The first draft of Ghostbusters 2 is BIZARRE

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Some of you guys probably know that Paul Rudoff from Spook Central just posted the first draft of GB2, and to say it’s weird is an understatement. You can check it out here: http://www.theraffon.net/~spookcentral/gb2_script_1988-08-05.pdf

It’s nearly a totally different movie: no Dana, no River of Slime, no Janosz, no Slimer, no Vigo painting.

The weirdest parts:

Vigo is not the Vigo we know. He’s a Russian monk from the early 1900’s, and has a big beard and wears robes decorated with “religious symbols.”

No Dana—she’s not even mentioned. Instead we get Lane Walker as Pete’s love interest, but she has pretty much zero personality beyond being a damsel in distress.

Lane is Oscar’s mother—except the poor kid never even gets a name in the script! He’s just “the baby”

Lane and Peter’s relationship is incredibly forced and quick—by page 11, he’s in her apartment and flirting with her, etc.

The PKE meters aren’t used at all—only the gigameter. In fact, the whole point of the movie is that the Ghostbusters aren’t investigating ghost activity—they are investigating something called “psychomagnetic energy” AKA the bad vibes and negative emotions of New York City.

Ray is extremely against the Ghostbusters reforming, which is odd, and has to be talked into it by Pete

For 90% of the movie, Vigo is known as Jason Locke, and he’s Lane Walker’s abusive ex-boyfriend. He’s also barely in the movie, except when he’s literally lurking in the shadows and spying on the Ghostbusters

There’s no river of slime—instead, it’s explained that the negative energy from all the angry New Yorkers has “seeped into the ground” and it causes little earthquakes. But there’s no physical representation, and it’s sorely missed.

Winston is BARELY in the movie. He’s in the birthday party scene in the beginning, then not seen again until page 45! Then he leaves again, and doesn’t show up until page 78! And he literally gets nothing important to do in the whole movie.

Walter Peck from the first movie testifies against them in the courtroom scene, which is a nice touch

The Scoleri Brothers are in the movie—however, incredibly bizarrely, they are literally the only creatures or ghosts in the whole film! A big departure from the first movie, with Slimer, terror dogs, library ghost, Stay Puft, Gozer, etc.

The Ghostbusters don’t do any ghostbusting, except the Scoleri Brothers. Almost the whole movie is them investigating things or doing various research.

There’s no “back in business” montage

There’s a bizarre scene in the World Trade Center where the Ghostbusters investigate a Donald Trump-esque character who spontaneously combusts. It has almost nothing to do with the rest of the movie.

There’s no Slimer or mention of him

In the middle of the movie, Peter and his love interest go on a date, but it comes basically out of nowhere and feels totally out of place

There’s another weird scene where a rich couple are fighting in their mansion, and the husband almost kills his wife with a pistol. He only stops because their mansion is suddenly overrun with millions of cockroaches.

The millions of cockroaches kind of takes the place of the river of slime, but it’s not nearly as important to the overall movie

Ray and Egon go investigate the millions of cockroaches, but, incredibly oddly, it happens completely off-camera. We only hear them talk about it.

Oscar still walks out on the ledge of his high-rise apartment building, but Peter and Lane remarkably aren’t all that concerned. It’s the worst part of the script—Peter even cracks jokes while Oscar is standing out there.

Amazingly, the Ghostbusters are never in their Ghostbusters jumpsuits the entire movie, except for one brief scene in the middle, and then again for the final showdown. They barely use their proton packs at all.

The Titanic scene from the movie is followed up with a nearly identical Hindenburg scene, which is totally redundant

The WEIRDEST part of the movie by far: the mayor allows the Ghostbusters to cut into the NBC Nightly News to tell all New Yorkers to be nice to each other. Ray even suggests several songs they can sing when they get angry to calm themselves down. Yes, this actually happens.

There’s no Janozs Poha, and he’s sorely missed. Vigo doesn’t have any kind of minion or second-in-command, it’s just him.

The best part of the draft by far is that Louis plays a much bigger role. He pretty much officially becomes the fifth Ghostbuster in the last act and plays a huge role in helping them save the day.

Vigo is a completely unsatisfying bad guy—he doesn’t show up or reveal his motive until page 100 of a 114 page script. And even then he has no personality and barely speaks.

Vigo drives the Statue of Liberty, not the Ghostbusters. And it’s used as a force of evil.

The way they save the day is incredibly bizarre. Egon realizes the Statue of Liberty is made from copper, so they hook up their proton packs to the electricity grid of NYC and fire electricity at the Statue from their proton packs instead of proton beams. For some reason this explodes the Statue of Liberty. The ending in general is incredibly abrupt.

