Hi, I’m Michael. This is Lessons from the Screenplay.
There’s no doubt that Ghostbusters is a classic comedy.
"He slimed me."
"That's great!"
I’ve always loved the movie and very much wanted to be a Ghostbuster as a kid
So I was really looking forward to reading the screenplay.
But after I finished it…I was pretty underwhelmed. I mean, it’s not like the screenplay is
bad, just somewhat unremarkable. It’s a case where the finished movie is better than the script
And I guess I shouldn’t be surprised — Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill
Murray are all comedy legends with improv backgrounds, and two of them were the writers
of the screenplay. Of course there were going to be great changes made on set.
But there was one thing that wasn’t being changed on set—the concept of the story,
and how that story was going to be framed. This is the kind of writing that happens long
before a word of the screenplay is written, and I would argue it’s some of the most
important work a writer does.
So that’s what I want to talk about—how they took Dan Aykroyd’s initial concept
and turned it into the movie we know today. Essentially, how Ghostbusters became Ghostbusters.
Premise and Designing Principle
If you were take a screenplay and describe it in its simplest terms, you’d have the
premise and the designing principle.
The premise describes what the story is about. The designing principle describes how the
story is told.
First, let’s look at premise. For Ghostbusters, I’d write the premise like this:
Four people in the ghost-extermination business use their “ghost-busting” abilities to
save New York City from a supernatural crisis.
So now we have what the story is about. And from Dan Aykroyd’s original draft to the
final script, this never changed. But looking at this premise, there are any number of crazy
ways to tell this story.
What if it took place a hundred years ago at the turn of the twentieth century?
What if it was in a post-apocalyptic world and they used steampunk technology?
What if the four people were women?!
These are all crazy alternatives, I know. But these are the kinds of decisions a writer
has to make when creating a story, and those choices form the designing principle.
Side note — premise & designing principle are also a great way to examine reboots, remakes,
and sequels but that’s a topic for later.
So what was the designing principle of Dan Aykroyd’s original concept? Well, director
Ivan Reitman described it like this:
“For one thing, it was set in the future … and it took place on a number of different
planets or dimensional planes. And it was all action. There was very little character
work in it.”
With the very same premise, Dan Aykoryd’s original vision for Ghostbusters was wildly different.
So how and why did they change it? Well, partially it was just too expensive to make. But there
were also serious story reasons behind it. Let’s listen to Reitman and Harold Ramis
discuss the changes:
“I always thought the movie should be a going into business story. It’s three really
smart guys who go into some business, it’s just a very unusual business.”
“Starting as parapsychologists working in the university. I think it helped bring the
audience from a place of what’s real to what’s unreal — the credibility was established
in the beginning.”
They spell out two major aspects of the designing principle. First, what if it was told as
a going-into-business story? And second, instead of taking place in the future across dimensions,
what if it was grounded in our reality?
If you take the premise for the story, and apply this new designing principle, you get
a pretty good recipe for the Ghostbusters we know and love today.
So, how did they execute this designing principle? How exactly do you make a film
Grounded in Reality
There are many ways to make a story feel grounded. I want to point out three methods I noticed
Ghostbusters using.
The first is pretty straightforward. The movie literally takes place in our reality. We,
the audience, are shown the Ghostbusters becoming popular via the same channels we would in
our day-to-day lives — if it was 1984.
News reports on TV, newspaper headlines — and not just generic ones. The script specifically
mentions the New York Post and features real news anchors of the time, including Larry King.
"More sightings are reported and some maintain that these professional paranormal eliminators
in New York are the cause of it all."
Secondly, it uses what Ivan Reitman calls...
“The Domino Theory of Reality. As long as you took people step by step through a series
of credible choices, you could start to believe that this sort of stuff can happen.”
The story begins with the characters in a very believable, humble starting place. Paranormal
scientists with questionable practices operating out of the basement of a university.
And gradually we buy into the story world more and more, until there’s a “cute,
quintessential American brand symbol, looming as large as Godzilla” walking through New York City.
The last thing the script does to ground it in reality, is make sure it has internal logic.
I want to focus on one aspect of internal logic. Setting rules for your story and following them.
Specifically, a technique I call…
Whatever you do, don’t do that.
A very common storytelling technique is setting up a rule early in the movie that will be
broken later. Ghostbusters has a classic one.
“There’s something very important I forgot to tell you.”
“What?”
“Don’t cross the streams.”
And when you see a character give this kind of warning, you can rest assured that at some
point the thing is going to happen.
When I see it in scripts, I’ve started writing a little note — WYDDDT — because it’s
essentially a character saying “Whatever you do, don’t do that.”
It tells the audience to associate a certain value with a certain action
Crossing the streams equals bad.
So later in the movie when their only option is crossing the streams, the audience recalls
this rule and is as worried as the characters.
“I have a radical idea. We’ll cross the streams.”
“Excuse me, Egon. You said crossing the streams was BAD.”
“Cross the streams…”
The problem with this technique is that it can be really obvious.
In Ghostbusters they disguise it in two ways.
“I’m fuzzy on the whole good-bad thing. What do you mean, ‘bad?’”
First, they use it as a joke — yet another humorous exchange by the always-concerned
Spengler and the amusingly carefree Venkman.
"Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously, and every molecule in your
body exploding at the speed of light.”
“Total proctonic reversal.”
“Alright — that’s bad. Ok. Important safety tip. Thanks Egon.”
Secondly, it’s motivated by what’s happening in the moment.
"You know it just occurred to me we really haven’t had a completely successful test
of this equipement.”
“I blame myself.”
“So do I.”
They’re using the proton packs for the first time, so this is important information that
is relevant to what’s going on.
“Start bringing him down! You’ve got him. Don’t cross the streams!”
“Maybe now you’ll never slime a guy with a positron collider, huh?”
“Whatever You Do, Don’t Do That” is a simple way for the writer to assign a value
to an action, and helps ensure that story elements critical to the plot aren’t being
dropped in whenever convenient.
By taking the original premise and changing the designing principle, the creators made
the story relatable.
They grounded it in our reality, and made sure it followed its own rules.
All these things underscore an essential lesson.
How you tell your story is as important as what it’s about.
And when the right concept meets the right execution, it makes for unforgettable movie.
Hey guys, Michael here. Thank you very much for watching my video on Ghostbusters.
There’s actually two videos that I made on Ghostbusters. There’s the one you just
watched and an original that had some good stuff in it, but just didn’t feel right,
so I ended up basically remaking it.
But, I want to release that first version for all of my subscribers on Patreon, without
whom this channel would not be possible.
So thank you very, very much to them. Thank you for watching this video.
If you liked it, please click like. And if you want more insights into great screenplays,
be sure to subscribe!
“Tell me what you think it is.”
“Is it a star?”
“Incredible. Five for five. You can’t see these can you?
“No, no!”
“You’re not cheating me are you?”
“No, I swear, they’re just coming to me!”