Write a quick introduction to introduce yourself.
By Alex Newborn
#473036
A former coworker just posted this pic on FB of me in my old grey Dickies jumpsuit (the one seen in my profile pic at left), waiting tables on Hallowe'en of 1993 or so.

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It's awesome because I have absolutely NO memory of ever having done that.

I still work at this same store, 21 years later. I should don my new flightsuit and go stand in that same spot for a comparison pic, except I don't want to get depressed over how fat and bald I've grown walking in endless circles the last two decades.

[UPDATE}

She also found another pic of our decorations in the lobby, including my repainted Kenner Ghost Trap. The same one my son has now appropriated.

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Alex
By Alex Newborn
#475064
I alluded to this event in another thread yesterday, and PssdffJay pointed out that I had not spoken about it here. I did post some pics to Facebook, wrote about it on AlabamaGB.com, and mentioned it on the RPF, but apparently I neglected to tell it on GBFans...

Two weeks ago yesterday, I drove ten hours round trip to achieve two unforgettables minutes.

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We'd been told there would be no posing for pics, so when Dan Aykroyd called my son "Cadet" and invited him behind the table, I was already pleased. Then he said for "Dad" to come back there too and hand my camera to someone else.

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Whoa. Totally worth getting up at 4am and getting on the road at 5:30am. Totally worth the couple of wrong turns I made before the sun came up and had to backtrack.

Big thanks to my friend Brian Curran in CA who monitors the Crystal Head vodka website's "Events" board, who messaged me about a week before and said, "How close are you to Jackson MS?"

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I'd gone to Jackson one other time in the last few years, to the Mississippi Museum of Art, to see a traveling Smithsonian exhibition called Jim Henson's Fantastic World. Got to meet his youngest daughter Heather Henson, who I should point out has shared the big screen with Bill Murray in one scene of Little Shop of Horrors and has a tiny cameo role in Spies Like Us as well.

But I remembered it as a long slog of a drive, at least five hours each way. I very nearly talked myself out of the Aykroyd trip, figuring if he was doing an event in Mississippi, maybe there would be another one soon after that was even closer. Another part of my brain presented the counter-argument, that it had been four years since the last time he was anywhere close by doing a signing.

Then at the last second my vacation money from work was deposited to my account, and I decided to make it happen. I invited my wife and older son, but they declined. That same day was my mother's observed birthday party... you can see where my youngest's priorities lie.

Oh, and as I later learned, Aykroyd was only in Jackson doing a movie (playing James Brown's manager in a bio-pic produced by Mick Jagger) so who knows if there will be other signings anywhere closer?

~~~

Due to how rushed my preparations were and how cold it was the night before when I was loading the car, I honestly started NOT to take the flightsuits or the pack. Boy, THAT would have been a mistake. I didn't know it was usual procedure for the GB's and Blues Brothers to be allowed to the front of the line.

Considering the line wrapped around several buildings, with hundreds upon hundreds of folks already queued by the time we pulled into the parking lot at 10:30am, the day would have gone very differently. As it was, I was headed back to the car, a signed Crystal Head and signed one-sheet of Ghostbusters in hand, by 11:15. I called my wife to say "Mission accomplished!" and she thought I meant I was just then arriving in Jackson.

Another bonus of wearing full gear was that we were stopped for photos several times. I even got interviewed on video. This shot of my youngest was one I found online later:

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One woman left the line and asked me to stop and pose for a pic, but the momentum of my 30+ lb. pack actually made it hard to come to a complete halt. I said, "Sure!" but then took a couple more steps. She said, "Well, you have to stop!" and I just indicated my pack with my thumb and said, "I'm trying!" She laughed.

Another woman wanted to know if my pack was 'real'. I walked over and let them hear the sounds and see the lights. When I drew the thrower she hid behind her date, convinced something destructive was going to blast out of the barrel.

~~~

I pointed out to Dan Aykroyd that I am a lifelong teetotaller, and no one's ever made me want to buy alcohol before. He suggested I invite some friends over and crack it open for them. Now on Facebook, I have two friends pestering me to send them the contents of the decanter. I felt like I was sending a mixed signal to my son, letting him hang out in a liquor store at age 11, but I talked to him on the way down and while there about the fact there was no other way to meet Aykroyd.