Overall, the script is remarkably not very fun. There’s no creatures, no big set pieces, no big memorable moments. Much of it has a weirdly serious and flat tone, and many of the jokes fall flat. What makes it most unsatisfying and not fun is the fact that the Ghostbusters never really do all that much—almost the entire movie they are in plain clothes, and just investigate stuff. It very much reads like a first draft that needs a lot of work—which clearly they did. It also seems like maybe this movie was meant to be made with a much smaller budget.

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The characters aren’t the characters. Venkman feels like a totally different person(he even has a few lines that Egon or Ray get in the finished film). It’s oddly serious and not very funny. Thank God it was re written! It seemed so awkwardly paced. The middle of the script is just flat nothingness. The beginning at Ellis Island feels like an episode of Extreme Ghostbusters. I can almost imagine how much material would get cut out in the editing phase.

However, if I’m not mistaken, the Back in Business montage isn’t listed as a montage in the GB2 shooting script. It reads like a montage, scenes happening rapidly at different locations, but there is a similar feel to the post Scolari Brothers scenes in this draft(the construction crew, re hiring of Jeanine, the man on fire etc i could see those as the Back in Business montage).

It was a fascinating read though. The production of GB2 has always interested me and it’s great to see how the plot developed. It’s interesting to see Harold Ramis’s name above Dan Akyroyd on this draft. The GB2 production script always felt more Ramis-ish than GB1. The DVD commentary for GB1 is basically Ramis taking credit for various jokes, would be interesting to hear who wrote what for GB2. Dan Aykroyd always seems to get shafted when it comes to credit for the comedy aspect of Ghostbusters. I love the technobabble stuff that makes it all seem credible.

Also Louis’s line about sticking a magnet on a pole was pretty funny. I laughed when I read that(I could almost hear Moranis’s delivery). Should have ported it over to the other script.

The Lane character is just horrid. One note and constantly overshadowed by the mere memory of Dana Barrett. I wonder how that role would’ve been cast. Thank god they came to their senses. I guess this is the draft Murray refers to as the draft he signed on for, before the film was rewritten? If so, yikes!

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Oh I forgot to mention the ballet date. Peter Venkman should never, ever, EVER, talk about or see a Ballet. That is not the character I know & love.

Plus the whole forced at gunpoint to the Mayor’s mansion is also really out of place. Especially when the mayor asks for the GBs help but a few pages later reverts back to his septic authority role

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I’m about half way done reading and it is BORING as can me. Interesting how much the movie changed in a year.

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You’re dead on–the whole thing has an oddly mean-spirited, angry tone. And the pacing is incredibly awkward.

I’m also fascinated with the development of GB2. But I don’t think this is the version Murray signed up for, and then wasn’t happy it was changed. I believe this was a draft they wrote when they didn’t think Sigourney Weaver was gonna do the film.

Someone else just pointed this out to me–there’s an even earlier version of GB2 that might be the one Murray signed up for. It’s even weirder and takes place in Scotland and has to do with Dana finding a civilization of fairies. This is from Spook Central:

Cinefex magazine issue #40 mentions that Dan Aykroyd’s initial script for a second Ghostbusters film was “a story in which Dana was kidnapped and taken to Scotland where she discovered a fairy ring and civilization underground”. Dan said, “One idea that did stay in our script was the notion of having things occur underground. We went skyward in the first film - up to the top of a skyscraper - so I thought for the second one it would be nice to see the underbelly of the city. But my original concept for going underground was different. It involved a pneumatic tube two thousand miles long that they traveled in for three days. It was like a primitive mail chute.”

Here’s where that came from: Spook Central - Ghostbusters II Scripts - theraffon

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I doubt it as I’ve asked about this in previous years, does anyone have the “Cinefex script” and/or know if its on-line?

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It’s supposedly named “The Seed” (like how Aykroyd’s first GB1 script was “Ghost Smashers”) and Murray nicknamed it “The Last of the Ghostbusters” supposedly in that one magazine article. And along with Charlie said, that’s all we know. A copy is not online. I’ve been pulling an Ahab searching for a copy the last couple of years with nothing to show for it.

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I doubt Murray read ANY scripts before he signed on. He’s not really into script-reading, unless it’s the scripts of first time directors trying to live their dreams. I bet he listened to a pitch, and it didn’t suck, and he said something close enough to “yes” to get the movie greenlit, and then he showed up on the first day of shooting, actually had to read the new script, saw it didn’t match what he’d been pitched and WASN’T HAPPY.

