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SHOW CREDITS

Producer and Director Alita Renee Holly Editor Thomas Teltser Director of Photography Mark C. Brems Technical Director Morgan Holly

Post Production Facility Motion Arts, Inc. Production Assistants Julia Jones Kelly Mohan Special Thanks to Joe Medjuck Susan Patricola

Dan Aykroyd was interviewed at the House of Blues,
Los Angeles, CA

Executive Producer
Michael Stradford

copyright © 1999 Columbia Tristar Home Video, Inc.
All rights reserved.

This is the full text transcript of everything that was said in this featurette. The transcription was done using computer software reading the subtitle track from the GB1 & GB2 4K UHD & Blu-Ray 5-Disc Set. IT HAS NOT BEEN CHECKED FOR ERRORS OR PROPERLY FORMATTED. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DO THAT, FEEL FREE TO E-MAIL ME.

NAME: When you have a film that becomes a phenomena all over the world... it's a wonderful thing.

It just makes you feel good that you can touch the culture

in that way. It sort of gives one,

you know, as a director, you get a certain confidence from that.

One day, I read an article on quantum physics and parapsychology

and I thought, "Wouldn't it be great to marry this concept

in a fantasy, that there could actually be equipment

that would enable one to entrap a phantom spirit."

Nice shooting, Tex!

Then, when they came to me with the Ghostbuster concept,

I had just finished directing...

National Lampoon's Vacation, the first one,

and I really looked forward to working with Bill and Danny and Ivan on this one.

I love the premise. And when Ivan and I really saw it.

I knew how to reshape the script.

I thought, for this movie to be successful,

that it was important for us to sort of really believe

in the occurrences.

If you just tell someone, "By the end of the movie,

there's this marshmallow man who's 150 feet tall

and he's walking down Central Park West."

You can't believe it.

So you have to try to figure out a series of steps

that will allow that believability to occur.

How we achieve that is by starting them in a very mundane,

realistic situation there.

They work at university. They're scientists.

They're not doing particularly well.

They get kicked out.

And they decide to set up a business themselves.

The university gave us money. We didn't have to produce anything.

You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like.

I've worked in the private sector. They expect results.

And it's dealing with all those things

in the first act of the movie

that makes you believe in the truth of it.

I believe that everything happens for a reason.

I believe that we were destined to get thrown out of this dump.

- For what purpose?

- To go into business for ourselves.

It wasn't difficult striking a balance between

the scary stuff and the comedy, because so much comedy

comes out of tension and fear anyway.

I finally showed my eight-year-old son the Ghostbusters movies.

I'd waited to show them to him.

And my four-year-old tagged along,

and I wanted them to like the movie, but I didn't want them to be too scared.

And they both really liked them both, and saw them over and over.

At one point, my four-year-old finished watching Ghostbusters II and turned to me

and said, "Dad, you're a really good scientist."

I thought that was the highest compliment of all.

Yeah, he is a good scientist. And a great writer.

I collect spores, molds and fungus.

[Reitman] My kids have pretty well liked all my movies.

I remember how excited they were when they saw it.

There was something very special about the film,

and it touched children in a very special way.

Somebody blows their nose, and you wanna keep it'?

Come on.

He slimed me.

Both the children who are of age to watch movies

have seen both movies. Yeah, they love Slimer, obviously.

They've asked me do I believe in ghosts, and are ghosts real.

And I can't lie to them, and I have to tell them that I do believe

and I do believe they're real.

I guess what's funny is their wide-eyed response.

They're expecting me to say, "Well, no. It's just a movie."

But I'm not going to say that to them because I respect their intelligence

and their perception as little beings.

And this is a part of our culture

and the physics of our planet

is that people do really leave bioelectric residues behind

when they go.

I guess it was kind of funny to see the kids' reactions

when I actually sat them down and talked to them about it.

And now they're fascinated by it

as little researchers and they love to hear ghost stories.

And they will be equipped for some of the revelations

that we're about to see in the new millennium.

What he means is Old Testament.

- Real wrath-of-God-type stuff.

- Exactly.

Fire and brimstone down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.

Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes. Volcanoes.

Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.

Even if they're not real, take the premise that they're not real.

Well, they're very real in our culture, in our folklore.

My grandma used to spin yams about a spectral locomotive

that would rocket past the farm where she grew up.

