This is my first post on the forums here. This is actually a note I wrote on Facebook just a few days ago. I hope you enjoy it. 
This is not a review of a classic movie. This is an ode. This is a “Thank you” letter. It’s my tribute to one of the funniest and best films ever made and one that means the world to me personally.
I was only 2 years old when “Ghostbusters” opened on June 8, 1984 (fun fact: it had the same release date as “Gremlins”), so while I was too young to see it when it became an American phenomenon that summer, it still ended up having a bigger impact on my childhood than any movie or TV show I saw outside of “Star Wars.”
With the iconic film approaching its 30th anniversary, I felt compelled to write about what it meant to me when I first got it on VHS for my 6th birthday and what it still means to me today.
If you ever find yourself responding to a question with, “Back off man, I’m a scientist,” or saying, “Yes, have some!” when someone offers you coffee or a snack then I have a feeling this movie means a lot to you too.
“Ghostbusters” wasn’t just a movie to me as a child. It wasn’t even that combined with the animated series, “The Real Ghostbusters,” and all of the related toys I played with on a daily basis. It wasn’t just the still fondly remembered summer day in 1989 when my mom took my brother and me to see “Ghostbusters 2.”
It was all of those things but mostly it was a world for my imagination to play in for hours on end. If I wasn’t playing with the toys, I was running around with my backpack on and my Wiffle bat in hand to be my proton pack. (Mike even built me a ghost trap out of a shoebox because he was just that great of a brother.)
At school my friends and I would re-enact the previous afternoon’s episode of “The Real Ghostbusters” during the morning recess. As I said above, the only fictional world that had a bigger impact on me was “Star Wars.” But unlike “Star Wars,” “Ghostbusters” took place in the real world (relatively speaking), in the present day. Growing up to be a Ghostbuster seemed like an actual career option, certainly more so than being a Jedi anyway. And Peter Venkman obviously had a lot more fun doing his job than Luke Skywalker had doing his.
As for the film itself, between the ages of 6 and 10, I watched it the way kids that age watch movies. Repeatedly, obsessively. I knew every line, every music cue, and every deadpan Bill Murray look by heart. It was funny, it was action packed. It had everything. “Ghostbusters” was easily one of my most watched movies.
I grew older and as is so often the case with the movies we watch more times than we can count when we’re young, I didn’t see “Ghostbusters” again for several years. I had outgrown the toys, I was too old to run around with my Wiffle bat and backpack and shoebox trap.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love the movie anymore but I had seen it probably upwards of 20 times by then and in a relatively short span. It was time to discover other things.
Several years passed and I became a full blown film geek. I looked at movies in a different way than I had as a child. My standards were higher, my tastes had changed. But when I watched “Ghostbusters” again on DVD at 19, I found that not only did it hold up to my new standards, it was like seeing it for the first time. I was understanding jokes I had never understood before. “Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back,” was at last hilariously funny to me.
I finally knew to laugh when Egon says, “Sorry, Venkman. I’m terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.” I was able to love and appreciate “Ghostbusters” without the element of nostalgia. This was a great movie, not one I was merely still trying to love because I’d grown up on it.
It really all came together for me though- my grown up sensibilities and my nostalgia- on a Sunday afternoon in November of 2007. It would be the first time I’d get to see the movie on the big screen. And this wasn’t just any big screen. This was Seattle’s Cinerama in 70mm. Judging from the condition of the film print it had almost certainly been playing in a packed theater somewhere on opening day in 1984. Knowing that made me feel connected to all of the kids who had seen that movie for the first time 23 years before. And on that cloudy day I was in a house full of people who got it. Who knew and loved the movie just as I did. Several of them had no doubt played Ghostbuster just as I had as a child. We laughed together, applauded, howled. For that hour and 45 minutes I was entranced.
That focus made me appreciate the screenplay and the performances in a way I never had before. Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis had written such well-defined characters and along with director Ivan Reitman, made this highest of high concepts feel grounded in a believable world. We saw Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Egon Spengler begin as scientists working at a university, being thrown out onto the street, and taking out a ridiculous loan to start up a business in a building that, as Egon puts it, “should be condemned.” It made it all so plausible somehow.
The contrast between Ray’s childlike enthusiasm, Egon’s seriousness, and Peter’s wry world view was played to perfection by Aykroyd, Ramis, and Bill Murray, respectively. All three brought their best to the table, playing off of each other brilliantly. Aykroyd delivers scientific mumbo jumbo with unparalleled aplomb. He plays Ray as a truly proud geek at a time when geekiness wasn’t nearly as accepted or “cool” as it is today. Ray really is, as Peter puts it, “the heart of the Ghostbusters.”
Ramis meanwhile, is so underrated as Egon. It’s the way he uncomfortably steps out from behind Ray’s freshly turned on proton pack on the elevator, how he says, “I looked at the trap, Ray,” and how he awkwardly looks down at his mark in their low-budget TV commercial. Being a co-writer, Ramis knew every inch of the character and no one else could have played him as well. Any other actor, even a really good one, probably would have either played too hard for laughs or would have played it too flat, not finding any of the subtle choices Ramis did.
