, but the Reitman story is it was these guys all along'). CR: 'I wonder if there was a moment when Ramis didn't think he was going to be in it — he eventually became Egon.'
• Dana auditions: Daryl Hannah, Denise Crosby, Julia Roberts (too young — '1984'), Kelly Lebrock (Bill: 'interesting').
• John Candy was offered Louis Tully and totally turned it down — wanted to do Lewis with a German accent. (Bill: 'They definitely went hard after John Candy.')
• Sandra Bernhard turned down Janine.
• Paul Reubens was allegedly going to be Gozer for a second. Bill: 'I don't know if I believe that one — all of these I just don't know if I believe.'
• Grace Jones turned down Gozer; replaced by Slavitza Jovan ('someone who looks exactly like Grace Jones in terms of the aesthetic').

Winner: Slavitza Jovan as Gozer. (Bill: 'They wanted Grace Jones and she turned it down.' CR: 'You get who you can get.')

• Discussion: Is William Atherton a 'that guy' from Die Hard or from Ghostbusters? Craig says he's a that guy.
• CR: David Margulies, who plays the Mayor. (Van: 'Oh, he's a really good that guy.')
• Bill: Jennifer Runyon (the blonde in the ESP scene) was a stealth that guy — Up the Creek, Charles in Charge, a whole season of 90210, an episode of something else, and played Cindy Brady in 'A Very Brady Christmas' — all in like five years.

• Bill: Rick Moranis. He's allegedly only in 8-10 minutes of the movie (per ChatGPT/Claude/Craig), but Bill insists 'he's in the whole last 20 minutes — he's the 6th lead in the movie.' CR rules him eligible regardless: 'Dion's about what you do with your screen time.' He plays two different characters (Vince Clortho the Keymaster and Louis Tully) and is one of the funniest things ever on screen. The party scene was supposedly mostly ad-libbed (Bob and Elaine, mineral water, smoked salmon). 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids' was massive but he basically retired to be with his family. CR: 'A performance worthy of considering renaming the Dion Waiters Award after him.'
• Honorable mention: Annie Potts as Janine. Bill: 'I think she's lovely. Yeah, she's fine.' Van: 'Her accent is crazy, out of control, her hitting on Egon, all of that — she's good.' Showed up the day she needed to shoot, took the hairdresser's glasses, made them iconic.

No serious recasting effort — the cast is treated as untouchable. (Bill on the four Ghostbusters: 'This is The Beatles. There's no way to top this.')

• Aykroyd's parapsychology origins (1981), originally titled 'Ghost Smashers,' set in the future. Reitman pushed it down to Earth and NYC. The day Belushi died, Aykroyd was writing his scenes.
• Frank Price at Columbia bought the title 'Ghostbusters' from another studio for $500,000 + 1% of profits. He later became #2 at Disney before dying in a plane crash.
• Richard Edlund did the special effects, used part of the budget to found Boss Film Studios with a $5M advance. There were no special effects studios back then.
• Marshmallow Man outfit by Bill Bryan, modeled walk after Godzilla, cost almost $600,000, separate air supply because the materials were toxic. The 'marshmallows' raining on the crowd were shaving cream — gave a lot of people rashes.
• Original library ghost puppet was deemed too scary and given to the 'Fright Night' movie instead.
• Deleted scene: Ray has a sexual encounter with a female ghost that goes beyond a BJ.
• Final rooftop confrontation needed 50,000 amps to light, requiring Columbia to shut down all of their other stages.
• From a Vanity Fair making-of piece: Murray flew back from the Razor's Edge shoot to LaGuardia an hour late on a private plane. He came through the terminal carrying a stadium horn that played 80 different fight songs, addressing everyone in sight. They dragged him to a restaurant in Queens, showed him the script, and Murray said 'I trust you guys' and did the movie.
• Marketing: theatrical trailer with a toll-free phone number that played a Murray/Aykroyd message. The 'no ghost' logo was modified for political/cultural protests — Reagan, Mondale, Mickey Mouse, union stuff. Murray's 'this chick is toast' is allegedly the first known use of 'toast' as slang. 'Busters' as a suffix took off after — budget Busters, crop Busters, eventually Mythbusters.
• Ray Parker Jr. had a week to write the theme song after Huey Lewis declined. Lewis sued and did fine financially.
• Nominated for two Oscars (Best Song, Best Visual Effects). Elmer Bernstein's score not nominated.