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Ghostbusters 2 has such an interesting production history. The short amount of time between filming and release date is insane! I bet Reitman was going nuts when reshooting key scenes with visual effects–2 months before the film was due to hit theatres! If it were today? You can bet the production of GB2 would be labeled a disaster. Look what happened when World War Z had to reshoot scenes. It was in every industry paper/website. Ghostbusters 2 had the train and tunnel scene, the photo lab fire, quite a bit of the showdown with vigo, the mayor’s office eclipse, Cheech Marin. Not to mention the filmed but cut subplots with Slimer, Eugene Levy, and possessed Ray. It’s amazing the movie works at all!

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mrmichaelt: I had never been fully aware of the original ideas for Ghostbusters II. I felt like i heard about it once maybe on this forum, never knew anything else about it. I suppose if I had actually checked Spook Central for one I would have known. :walterpeck: Thanks for your reply and providing insight.

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There’s a saying that writing is re-writing. Your first draft of anything is probably going to suck, but if your lucky, it will contain some good ideas that can be developed as you keep working on it. It’s possible this version of the script was done when they weren’t sure what their big set pieces were going to be, yet, so they just put down the bare bones and figured they’d elaborate later.

But the more I read about GB2 and where it went wrong, the more I think nobody really had a strong vision for what they wanted the movie to be. The version that got everyone excited was the “darker,” one (the one Bill Murray called, “a good story, a really, REALLY good story”) but that version may not have ever actually been written. Right from the start, Ivan and Harold and Dan and the producers were never really on the same page. Dan’s idea of fairy circles and Scotland was summarily thrown out. Harold didn’t like the slime and thought “negative energy” could work. Ivan just seems to have thrown in the towel story-wise and re-routed all of his energy to just getting the movie done. Meanwhile all the studio is saying is they want the first movie done over again. Then ILM, after promising all these elaborate effects, turns around with a list of stuff that just isn’t going to get done on time.

It sounds like a clusterfak. It’s kind of amazing the movie holds together at all.

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@ M Thunder

ILM should be praised for the work they managed on GB2. Every piece of advice ILM tried to give was ignored. ILM painstakingly made the Scoleri Bro’s the way Reitman and co demanded. When the sequence changed and no longer required the brothers to shout Italian cuss words, it was too late and the work was already done. The brothers were done via body suit because the movements were too complicated for model work. Again, when the sequence changed it was too late and the work had already been done. Had the GB2 producers figured things out before or listened to advice, these sequences could have been done much quicker.

Artists worked themselves to death on scenes that would end up on the cutting room floor, or changed to the point where the details of their hard work would be lost.

1988-89 was an insane year for ILM(Indy 3, Back to the Future 2. ghostbusters 2, I think Honey I Shrunk the kid). They were so busy they had to turn down Shatner’s Star Trek movie.

When concepts, scenes and additions keep changing and piling up ILM has to put it’s foot down. When a business has to turn down work and hand it off to competitors, you know something serious is going on. GB2 was an already tight schedule, when you start adding complex effects shots just months before the release date, you can’t compromise the ILM brand by delivering a product you don’t believe in.

It’s telling that, on all the projects the legendary Dennis Murren has worked on, he lists Ghostbusters 2 has the hardest. Not because the effects were challenging, but because the schedule was like nothing ILM had worked on before. They were use to having a year post production schedule. On GB2? Mere months.

It’s a god damn miracle GB2 isn’t a disaster of biblical proportions. Look at Shatner’s Star Trek as an example of what happens when you hire the wrong FX vendor. That movie is 20% of what is was suppose to be. All due to the schedule and FX.

It kind of annoys me that Reitman was such a “yes man” to the studio. He could have easily delayed the release for Christmas or even summer 1990. Instead the schedule got pushed up(due to Batman). Now, again, I love GB2, but it needed some fine tuning. Reitman wanted to be the hero that saved Columbia, like in 84. I also maintain that had GB2 not been releases so close to Batman, we would have had multiple sequels by now.

Batman swallowed up everything in it"s wake, much like GB1 did to Gremlins & Temple of Doom in 84. GB2 broke the opening weekend record, then Batman came along and broke that same record. The negative reaction to Ghostbusters 2 was all about context. Indy 3 and Lethal Weapon 2 were considered good sequels. Ghostbusters 2 was released in the middle of all these massive action blockbusters. Audiences want explosions and chase scenes. Of course GB2 was seen as a dissappointment!

Wow. I think I may have gone off topic..just a tad. See this is what happens when I start talking about GB2! I love this franchise!

