(techno music)
- It's a ridiculous question.
- You mean it's a ridiculous question
because you don't have an answer,
or 'cause you don't believe in the afterlife?
- No, it's a ridiculous situation
because I am not planning on dying.
It's like asking Superman to stop being from space.
He can't stop being from space, Katie.
Space is who he is.
- Hey now, don't diminish yourself.
You're more than just a guy who's never gonna die.
- I wasn't fishing, but thank you.
- Okay, so then imagine, somehow, that you do die.
What kind of ghost would you wanna be?
- Easy. Force ghost.
- Like a Jedi?
- Solid choice.
- No, no, you can't be a force ghost, that's cheating.
You'd have to be a Jedi for your whole life,
and honestly that ship's kinda sailed.
- I still got time.
Okay, fine I'd be a ghost cop.
- Like a dead cop's ghost, or a policer of ghosts?
- Have you guys seen R.I.P.D.?
- This world's for the living,
and R.I.P.D's gonna keep it that way.
- Nope. - N.O.P.D.
- Okay, so, Ryan Reynolds dies,
and because he wasn't the most upstanding person in life,
he gets the opportunity to work
for the Rest in Peace Department,
where he just rounds up souls for heaven
as a way to, like, clean his slate.
- Like indentured servitude?
- More like working off a debt.
- So, indentured servitude?
- Yeah, like the Tooth Fairy.
- Anyway, if you're in the R.I.P.D.,
you get to stay on earth for at least another century,
and you get to keep doing all the same stuff
you would do when you were alive.
Plus, you get to be an undercover ghost cop,
and chase down illegal ghosts with a ghost gun
and other ghost toys, and a lot of props
from "Men in Black" for some reason.
- Can living people see you?
- Yes, but you're in disguise, so you look like a supermodel
or like, a girl scout,
or beloved character actor James Hong.
- Oh! Yeah!
I have seen this.
Isn't Kevin Bacon in it?
- [Soren] Yes.
- Have you noticed that the presence of Kevin Bacon
in a movie doesn't determine whether it's good or bad?
- Wait, but at the end of that movie,
Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds get put on suspension
'cause they let a ghost drop his disguise
and go rampaging through the public.
- Yeah, so?
- Well, the terms of the suspension are that
if the higher powers that be decide to,
they can fire Jeff and Ryan and
completely erase them from existence.
Also, all the guns they use shoot bullets
that erase ghosts from existence, and
all the bad guy ghosts have the same guns.
So you're risking complete oblivion
every time you go out on the job as a ghost cop,
if you turn down the wrong blind alley and get shot,
or if you just get a bad performance review.
- I feel like you're being reductive to make me
look foolish, but yeah, that sounds like a nightmare.
- Sorry, I'm late.
Did you guys order without me?
- See, I prefer Patrick Swayze in "Ghost."
- Ooh, good film.
- Wait, you want to be a ghost
from the saddest ghost movie ever made?
- Yeah, I don't find it sad.
It's more bittersweet.
I mean, it's the most hopeful ghosthood
that exists in Hollywood.
You get to hang out in spirit limbo.
You get to meet interesting spirits.
You get to help your loved ones through a tough time.
Plus you get to use your ghost powers to thwart danger,
and then you get to go into Heaven like Patrick Swayze,
roundhouse kick helicoperting into eternity.
- So it's like freshman orientation but for dead people.
- Exactly.
You get to make new friends to help lessen the blow
of losing your loved ones,
and you get to beat Tony Goldwyn's ass,
and you get to kiss Demi Moore goodbye.
Is it Demi Moor or Demi Moh-er?
- Moor like Othello.
- Anyway, there's no bureaucratic rule book.
I mean, the only rule in Ghost
is that if you're a bad guy, you get dragged into Hell
by some shadow goblins, and frankly,
you kind of already rolled those dice when you were alive.
- I do love to roll dice.
I think I brought some, actually.
- Why do you have dice?
- They streamline every decision-making process.
- Wait a second.
So your preferred version of the afterlife
is just some esoteric waiting room
where you and a bunch of dead strangers
are powerlessly watching your loved ones forget about you
until you accidentally save them from some tragedy.
- Well, I feel like you're being a little reductive
to make me look foolish, but yeah.
- Ha ha!
Found 'em.
- Great.
Do you think you could roll them under the feet
of our waitress when she comes back,
to force her to stop and take my order?
- See, I want to be the kind of ghost
that gives her loved ones closure to move on,
not selfishly clinging to this mortal realm,
disguised as James Hong, who is still alive, by the way.
- Okay, so you help them move on.
But then what?
They get into Heaven after living another 30 years,
basically a whole lifetime without you?
I mean, would they even want to see you,
or would it just be horribly painful for everyone?
Ooh, would they even remember you?
- I know, right?
It's like that song Eric Clapton wrote about his dead kid.
- Oh, Jesus.
- Oh, I'm sorry, was that out of line?
I used the dice.
- No, it was on topic, it's just sad.
