Meedyah Morsels #161
I talked about it here, so here it is.....
Ghostbuster's Daughter (2018) &
Wild and Crazy Guys (2019)
Acquired them here and here.
Ghostbuster's Daughter-
Told more from a daughter's point of view, then it gets to be more about Harold and his career once she becomes an adult, and can look back on it all from an adult's perspective.
We find out Harold and his first wife had an open marriage, being that they were full tilt hippies, which explains the weirdness in "Ghostbusters 2", of Janine being broke up with Egon, and Egon cracking a joke about all the tail he gets, and then Janine nailing Lewis, but then she dresses Lewis up in Egon's Ghostbuster's suit.
Apparently, Egon and Janine were kinky, and Ramis based it on himself.
I never got the line in "Ghostbusters 2", of Janine saying she fed baby Oscar French bread pizza.
How the Hell does a toothless baby eat that?
Did they throw it in the blender?
Did Lewis eat it, and say it was for the baby?
Well, now I know.
Harold was very hands-off as a parent, and taught Violet how to use the toaster oven to make French bread pizzas, and she practically lived off them for awhile.
So, that weird little line was a shout out to Violet.
I mean, within the story it still makes no sense, but it isn't meant to.
So, two little quirks in that flick finally make sense to me at last.
Yeah, Harold did coke for awhile, and yeah, he had an illegitimate daughter with a married woman, but aside for those things, and a weird incident where he drowned a cat, and a weird incident where he threw a tantrum over not getting the fancy table at a restaurant, he was damned near a perfect human being.
And his weird hands-off hippie-dippie way of raising Violet?
It works!
She had a lot of boyfriends, a couple of husbands, and an abortion, and had some mild drug use, but Harold just made sure she didn't end up dead, or in prison, and it all worked itself out, and Violet has turned out awesome.
Harold Ramis, awesome guy, awesome dad, this book is the mirror opposite of "Mommy Dearest".
All you new parents out there, be like Harold, not like Joan.
The whole Christian-conservative tight-ass "family values", parenting thing meant well, but it failed miserably.
Time to let it go already.
Hell, parent-shmarent, just be like Harold period.
Except for the cat thing.
Wild and Crazy Guys-
Excellent!
Wonderful!
Takes awhile to build, but once their careers take off, it's a full speed ahead page-flipper.
It covers the guys you see on the cover, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Eddie Murphy, plus Rick Moranis, and John Candy who aren't on the cover for some reason (probably because they're SCTV-ers not SNL-ers), and how their SNL/SCTV careers led to their movies, and how their movies led to transforming the face of American comedy as we know it.
It follows the structure of picking one actor/comedian, then following the story from his point of view until he crosses over with another one of the 8, then following from their point of view until they cross over with another one, and so on, and so on.
Like a marathon baton pass.
Once they get uber-famous enough, their movies puzzle-piece together more, so there's less and less fragmenting, and having to jump back, and catch back up.
Along the way, Martin Short pops in a little, as does Dave Thomas from SCTV, and we get very brief fleeting mentions of the SNL girls.
The SCTV girls don't seem to exist at all.
Robin Williams pops up for a nanosecond, blink and you'll miss him.
John Landis pops up an awful lot.
Harold Ramis a little bit, but not as much as Landis.
But, that's all right, he got his own book.
For some reason, the big three it covers the most are Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Bill Murray.
Murray I can see, but Martin is practically the protagonist of the whole thing.
But, he still does SNL today, so I can see him being the spine of it, I guess.
The author makes you actually sympathize with Chevy Chase.
He had a rough childhood, his mom and dad both beat the shit out of him, and kids at school and in the neighborhood pounded him into moosh, so the arrogant persona he put on was his shield against a rough world I suppose.
Then sprinkle cocaine on top of all that, and well....
Course, he's still difficult, and grouchy, and hard to work with even as an old fart, so...yeah, damage is done on him, therapy ain't fixing it now.
Poor Chevy....
The interviewees they pull from most are Landis and Thomas, cuz Landis directed a big chunk of their movies, and Thomas hung out at a lot of the parties.
Along the way, pretty much all their films are touched on.
Some rushed past, and a tiny few flat out left out, but only the ones that really, really bombed.
