As I briefly noted yesterday, “Ghostbusters” has just celebrated the 25th anniversary of its June 8, 1984 release. The film went on to make considerable box office dollars and launched the post-SNL careers of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, along with co-stars Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, further into the stratosphere. Okay, well, Hudson’s career never really took flight, but still.
The anniversary is certainly not going by unnoticed. Sony is prepping the Blu-ray release of the film for next week while Atari, Inc. is all set to launch the heavily anticipated cross-platform video game on June 16. I knew I wanted to do something special for the site, but I just couldn’t come up with the right idea. Then it hit me.
In my view — and this is, of course, quite the disputed opinion — “Ghostbusters” is the most quotable movie of all time. And it’s not just the one-liners that have me howling every time I give the flick another look (which understandably dominate the list below), but it’s the thoroughness of the comedy. Witness, for instance, Egon Spengler’s (Harold Ramis) description of the consequences of “crossing the streams,” or the way Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) rifles off the particulars of Ted and Annette Fleming’s fiscal business at a dreary clients’ party. It is, quite frankly, one of the most ingenious comedy screenplays ever assembled.
So…why not a list of the film’s 10 best lines?
This quickly became a painful process. I ended up with at least a dozen lines that, on another day, might have made the list. Annie Potts’s “I’ve quit better jobs than this,” or Hudson’s sincere, “That’s a big Twinkie.” I wanted to give a shout-out to “Let’s run some red lights” and “Somebody blows their nose and you want to keep it,” and especially a personal favorite that hits my funny button more firmly than others: “I looked at the trap, Ray.” Not to mention “Yes it’s true, this man has no…,” well, you get the picture. But you have to whittle it down, and so I have. On to the list.
And Happy Birthday, “Ghosbusters.”