- Well, any spirited discussion of the afterlife
would be a miss without a mention
of the Ghostbusters anyway.
- [Narrator] Ghostbusters.
- Hey, anybody see a ghost?
- [Narrator] They catch the ghosts that won't stay dead.
- That's the kind of ghost I want to be.
- You want to be a ghost from Ghostbusters?
Or you want to be the ghost of a Ghostbuster?
I want to just post my statement busters, (beep) this.
- Think about it.
You can eat whatever you want.
You never have to sleep.
You can fly.
It's awesome.
You get to read a bunch of books.
- Hello.
- No, better, you could go to the movies for free, probably.
You could wreck a bunch of (beep),
commandeer public transport without a license.
I mean you basically do whatever we would do
to kill time anyway, except you never have to sleep,
and you never die.
Again.
I mean, you'd have to die the first time,
when you become a ghost, you died, so.
- Yeah, but you don't get to have any
meaningful interactions with people.
I mean, you're just stuck on Earth,
goofing off by yourself forever.
- That ghost ba-jay was deeply meaningful.
- Plus you end up looking like a terrifying
mutant version of yourself.
Like one of those awful caricatures
they charge way too much money for at amusement parks.
God, I got burned.
- And what about Casper?
- The friendly ghost?
- The friendliest ghost you know?
He looks like a mutant.
- Well, Casper explicitly takes place
in the same universe as Ghostbusters.
- Oh yeah, Dan Akroyd shows up
as Dr. Raymond Stantz with a mustache.
- And in Casper, all the ghosts in the world
can communicate with each other,
on like a secret ghost channel.
So I could just make a bunch of ghost pals if I want.
- Yeah, but he does carry on a weird relationship
bordering on felonious obsession with Christina Ricci.
- That's right, he does have like a weird
sexual interest in Christina Ricci.
And, we find out from a throwaway joke in the movie
that ghosts have penises.
- [High-Voiced Male Ghost] Who's got their
pointy head in my...?
- [Deep-Voiced Male Ghost] That's not my head.
- So ghosts could ostensibly have sex?
- Ghost ba-jay.
- Ooh, and Casper's uncles hang out doing
regular human stuff all the time.
I mean, they go to the race track,
they take Bill Pullman to a bar.
They spend barely any time at the house
that they are supposed to be haunting.
- Starting to sound pretty sweet.
Am I right?
- Yeah, but the ghosts are vulnerable to physics.
You can get launched across the room
with a toilet plunger or sucked into a vacuum.
Christina Ricci carries around a Dustbuster,
and it's enough to convince Casper's uncles
to stop screwing with her.
- Yeah, I mean you wouldn't even really
need Ghostbusters, just Joe and Jane homeowner
could exorcize a restless spirit with a home appliance.
- Boover vacuums, boos that.
- But not if you're their friend, though.
They're not going to ghost dust bust their friend.
- Yeah, but Casper is not a good friend.
He makes things awkward and weird
for Christina Ricci all the time.
And we find out at the end
that he'd been haunting his grieving father for so long
that he literally drove the man insane.
- So?
Just because Casper sucks at it,
doesn't mean I will.
I would be a great ghost pal.
- None of us are nodding.
- Okay, so we agree that no ghost situation is ideal,
but maybe Casper wins?
- (gasps)
- Yeah, I mean, I guess in Casper you get the most
freedom to interact with the living and the dead.
You can come and go as you please.
There doesn't seem to be any governing board
to banish you into nonexistence,
and you just got to look out for Dustbusters.
- Dead kids all day.
- Jesus, what is with you and dead kids tonight?
- Casper's a dead kid.
Look it up.
- Look at her.
I mean, she definitely sees me, right?
I mean, I don't want to be rude and scream,
but is it ruder to snap?
That's definitely worse, right?
Do I clap?
- Yeah, somebody should call Daniel.
I mean, I think it's a little weird
that he wasn't here an hour early to reserve our table.
- What?
- Ah, I'm going to countermand the dice and say no.
- I've been texting him, but he's not responding.
I just assumed he's driving here.
- Oh, I see what's going on.
You guys are Shyamalaning me because we've been
talking about ghosts for the past ten minutes.
I got you.
Son of a bitch, I'm dead, aren't I?
- That means the answer would have
something to do with Spiderman, right?
- Probably.
- Yes.
Of course it would.
- Didn't Uncle Ben come back as a ghost?
- No.
What?
No.
- No, he came back as Martin Sheen.
- Ah.
Who's Martin Sheen?
- What?
- [Michael] How funny would it be
if Dan died on the way here?
- [Dan] I'm remembering how I died, now.
- [Michael] And that's why he's not here?
Like what if he got in car crash.
- [Dan] There was a little girl in the road,
and she was going to get hit by a car.
- [Michael] That is hilarious.
- [Katie] That would be so funny!
- [Michael] It would be like super fitting.
- [Dan] Unrelated, a guy just stabbed me.
I wasn't going to help that girl.