Discuss all things Ghostbusters here, unless they would be better suited in one of the few forums below.
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By mrmichaelt
#4943620
As a Christmas gift to us all, Paul Rudoff officially added the 9/29/1988 draft to his list of scripts for Ghostbusters II! You can definitely see a transition to the story structure seen in the movie but a lot of characters and scenes haven't shown up yet., like the Lane Walker love interest is still a main character but Dana still comes up...

https://www.theraffon.net/~spookcentral ... 988-script
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By mrmichaelt
#4943632
Probably the wildest bit that I loved was Peter and Lane running into Dana at the restaurant, and the two women know each other, Dana is amused Peter is dating another client, and Dana's date is Sting...and Peter asks what he does. :D

Jason Locke, the precursor to Janosz, turning into a pterodactyl monster at the end and melting into a puddle was well very 80s movie inspired.
d_osborn wrote: December 25th, 2020, 8:50 pm It's a great read. I've always liked these Slimer scenes a lot more. :-)
Agreed. His appearance at Peter's apartment felt very 'RGB' to me. Him trying to mime what's happening, Peter pulling the window shade down, etc. I would have dug seeing this in the movie even. It was also a neat idea that they discover Slimer evidently hiding out in the Firehouse basement this whole time.
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By RichardLess
#4943646
Oh boy was that a baaaaad Climax! There’s almost no action. This is the worst draft of the film.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine if they had made this draft? They break in the museum hose a monster and...the end. Yikes..

Vigo is barely a character. Jason is...a ghost? A monster? Why does he turn into a pterodactyl monster? Is that his true form? The earlier draft was much creepier when he was Vigo. Thank god they hired Peter Macnicol who turned Jason into Janosz. Janosz steals the movie.

Also Venkman comes off super creepy and if they would’ve made this version of GB2? Holy crap. The politics of today would’ve destroyed this franchise. As it is some people already call Venkman a creep for the some of his actions in GB1...but this?? He’s a dog.

It’s crazy to think that as of September ‘88 Sigourney Weaver was just a cameo. Thank god they changed that.

That being said? Holy shit is that dinner sequence with Dana & Sting hilarious. I can picture it. There are a couple ideas they should’ve kept:

Number 1: Venkman loosing his TV show & the kooks come to the studio as his fans.
Number 2: New Yorkers forcing themselves to be nice to each other. I love this idea. It could’ve been really funny.
Number 3: Slimer is utilized waaay better here.
Number 4: The Mayor being more cooperative.

But...no Ray’s occult? Winston has, what? 5 lines? It doesn’t even have a sequence of Ray, Egon & Winston going into the sewers. I know the ghost train portion was a reshoot but they at least had the “falling into the slime” bit in the next draft. This one they talk about going into the sewers and then they just interrupt Venkman & Lane’s dinner. We don’t see any underground action. The ghostbusters aren’t even aware of Vigo as a potential villian. Hey don’t interact with him, nothing.

It’s amazing to see story progression in these drafts. The filmmakers figuring out what works, what doesn’t work. How to improve the film etc. Dana going out to get her baby on the ledge is much better than Venkman doing it. Same with having Dana go to the museum herself after the baby is taken. Lane just kind of...hangs around. Having Egon’s research at the start of the film tie into the central premise is much better than the text book copy/paste we get of solar gravitational forces & the speed of light lecture. Having Dana as the love interest is 100x better than Lane, who barely registers as a character. This gives us a much more personal story for Venkman and Dana with Venkman giving a poignant “I should’ve been your father. I mean I could’ve been”. It shows you how much of a non character Lane is when they can just take her dialogue & give it to Dana in the final film.

I’ve talked about this before but it’s amazing how much the reshoots benefit the final film. Even the next draft? There’s very little Ghostbusters. It’s more “Venkman The Movie”. Adding the ghost train, the Vigo picture fire, the “atomic weight of cobalt”/ Vigo history lesson + having the next draft include the Winston getting pulled into the Slime+ them fighting before realizing where the slime is flowing, and showing up to the museum to investigate after the tub monster? It works wonders. It adds so much.

It’s amazing to me that this is something they felt good enough to call a draft. The first film feels epic with demi gods and gateways into other world and Sumerian mythology, big explosions and set pieces.
This feels tiny in comparison. It’s interesting that the most exciting sequence in the film went unchanged from draft to draft, which is the court room bust. That’s probably not an accident.
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By Kingpin
#4943664
I think in hindsight, hearing all these accounts of the early drafts of Ghostbusters II, it gives me a greater appreciation for the movie we got. While GBII remains the poorer cousin to the first film, after hearing all these summaries, we got a far better version of Ghostbusters II than what may've been.

