{"id":8577,"date":"2016-07-10T13:33:04","date_gmt":"2016-07-10T13:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8577"},"modified":"2017-06-20T13:38:38","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T13:38:38","slug":"why-bill-murray-had-all-the-good-lines-in-ghostbusters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8577","title":{"rendered":"Why Bill Murray had all the good lines in \u2018Ghostbusters\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ghostbusters<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Bill Murray not only got all the big laughs in the original \u201cGhostbusters\u201d, he also got the girl and he told reporters at the New York junket for the film in 1984 that it was all Dan Aykroyd\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

Aykroyd, who has had a lifelong interest in the supernatural and has been a card-carrying Fellow of the American Society for Psychical Research, had hammered out ideas for \u201cGhostbusters\u201d as a blue-print. He and the rest of the cast and the director were on hand at the Park Plaza Hotel for the film’s press launch. He said, \u201cI always like to work that way: get the raw material down, throw it in there and see what other people\u2019s thoughts are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Producer and director Ivan Reitman took the pitch to Columbia Pictures and they liked it, but he said, \u201cI didn\u2019t let them read Danny\u2019s draft script because they would have jumped off a tall building.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reitman thought Aykroyd\u2019s idea was wonderful but the script would be impossible to produce: \u201cIt would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. It took place partially in outer-space and was filled with special effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harold Ramis, who was co-writer on Reitman\u2019s \u201cMeatballs\u201d and \u201cStripes\u201d and directed his own script for \u201cCaddyshack\u201d, came in to work with Aykroyd and co-star. Ramis said, \u201cIt\u2019s become a very natural process for all of us because as far back as \u2018Second City\u2019, which for me is 1969, we\u2019ve had a lot of practise collaborating with people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ramis liked the core of Aykroyd\u2019s idea: \u201cThe whole concept of professional ghost exterminators really worked for me: taking something that is so special and exotic as the supernatural and then playing a really mundane workmanlike attitude around it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the final script, Aykroyd and Ramis are committed ghostbusters and Murray\u2019s character more or less goes along for the ride.\u00a0 As their ghostbusting careers skyrocket, they take on not only slimy green apparitions but ugly inter-dimensional creatures and evil deities from the past. It\u2019s left to Aykroyd and Ramis to explain to the audience what\u2019s going on while Murray gets most of the laughs.<\/p>\n

Ramis said, \u201cWe racked our brains to come up with a consistent cosmology that would make sense because we had to make this leap from ghosts, which are one thing, to inter-dimensional creatures recurring on some kind of karmic wheel. Dan and I worked out our own conception of time and space that would account for what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aykroyd was amazed and delighted by the reaction of audiences: \u201cThey follow the story and our mythology, this whole crazy, silly think. I mean, ghosts? Come on, now. But we make them take it seriously and they\u2019re kind of rapt throughout the whole exposition.\u201d<\/p>\n

His major concern was where the laughs would come from, and that\u2019s where Bill Murray came in: \u201cBill\u2019s our point man; his whole attitude is scepticism. We saw him as the mouthpiece, the guy who delivers the punchlines simply because he does it so well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray had a different take on it: \u201cI ended up with a lot of lines because Aykroyd is lazy. He and Harold wrote the script and I had all the lines like \u2018Let\u2019s go\u2019, all the sleazy lines, too, and the dumb lines. I had the most lines because they really like days off. Danny likes to drive around and Harold likes to sit at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aykroyd said that Murray became the romantic lead in the film opposite Sigourney Weaver (pictured) because \u201cBill works well with women that way. I might have been a little stiff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray said, \u201cI think it was a mistake on Dan\u2019s part because Sigourney is pretty good fun. She\u2019s got style. She\u2019s a big drink of water and she\u2019s really very funny when you make he laugh. She gets goofy when she laughs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray did not, however, enjoy working with special effects he couldn\u2019t see: \u201cIt\u2019s kind of difficult and kind of boring. You get into a lot of things like, \u2018OK, there\u2019s a sheet of flame in front of you. Look scared.\u2019 I did the same thing every time. \u2018Duhh!\u2019 They\u2019d say, \u2018Great! Print it.\u2019 I couldn\u2019t believe it. They\u2019d say, \u2018More scared!\u2019 and I\u2019d go, \u2018Duhhhh!\u2019. They\u2019d say, \u2018Perfect.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Bill Murray not only got all the big laughs in the original \u201cGhostbusters\u201d, he also got the girl and he told reporters at the New York junket for the film in 1984 that it was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263],"tags":[2265,1317,1583,3983,630,4341],"class_list":["post-8577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","tag-ghostbusters","tag-bill-murray","tag-columbia-pictures","tag-dan-aykroyd","tag-harold-ramis","tag-sigourney-weaver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9122,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8577\/revisions\/9122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}