Afterwards we were invited to lunch with some of the other GB's in attendance. Between me and my son below is Sephiroth, who wanted to see my pack's "switch me on" function in action. I in turn was excited to see his gizmo with light-up Nixies in person, having loved his Dad's build thread about it.

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Also in attendance at lunch was Joe, dressed as Elwood. He was the guy who held up the yellow security tape so my pack wouldn't snag it when the GB's were allowed in at the front of the line, and also who took over my camera when I posed with Dan.

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~~~

We'd already passed through Winston County during our drive to Jackson...

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... and just as we were leaving Jackson, this was a license plate right in front of me.

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On the way there, I had my pack in the front passenger seat, buckled in. But when we were leaving the event, another vehicle was parked too close on the right for me to get it in. So I put it in the back seat on the left. Driving home, I asked my son a couple of times if he had enough room, did he want me to pull over and put it up front again. He said he was fine.

After a while, he grew really quiet and I looked back to see this:

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I showed that pic to Vinny, the maker of my shell, who said, "I'd like to say I've never done that. But I'd be lying."

~~~

I told my son, hey, you've met half the Ghostbusters now. It will probably be a lot harder to ever meet Peter or Egon.

And then just a couple of days later, this happened...

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Alex
By PssdffJay
#475114
What a great story! I'm glad you finally decided to post it here! ;)

It makes sense about being told there was no asking for photos to keep the line moving, but that is awesome of Dan to do that for you. I think he knows where his true fans come from. Good to know about being in costume, not that I wouldn't be if he ever came close enough here that I could go to a signing.

I don't drink either but I think the bottle is really cool looking.
Alex Newborn liked this
By Alex Newborn
#475330
Yay, Teetotaller powers activate!



As my mother pointed out, I erroneously gave my age as 43 even though I'd had my 44th birthday three weeks previous.

But hey, I was operating on very little sleep and I'd been driving for five hours straight.

And I was in the presence of DAN AYKROYD!

Little things like birthdays just get driven out of your head for a while.

Alex
User avatar
By Morydees
#475332
Excellent vid, you can check that one off the bucket list. If it makes you feel any better, I've already done the forget my age thing and just into my 30s. I mean really, how often do you get to introduce your child to your childhood...

I'd barely get out a coherent sentence. Well done!
Alex Newborn liked this
By Alex Newborn
#4786296
Alex Newborn wrote:Image
We met a girl that night at the Haunted House who wound up being first my girlfriend and later Dave's ex-wife, LOL.
Well, as if I haven't lost enough people already this year, I awoke this morning to a message from Dave informing me that his ex-wife and my first girlfriend, the one mentioned above, died of a heroin overdose this weekend. He'd been told the news by a distant acquaintance. I saw the obituary shortly afterward.

I posted about it on my FB wall, but it didn't seem germane to point out, "I met her while dressed as a Ghostbuster for the first time".

I've lost other friends due to drugs, but it's been metaphorical not literal. As a teetotaller with firm anti-drug beliefs, they generally don't like what I have to say when I urge them to stop. Eventually we drift apart.

But even though I hadn't spoken to her for about twenty years, it's still left me shocked and chilled to find out how she ended her life. I had heard a rumor she was on meth a couple years ago, but knew from experience how futile it is to help someone unless they want to be helped. Now I wish I'd at least tried.

Please, if you're using, stop. If you know someone who's using, don't turn a blind eye to it. Don't enable them. Talk to them. Make them want to stop. Yes, believe me, I know... it almost never works. But do it for yourself, so you won't regret not making the effort.

The time to speak up is now. Tomorrow may be too late.

Alex
Ecto-1 fan liked this
By Alex Newborn
#4883445
One week after Ryan Kemp's death in 2015, we did a kid's birthday party in Iuka MS. I wore my gray flightsuit and my goggles over my hat, and black straps on my pack, in memory of Kemp.

The day did not end like we expected it to.



Alex
By GB Wolf
#4898706
