By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The ‘80s were filled with plenty of killer comedies, including iconic films like Spaceballs, Goonies, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. For my money, though, the funniest film of the decade was Ghostbusters, a sci-fi blockbuster with more quotable lines than New York City has spooky spirits.
Later movies tried and failed to bite this earlier film’s style, including future Ghostbusters installments. Ghostbusters II was a decidedly sophomoric sequel that came nowhere close to the original Ghostbusters’ brilliance. Ghostbusters (2016) tried to go all-in on comedic improv, and it became the worst remake in movie history. Meanwhile, Ghostbusters: Afterlife tried to reinvent the franchise as a Spielbergian nostalgia fest rather than a cynical comedy.
Why, though, has it been so impossible for any other film to capture the spirit (so to speak) of what made the first Ghostbusters so awesome? Simple: the chief creators of this movie all had wildly different goals.
Dan Akyroyd wanted to make a more serious horror film, Bill Murray wanted to make a snarky comedy, and director Ivan Reitman wanted to create a high-concept blockbuster. The result is a lightning-in-a-bottle movie whose magic has never and will never be captured onscreen, ever again.
It Started As A Horror Movie
Ghostbusters is arguably the funniest comedy ever made. It didn’t start out that way, though. Dan Akyroyd, who is a big believer in ghosts and the paranormal, wrote an early draft of the movie (then called Ghost Smashers) that was designed as a relatively serious sci-fi piece where our heroes busted ghosts across various planets. In Making Ghostbusters, director Ivan Reitman revealed that this draft didn’t exactly bring the laughs. “Although I could detect a comic attitude, the whole thing was written rather seriously.” On top of that, the movie was designed as a horror movie far more likely to make you scream than smile.
What happened? Reitman wisely encouraged Akyroyd to rewrite the film as a comedy about screwball scientists going into business for themselves, and he brought in Harold Ramis to help with the new draft. The two proved to be quite the team, as Akyroyd was better at coming up with off-the-wall concepts (he insisted on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man over Reitman’s objections), while Ramis was better at crafting funny dialogue. Meanwhile, Bill Murray had been brought in to replace the late John Belushi. Murray barely looked at the script, but, in a fun twist, technically ended up writing most of the film.
Embracing The Comedy Apocalypse
In 2020, Josh Gad got several original Ghostbusters stars (including Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts) together on a Zoom call, and they revealed some startling secrets about the film. According to Akyroyd, 80 percent of what we see onscreen was a result of improv, and he credits that to one cast member in particular. “When you bring a master comedian and charismatic leading man like Bill Murray into a project, you know there’s gonna be contributions on the writing side.”
In the final film, you can see the obvious tug of war between Akyroyd and Murray’s very different visions for Ghostbusters. Most of the movie is, of course, filled with Murray’s unique brand of snarky, quotable humor. But many of the more serious scenes echo Akyroyd’s desire to create a genuinely scary movie. The librarian’s ghostly jumpscare and Dana Barrett being kidnapped by a monster inside her couch is the stuff of childhood nightmares. To scare the older audience members, the film also includes a somber scene where Ray and Winston speculate that the ever-increasing number of ghosts is a portent of the biblical apocalypse.
Time Tables And Slime Tables
The final ingredient in Ghostbusters’ success was, of course, Ivan Reitman. In addition to directing the film, he helped with writing duties and also bluffed his way through studio negotiations. While pitching, he made up a budget (somewhere between $25-$30 million), choosing a number that was about three times what it cost to make Stripes, his previous comedy starring Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. Columbia Pictures exec Frank Price agreed, but on one condition: no matter what, this film would come out in June, 1984.
Reitman agreed, only realizing while walking out of Price’s office what a seemingly impossible task he had given himself. He had no idea if his arbitrary budget would be enough to bring Ghostbusters to life; he previously estimated that Akyroyd’s original script would have cost over $200 million to make. Furthermore, he had only 13 months to create a film that had no effects studio, no start date, and (most importantly) no finished script. Fortunately, he personally helped finish the script, keeping Akyroyd and Ramis on task by ensuring that the story had clearly defined goals, a memorable villain, and even mechanical explanations for why ghosts were suddenly haunting New York City.
Three Men, Three Visions
The rest is Hollywood history. Reitman met his deadline, and Ghostbusters became a blockbuster success, earning over $370 million at the box office. This success is even more impressive when you consider how everything about filming was rushed, that most of the dialogue was improvised, and that the final story (per Akyroyd and Murray’s competing visions) was a blend of silly and serious. On paper, these are all reasons why Ghostbusters should have been a disaster, but the opposite happened. With several creators trying to craft a completely different film (Akyroyd wanted serious horror, Murray wanted schlubby comedy, and Reitman wanted a high-concept blockbuster), they created a perfect movie.
Incredibly, they did so completely by accident. This is why there has never been a worthy follow-up to Ghostbusters: every subsequent movie has been trying to make a Ghostbusters film, but what made that first film special can’t be easily understood, much less copied. The people who made Ghostbusters were all trying to make different movies, resulting in a strange creative brew that can never truly be replicated. This is why Jason Reitman didn’t even try to recreate the magic of the original film and almost eschewed comedy entirely to transform Ghostbusters: Afterlife into Spielbergian schlock aimed squarely at nostalgic millennials.
While Afterlife has its charms, nothing beats the unflappable cool of the original Ghostbusters. If you’re ready to take a walk (Stay-Puft style) down memory lane, that ‘80s comedy classic is now streaming on Netflix. If you were disappointed by the Stranger Things final season, this is your chance to channel some nerdy nostalgia that actually delivers a satisfying third act. Just don’t try to watch them both at once; you never know what will happen to our dimension if you cross the streams!
