ourchair
Well-Known Member
Sincerely, your compliments are very much appreciated. Thank you very much.
I have to admit... I feel that I may have indeed 'cheated' by providing an entire story and gone a little bit out of control. I feel like marvelman's complaint that 'coming up with an entire plot' to be even considered a worthy contender is a legitimate complaint.Bass said:
But the entire logic I had in mind was this...
I just couldn't imagine how to replace the original Ghostbusters. There really was no way to duplicate Bill Murray or Dan Aykroyd or Harold Ramis or anybody else. I believed that no matter how talented an actor is who would come to take over their roles, they were essentially... inimitable.
So the next best thing I could think of was to find actors who could create performances that were faithful to the way the writers had conceived them... but without attempting to duplicate the portrayals... and remain true in spirit.
- Aaron Eckhart is miles away from being anything like Bill Murray but I pictured him as a version of Peter who relies on his smarts more often than Murray's Peter --- who was always stated as being a college professor. Eckhart is intended to bring to the surface an aspect of the character that Murray made largely invisible.
- Paul Giamatti is an odd bird who uses a largely comical bag of tricks for dramatic purposes. You can't replace Aykroyd's obssessive energy and strangely child-like vacuousness, but Giamatti could at least channel the same intensity into a kind of 'dispassionate wonder' that would remain faithful to the idea of what Ray was always about. If you've ever listened to Henry Jenkins --- an MIT professor who does social commentary on geek culture and fandom --- on a podcast or seen him on TV, that's the Ray I'm looking at.
- Egon Spengler often gets mistakenly described as 'rigid', 'stuffy', 'self-serious' or 'humorless' when he's not. He's just really ****ing boring. Harold Ramis perfected this kind of dull drone that really made the Egon character what he was... a guy who can tell a joke with the most boring intonation. I wanted Ioan because there's a certain way he breathes in through his mouth and furrows his brow that clamps down on whatever emotions his characters may be feeling at any given moment, and I felt that would do well for Egon.
- Winston Zeddemore, I felt had no other defining characteristic than being the everyman... though I do like that touch where he says that "If there's a buck in it, I'll believe in anything you want..." A character like Zeddemore was humorous without resorting to 'Psycho Negro' shenanigans like say Chris Rock or Chris Tucker or Eddie Murphy. He's the disbeliever, and so I thought, why not turn it on its head by making Winston a 'believer in denial'? Hence the idea of bringing in King, who turned the act of 'macho black toughness' into a humorous act of uptightness... (I think Keith David works on a similar level).
I could go on and on and talk about the other characters, but what it all boils down to is this... that despite the motivation given above, and the individual criteria for each actor... I knew that I couldn't present the cast and expect everyone to 'get it'.
And so, the story was born... the story came about as a way to justify the casting choices.
Peter was the best candidate to get the boot from the university. Making Raymond a pal made it easier to get him kicked out too. Stripping Raymond of any engineering skills and giving them ALL to Egon made him indispensable to them but it would be ludicrous to make him another university reject, so I had to de-age him... which permitted a more 'indebted' academic relationship.
It was a pull between giving new actors liberty to not be wedded to the old portrayals, and a push to change the characters to fit their chemistry better. Everything flowed from that idea.
So sorry guys if I went too far.
