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PostPosted: September 26th, 2011, 3:34 am 
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Spook Central has up two very interesting pdf's. One is of Ghostbusters: The Supernatural Spectacular Novel, written by Richard Mueller. It is a Novel based on the first film that is expanded on. Includes deleted ideas for the movie. Second is a pdf of the Ghostbusters film script written by Dan Aykroyd & Harold Ramis for August 5, 1983. Winston is in the Hotel in this version! Anyways, to go to Paul's blog which links to the pdf's.
http://www.theraffon.net/~spookcentral/scblog/index.php/2011/09/25/ghostbusters-pdf-ebook-project

Paul Rudoff was the manager of both projects and provided location for finished efforts. Patrick O'Riley scanned and provided the script. I cleaned both pdf's and scanned and provided the novel.

Anyways, that is why I have been quiet the last 2 months. :lol:

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PostPosted: September 26th, 2011, 10:02 am 
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Oh wow. Looks like I've got some reading to do. I've wanted to see the Mueller novelization for ages; there's several bits of GBOT canon that came from it (through a secondhand source who actually has the book) but I look forward to seeing it for myself. I'm especially interested in seeing it from the perspective of a writer who went on to become one of the cartoon's most prolific writers (the best one to stay after JMS quit, in my humble opinion) and even do a couple of EGB episodes.

The other stuff looks awesome too, but this is the one that's got me pumped.

:D

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PostPosted: September 26th, 2011, 11:42 pm 
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Both projects I feel will be of use for timeline/canon projects, and understanding the details of the first film.

I am approved by Paul to also submit the same type of pdf files for the novels: GB by Larry Milne, GB2 by Ed Naha, and GB2 by B. B. Hiller. He also has scripts I may also clean up for him.

Here is a fun excerpt from the script:

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PostPosted: September 27th, 2011, 11:28 pm 
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Hey, thanks for that. i use to have all of those when I was a child but that's been a while. It was good to be able to see them again.

Thanks

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PostPosted: September 28th, 2011, 9:43 am 
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I've read the first four chapters of the Mueller book, and it's already interesting.

The bums who appear in a deleted scene are recurring side characters, and get names and brief backstories.

There's a couple of times where the female student Venkman is trying to get into the pants of is misidentified as "Brenda". Mueller probably put that name in there, an editor caught it, but didn't get all of the references fixed, as a guess.

We actually see Janine get hired. She's sent by an "agency". I admit this was interesting to compare and contrast with the version of her hiring I wrote years ago:
http://www.ectozone.com/ff/gbfo.php

It was also fascinating to read the part about Ray's backstory with Jean, Carl, and their parents. My version ( http://www.ectozone.com/ff/ftb.php ) only drew on the barest outlines, but again, it's interesting to see the differences and parallels. Perhaps the most intersting is that their "failed reunion" was "three years ago", which exactly matches the GBOT version, and I swear this is just a weird coincidence. I picked 1980 because it was ten years after their parents' death (the characters we call David and Carolyn are still alive during the reunion in the novel; they die eighteen months before GB1) All the Stantzes appear to be a little bit older, too (probably better matching Aykroyd's actual age): Jean's daughter is already born and in "ballet class", both of Carl's kids are around and in Boy Scouts. (In GBOT, Jean's daughter and Carl's second child aren't born yet in 1980, and Carl's first son is an infant).

Looks like I did pretty much nail Carl's personality, though. They even have a brief argument that sort of parallels the one I had them have; Mueller just has Ray hide afterward, though, instead of a fistfight getting started.

It's also mentioned that Egon's the only one of the three founders with a living parent. Ironically, of course, Mueller would later contradict this statement himself by creating Charlie Venkman. Egon's parent, on the other hand, is his Mom, which RGB would match.

More to come as a read through further.

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PostPosted: September 28th, 2011, 6:58 pm 
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OK so I read the first post the day it was posted and promptly disappeared to spend all my free time reading Mueller's book and finished way late last night. I enjoyed it beyond words. Thank you so much for posting this, seriously.

Fritz I could have sworn you'd read it by how many things are consistent.