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Doesn’t surprise me considering how different the first film was from it’s original draft with things like…

taking place in the future

hundreds of offices across the country

catching ghosts with magic wands

traveling through space and time

etc, etc

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It was VERY cool of Paul to post the scan. Thanks, Paul!

The 8/5/88 isn’t the first draft. Not by a long shot. Aykroyd and Ramis had been writing it for at least six months by then. Even before that, Aykroyd hammered out THE SEED solo spec script, which is mentioned earlier in the thread.

Interesting note, the 8/5 script was the first draft submitted by the production to ILM and Columbia.

Although he’s not credited, I’ve read in several places that Murray had a hand in crafting the story! Aykroyd even mentioned it in an interview:

Maybe it’s why Murray seemed so high on the earlier script. Bill Murray signed on wayyyy before the 8/5 draft was written, though. If I had to guess, Murray probably played a part in shaping the core idea of the GBs being shells of their former selves, legally barred from ghostbusting, physical effects of positive/negative emotions, female lead has a baby, etc.

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Some of my own observations:

First, it’s just kind of…bad, like others have said. We see some moments and bits that would make it into the final script and the actual movie, but it doesn’t hang together well here. Venkman is really unlikeable. Lane is bland beyond compare.

I actually find the villain concept a bit interesting, though. The backstory is so completely different from the final Vigo that you could easily pull out any residual links and spin Jalmar Litvinov into a totally different villain. I won’t rule out giving that a try.

An even more abrupt and stupid version of the Janine/Louis trainwreck than in the final movie: after not even interacting during the entire script, she kisses him out of nowhere just before the big battle. Good grief. What’s really absurd is that Louis shares most of what became their 'flirty" dialog in later script drafts with Winston of all people. (Winston/Louis new OTP!!!111!!! Nah, I couldn’t do that to Winston :stuck_out_tongue: )

It’s an interesting artifact, and I’m glad Paul and devilmanozzy for bringing it to us. If nothing else, it confirms that, indeed, while GB2 could have been better, it also could have been a lot worse.

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As someone who’s disappointment with Ghostbusters II stems from the movie’s dependence on the first film in every regard I actually enjoyed the meat of this draft. Not only is this movie different it is weirdly different.

Venkman isn’t written particularly well, Zeddemore is again poorly under written, and Stantz/Spengler both seem under developed. Lane Walker seems like a placeholder character, as if they were unsure they could get Weaver back or not-- this isn’t the first time we’ve been exposed to this type of love interest in a Ghostbusters property (Dr. whatever from the video game how are you)-- oddly enough Louis is the best written character in the whole script. Giving his desire to be a Ghostbuster reasoning past “plot device” was a nice touch that would’ve been nice to have made it through the various drafts. The level that this is a purely Bill Murray vehicle is kinda dumbfounding compared to the clockwork mechanism of the first film but it makes sense as far as luring Murray into the project to begin with.

Onto some of the things that I found interesting about this draft:

the darker tone is kinda jarring. The dark elements do line up with the darker elements that were cut from GBII proper though. Moments like the rich couple/possibly attempted murder, the interaction between Venkman and Vigo in the alleyway (though Venkman being amazed at actually having his socks blown off got a laugh out of me)-- just not very Ghostbustersy feeling.

The broadcast, previously mentioned in this thread, IS weird but picturing Stantz’ speech being as deadly serious as possible makes it work-- in particular telling a waiting populace that Ray Steven’s “Everything is Beautiful” is the scientifically proven choice of song to sing. The ensuing segments with hostile New Yorkers making nice with each other are redundant but I got a chuckle out of the exchange between the Umpire and the Manager.

The odd bits about every specter in the tri-state area heading into New York for the weekend were a little weird since the psychomagnetic force was described as the Anti-PKE earlier but whatever-- they would’ve been pretty neat images (in particular with the subway platform which drew parallels to Knock Knock in my head). I actually enjoyed the ending. The Ghostbusters being deputized as city officials, plotting out a diversion tactic to trap Vigo, and then the whole weird using the city’s power supply to ionize the Statue of Liberty, dissipate Vigo-- all on Wall Street. Feels big and dumb and fun.

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I thought Bill said he signed on to GB2 because the pitch he read was that is was completely different from GB1 and I’m pretty sure he mentions that the Ghostbusters literally end up “dead” somehow and go to the other side.

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Anyone have a current link or PDF copy of the 1986 script?

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It has not surfaced nor made public as of this post. The earliest GB2 draft released is the August 5, 1988 one.