And I think it increases our debt to Harold for being the script-writer/developer that he was.
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By RichardLess
#4943695
Dr.D wrote: December 27th, 2020, 12:20 pm It's hard to imagine Dan and Harold sitting down to write a sequel at all with how the first movie came together.
What do you mean by that?

When I started reading screenplays it really made me appreciate the art of acting a lot more than I did. Some scripts can be read as funny right off the page while others don’t. I remember feeling so disappointed in the Ghostbusters 1 script. I just didn’t find it funny. But when you put that dialogue in an actor like Bill Murray’s mouth? So much of it is attitude and delivery. With ad libbs done by pros.

Take Janosz in the final GB2 draft. His lines don’t read as funny. But when you see it in the final film? It’s hysterical. So much of that comes from direction & performance.

I LOVE John Candy. Love him. But if John Candy had been cast as Louis rather than Moranis, the first film would’ve been at least 1/3rd less funny than it is. Moranis just has this nerdy desperation to him that makes the character work.

Think of how funny the world of the psychic scene is in the film compared to how it comes off in the script. So much of what makes that scene work is the complete earnestness of the woman & Venkman’s looks directly to the camera and his general uncomfortable body language.

When Dan & Harold wrote that scene they KNEW Murray would nail it. But the woman? Who knows how over the top that scene could’ve been with a different actress.

It’s similar with the script to Dr. Strangelove. The script doesn’t really read as funny. But when you cast Peter Sellers & give the film a certain aesthetic...it’s like magic. A line like “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the war room!” works so much better when you have Peter Sellers as some milquetoast WASPy American President.
By Lenny m
#4943700
You guys got to remember that in Ghostbusters the three actors of Professionals of this Saturday Night Live alumni Saturday Night Live when the first started out improv comedy and three of the major individuals from Saturday night live was in the Ghostbusters movie that Bill Murray Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis
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By Dr.D
#4943701
I just mean, given how colossal the success of the first movie and given how smart Dan and Harold are (meaning smart enough to know even the best scripts can fall apart when it gets time to actually film. Adding to that the fact that Dan, Bill, and Harold were all offered and declined sequel deals for pretty much every movie they made in the 80s, it must have been all the more daunting to put word to paper and actually get to the point where they wanted to make a sequel.

It's like when a band is making their second album. You have all your life to make your first album, after that it's all about the follow-up and how that compares to your debut.
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By RichardLess
#4943702
Lenny m wrote: December 28th, 2020, 4:41 am You guys got to remember that in Ghostbusters the three actors of Professionals of this Saturday Night Live alumni Saturday Night Live when the first started out improv comedy and three of the major individuals from Saturday night live was in the Ghostbusters movie that Bill Murray Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis

So let me get this straight?

...they were in Saturday Night Live? Saturday Night Live?

Are we sure they were in Saturday Night Live?

Someone better check to make sure if they were on Saturday Night Live.

Oh I checked and Harold Ramis was never apart of that show called Saturday Night Live
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By d_osborn
#4943710
RichardLess wrote: December 28th, 2020, 3:28 am Think of how funny the world of the psychic scene is in the film compared to how it comes off in the script. So much of what makes that scene work is the complete earnestness of the woman & Venkman’s looks directly to the camera and his general uncomfortable body language.

When Dan & Harold wrote that scene they KNEW Murray would nail it. But the woman? Who knows how over the top that scene could’ve been with a different actress.
Well, for what it's worth, World of the Psychic was a reshot scene, with a completely different production design. Chloe Webb had just worked with Ivan on Twins, so he knew what she was capable of. I would LOVE to see the original version of the scene.
By Alex Newborn
#4943735
I'm slowly savoring this script. I got to the 'slime in the bathtub' scene, and despite the fact this is Lane, not Dana, I did feel that throwing in the hair dryer to electrocute the creature was more "Ripley"-like.

Also, since the slime from the faucet is described as coalescing into a froglike creature, I pictured the deleted subway frog ghost.

Yeah, Ramis was on SCTV not SNL, which is fairly distinct though there were some like Murray and Martin Short who appeared on both. I'm currently looking up some John Candy clips to see when they originally aired. It gets a little blurrier for me when SCTV becomes "SCTV Network", etc., and one clip that I thought was SCTV turned out to be the short-lived New Show by Lorne Michaels.

Alex
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By mrmichaelt
#4943741
RichardLess wrote: December 27th, 2020, 2:48 am New Yorkers forcing themselves to be nice to each other. I love this idea. It could’ve been really funny.
I do like it sort of evolved into the movie with it starting out with New Yorkers being awful to ending with New Yorkers pretty much saving the Ghostbusters' bacon.

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