I love the back stories, I love back stories in general but GB back stories are my drug of choice, lol. And I too noticed that he contridicted himself by creating Charlie (what do you do with that canon wise :P)

But it's all in there. It's just great. You'll even hear about Egon's brother and some interesting extra scenes with Janine (like what happened to her after the coin scene...)

I loved the part about everyone's parents telling their kids to stay away from that weird kid Egon, poor Egon...

Very E/J friendly BTW. Especially the part where it says,'now that Egon and Janine are an item'. I was satisfied.

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PostPosted: September 29th, 2011, 5:00 am 
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Fritz wrote:
Looks like I did pretty much nail Carl's personality, though. They even have a brief argument that sort of parallels the one I had them have; Mueller just has Ray hide afterward, though, instead of a fistfight getting started.


One funny note tho, Egon kept on saying Ray's parents could still be alive in the Bermuda Triangle, til Ray punched egon in the nose. (P.49/50) So indeed Ray did lose his cool in the novel too.


Fritz wrote:
It's also mentioned that Egon's the only one of the three founders with a living parent. Ironically, of course, Mueller would later contradict this statement himself by creating Charlie Venkman. Egon's parent, on the other hand, is his Mom, which RGB would match.

More to come as a read through further.


You could always argue that Charlie went into hiding or something and Peter thought he was dead. That means during the time between the movie and the first episode "Venkman's Ghost Repellers" of Charlie being in RGB's that his dad either was discovered alive or reached Peter via phone or other way. Realize the ad for the ghostbusters was running all over NY area and they saving the day may have been in the the news. They were featured in mags and newspapers. Charlie most likely saw something about his son, and aimed to con him, now that he was famous. The Ghost Repellers Charlie was selling in the episode of the same name is proof one. In his second appearance he used the "Venkman" name again when coming up with the plan to release of Hob Anagarak and make money off the event. I think there is plenty to work with here to explain this.

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PostPosted: September 29th, 2011, 1:33 pm 
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Few more Mueller chapters...

Interestingly, Janine doesn't project as much "love at first sight" of Egon as she did in the movie. It almost seems like a whim to talk to him (though she does think of him as the cutest one of the three) and is a little grossed out by his talk of spores, molds, and fungus. On the other hand, she gives him a peck on the cheek as he goes off to catch Slimer, and he seemed a lot more pleased by it than movie or early RGB Egon would be.

Trivia note for Rosey: Dana Barrett has an uncle in the Army. He served at Fort Hood, Texas, and gave his niece a souvenir pillow from there.

Egon definitely seems even weirder than in the movie or RGB. Many descriptions of strange experiments that he conducted as a kid, including blacking out half of Ohio in the process. Strange scene after the Hotel Sedgewick that reminded me a little of one JMS wrote in "Slimer Come Home" ("My dad always told me never mess with anyone weirder than I was") I forgot to comment earlier about the passing mention of a brother; this is one more reference that seems unsupported in RGB canon, though GBOT fanon eventually established a half-brother (Kind of literally splitting the difference between the RGB depiction as an only child, and the need for a brother to father his niece Jen.)

And reminders that some parts of the GB2 script were literally recycled from parts of the GB1 script that were cut, as the Ghostbuster commercial includes some stuff that eventually made it into the GB2 commercial. Really could have done without the foreshadowing there, considering who the "married couple" was in the GB2 version. :P

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PostPosted: October 5th, 2011, 10:35 am 
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More on the Mueller novel.

Man, do I like the angle Mueller is taking with Egon and Janine. She may have started a little slower than in canon, but he's moving faster--she complains about how tired she is and he immediately appears and offers her part of his Baby Ruth. Knowing how Egon is about his candy, this is just this short of "Yes, let's conduct some fascinating biology experiments together."

Andre Wallance is depicted as of foreign birth, probably French. His few lines in the movie itself didn't have much of an accent, as I remember. The scene includes a double entente on the "Sacred Sects" part of the Roylance Guide's title that makes me wonder what kind of dirty zingers Mueller would have put in the cartoon if allowed.

