[Alex Newborn]

I am going through a decades-old Ghostbusters scrapbook that I just located again, and found a little note I'd tucked in there, of various places that I had seen 'the Ghostbusters phone number'... 555-2368

I'm gonna try to do some framecaps, but for now here is the list in the order that I noticed them:

Ghostbusters

Howard the Duck

Ordinary People

When A Stranger Calls

AT&T commercial 1993

Far and Away

Rockford Files opening credits



I had to look up the title for When A Stranger Calls, as my note simply said "Carol Kane? movie with killer in house"... and while checking its imdb page, discovered that the same phone number also appears in Forever Young.

Some more possibilities found via online searches...

1965's A Patch of Blue
the hotel room in Memento
Real Estate, Along Came Polly
Tony Baretta, Baretta
Guiler residence, Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Det. Sgt. Rick Hunter, Hunter
Hotel Phone, Jane Austen's Mafia!
Kojak, Kojak
Jaime Sommers, The Bionic Woman

Seems to be pretty popular among TV detectives, huh?

Alex

P.S. Check out this website!
http://home.earthlink.net/~mthyen/2000.html

[TheRealPonyboy]

I'm gonna call 867-5309 instead.

[Chace]

JL5-2020

[TheRockman]

JL5-2020

Heh, my thought exactly so I had to dig (Google Image Search) a bit.



I think JL5-2020 was the number on the Ecto-1a.

So why did they change their number? WHAT ARE THEY HIDING!?

[ProtonCharger]

they're hiding winston's mustache.

[TheRockman]

[kevinj319]

An excerpt from Wikipedia:

The number "2368" is a carryover from "EXchange 2368", which was common in old telephone advertisements. This represents "Exchange Central", with 2368 being the numeric version of "CENTral" in alphabetic dialing.

The full article is here.

[Boomerjinks]

Earlier this year I called the number of the cherry picker arm from the GB2 sign installation scene. It's someone's personal voicemail now.

[Fritz]

So why did they change their number? WHAT ARE THEY HIDING!?

They were out of business for a while, remember? Maybe they lost the old number during that time.

(Or the guys in the Columbia prop department making the decals for the ECTO-1A weren't nerds enough to realize that a phone number had appeared in the first movie, and made up their own.)

[CPU64]

I'm gonna call 867-5309 instead.

If you use (407) you'll get a plumbing company here..

[Alex Newborn]

I'm gonna call 867-5309 instead.

Aw, come on... if you're gonna go for that joke, couldn't you at least keep things Aykroyd-centric?

[Youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGbj4u-6c0A[/Youtube]

634-5789, man! Blues Brothers 2000!

Alex

[BluesSinger212]

Wilson Pickett (originally written by Eddie Floyd and Steve Cropper) - cool tune! Johnny Lang hacked at it though mid-way through the song in Blues Brothers 2000. Sends shivers down my spine like nails on a chalkboard.

Didn't they do a promotion for Ghostbusters 2 where you could the number and get a "special message" or something? I thought I read that somewhere (here actually)

[Alex Newborn]

Didn't they do a promotion for Ghostbusters 2 where you could the number and get a "special message" or something? I thought I read that somewhere (here actually)

Not for the sequel, that I recall, but for the first movie, yes.

"After the film was out and doing well -- just to keep the phenomenon going -- Ivan came up with the idea of taking a 'junk-buy' cross-country on late-night TV and running the commercial just as it appeared in the film, only with the superimposed phone number changed to an 800 number. Then people could call in and get an answering machine with Danny's and Bill's voices saying: 'Hi, we're the Ghostbusters. We're not in right now -- we're out catching ghosts...' Well, they did that, and they got a thousand calls per hour, 24-hours-a-day for six weeks. "

--executive producer Michael Gross
[quoted on p. 47 of Don Shay's Making Ghostbusters]

I remember hearing that story a couple of years later, around '86 or so, at leastways it was after I had taped the movie off cable. The guy telling it wasn't the most truthful individual I've ever met, and he apparently was unaware they had changed 555-2368 to a non-fictitious number instead. Anyway, we tried calling 1-800-555-2368 and got the "the number you have dialed does not exist" recording from the operator, which only convinced us all further that Earl was a liar.

