At this point, Ghostbusters is one of the most beloved movies of all time and its stars are some of the most recognizable faces in all of show business. But that wasn’t always the case when Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson suited up in Ivan Reitman’s 1984 horror comedy classic. This isn’t to say the cast of comedy heavyweights were unknown at the time, especially with several of them having been Saturday Night Live standouts and National Lampoon mainstays, but they were able to get up to some rather hilarious shenanigans without causing a scene.
Included with the home release of Ghostbusters: Afterlife is “Ghostbusters: A Look Back” an insightful group interview with the surviving members of the cast and director Ivan Reitman which sees the longtime friends go into detail about how the movie was made, its famous scenes, and its enduring legacy. Also included in the interview are a couple of hilarious stories shared by Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd about essentially using the streets of New York City as their personal playground:
[Dan Aykroyd]: It was just fun being in Manhattan and stealing shots and swinging that Cadillac around corners with people going ‘What is that thing?’ [Bill Murray]: And never stopping for stop lights. It was so much fun. You just blaze through and even the cops would look at you and go, ‘I guess those guys are Coast Guard or something.’ They didn’t know what the hell we were. We were just driving around doing anything we wanted.
While making movies can be serious business, it sounds like the original cast of Ghostbusters were definitely able to have some fun along the way. Because when you’re suited up in full costume, why not?
But whipping ECTO-1 around corners in the Big Apple and confusing police officers wasn’t the only example of the Ghostbusters cast having fun while filming the movie. In fact, they used everyone’s confusion to have fun with some of those hoity-toity shops and boutiques along Madison Avenue, as Bill Murray put it:
I remember we were in the suits and walking into stores and looking at goods just saying, ‘We’re going to have to take a look at some of this stuff,’ and just walking out with lots of stuff from Madison Avenue stores, just walking out with it. And about half and hour later, saying, ‘Okay, yeah it’s fine. This stuff is all clear.’ And just bringing it back. Meanwhile we walked out with a few thousand dollars worth of things. They just thought we were official because we had those suits.
It is safe to say that none of that would fly in today’s world, especially with the Ghostbusters stars being immediately recognizable and how so much has changed with movie shoots. But even so, I personally would love to see footage of Bill Murray taking thousands of dollars worth of merchandise from unassuming New Yorkers. That is near the top of the list of crazy things the comedy legend has pulled off over the years.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a movie we’ll still be talking about years from now. is currently available on 4K, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital, and if you want to know what else is coming out, take a glance at CinemaBlend’s 2022 home release release schedule.