Discuss all things Ghostbusters here, unless they would be better suited in one of the few forums below.
#4903897
Alex Newborn wrote:
Do you recall if it was the alternate *footage* of the line, or did they only replace the audio, like they did with "Twinkie"?

Alex
I believe it was alternate footage. I had a tape of this as a kid but it was later replaced with a different one which included the second movie on the same tape, both recorded off of HBO I think.

*fun fact: the original tape that we had was recorded over with a copy of Good Morning Vietnam. I can still remember the few seconds of the opening of Ghostbusters before the new recording started :wink:
#4904017
Wade burned me a copy of the recent Logo broadcast of Ghostbusters. I went through and made some notes. I may possibly edit a 'Highlights' video at some point about it, similar to what I did for the ABC broadcast.

As far as I saw, the only 'alternate takes' were just the two we'd already discussed: "Wally Wick" and "some kind of rodent", so apparently the most offensive word in the film was d**k.

Curiously, they left in "Well you can believe Mr. Pecker"/"My name is Peck".

They didn't even have the "stuff that will turn you white" alternate take in that same scene. They altered the audio, very poorly in my opinion, but the lip sync was still "s**t" instead of "stuff".

All the other "s**t"s were taken out. Usually by removing the entire shot. In the case of Egon after Peter asks where the Keymaster is, it was a very bad audio edit that left his lips moving on the original line, only to add him saying "No!" while his lips were closed. In the case of Winston saying the same scatological expletive in the long shot as all four look at Stay-Puft in the distance, I think they repeated Ray's line "It can't be!" an extra time over it. I need to go back and compare that to the theatrical version and the ABC edit.

The student's line "it's p***ing me off" was cut, but with no alternate reverse angle shot. Just excised out entirely. "I'll tell you what the effect is!" "Well then maybe my theory is correct!"

Likewise, Louis' use of the same curse word with regards to the janitor was removed completely. Dana's "GD it" was trimmed to just "dammit", another audio-only cut since her back is to camera. And just like the ABC edit, they changed the audio of Zuul's line to drop the "inside me" portion.

The other borderline stuff, things that don't really contain a swear word but are suggestive in nature, were all left in. By this, I mean the dream sequence in the montage, Egon's "your mother!", and Venkman's "mother pus bucket" and "make 'em hard" lines. And like the ABC version, they even left in "prehistoric b**ch".

But the speech about the 'sailor in New York' was cut, going to commercial break right after "killed by a hundred foot marshmallow man", and then coming back from commercial with a flaming Stay-Puft climbing the side of the building.

Their modern approach to commercials, with an overlay at the bottom of the screen preceding each-- always advertising their RuPaul show-- was super-intrusive in my opinion. But considering their network Logo logo was overlaid throughout the entire film, the larger versions before commercials were almost in a blind spot by that point.

Most of the commercial breaks were in completely different spots from the ABC choices, although they did both go to commercial after Peck says "You can have it your way, Mr. Venkman" (which would've made a great spot for a vintage Burger King ad, don't you think?) and they also chose the same spot for a commercial after Vinz Clortho talks to the horse, so they could take out the cabbie's line "What an a**hole!"

And that's an indication of just how 'pick and choose' Logo was being, to quote Wade. They cut out "a**hole", "running your a**es off", and the word "wisea**"... but they left in "we came, we saw, we kicked its a**" and "sue your a** for wrongful prosecution".

Scratches head.

I'd personally have preferred to see a more 'widescreen' format of the "knockabout of pure fun" and "sue your funny face" alternate takes.

Oh, and that's another thing...

It wasn't completely Pan & Scan, like the ABC stuff. But it wasn't the full theatrical ratio either. It was somewhere in between.

For the most part, this didn't cause many problems, but it did lead to a few tiny losses. When Venkman is spinning in the pullback at the fountain after Dana and the 'stiff' have walked away, you can't see the roller-skater in orange, the one that Peter is mimicking.

When Zuul and Vinz are standing on the spots formerly occupied by their statues, about to channel the lightning to open the portal, instead of choosing to show at least one of them, the crop aims at the middle of frame and deletes both of them (twice, in two separate shots).

And, in a harsh blow to trivia-minded GB fans, Ron Jeremy's work as an uncredited extra is also cropped out when Ecto arrives after the ghost geyser scene.

But then, when it's time to roll credits at the end? Suddenly they go to true widescreen, just before Reitman's name appears over Dana and Peter's kiss atop the rubble.

Then, at some point, they squish the frame upwards so they can run the text-only credits at superspeed below the film footage of Ecto departing, timing it so everything ends exactly when Slimer flies towards camera.

Overall, in my opinion, an inferior edit when compared to the ABC broadcast. Better picture quality, I concede, and thankfully not time-compressed like the 1987 TV edit, but in a day and age of better editing software, and the ability to run the entire movie in widescreen, some of the Logo choices were truly baffling.

Alex
Sav C liked this
#4904058
Also, the Tv alternate scenes are available on the latest Steelbook version of the Blu-Ray. The quality looks good, but my guess it was just grabbed from the ABC broadcast version and cleaned up a bit.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/ghostbuste ... Id=5345701

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