Many years later, when James Van Hise gave me a copy of Making Ghostbusters, I saw the little anecdote in the sidebar and thought, "I'll be darned. Earl was telling the truth for once!"

I would LOVE for someone to dig up a recording of the message. That should've been on the DVD/Blu-Ray.

Alex

[Fritz]

I'm gonna call 867-5309 instead.

If you use (407) you'll get a plumbing company here..

Strangely enough, there's a plumbing company where I am that does the same thing. That'd be (317) though.

[Zack]

[BluesSinger212]

867-5309 is the number to GEM Plumbing and Heating here in Rhode Island. They have this quote from their website:

"Today, Gem Plumbing & Heating Company has over 300 employees over 165 trucks making it one of largest plumbing & heating companies in the United States. Gem continually strives to provide the best in customer service coupled with the most knowledgeable plumbers and service technicians in Rhode Island."

I find it to be a strange coincidence that 867-5309 is the number to plumbing companies across the country. I wonder if they branched??

[Fritz]

I find it to be a strange coincidence that 867-5309 is the number to plumbing companies across the country. I wonder if they branched??

The one here in Indy calls itself Benjamin Franklin, but there has to be some connection, I'd think, if nothing other than one plumber did it first, and a bunch of others latched onto the idea. Sorta like how I once saw a lawyer ad from New York City that was exactly the same as one here, only with the badly dubbed in firm name being different.

[BluesSinger212]

Are you talking about the "tell them YOU MEAN BUSINESS!" ads? The ones with Robert Vaughan?? It's "de Olivera & Morgan" over here.

[Massacci]

I've always wanted to get my cell number changed to 555-2368.

[Fritz]

Are you talking about the "tell them YOU MEAN BUSINESS!" ads? The ones with Robert Vaughan?? It's "de Olivera & Morgan" over here.

Yeah, that one, and one I remember with a couple of guys from an insurance company lamenting...

Insurance Company Jerkbag #1: They have a big claim. Lots of injuries
Insurance Company Jerkbag #2: We'll just lowball them an offer and they'll be happy with the quick bucks.
Insurance Company Jerkbag #1: They got a laywer
Insurance Company Jerkbag #2: That doesn't mean anything. Who'd they get?
(switch to a shot from behind Insurance Company Jerkbag #1 so we can't see his mouth move)
Insurance Company Jerkbag #1: Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe*
IInsurance Company Jerkbag #2: (sigh) This is gonna cost us a lot of money.

*--Replace with Jacobi and Meyers, Kenn Nunn, or whoever else is using the ad, with a clearly overdubbed voice.

[Alex Newborn]

Watching Gremlins 2 on Blu-Ray for the first time, noticed that the label on the phone on Daniel Clamp's desk is 555-2368. You can see it when Billy uses the phone to capture the Electric Gremlin.

I also spotted a couple of other neat things I'd never made out.

All throughout the Clamp building are signs for businesses that contain references to other films. Now, some of these are rather well-known, like the dentist office says "Dr. Farb", referring to the 1960 version of Little Shop of Horrors, two stars from which play the Futtermans in both Gremlins films.

And in one scene there's a sign for Vectorscope Labs, a reference to Joe Dante's InnerSpace. (Great movie!)

But today was the first time I spotted two tiny ones...

When Kate hears Marla cry for help and moves down a corridor to the right, there's a sign that says "Wak and Neek, Attorneys at Law" (a reference to another Dante film, Explorers) and below that is a sign saying "Klaatu Barada Nikto".

If I have to explain that one... sigh...

Alex

[MageGrayWolf]

How about try calling 1-212-664-4678.

[Alex Newborn]

What do we get when we call that?

