The other members of the Ghostbusters, and the director of the first two films (and potentially the third) pay their respects to actor Harold Ramis. For those that don’t know, Harold Ramis played Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II.  He returned to the character, lending his voice to Ghostbusters: The Video Game, and was due to cameo in a scene as Egon in Ghostbusters 3.  Ramis passed away on February 24, and I wanted to share what the others had to say about Ramis.

Ivan Reitman, director: “The world has lost a wonderful, truly original, comedy voice with the passing of Harold Ramis. He possessed the most agile mind I’ve ever witnessed. He always had the clearest sense of what was funny and how to create something in a new clever way … Harold had an extraordinary impact on my career and I loved him like a brother.”

Dan Aykroyd (Raymond Stantz): ”Deeply saddened to hear of the passing of my brilliant, gifted, funny friend, co-writer/performer and teacher Harold Ramis. May he now get the answers he was always seeking.”

Bill Murray (Peter Venkman): “Harold Ramis and I together did the National Lampoon Show off Broadway, Meatballs, Stripes, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day. He earned his keep on this planet. God bless him.”

Ernie Hudson (Winston Zeddmore): “Harold was the glue. There wouldn’t a ‘Ghostbusters’ without Harold Ramis. Harold Pulled it together. And I know I probably wouldn’t be in the business had I not had the chance to work with Harold at that time in my career. He taught me a lot, not overtly by trying to teach me, just watching him work and how he dealt with things. He will be missed.”

I’ve read some really interesting things just now about both Ghostbusters 3 and Ghostbusters: The Video Game. I wanted to bring some things to light that might have been missed, which I feel are worth repeating, as well as highlighting:

Even [Bill] Murray returned – not with a hatful of diva demands, but wanting an assurance that Winston Zeddemore, the underwritten black character from the movies, would be elevated to full status.

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Sony has done it again, and made me happy that I have never owned a Playstation. In short, just so that everything is clear:

In NTSC regions such as the United States, Atari is handling distribution of the game, and it WILL be released on time on ALL consoles on June 16th.

In PAL regions such as the United Kingdom, Sony is handling distribution of the game and ONLY releasing it on PS3, PS2 and PSP on June 19th, and Wii, DS and 360 in Fall 2009.

Sony has a history of bad moves like this. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis have commented on the upcoming Ghostbusters 3 script that is in the works, and in the process revealed some new plot points as well as new Ghostbusting tools that will be at their disposal. I am assuming this is in addition to the classic and iconic Proton Pack, which wasn’t mentioned, but most definitely will be a part of it.

Aykroyd explains: “There will be a whole new generation that has to be trained, and that whole new generation will be led by an individual who you’ll all love when you meet him but I’m not going to tell you anything yet.”

This is really interesting and I wonder who it could possibly be. The first time that I read this, I took it to mean that the person training the Ghostbuster Cadets was who he was referring to. But reading it again, it seems that he means a new leader for the new group of primary Ghostbusters.

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It’s about time that Bill Murray said more than, well nothing, about Ghostbusters. Up until the last month or so, Murray hasn’t really said anything with regard to Ghostbusters, at all. But since recording dialog for the video game, and the writers being hired, Murray seems to have a lot to say.

“I think it’d be funny to have a girl Ghostbuster. We don’t have a girl Ghostbuster. I mean, they say like, ‘What if you passed it to Chris Rock?’ And I go, ‘Well, I dunno. Is Chris Rock gonna save us?’ You know, I guess. He’s funny.”

He adds, “I just think there’s some funny girls I’d love to see be Ghostbusters.”

Just to be clear, one site I read went well beyond what I thought of, when reading this. The route that I went was more along the lines of Tina Fey. The only real problem is that there isn’t a girl that I can think of, at the moment, that would realistically play a Ghostbuster. One person that came to mind, however, is Janeane Garofalo. She tends to be negatively sarcastic though, and no Ghostbuster was mean-spirited in the films, which I think is what helps make it work.

“We didn’t have a lot of special effects in it. There were just a couple. It was just the funny characters in that world, and I like that movie because of it. The first movie had like 60 plate shots. The second movie had like hundreds. Those guys got their hands on the script early, and it was GONE. It went away. It was hard to wrangle because it was tied all around the effects without the story or the characters coming first. So, they are hard movies to write, and Dan really caught it with that first one.”

That’s absolutely correct. Dan Aykroyd seemed to catch lightning in a bottle. Having a third Ghostbusters film in this day will mean that it’ll have some pretty great special effects. But keep it to a minimum, be smart with the effects and don’t do things just to do them. Story and characters need to be taken care of before any effects shots are considered. In doing this, the effects can support the story, not the other way around.

Thank you, Bill Murray, for re-instilling hope of a great new Ghostbusters film actually seeing the light of day. I’ll leave you with this hilarious quote:

“The characters are fun to do. We did the video game this summer and it was fun to do it again. I found myself walking down fifth avenue singing the song. People were like ‘wow that actor is really full of himself.’”