Hey Alex. I apologize if you have answered this question before, I am a relatively new Ghosthead and new to this site, but I was watching you're video about the Ecto crash. First, thankfully all of you made it out of that ok! But what ever happened to the Ecto, did you have to scrap it or was it repaired?
By Alex Newborn
#4898711
Hi GB Wolf,

Thanks for your inquiry. The original Pontiac Ecto (let's call it the Wreckto, to distinguish it) is still in Brandon's possession, as far as I know. A high school classmate of mine owned the wrecker service that towed her in, and said he had a frame-straightening machine, but the cost estimates were way beyond reach. Within weeks of the wreck, Brandon was able to buy an actual Cadillac chassis. Not the correct year, but a step closer to the movie car. Since it was missing an engine, he got it for a price that was about a fifth of the estimate to repair the Wreckto.

When Brandon got the Caddy body, he took a pic of it side-by-side with the Wreckto and posted it to social media. I captioned it "Old and busted. New hotness."

The original hope was that the engine of the Wreckto could be refit into the Cadillac body, dubbed the Resurrecto. Though Brandon's car-genius father-in-law made a valiant effort, it just proved to be too incompatible. The last report I heard was that a Cadillac engine had been obtained for Resurrecto, though, so eventually the flagship of the Florence Ghostbusters will make a triumphant return. Maybe not in time for this Hallowe'en season, but who knows? The original was an eight-month conversion, but as you know it's always easier to build something a second time around than it was the first.

Alex
GB Wolf liked this
By Alex Newborn
#4899325
Where has the time gone? Just a few years ago, my sons were in 40S flightsuits. Orion's fit him perfectly, Zak's was long on him, but he had room to grow.

Now they're in a 40L and a 42L respectively.

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Finally got the bumpers put on their packs, too.

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As soon as I saw this cosplayer at today's local 'Geek Gathering' (our fifth year attending it, I think?), I had to get a pic. In the first one, he put his arms around them, then he said "Let's do one more" and did the firing pose. I snapped it and only later saw how awesome their facial reactions were.

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I kept hearing this dialogue in my head, too.



Jump to 8:06

Alex
By Alex Newborn
#4956981
Hmm... awfully dusty in here. Let's kick some of these cobwebs out of the rafters and liven this place up a bit.

The other day on Facebook, in the GBFans group, someone named Shannon Cornthwaite expressed interest in seeing a 'chronological order' cut of Ghostbusters , so that the "welcome aboard" scene and the "man from the EPA here to see you" scenes were not interrupted by the "who's the stiff" scene at the fountain.

Using two of my older videos (Sedgewick reporter scene and extended Winston intro), I pieced together the rest of it fairly quickly using the October 1983 shooting script from Making Ghostbusters as my guide.

For the numerous places where there were gaps in the dialogue among the 'known footage', I used graphics of the script itself. It was surprising to see just how little of the finished film's montage was never scripted.



Thoughts?

Alex
mrmichaelt liked this
User avatar
By mrmichaelt
#4956993
Alex Newborn wrote: October 9th, 2021, 10:34 pm Hmm... awfully dusty in here. Let's kick some of these cobwebs out of the rafters and liven this place up a bit.

The other day on Facebook, in the GBFans group, someone named Shannon Cornthwaite expressed interest in seeing a 'chronological order' cut of Ghostbusters , so that the "welcome aboard" scene and the "man from the EPA here to see you" scenes were not interrupted by the "who's the stiff" scene at the fountain.

Using two of my older videos (Sedgewick reporter scene and extended Winston intro), I pieced together the rest of it fairly quickly using the October 1983 shooting script from Making Ghostbusters as my guide.

For the numerous places where there were gaps in the dialogue among the 'known footage', I used graphics of the script itself. It was surprising to see just how little of the finished film's montage was never scripted.



Thoughts?

Alex
Excellent editing and sleuthing as usual, Alex.

At around 6:35, there's 2 bts stills of Peter and Ray getting out of Ecto-1 for the scene where they meet Winston. Do you recall where you got them from?

I did want to pick your brain on one thing not in your video. In the trailer, the one that popped up on the Stripes DVD, there's that shot of Peter at the Lincoln Center sort of doing a bent gliding pose. I don't recall that being in any of the drafts and may have just been Bill riffing. But where do you think it takes place, before Dana and the Violinist exit the building or after the final part of the scene when Peter twirls around to mimic the skater. I've been thinking it's a continuation of the latter.