[MageGrayWolf]

I have no idea. It was originally from the novelization of Ghostbusters and later used in The Real Ghostbusters cartoon.

[mrmichaelt]

1-212-NO-GHOST (or 1-212-664-4678) was used in the novelization Ghostbusters: Supernatural Spectacular (page 65).

NO-GHOST (664-4678) was on the business card in "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Ghost?"
555-BUST (or 555-2878) was on an advertisement in the bus in "Janine, You've Changed"
212-555-GOST (or 212-555-4678) was the number used by the Extreme Ghostbusters, it was revealed in "Grease"

555-2368 was used in the first movie.
JL5-2020 was seen on Ecto in the second movie and The Video Game
212-555-6311 was on Janine's invoice sheet prop in the second movie

[westies14]

I lifted the 2368 in my local area for my business. I'm sure none of my clients get the joke...

[Alex Newborn]

I just spotted another instance of 555-2368...

The season-ender for the first series of The Greatest American Hero. Ralph uses the suit to see a 'hologram' of someone dialing a phone. That phone's dial has the number.



But what made it particularly cool was, I'd already spotted a Ghostbusters actor earlier in the episode.



In this episode, Michael Ensign (left) plays the principal at the school where Ralph (William Katt) works. In a later episode, a different actor plays the principal.

Other nifty early-80's items I've spotted in various episodes are MT-500 Motorolas, the same style of hardhat Venkman wears in GB2, and the first telephone used by Janine. And as my youngest pointed out, lots and lots of custom props on this show have toggle switches. And I think I spotted another 555-2368 but it was too pixely to get a shot.



There's also the convertible Volkswagen bug driven by Pam (Connie Sellecca), which keeps making me think of Janine's car and the Highway Haunter. And also the VW option in the old Commodore64 computer game.

But apparently the VW bug was just a super popular car in LA in the early 80's. In one continuous towed shot where Ralph, Pam, and Bill (Robert Culp) are driving through town, I counted five separate hardtop doodle-bugs among the oncoming traffic.

Alex

[Alex Newborn]

Well, why didn't somebody tell me this had already been discussed? I just found this by accident.



http://protoncharging.com/2008/02/04/i- ... ng-number/

Alex

[AJ Quick]

Are you talking about the "tell them YOU MEAN BUSINESS!" ads? The ones with Robert Vaughan?? It's "de Olivera & Morgan" over here.

Yeah, that one, and one I remember with a couple of guys from an insurance company lamenting...

Insurance Company Jerkbag #1: They have a big claim. Lots of injuries
Insurance Company Jerkbag #2: We'll just lowball them an offer and they'll be happy with the quick bucks.
Insurance Company Jerkbag #1: They got a laywer
Insurance Company Jerkbag #2: That doesn't mean anything. Who'd they get?
(switch to a shot from behind Insurance Company Jerkbag #1 so we can't see his mouth move)
Insurance Company Jerkbag #1: Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe*
IInsurance Company Jerkbag #2: (sigh) This is gonna cost us a lot of money.

*--Replace with Jacobi and Meyers, Kenn Nunn, or whoever else is using the ad, with a clearly overdubbed voice.

Off topic, but funny (jump to 46 seconds).



I wish someone had compiled ALL of the commercials from all over the country. There are so many Robert Vaughn lawyer commercials it is hilarious.

[VincentVegaFFF]

I'm gonna call 867-5309 instead.

Aw, come on... if you're gonna go for that joke, couldn't you at least keep things Aykroyd-centric?

[Youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGbj4u-6c0A[/Youtube]

634-5789, man! Blues Brothers 2000!

Alex

In my town we actually have phone numbers that start with 634. I always wanted to call them and ask if they knew their phone number was a song about a sex hotline but never did. Extra fun fact is Aykroyd hangs out in my town all the time, owns a cottage on the out skirts, organized the local blues fest, owned a restaurant here and shot the opening prison scene of BB2K here. Maybe he bought the phone number as well? Wouldn't put it past him.