I was strangely amused by Dana having a moment of self deprecating realization "Louis Tully, Andre Wallance, Peter Venkman. I certainly can meet'em" Then Mom Barrett calls (Rosey named her Valerie) and I guess you can say Rosey's portrayal of her seems to spring pretty naturally from the broad outline we're given of a woman who's both obsessed with getting her daughter married, and living up to Dana's speculation that Mom would be "scandalized" by her dating Venkman.

There's a really funny bit original to the book as far as I know (I haven't even read all the drafts of the scripts online yet, though). Apparently one of the New York scandal sheets wrote an expose saying some not nice things about Venkman's background (which were mostly true, which I'll touch on in a minute) so he apparently snuck a ghost trap into their offices and let something loose, just so he could gloat and extort a retraction when the paper came crawling to the Ghostbusters to take care of it.

As we've already noted, the background Mueller gives Venkman is mostly contradicted by the episodes he himself wrote, and we took a lot of it (the mother as a carny ticket taker) and pushed it back a generation to Charlie. Venkman's dad in the novelverse is the carny's impressario (they don't say whether Venkman's parents were actually married). Trivia: the carnival is named King City Attractions. The carnival wintered in Iowa; in "Cold Cash and Hot Water" Venkman makes mention of sending Charlie back to Iowa; Mueller wrote that episode, of course. (In GBOT, Charlie has a brother named Alf who lives there)

Though Venkman's dad's reaction to Peter declaring his intention to go to college is perhaps the first little rudiment of the Charlie we saw in the cartoon: "What do you want to do? You'll tell me when you find out? If you find out?" As previously mentioned, though, Venkman's dad is dead by 1983/1984 in the novel, a big contradiction of later RGB canon.

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PostPosted: October 8th, 2011, 12:31 pm 
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Well, just finished it.

To add on to some of the above comment about their treatment of Egon and Janine, we get inside Egon's head a little bit. He's mostly thinking of it, at this point, more as an experiment, it seems. An interesting experiment, mind you; as Ghostdiva remarked above, there's one passing reference from Ray referring to the two as "an item"

The Fort Detmerring scene is in there, though there's some tapdancing around what the ghost is really doing to Ray.

There's more emphasis on Venkman being ready to tear Peck's face off after the ECU blows up. Egon does get to yell at Peck once, but movie's "YOUR MOTHER" moment is pretty watered down.

The dialog in the Mayor's office conforms more to the network censored "Wally Wick" version, if not even a little tamer. "Yes, Mister Mayor, this man is a jerk." basically. Mayor Lenny is always called "Hizzoner" except for one reference to "Ed"--presumably the real world mayor of New York in 1984, Ed Koch. (Lenny is undoubtedly based on Koch; it's the GB2 novel that gives him the last name Clotch)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, since the "lucky coin" scene is also in there, the novel makes it clear Janine rides along with the Ghostbusters and is in the crowd at the bottom of the Shandor Building watching the whole time during the Gozer battle. This makes a lot of sense; in the movie she basically disappears after the ECU is blown up, and doesn't appear again until the closing credits, provoking Egon's one and only smile in the movie. (I could easily see, in an RGB/GBOT version of events, they drop her back off at the firehouse while they take Dana somewhere, maybe a hotel, and when they get back Janine has dug out the new uniforms)

The novel has Venkman theorize that the whole reason Dana was chosen for this was because maybe the apartment she was living in just happened to be previously occupied by Shandor himself.

Believe it or not, the way they defeat Gozer is actually clearer in the movie. The movie did a better job of dropping in just enough more pseudo-science about the stream-crossing causing the gate to close that it works; the novel makes it sound more like "Well, we're gonna die anyway, why not try something random and crazy?"

Eh...sorry...I deduct a few points from Mueller for giving the closing line "I love this town!" to Venkman instead of Winston.

But still, great read.
:)

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PostPosted: May 16th, 2016, 4:45 pm 
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Bumping this thread after 4 1/2 years because I had a great find this weekend at a local Half Price Books:

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Only $1.50

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