Girl Most Likely....to be a Ghostbuster!

Sorta-sequel to "Ghostbusters: RGB references in ATC".

So, I think I've cracked open the whole rest of the recipe for "Ghostbsusters: Answer The Call".

The Kristen Wiig movie "Girl Most Likely" has been playing on Starz, and it's very obviously a key ingredient to the stew.

So, here's the spoiler-ish plot for "Girl Most Likely".

Kristen Wiig is a goofy loser whose female friends are mean-girl bitches, and her boyfriend is a neglectful emotionally distant piece of shit, so she stages a fake suicide to get his attention, but she gets committed instead, then given over to the custody of her estranged mother played by Annette Benning.

Tear-jerking scenes are mixed with wacky hi-jinks, and in the end, Wiig gets a new boyfriend, stops an armed bad guy, makes peace with her mother, and creates a happy ending for both herself, and her weird emotionally disabled brother.

It's a cute little rom-com that leans heavily into the com column.

Now!! The extended director's cut of "Answer The Call"!

Kristen Wiig's Erin Gilbert is a goofy loser whose co-workers are snooty, and her boyfriend is a neglectful emotionally distant piece of shit. 

Wacky hi-jinks lead to her re-uniting with her estranged former best friend, and they and two other gals become the Ghostbusters.

Wiig/Gilbert is both enthusiastic to be a Ghostbuster, but socially embarrassed by how weird everyone else thinks it is, and we get some tear-jerky scenes with her and Melissa McCarthy's Abby Yates about not having to please the college snobs, and her shitty (now ex) boyfriend.

The Ghostbusters save New York, and everyone loves them, and the Busters becomes Wiig's new weirdo found-family, like how she learns to accept her weirdo biological-family at the end of "Girl Most Likely".

The boyfriend thread, and ex-coworkers/pleasing the snobs thread are more through the extended cut.

Its virtually gutted from the theatrical cut.

There are little booger-traces where the editing surgery couldn't carve it all out, but mostly it's gone.

Tracks VERY closely with "Girl Most Likely" though doesn't it?

So, here's what I think happened.

I think Paul Feige auditioned the girls before he had the script, and asked them about their likes, and studied their work, and shoved stuff in for each of them to get them to come on board the movie.

He put the rom-com tear-jerker misfit stuff in to get Kristen Wiig.

He put the animated series Easter eggs for Melissa McCarthy (she's a fan).

For Kate McKinnon, he named Jillian Holtzman after both Jillian Anderson and agent Holtzman from X-Files, and had the Busters competing with (inept) government spook agents .

For Leslie Jones....Exorcist reference, and being a history buff, I guess.

But the biggest ingredients are animated series, and "Girl Most Likely".

And the X-Files thread is in there pretty deep too, I guess.

But mostly those first two.

Figuring this shit out just makes me love the flick even more.

From a writing perspective it's fascinating; and it paints Feige as even more of a sweetheart than I already thought he was.

Now, all of this could of course be coincidence....but it's a helluva cluster of coincidences.

No, I'd sooner believe Katie Dippold is a Professor X level telepath, and her word processor is her Cerebro than it be pure coincidence.

I think even if I haven't nailed it perfectly, I'm pretty damned close.