Why is ghostbusters a classic

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After the members of a team of scientists Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray lose their cushy positions at a university in New York City, they decide to become "ghostbusters" to wage a high-tech battle with the supernatural for money. They stumble upon a gateway to another dimension, a doorway that will release evil upon the city.

The Ghostbusters must now save New York from complete destruction. Fantasy, Comedy, Adventure. Ivan Reitman. Dan Aykroyd , Harold Ramis.

Jun 8, wide. Aug 2, Columbia Pictures. Bill Murray Doctor Peter Venkman. Dan Aykroyd Doctor Raymond Stantz. Harold Ramis Doctor Egon Spengler. Annie Potts Janine Melnitz. William Atherton Walter Peck. Ernie Hudson Winston Zeddemore. Ivan Reitman Director. Dan Aykroyd Writer. Harold Ramis Writer. Bernie Brillstein Executive Producer. Michael C. Gross Associate Producer. Joe Medjuck Associate Producer. The script was redone by Harold Ramis, who would also star in the film, and Aykroyd to tell the story we see today.

Eddie Murphy was never set to star: Somehow pre-Internet rumors continued on the Internet claim Murphy was meant to star in Ghostbusters. Not true says Reitman. John Candy did turn down a role: Reitman had worked with Candy on his first film, Stripes, and wanted to cast the Canadian star as the accountant neighbor down the hall.

But Candy had trouble grasping the concept. He kept saying, 'Maybe I could play him with a German accent. He didn't get it. So he passed on it over the phone. This is the greatest,' " says Reitman laughing. Unfortunately, there was a time constraint as the lawyers used up much of the setup time to finalize the contract and left only ten months to build the studio itself, shoot the scenes and composite the images. When creating the supernatural creatures, Edlund already had experience working on the ghosts from Poltergeist and used it as a reference for the ghost designs in Ghostbusters.

Associate producer, Michael C. Dan Aykroyd chose his friend, known as the Viking, to design the Marshmallow Man, combining both the Michelin Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy in a sailor hat.

He was portrayed by the actor and special effects artist Bill Bryan who also modeled on Godzilla. Bryan had to use a separate air supply due to the toxicity of the foam. There were also three different heads built from foam and fiberglass, each with their own expressions that were moved using cable mechanisms.

The costume was then filmed against scale models. The marshmallow effect that rained down on the crowd was actually shaving cream, lbs of it to be exact. The weight of it knocked down a stuntman, so they decided to go with 75 lbs. Although the cream ended up giving rashes to some of the cast after wearing it for several hours. It was based on a reanimated corpse puppet the special effects artist Steven Johnson had made for An American Werewolf in London Both he and actor Mark Wilson collaborated on the Library Ghost in which they created the puppet that was operated by tens of cables running through the torso that controlled the head, arms and rubber skin away from the torso to turn it into a monstrous ghost.

The original Library Ghost puppet was considered to be too scary for younger audiences and was instead used in Fright Night The Library scene was done in three takes, with the camera crew blowing air through copper pipes to blow the cards into the air, which had to be collected and reassembled for each take. The floating books were hung on strings. Randy Cook created the stop-motion puppets for the ghost dogs, Zulu and Vinz. The model was both heavy and unwieldy and took almost thirty hours to film while moving it across a foot stage for the scene where it chased after Louis Tully across the street.

When Dana was pinned to her chair and pulled to the lit doorway, Reitman said he was inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind , using a rubber door to allow distortion as if something was coming through it and grips hidden by a trapdoor underneath the chair burst through while wearing the dog-leg gloves. All other non-puppet ghosts had to be animated and took almost three weeks to create a second of footage. For the character of Gozer, Slavitza Jovan wore red contacts that were painful to wear and was strapped into a harness to move around the set.

In fact these themes made the film that much more challenging to produce. Some even said it was impossible to incorporate both and have the audience take the film seriously. Aykroyd was also inspired after reading an article on quantum physics and parapsychology in The Journal of the American Society for Physchical Research , where he got the idea of trapping ghosts.

At the same time, he was also fascinated with the idea of modernizing the comedic ghost films of the midth century like Hold That Ghost , The Ghostbreakers and Ghost Chasers Nevertheless, he pitched it to his agent, Bernie Brillstein, who claimed it sounded like a group of pest control contractors who were called in to remove rats.

But still, he took on the challenge, suggesting the setting be filmed on Earth to make the ghosts more humorous and realistic as well as putting the Marshmallow Man at the end to make it more believable.

To fund the film, Reitman pitched the story to Frank Price at Columbia Pictures in March , which he said the concept was funny but controversial. There was also the fact that comedy films had a lower profit margin.