By Alex Newborn
#4957000
According to Tineye, the oldest online version of the full pic with the dolly tracks beside the car was found on ghostbustersinc.files.wordpress.com back in 2014.

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Here's the direct link.

https://ghostbustersinc.files.wordpress ... lecto1.jpg

But I've had it in a facebook album of Ghostbusters reference pics since 2012, so I have no recollection where mine came from.

As for the second image...

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Tineye returned zero hits for it, but I've had it in my FB album since 2013. I wish I'd kept better records of where I found each image, but back then I was mainly just trying to group them all in sequence from the movie.

As for the swooping Venkman...

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... it's an intriguing little tidbit of film-- enough that I put a still from it in that same album in 2012-- but without more context to go on, I hesitate to speculate where it would have been.

To illustrate, next time you watch the scene, pay close attention to The Stiff's violin case when he asks Dana, "So who the hell is that?" When they're filmed from the front, with Venkman in the distance behind them, the case is tucked under his left arm. But when the action cuts to behind Venkman as he calls to them, the violin case is now held at arm's length in his right hand. And it switches back and forth each time the angle changes.

So we know from that one continuity error, they shot the scene multiple times from multiple angles. If Timothy Carhart (The Stiff) can forget from one take to the other which hand his prop was in, then you know with Murray's penchant for invention and improvisation, there were likely to be huge differences in vocal and physical performances on every single take. And we have no idea how many takes there were total. The 'swooping' or 'gliding' bit of physicality could have been right in the middle of a line that's totally different in the finished film.

Contrast the two very different line readings that Murray gives in response to Peck's threat of the court order...



Now ignoring the fact that the two lines are worded slightly differently, pay attention to his *performance* of them. Note how his body English is different. In one he rises quickly, in the other he stands in a more slow and measured way. One has anger, the other bemusement. He seems ready to fight in one, is relaxed and smiling in the other. That's two very different interpretations of the same moment in time.

Honestly, it's a testament to the editorial skills of Ivan Reitman and Sheldon Kahn that the film cut together in a coherent way. They had the proverbial 'embarrassment of riches' to choose from with Murray and the others riffing on scenes. But it's their crafting of the footage into what we see on screen that actually contributes the overall tone. Have you ever watched a deleted scene and thought Murray seemed out of character? Telling Janine in a Southern drawl to "go on home" or shouting at Ray and Egon "I introduced you!"? That's because the 'character' of Venkman which the audience ultimately saw was not only Murray's choices in the moment, but ALSO a series of choices that Reitman and Kahn made in post-production, further sculpting that performance. They could have easily selected any of the countless as-yet-undiscovered on-set choices made by Murray and turned his character into something else entirely.

Specific to the Lincoln Center scene, there were also the sound recording difficulties presented by the constant white noise of the fountain, which required the scene to be looped in post. From the 1999 DVD Commentary track:

Joe Medjuck: This is actually Lincoln Center, of course.
Ivan Reitman: Our sound man--
Medjuck: Went nuts.
Reitman: -- just went nuts when he saw that we were gonna shoot here and he kept saying, "Well, can we turn off the fountains?" And they wouldn't let us turn off the fountains at Lincoln Center.
Harold Ramis: Sound men are always going nuts in New York, though.
Reitman: I think this is one of the few scenes we had to loop.

I suspect at least some of Murray's lines when he's in the background slightly out of focus aren't even what he said when they were on location. Murray's skills in the ADR booth to match his own lip sync are impressive, but if he had the chance to improvise a new line when lip sync didn't matter, you know he would.