• Bill Murray: Yes (Bill). Van argues Groundhog Day, but Bill counters that Murray didn't work for four years after this — the movie freaked him out.
• Dan Aykroyd: Probably Trading Places per Bill, but CR makes the case that 'he wrote this and is basically the custodian of the Ghostbusters franchise — in some ways this is his.'
• Sigourney Weaver: Aliens or 55 Central Park West.
• Harold Ramis: Probably Caddyshack/Groundhog Day as a director, but his acting Apex is here.
• Stay Puft Marshmallows: Yes (Van: 'Real brand, I think — didn't look it up').
• Ghost movies: Razor-thin debate between Ghostbusters and 'Ghost'. Bill: 'I would have put Poltergeist in the running too.' CR: 'Some other people might be like Paranormal Activity or The Conjuring.'
• New York City movies: 'No.' (Too many great NYC movies.)
• Ernie Hudson: Yes, this is what he's best known for. Also Oz Warden, Hand That Rocks the Cradle gardener.
• Rick Moranis: No — Honey I Shrunk the Kids.
• New York City library scenes: Probably.
• Sedgwick Hotel: Yeah — never heard of that before this movie.
• Turning into dogs: Possibly (vs. Twilight wolves).
• Modern architecture: CR's tangent — bums him out that you'll never get a story now like 'the occult architect built in special metal to make it a superconductor of paranormal stuff. It's like five condos above a Trader Joe's.'
• Ghost combat: Pretty good ghost combat — Van mentions 'Ice Cave' and 'Ghosts of Mars' as competitors.

Bill goes Spielberg as the obvious / 'safe' choice. CR pushes for a Marty version with the NYC/Travis Bickle vibe. Bill: 'Cocaine is the end instead of marshmallows.' CR: 'You guys are so fucking boring with this one.'

• Van: Hundreds of people would have been killed by falling debris during the ending — all the people standing around looking up. (Bill agrees.)
• Van: Dana's apartment is too nice for a single concert cellist. Bill: 'She comes from money.' Van: 'She probably went to the finest schools — fucking Sorbonne, Juilliard, wherever you go to do that. She's stuck up. Goes brings her back down to Earth. That's why she dissed Venkman.'
• CR: New York City is in 'paranormal pandemonium' — would the city really leave it up to four guys who got kicked out of NYU or Columbia? 'I just don't think they would leave it up.' Bill: 'This is the city that protested the premiere of The Warriors. They would have the paranormal activity would have been would have been tough.'
• Van: Why are the Ghostbusters allowed to have a blueprint in jail? 'They're in jail. They're looking at a blueprint.' (Discussion settles on it being a holding cell.)
• Van: Why didn't Dana's apartment get cleaned? 'Eggs and marshmallow on the counter for like two days.'
• CR's Drugler's Door Award (how much would that hurt?): Venkman gets slimed and recovers really quickly from physical contact with a ghost. Van: 'It seems like the slime took over him. He was paralyzed.'
• Bill: Venkman gets slimed — slime is super thick. CR: 'I was going to try to do a book about medals for this movie and it's the whole movie.'
• Bill: 'It's a really cool shot... Goza the Gozarian' — the most rewatchable line.
• DeShaun Penn 'I brought my own pack' award for excellence in on-screen smoking: Aykroyd's dangling cigarette, no adhesives. Bill mentions a 59-second smoking supercut from the movie.

Bill: This should have been untouchable. Sadly we got Ghostbusters 2 and a bunch of subsequent sequels/reboots. The 2016 all-female version is 'one of the worst movies in the 2010s.' Van enjoyed the first Jason Reitman one (Afterlife) — 'I actually thought it was pretty cool. The goo underneath the city stuff.' CR less so on both Reitman ones.

• CR does Zane Lowe as Gozer: 'Zane Goza Goza the Gozaarian, it's great to see you, man or woman, because you take many forms, just like your music. Your music is undefinable, and so are you. But I have to say good evening. And as a duly designated representative of the city, county and state of New York, I order you to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension. And we'll be listening.' Bill: 'Zane was wordy.'
• Bill: Shaquille O'Neal as the Inside the NBA analyst breaking down the movie — 'I thought the best person in the movie was Gozer the Gazarian.' Then everybody kind of goes 'OK, cool' and they go to commercial.