They're as real as fairies were 100 years ago.

Today, aliens have replaced fairies.

And you see them on bumper stickers and in shops, and you see the alien head

and we know about abductions.

Everyone knows about Roswell.

Whether it happened or not, whether this is going on or not,

it is part of our folklore.

And I find that interesting from a sociological standpoint.

You know what it could be? Past life experience intruding on present time.

Could be a memory stored in the collective unconscious.

I wouldn't rule out clairvoyance or telepathic contact either.

I'm sorry, I don't believe in any of those things.

Well, that's all right. I don't either.

And all of Murray's exchanges with Sigoumey were great.

Because he was playing that kind of coy, romantic thing while also being naughty,

as only Bill can do.

We never talk anymore.

[groans grunts]

Easy. I make it a rule never to get involved with possessed people.

[Dana] Hmm.

[moans]

It's more of a guideline than a rule.

You know, I can--

I want you inside me.

[Peter chuckles]

Go ahead. No, I can't.

Sounds like you got at least two people in there already.

Might be a little crowded.

When Billy and I, we sort of, kind of had a little conversation in which we,

I guess, acknowledged to ourselves how good the work was feeling.

We are on the threshold of establishing the indispensable defense science of the next decade: Professional paranormal investigations and eliminations. The franchise rights alone will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams.

You know, I'm often asked, "When did you know that this movie was gonna be

as successful as it turned out to be?"

I guess we had a little bit of a feeling halfway through

that we might be making something special.

Danny and I, as we were getting into this, we thought, "This is gonna be huge. This cannot fail."

I think it was the first day of filming.

One of the montage shots, which was the four guys in full dress,

backpacks, running around with traps in their hands.

I had been setting up the shot and here they came as a group together.

It was the first time I saw them all dressed up in a real location

with the stuff,

and I had this extraordinary shiver down my back.

It was an image I had never seen before,

and it was an image that just seemed to be right.

It seemed so funny on the page.

We just knew how the casting would work out.

We trusted each other so implicitly

because of our mutual training at Second City.

There was a great comfort in working with these guys,

because there was a shorthand involved in them,

but more than that, there was the comfort that you didn't have to watch your back.

Working with Ivan as a director and having confidence in him

allowed me to focus on my work as an actor, but also my work as a writer.

Like, just doing fixes every day on the set

or helping-- Participating in the improvised material

or helping the other actors improvise stuff.

There's something very strange about that man.

I'm usually very psychic, and I have a terrible feeling

that something awful is gonna happen to you.

I'm afraid you're gonna die.

It's all explainable within the realm of physics as we know it.

There's really nothing that can't be explained.

You can even grasp the concept of ghosts if you think about molecules and hydrogen

in the air, and how it's all composed of molecules

in the ether and air around us really has a substance and it's all moving.

And you have atoms which make up everything in nature.

You have a nucleus and then you have particles rotating around that nucleus.

Well, what's in-between? There's space in-between that.

And I think the space in-between the nucleus of an atom and an electron

is as infinite as the space out there.

So, if you think in those terms, anything is possible.

It can all transmutate and change.

You know, you have to understand spirits and phantasms,

you have to take into account the Big Bang,

what people are saying about parallel dimensions

and just-- I encourage people to keep reading and keep an open mind.

[Ray] Symmetrical book-stacking.

Just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947.

You're right. No human being would stack books like this.

My favorite moments making the film were on the big stage at Columbia

with the huge rooftop set filling almost the entire stage

and getting blasted in the head with air cannons.

Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say, "Yes."

The whole career, I guess, kind of changed after the first movie,

because it was so successful.

It just opened a lot of doors in lots of ways.

It underscored my credentials as a screenwriter.

So, I've been able to get other things done as a result of it.

When the movie was out the Summer of '84, I was in New York,

working on something else, and we were like heroes

when we walked down the street and people would virtually cheer

when they saw us. It was great.

Why Ghostbusters was special, I think in my life,

was that it was

kind of a culminating moment of work with a group of people

that I had worked with before,

and we had learned to work together in a really unique and special way.

To have a film work out as well as Ghostbusters

was extraordinarily satisfying and very happy.

This is certainly one of the movies I've made that I really do like.

And I said, "There's something about this movie that's gonna just jump." And it did.

I love this town!