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July 1, 2006

Who You Gonna Call?

Somewhere, wedged under the memories of visiting Pumpkinville and knowing the complete route to defeating Goonies 2 for Nintendo, there exists the entire script for Egon's role in Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters.

In the 80s my neighborhood friends Keith and Eric (they're brothers) and I would spend the full two hours reenacting the whole film. I had seen it the least of us, meaning only about 35-40 times. Somehow, though, Keith, as Venkman (Bill Murray's role), always got to say the "Don't cross the streams" line, even though everybody knows it was Egon who said it and it was the coolest thing he ever said.

In either movie.

But you know how kids' rules go: They saw the movie before I did, and by the time I caught the error, we'd already played it the same way so many times. Can't mess with tradition.

Yesterday, in what spurred a stupor to enrapture my attention for the greater part of my existence until I went to bed, I learned news that left me questioning, reflecting, hoping.

They've all but green-lighted Ghostbusters 3.

Don't believe me? Here's a reputable source: http://imdb.com/title/tt0805537

That's right - Ghostbusters in Hell. They find a portal to Hell in NYC and have to go save the world. Not just Manhattan - the world.

That's perhaps the first mistake on this project - Remember when the big enemy was Peck from the EPA and the mayor's assistant in the sequel? Now what? Does Beelzebub carry a clipboard taking count of souls, and suddenly Venkman is called upon to thwart his snivelling by referring to him as "Boobybub?"

C'mon - the campy writing, the trite dialogue, the special effects - it was everything I loved about the movies of my childhood. This may be doomed to fail in an Episode I, I, III kind of way. Leave our beloved mythos behind us. Challenge yourself, Hollywood, to create anew. Movies are like memories we can revisit - they don't fade or tarnish over time - it's our perception that does it for us.

Example: I didn't think I'd get that giddy, child-like awe feeling from a movie until I saw Superman Returns, and the cheesy 70s-font blue lettering flying through the universe heralded another installment of another of my favorite childhood franchises. They did it right because they had to - I think there are millions of fans out there like me who have seen so many of the things they thought were cool as kids (Transformers is shooting right now dammit!) be torn up and "modernized" in recent years.

A handful of directors, Bryan Singer and Sam Raimi to name two, are getting it right because they take this stuff as seriously as we do. That give me a lot of hope for future installments of well-worn franchises, but Harold Ramis? Dan Akyroyd?

I leave it to them (who seemingly are coming out of retirement to prove to us they're still funny) to deliver the goods. I hope they don't cross the streams. It would be bad.

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