But this brings me to another point to consider. Next time you watch that scene, pay attention to the atmosphere players. On some of my past videos, like "Making Ghostbusters 2" and the ones about the Stock Footage (I will link them below), as I was editing them, I began to notice little repeated actions by the 'extras' in take after take.

It's easy to think of Ghostbusters almost as a documentary, as if it was filmed one time by multiple hidden cameras. But that illusion is made believable by the amazing amount of detail they chose to occur on the periphery of shots. In GB2, when they go out into the middle of the street to investigate ("Relax, you're on the meter"), in take after take you can see the same jogger waiting for the light to change, the same guy walking across the street with skis slung over his shoulder, etc.

For an establishing shot of the Sedgewick Hotel, the extras all had specific directions to walk at specific times. And after each take, they had to go back to their starting positions and do it again. They shot this scene multiple times from multiple angles, with dozens of extras and limos and taxicabs, making an LA location look like NYC... and then that specific shot never even appeared in the finished film, only one brief snippet was used as an establishing shot for the deleted Honeymooners scene.

In the Lincoln Fountain scene, as I was cutting the Chronological Order video posted above, I noticed a little family sitting on the side of the fountain posing for a photo. A very tourist-y detail, perfectly New York. It's not something the cameras accidentally caught. It was arranged for us back in 1983 specifically to be so normal as to be subconsciously invisible. They repeated that same little family tableau over and over and over the entire day, as the cameras were repositioned and the principal cast kept doing take after take. It was completely deliberately crafted. Some 'atmosphere player wrangler' had to group them there for that and instruct them what to do and when, some prop guy had to get them a camera, etc.

All just to help sell the illusion that the moment in time from one camera angle was the same moment in time from another camera angle, possibly shot hours later. (I seem to recall someone once pointing out that the shadows on the ground don't match from shot to shot.)

I guess what I'm saying is... the more little snippets of Ghostbusters footage I see, the larger I think the rest of the iceberg is. They shot SO MUCH of every scene, there's got to be even more that we've never glimpsed. It simply boggles the mind.

All I know anymore is that I don't know it all, LOL.

Alex


Making Ghostbusters II (my magnum opus)




Sedgewick Hotel stock footage

mrmichaelt liked this
User avatar
By mrmichaelt
#4957044
Alex Newborn wrote: October 10th, 2021, 9:28 am According to Tineye, the oldest online version of the full pic with the dolly tracks beside the car was found on ghostbustersinc.files.wordpress.com back in 2014.

Image

Here's the direct link.

https://ghostbustersinc.files.wordpress ... lecto1.jpg

But I've had it in a facebook album of Ghostbusters reference pics since 2012, so I have no recollection where mine came from.

As for the second image...

Image

Tineye returned zero hits for it, but I've had it in my FB album since 2013. I wish I'd kept better records of where I found each image, but back then I was mainly just trying to group them all in sequence from the movie.
Thanks.

Cool with you if I use the 2nd image on the wiki?
Alex Newborn wrote: October 10th, 2021, 9:28 am
As for the swooping Venkman...

Image

... it's an intriguing little tidbit of film-- enough that I put a still from it in that same album in 2012-- but without more context to go on, I hesitate to speculate where it would have been.

To illustrate, next time you watch the scene, pay close attention to The Stiff's violin case when he asks Dana, "So who the hell is that?" When they're filmed from the front, with Venkman in the distance behind them, the case is tucked under his left arm. But when the action cuts to behind Venkman as he calls to them, the violin case is now held at arm's length in his right hand. And it switches back and forth each time the angle changes.

So we know from that one continuity error, they shot the scene multiple times from multiple angles. If Timothy Carhart (The Stiff) can forget from one take to the other which hand his prop was in, then you know with Murray's penchant for invention and improvisation, there were likely to be huge differences in vocal and physical performances on every single take. And we have no idea how many takes there were total. The 'swooping' or 'gliding' bit of physicality could have been right in the middle of a line that's totally different in the finished film.
Ok so,
Image

But seriously, yeah, could have been an alt. take on the bit we see in the movie of Peter spinning.

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