Editorials
‘Ghostbusters In Concert’ Spotlights the Stealth Magic Behind the Movie [Event Report]
Nostalgia is a tricky thing, especially these days. What used to be a slice of escapism has since become the blueprint for Hollywood studios, who have seemingly molded intellectual property into a skeleton key to get projects off the ground. Indie filmmakers graduate into blockbuster reboots, veteran filmmakers stretch their limbs with unnecessary sequels, and listicles are made about all the Easter eggs and trivia and yadda, yadda, yadda. There are exceptions, sure, but this is the business today, and our rose-tinted lenses are feeling the wear and tear.
Maybe. Hopefully. Probably not.
Ghostbusters, to stay on theme here (there is a point to all of this), is no exception to this riff raff. Last year, Jason Reitman finally delivered the second sequel die-hard fans have been waiting for since the days of Chris Farley rumors. It was fine. Rather than attempting to capture the comedy of the first two entries, Reitman wisely sketched out a love letter to the franchise itself, speaking less to the critics and fans of ’80s comedies and more to those who grew up wanting to bust heads — in the spiritual sense, of course.
It worked. For the most part. Paul Rudd was charming as always. The ode to the late Harold Ramis was affecting. The kids were a riot. What didn’t work, though, was the film’s relentless attempts to make everyone go all Rick Dalton and point at the various callbacks, accoutrements, and story beats of the original. But, again, this is how franchising goes. Hell, it’s happening this very week with Halloween Ends as the marketing has made it very clear that you’ll be reminded of all the things you loved in John Carpenter’s original.
All of this only erodes the magic of the source material, and this is something that has come to mind this spooky season while revisiting many of the original movies that have since been mined and gutted by studios today. Well, except one. This past Saturday night at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre proved to be an outlier in these rewatches. (Told you, we’d get there.) The venue played host to Peter Bernstein, son to the great and late composer Elmer Bernstein, who led the Chicago Philharmonic through a live score of Ghostbusters.
To be fair, the night was fueled by the same nostalgia that prompted Sony to greenlight Ghostbusters: Afterlife and its forthcoming sequel. Attendees were invited to wear their costumes, and many did, taking photos next to inflatable Stay Pufts and Slimers, not to mention our local folks in grey who arrived with all their dazzling props. The bar even served a cocktail themed to Hi-C’s Ecto Cooler, giving a little something to the adults. It was incredibly cute, and even the most stone-cold cynic would have smiled from the palpable energy.
But, here’s where the evening turned: Bernstein. After a short introduction by his son, which was accompanied by video introductions by Dan Aykroyd and the late Ivan Reitman, the lights dimmed, the film rolled, and that familiar twinkle and chorus exploded over the New York Public Library. Right below it was the Chicago Philharmonic, though, who hit every note under Bernstein’s guide. Needless to say, the talent on display was electrifying to watch, particularly the harpist, who was tasked with one of the first quiet moments of the night.
As the film progressed — there was a short intermission shortly after things go south for Dana Barrett and Louis Tully — it became quite clear that this wasn’t entirely a celebration of a widely celebrated film. It was a showcase for the kind of magic we often take for granted. The score. Hyperbole be damned, but Bernstein’s score is one of the more underrated gems in Hollywood scoring history. It’s an eclectic compendium that juggles all the weird tones within Reitman’s supernatural comedy, and this film is a lot weirder than its reputation suggests.
Because of this, it wasn’t an easy or even enviable task for Bernstein, who said as much to CinemaScore in 1985 (via Ghostbusters News): “It was probably one of the most difficult jobs I ever had to do just to, and I don’t mean this as a pun, but to find the right note. The score was not easy. It was extremely difficult. Ivan Reitman and I must have talked on the phone every single day while I was working on it, just trying to help ourselves find the right approach.”
Bernstein’s approach and all the complexities wired to his decisions were on full display at the Auditorium, and the excitement of seeing it unfold was admittedly tough to contain. Much to the chagrin of my girlfriend (and certainly the audience), I found myself pointing not at the screen, but sections of the orchestra as they conjured all the sounds that are a given on any other rewatch. A few snapshots come to mind (even days later): the heavenly swells behind “Dana’s Theme”, the haunting minimalism within “Halls”, the jaunty march of “Stairwell”, and the eerie pivot from the Carpenter synths of “News” to the funky sendoff of “Judgment Day”.
Staggering stuff.
Even more staggering was how magnetic it made the rewatch. One friendly fan behind me said it best: “It’s like I’m watching it for the first time again.” Who wouldn’t want that? Isn’t that the high we all chase whenever we pop in the tape? Isn’t that what studios are capitalizing on with these reboots? All true. The joy in this night, in this particular performance, is that it feels earned and genuine. And, more importantly, you’re not dropping your jaw at callbacks or remember-whens, but the raw ingenuity that captured your imagination in the first place.
That’s always been the magic word.
Photography by Anne Ryan. Click here to see if this show is coming to your town.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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