• Unanimous: Bill Murray as Best Actor for Venkman. Van: 'Bankman.' CR: 'Bill Murray.' (1984 Best Actor winner was F. Murray Abraham for Amadeus, with nominees Jeff Bridges in Starman, Albert Finney in Under the Volcano, Tom Hulce in Amadeus, and Sam Waterston in The Killing Fields. Bill: 'Could have been room for Albert Finney under the volcano. I don't know what the fuck was going on there.')
• Side joke: 'The song that ripped off Huey Lewis gets best Oscar — they didn't know at the time.' Best Original Song that year was 'I Just Called to Say I Love You' from 'The Woman in Red.'

• Is the movie better or worse with Belushi instead of Bill Murray? Bill: 'It's worse. I love Belushi — that was one of my guys. But he didn't have a leading-man trying-to-be-dashing thing. He died on his back.' Van: 'He was still on his climb when he passed.' Bill: 'This was the kind of movie that would have been great for him' — but Murray was the right call.
• CR: Would the movie be better if released 5-6 years later with slightly better special effects? Bill: 'No — '84 was the quintessential year for this to come out.'
• Floyd Gandali 'butter in my ass and lollipops in my mouth' award for something I just enjoy: Bill — 'The key master.' Just a great nickname. 'Why is KD not the key master?' (Discussion of NBA pairings: Tatum/Brown the gatekeeper/key master, Steph Castle and Wembanyama, has to be teammates who like each other.)
• CR: Bill Murray working a crowd — when they first get out of Ecto, when they get up to Dana's apartment at the end and he's just like 'you know him, you love him.' 'This guy has the city in the palm of his hand.'
• Van: The fireplace pole that they slide down at the firehouse. Bill: 'You know what happened? The poles turned into strippers — for strippers.'
• What would happen if Van picked his thought instead of Aykroyd? Bill: 'A 100-foot Lisa Bonet from Angel Heart just walking through the street in New York City.'

• Bill: One of the proton packs (there are four total).
• CR: A Ghostbusters jumpsuit.
• Van: One of the proton packs. Also pitched: anything from the firehouse, the fireplace pole.
• Discussion of Ecto-1 (the car) — but cars are banned from this category. Van loves the look on Murray's face when Aykroyd tells him how much he paid ($4,800). 'How much? $4,800?' That look. 'They have it out there when you go see it.'

Bill (Coach Finstock / Mr. Miyagi): 'Ghosts are fucking real. That's my lesson. Don't underestimate them.' Van: 'I'm not. You know I believe in it.'

• CR: Big Trouble in Little China — similar comic sci-fi element, probably picked before.
• Van: The Blues Brothers. (CR: 'It's a long fucking night though.')
• Bill (winner): Beverly Hills Cop — 'Let's just go 1984. Beverly Hills Cop would be amazing.' James Bond was floated and rejected.

• CR: Murray. Van: Peter Venkman / 'My friend Bill Murray.' Craig: Murray. 'Murray carries the hell out of this movie.'
• Bill makes the case for Reitman: 'Meatballs, Stripes, this — becomes not only the premier comedy director of that generation, but as a director and producer, a fucking juggernaut. Goes right to Arnold Schwarzenegger with Kindergarten Cop and has this crazy run from '79 to '93 all the way through Dave. Ghostbusters is the NBA Finals MVP for him.' CR: Without him pulling back the impulses (no 20-minute car crash scene à la John Landis), the movie wouldn't work.

• Craig also goes Murray for who-won: 'Murray carries the hell out of this movie. Not that it's like he's the only reason it's good, but he is.' CR: 'If somebody was like why do you think Bill Murray's funny, I'd show him Ghostbusters.'
• Craig: 'It also feels the most like the lines were not written and he was coming up with them, which I think you also have to give him credit for. It's crazy to me how movies like this feel so unfinished — movies that feel like they're kind of making it up as they go where it's like the script wasn't really finished. Bill Murray just showed up last second. There was something I was reading about Annie Potts — just like, showed up the day she needed to shoot. They had no costume for her. She took the hairdresser's glasses and put them on and then just wore those for the whole movie. It's so haphazard the way these things were thrown together — and now those glasses are kind of like iconic.'
• Craig: 'It's just crazy how messy these movies were of this era and how they worked. And now if that just wouldn't happen, everything would be so finished and glossy and purposeful.' CR: 'And safe.' Craig: 'And safe. What ultimately saves the best from this movie is just friends being in movies together — you don't really see that anymore.'