We get a pretty good chunk on "Ghostbusters", and a good page and some change on "Little Shop Of Horrors". So, two of my birthday presents connect.
Damn, I kinda wanna have a double feature of GB and LSOH now...
If you're old enough to have grown up with the 80's comedies, and 80's/90's SNL, none of this stuff is really gonna surprise you.
I mean, for me, there were little details that I didn't know before, but I knew the broad strokes.
If you're a millennial/Gen-z-er, this book is written with you in mind, because it comes from the angle of assuming you never even heard of these guys, and then building up the details.
Recommended for everybody.
And I hope they do a part 2 about the SNL/SCTV girls.
And John Landis really needs to write his autobiography.
Both of these together are an excellent pairing if you love Ghostbusters, or just plain 80's comedy.
Must-haves for hardcore Ghostbusters fans.
Although, hardcore GB fans won't be surprised at all by WACG, but they will draw a lot of new stories and insights from GBD.
Here's some fun podcasts to listen to to enhance your enjoyment after you read the books.
And, that's all that!
Previously with books-
Books & comics.
Previously with MM-
GB2020 wraps! ...again...sorta... (MM #160)
Sunday, October 20, 2019
Ghostbusters biographies.
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6 comments:
Chevy Chase - Rough childhood?!? Damn, I didn't know that. I thought he was born rich as hell and went to that preppy school up in New York that the Steely Dan guys went to and he was in that band and in another band called Chameleon Church and did that "Walk...Don't Walk" movie while the 60s were still going. I am pretty amazed that people NEVER stop getting pissed off at him, even in his late 70s.
AEnima - It's a classic. But it's funny to think now that it's older than "Back In Black" was when I was in high school. The Tool guys are all fairly old now, but nobody cares about age in heavy metal anymore (if Dio and Lemmy had lived, they'd still be performing!)
Eghn, don't feel bad about wiping out all those conversations you had with me. I went through a nasty ice storm in 2008 that crippled this place pretty badly but it doesn't happen every year.
Didn't John Candy mess around with dope? Who am I thinking of? Also Jeremy Renner's on the creep list now pending the truth come out (were lots of people hoping for a Hawkeye movie?)
I tried to write a Western recently and stopped after three pages, so I got distracted too
He was preppy rich, but not high-falutin' rich, his dad had a successful business, but it wasn't a glamorous thing, and wealthy people can still be abusive shitpiles.
So, poor kids hated him for being more well off than them, and beat him up, and richer kids looked down their nose on him for his crummy family.
He was kinda screwed.
John Candy's thing was food and booze.
And I think cigarettes.
I think you're thinking of either Farley or Belushi.
Those are the SNL fat guys that went out with drugs.
Belushi - Ever see "Wired," the 1989 film that got trashed by every critic alive and almost ended the career of Michael Chiklis from "The Shield," who played Belushi as his first ever screen role? It plays like a bad after school special about Belushi, replete with scenes of his ghost watching his own dead body from the afterlife. Man is it ever bad!! I had to watch it on Youtube.
Had never heard that side of Chevy Chase's story before. Chamaeleon Church was real though:
http://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2015/05/chamaeleon-church-and-lost-interview.html
I just watched the "Wired", trailer.
Ugh, cringe.
I can't believe that cheap mess got a theater release.
Regarding Harold's relationships, etc. He never shipped JanEgon.
It's an interesting hypothesis about the open relationship thing spilling into his writing, but I don't remember that in the book. Though, to be fair, I read it all one morning after a sleepless night, so maybe I'm forgetting.
Shame about that cat. That was a hell of a shock and I nearly stopped reading. But Violet understood it.
Re: Not shipping Janine Egon.
True enough.
The cartoon got the fans hearts set on that.
Which makes it so strange they made Janine look like her cartoon self, and gave the green spud the name of Slimer, making that canon forever.
Which makes it stand out all the more that Janine puts Egon's jumpsuit on Lewis.
If they cherry-pick from the cartoon, naturally your eye is gonna be drawn to other things, and try to assemble some sense out of it.
I have my theory, it's probably wrong, but hey, maybe not.
And, the book doesn't mention it, but it doesn't directly connect the French bread pizza thing either.
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