Bill Murray discussed what it was like to film the new Ghostbusters film, revealing that it was “physically painful”.
Last year, the actor confirmed after much speculation that he would be appearing in Ghostbusters: life after death, the next Ghostbusters sequence directed by Jason Reitman. It will also see the return of original cast members Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts.
Speaking in a new question and answer session when he received the Maltin Modern Master award at the 36th Santa Barbara Film Festival last week (April 2), Murray, who played Dr. Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters 2 (1989), talked about being approached to join the cast of the new film.
Explaining how the conversation between him and Reitman started, Murray said: “I remember him calling me and saying, ‘I have an idea for another Ghostbusters. I have had this idea for years. I thought, ‘What the hell can that be?’ I remember him as a child. I remember your Bar Mitzvah. I was like, ‘What the hell? What does this boy know? ‘”
He continued: “But he had a really wonderful idea that he wrote with another wonderful guy that I worked with, Gil Kenan, who did Ember City. The two wrote a Ghostbusters movie that really brings him back to life. It really has the feeling of the first, more than the second or the feminine. It has a different feel every two. “
Ghostbusters: life after death was originally scheduled to be released last year and has since been postponed to November 11, 2021. Murray talked about Reitman’s task of continuing what his father Ivan Reitman started with the two original films in the franchise.
“I think he really has something,” Murray continued. “It was difficult. It was very difficult. That’s why I think it will be good. We stayed there for a while, but it was physically painful. Using these backpacks is extremely uncomfortable. We had batteries the size of batteries. They now have batteries the size of earrings. It’s still a very heavy thing to wear, all the time.
“The special effects on this one are a lot of wind and dirt on your face, and there were a lot of descents and ascents. I was like, ‘What is this? What am I doing? It’s like a Bulgarian deadlift, or a Russian kettlebell, going up and down with that thing on my back. It was very uncomfortable. “
He added: “Normally, when something has a very high misery quotient, something comes out of it and some quality is produced that, if you can capture and project it, appears on the screen and affects you. I think it comes out sometime in the fall. They were delayed for a year or a year and a half, but I’m glad they did. It will be worth seeing. “
The new film – which also stars Finn Wolfhard, Carrie Coon, Mckenna Grace and Paul Rudd – will follow a small family as they move to a small town in Oklahoma when their mother, Callie (Coon), inherits a property from a father that she didn’t inherit I don’t know. Grace plays science-obsessed daughter Phoebe, while Wolfhard plays son Trevor.
Meanwhile, Jenny Lewis and Bill Murray teamed up for an improbable cover of Drake’s 2020 success, ‘Laugh Now Cry Later’.