He Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost

Step into the brilliant mind of Egon Spengler, er, Harold Ramis.

Harold Ramis is responsible for some part of nearly every comedy of note from the eighties and early nineties, from cowriting Animal House and Stripes to directing Bill Murray in Caddyshack and Groundhog Day, and acting in half of the above. This summer, the humble Chicago native reprises the role of Egon Spengler in the videogame Ghostbusters, and will check out the script for the upcoming film Ghostbusters III.

We’ve heard you’re not much of a gamer.
When my daughter was young, in the days of Super Mario, I got interested and sometimes my wife would wake up at two in the morning and find me at the edge of the bed saving the princess. But as games got more complicated, they kind of left me behind.

Did you hang out at arcades growing up?
Not that much. I’m very competitive, and other people were so much better at jiggling those pinball machines.

Was it fun stepping back into the part of Egon?
[Laughs] I am Egon. I’ve never stepped out of the part…. It was fun seeing myself young and thin and fully animated. And I think for the first time the action figure line has our likenesses.

What is that like?
It’s kinda cool. But the worst thing you can do is turn grandiose and start thinking of yourself as a legend. Year One [which Ramis directed] comes out the day after the game. When the lights go down in the theater, my having been in Ghostbusters or having directed Caddyshack is not going to get them through the movie. It’s a new game every time.

Dan Aykroyd got everyone together for this game?
Dan has always been the heart and soul of Ghostbusters.
He brought us together for the first film, too.

Was it fun working with them again?
We recorded in different cities at different times, but it was fun hearing them. I’m in touch with Danny, so it’s always fun to see him. And Bill is a mystery man. He’s hard to pin down. I’m kind of amazed he even said he’d do it, but there he is.

You say Dan Aykroyd is the heart and soul of Ghostbusters, but he’s not writing the new one.
The guys writing the script were my cowriters on Year One. The idea of doing a third one really took hold at Columbia. One of the executives said, “Do you think Gene [Stupnitsky] and Lee [Eisenberg] would be good people?” I said sure. They’re still in the story phase, and I’m sure they’re being extremely careful, as no one wants to screw up a franchise like that. They consult with me and Ivan [Reitman] and Dan every step of the way. When we did the first one, Dan and Bill were already so loved from Saturday Night Live that we were warmly embraced. When we were driving around New York and running down the street wearing those suits, real people were cheering. And I’m sure there will be even more the next time they see that logo on the streets of New York.

Ghostbusters was better than its sequel. Looking back, what would you have changed?
I wasn’t happy with the conception of some of the effects. The shape of the sequel was not entirely in my hands. I think the slime metaphor was overworked. I had a more subtle idea in mind that I regret not fighting harder for. I thought there was something a little juvenile about the slime thing.

What was your idea?
The idea of psycho-reactive negative human emotions collecting in large population centers was the core idea—that there were so many bad vibes in New York, the critical mass was causing new eruptions. My idea was, there is a three-day period in New York where people have to be extremely nice or they could tip the balance. For instance, have a hockey game at the Garden where a fight breaks out and the whole stadium starts to rumble; cracks open in the ice, and the players freeze and look at each other and go, “Oh, I’m sorry, did I bump into you?” Having that play out on the streets of New York with different situations seemed funny to me. I thought [Ghostbusters II] got too sentimental at the end. Part of our strength was playing against sentiment.

Also, after the Marshmallow Man was so successful we wondered, does something have to get big at the end of the sequel? My concept was the Statue of Liberty would be our adversary. I thought there would be something really counter intuitive for the audience about the Statue of Liberty being bad. When we defeated her, she’d be lying in Wall Street with her skirt up over her knees. Everyone thought it sounded too much like a Marxist thing. Too radical.

Do you think the new one will be hard to cast?
It will be interesting. The whole project will be very interesting on a lot of levels. We’ve seen Batman reinvented twice. There was the Tim Burton version and now the Christian Bale/Christopher Nolan version. The trend is to get darker. Tim took it dark in reaction to the goofy TV show. They lightened it up with George Clooney and now we’re dark again.

Will Ghostbusters III be dark?
I think we can afford to be a bit darker. The darker we get, the more it makes the comedy work.

Final question: Are you afraid of ghosts?
Personally, I have no belief in the supernatural. I’m as practical as a person can be. But I spent a lot of time on a Greek island where there were several ghost legends. It was a very scary place. There are virtually no streetlights and there were no cars. Walking those streets at night, sometimes I wanted to scream and run, but I never saw anything.