Sorry if this was posted before. I checked and didnt see anything but that doesnt mean I didnt miss it but, where the hell Winston was during the trial. I love his character and like many of you wish he had more time on both movies, but it just struck me tonight during a viewing of gb2 that he was in the court room then he wasnt there during the scalary bros. showdown. Winston doesnt seem like the type to take off especially when his friends are in trouble. Even if he didn’t have a pack I couldnt see him bolting. Any theories or any one know what happened to him? I read about the deleted scenes but didn’t see one about the court room. Then again i may have missed it or didnt do a great search. I dont know, any insight would be great.
i think it was just the fact that ray and egon were doing dana a favor and then peter found out…no one bothered telling poor winston. that’s why he wasn’t part of the digging/river of slime scene, and therefore he wasn’t on trial. they prob contacted him after the court scene, when they went back into business.
Bad case of food posioning?
I hadn’t ever thought of it before, but now it’s something that’s really bugging me..
He’s there, talking to them at the start of the trial.. he’s sitting out in the audience (though not in all shots, sometimes he’s gone, sometimes he’s there)..
But as soon as the ghosts show up, he hauls ass out of the court room? Leaving your friends behind to save your own butt doesn’t sound like something a Vietnam veteran would do..
Leaving your friends behind to save your own butt doesn’t sound like something a Vietnam veteran would do..
[/quote]
Its not. He isnt the type of guy to do something like that. I have to say that he seems like the toughest of the GB. Now Venkman is my favorite. BUT Like i said Winston seems like the toughest since he’s not really a scientist he realies more on his wits and knowhow. Hes not dumb by any means, just pointing out he’s not a scientist. We see him halling ass and breaking down a damn door to save his buddies during the fire scene. It almost would make sense to say he left or something before any of the ghost stuff happened. I don’t know. I just don’t get why they cut him so much. All 4 are extremly essential to the team. They are very different people that bring a little something making them 1 unit. I’ve never seen such a balance like that in a fictional work before. It just sucks when they leae winston out. I really want to know where he was during that court room scene. Lol, this sucks!
On the Ghostheads podcast they asked Ernie Hudson and he said it was basically a studio decision to give more screen time to the rest of the cast. Pretty weak. I think the generally accepted explanation around here is that he was doing crowd control.
He didnt have a pack. He’s hauling ass back to the station to get it and come back.
He would have helped out… IF there was a steady paycheck in it…
I think he was probably helping all the other people get out.
Everyone kind of panicked and ran out, then the ghosts closed the doors and jammed them shut… Winston was probably stuck outside.
He went to work on the movie The Crow lol
he probably had to leave, he wasnt the one breaking any restraining orders, so he wasnt on trial. If he stayed in the court room it could have been seen as a conflict of intrest seeing as his part as a ghostbuster and being the warden of a maximum security penitentiary
I can understand Winston’s limited appearance in the first film, but cutting him out as much as they did in the sequel was just rediculous and rude. That’s why I was very pleased to see his character fleshed out in the video game.
I was gonna kid around and say he went to the car to get his own pack but it looks like someone basically beat me to it. 
That sounds like a good explanation. Especially since he didn’t have a pack. There were only three packs in the courtroom because only three ghostbusters were digging a whole in the middle of first avenue. So they only needed to bring three packs in the car. Why bring an extra pack to leave it in an unattended car?
I agree with others that he helped people get out then he got stuck outside. Too bad they didn’t film that though. Seriously.
Very rude. It was great to see him shine in GBTVG though. I heard Bill Murray wanted Ernie Hudson to have more of a role in the game.
This thread is the single reason why GB2 chaps my butter. Winston was completely treated like a secondary character in this film for no dang reason. His absence just never sat right with me. You’re telling me that he wouldn’t have helped the boys with Dana’s problem even if it was just manning the wench? Would it have been that much of a problem to show him in an equal footing with the rest of the guys? Ernie deserved better treatment then that.
On a side note: was the fact that he looked more like his RGB version done on purpose or just a coincidence.
At least he saved Egon and Ray’s butt in the darkroom. Even though that scene kills me there’s a sink right behind them that they could get some water from to put out the fire but they just stand there banging on the door.
There have been times where I’ve honestly wondered whether Winston or Janine would have been in the movie at all if they hadn’t been so established by the cartoon series. I mean, look how they were treated: Niether is in the first third of the movie, other than Winston’s brief appearance in the party scene. Winston does a tad better once he does start appearing (ie going with Ray and Egon to investigate the River of Slime; saving them from the burning dark room) but Janine was practically written to be a completely different character from the one in the first movie in what few scenes she was in.
It’s never been a strong belief, but it’s been there at times.
And your saying Winston wasn’t treated as a second character in GB1? If you want to get technical, Winston wasn’t involved with drilling in the street, so that’s why he wasn’t put on trial with the rest of the team. Though, why he didn’t bust the Scolari Brothers with them, is beyond me. Winston was included in the music montage, and he was in the subway scenes.
That too. He had A LOT more air time in GB2 than in the first movie.
You noticed Winston resembled his RGB counter part…but not Janine? GB2 took a lot of queues from RGB.
He may have had more time in GB2 then he did in GB1 but there’s a reason for that. He wasn’t hired until near the end of the movie. He’s being trained by Ray when the COntainment Unit is shut down. In the context of the story him not being in it that much doesn’t bug me, because he hadn’t even been hired yet.
In the second movie, he’s an established character who should have been given an equal footing as a Ghosbuster and yet it just focuses on the three, it seemed wrong since Winston was just as big a part of the group as the other three. He’s not the secretary, he’s not the accountant, he puts on a Pack and rides with the guys, so yeah it bugs me that he is just left behind for most of the movie.
I bring up Winston’s look and not Janine’s because they changed Janine’s look on the show to resemble how she looked in GB2 and not the other way around. In the first movie Winston looks as he does, then in RGB they design him to look the way he does and that look never changes, and then in the second movie he resembles (at least to me) his cartoon variation.
I have always felt that Ernie Hudson was severly underused in both movies. I understand him not showing up until the middle of Ghostbusters, however, I heard had Eddie Murphy signed on to do the role, then Winston would have been hired earlier in the film and would had accompanied the other guys to the Sedgewick Hotel, and he would have been slimed instead of Venkman. Being that Eddie Murphy was busy filming Beverly Hills Cop and couldn’t commit to the film, Ernie Hudson secured the part. However, I still don’t like how Winston’s part got cut back. I wish they would have included the deleted scene when Ray and Winston investigate the fort where Ray originally encounters the “dream ghost” Having said that I still think he has some of the best lines in movie. I just thought they could have used him more, I mean for Christ’s sakes he isn’t even on the original poster art or even in the early video games.
One of the reasons I enjoy Ghostbusters II a lot is that Winston receives more screen time, however, I thought it was total bull**** that he is excluded from the court room scene (with the exception of a minor appearance in the beginning of that scene). I mean we see Winston in the beginning of the movie with Ray; then he disappears right after for no apparent reason. Your telling me he wouldn’t have agreed to help Dana and the guys out, not likely my friends. However, I strongly believe they used him more in the sequel and for that I’m happy. I’ve always like Winston, and up until the 2009 video game, he never received the credit he deserves. Plus, I heard that Ernie Hudson is an extremely nice guy in person. He seems to do a lot of conventions and most fans love talking to the dude, because he is so down to earth.