Then there’s the Man. Bill Murray had already become a comic superstar on “Saturday Night Live” and in movies like “Caddyshack” and “Stripes.” But this was the one. This was the movie that cemented his deadpan face onto the Mount Rushmore of American film comedy. For the past 30 years it’s not that kids have just wanted to be Peter Venkman. Kids and adults have wanted to be Bill Murray. Because everything he does in “Ghostbusters” is flawless. Almost all of it is funny. And what isn’t funny is the genuine concern he brings to the moment Peter realizes that Dana is truly possessed and in real danger. It’s the quietly dignified heartbreak when he thinks she’s died as a terror dog. There are real flashes of the more dramatic Bill Murray we’d become so familiar with a couple of decades later.
Mostly though, Murray is funny. Because Peter “never studied” he’s less like a scientist and “more like a game show host.” Making him less of a committed man of science than Ray or Egon gives the audience someone to relate to from the start. Like a goofball Han Solo, Peter Venkman is the “regular guy” in the mix. But he’s not really a regular guy, is he? He’s a guy who gets to make a living chasing ghosts with his best friends and making brilliant wise cracks all day, every day. Who wouldn’t want to be Peter Venkman? Like the man who plays him, Venkman is made out of magic.
There are no interchangeable lines of dialogue between the three either. Everything that comes out of one of their mouths would only be said by the man who says it.
The filmmakers’ attention to character detail didn’t stop with the three leads though. A lot of writers could have made Dana Barrett’s role a thankless one but without us investing in her the movie wouldn’t have worked. Dana is the anchor of the entire movie. Casting Sigourney Weaver in the part certainly didn’t hurt either. To paraphrase Ramis in the film’s audio commentary, she raised Murray’s game as an actor to make the romance between Dana and Peter work. And she absolutely makes us buy her possession by Zuul later in the film.
It’s the other performances that make “Ghostbusters” such a rich experience as well. The everyman quality that Ernie Hudson brings to Winston, the guy the other three hire when business starts to become more than they can handle. Hudson’s role is relatively small, but absolutely essential. (Evidently in the script during his interview, Winston reveals that he’s a former Marine with several PhD’s, not realizing that he’s incredibly overqualified for the job.) It’s the slight kookiness and long suffering “bug eyes” of Annie Potts as their secretary, Janine. It’s every single hilarious thing that Rick Moranis brings to the part of Louis Tully, Dana’s neighbor and eventual Key Master.
His admission at a party that he can write the whole thing off as a business expense and which is the reason he, “invited clients instead of friends,” is pure gold. And it’s the general despicable nature of EPA man Walter Peck, played to utter perfection by William Atherton. Atherton never overplays anything. Peck doesn’t enjoy being an unlikeable government tool, he’s just doing his job and is finding it incredibly frustrating to do so. Some people in this world are just unlikeable and believe with full conviction that what they’re doing is right. Walter Peck is one of those people.
From top to bottom, “Ghostbusters” is a master class in screenwriting. In addition to the excellent characterizations, the story is perfectly constructed, and it could very well have the highest percentage of quotable lines in cinematic history. Aykroyd and Ramis should have at least been nominated for an Oscar for their screenplay but mainstream comedies just don’t get that level of respect.
What’s most impressive about the entire film though is the magic trick Aykroyd and Ramis pulled along with Reitman. They blended comedy, science fiction, action, big special effects, and a little bit of horror (the terror dog attacks on Dana and Louis always unnerved me as a kid, even though Louis’s was played primarily for laughs) into one package. Those things don’t normally go together. By all rights they shouldn’t work together.
Attempting to put all of that into one movie should cause it to derail by the half hour mark and get progressively worse. But the results couldn’t have been any better. There isn’t one moment that doesn’t work in this movie. (Even some of the weaker effects shots have a charm to them.) What other film could have possibly pulled off a gigantic Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man rampaging through the streets of New York? Seriously, what other movie could make that work tonally?
Somehow it doesn’t really feel dated either. Yes, there’s the Ray Parker, Jr. theme along with the handful of other pop songs used but there’s that classic orchestral score from Elmer Bernstein. There aren’t that many “only in the ‘80s” clothing moments either. “Ghostbusters” isn’t so 1984 that we get caught up in it being a product of its decade. Whether Reitman knew it or not, he was making a timeless film.
Ever since I was first introduced to it so many years ago, “Ghostbusters” has been a movie near and dear to my heart. I loved it as an imaginative 6-year old who wanted to be a Ghostbuster. I love it as a comedy nerd and I love it as a movie fanatic. Technically, artistically, and comedically, it’s one of my favorite films of all-time and I grow to love it more with each viewing and with each passing year. It’s taught me life lessons.
To never cross the streams, that dogs and cats living together adds up to mass hysteria, and that when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say, “Yes!” For all of those reasons and more I still want to be a Ghostbuster. So if you’re troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night, experienced feelings of dread in your basement or attic, or if you or your family has ever seen a spook, specter, or ghost then don’t wait another minute and give me a call. I’m ready to believe you!