Bill Murray Becomes a "Nice Guy" To Allow Ghostbuster Sequels -- and Proves He Was Right

Interesting lore on the original Ghostbusters and its sequels.

I think it goes like this:

Bill Murray was on a roll as a movie star starting in 1979 with the modest summer camp comedy "Meatballs," and then continuing on to Caddyshack(1980), Stripes(1981) and Tootsie(1982 -- a true blockbuster in which Bill Murray took a small role but stole all his scenes and got the best punch line at the climax.)

Murray inherited what was intended to be a role for John Belushi in "Ghostbusters"(partially scripted by yet another SNLer Dan Ackroyd) ...but Murray clearly took over the role as his own -- and the MOVIE as his TO own. Murray's constant parade of largely improved adlibs and one liners are the comedy core of a movie otherwise in danger of collapsing under Ackroyd's high exposition ghost mythology.

The combination of Murray's one-liners(for the adults), the comedy ghosts(for kids) and special effects spectacle(for everybody) made Ghostbusters a full blockbuster in the summer of 1984.

Faced with both a blockbuster and clear superstardom, Murray cashed in with a "serious film" (The Razor's Edge) which failed -- and then pretty much checked out of Hollywood for 4 years. He made no major film in 1985, no major film in 1986(less a funny cameo scene in Little Shop of Horrors), no major film in 1987, and came back only at the very end of 1988 with Scrooged.

This hiatus seems to have messed with Murray's superstardom, though he remained a very funny comedy star.

But in 1989, he agreed to "return to his big one" with Ghostbusters II. Facing summer 1989 competion in Batman(the new kid on the block) and Indy 3, Ghostbusters II struggled to regain its primacy and...as Murray himself figured out...something was wrong with it. Ackroyd's mythology took over, Murray's one-liners weren't as strong or as frequent. They gave Sigourney Weaver a BABY.

And for many years thereafter, Bill Murray used his legal rights to stop any more Ghostbusters sequels from being made. Not only would Murray himself refuse to BE in any Ghostbusters sequel, he refused to allow anyone ELSE to MAKE a Ghostbusters sequel. Evidently this was particularly hard on Dan Ackroyd, who had created the premise to start with, and watched his hot 80's movie career dwindle down to not much in the 90s and beyond(less Ackroyd's hilarious performance as a psycho hit man trying to form a "Hit Man's Union" in Grosse Pointe Blank of 1997.)

Something else happened along the way: Bill Murray and fellow Ghostbusters writer-actor Harold Ramis made "Groundhog's Day" together in 1993. The movie rather rescued Murray from his OWN career slump("The Man Who Knew Too Little" and that one about the elephant) and gave Murray a philosophy-deep cult classic.

But Murray was really mean to Ramis on the "Groundhog's Day" set --tempermental(Murray was going through a divorce) --and the two ended up estranged and not speaking to each other for years.

But Harold Ramis took ill and died in 2014. I can't remember if Bill Murray actually got to speak to him once he was ill, but I do remember reading that Murray sought out Ramis's home address by going to a police station in Ramis's city and asking for help.

Ramis died on February 24, 2014, age 69. Little over a week later, at the Oscar ceremony for 2013 films on March 2, 2014, Bill Murray was giving out the award for Best Cinematography and stopped after naming all the "real" nominees to say "..and oh yes, I forgot one..Harold Ramis for Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog's Day." The feud was over, Murray's new leaf had been turned.

And Murray started being a "Nice Guy" and allowing those "Ghostbusters" sequels -- and one reboot -- to appear -- several of them, one after another.

And he even deigned to appear in them. All of them.

In the first one, he didn't play his famous original role as Ghostbuster Peter Venkman. He played some other guy, in the "all-female reboot" Ghostbusters (2016.)

The second one, a sequel, centered on the adult daughter and family of Ghostbuster Dr. Egon Spengler -- who, like the actor who played him(Harold Ramis) was said to have died as well -- Murray DID come back as Venkman, with a few handy one-liners at his disposal(AH the nostalgia) and the feel-good climax of having Murray, Dan Ackroyd(Dr. Ray Stantz), Ernie Hudson(Winston Zeddmore), and a "ghostly" Spengler standing side by side to fight off new ghosts in rural mid-American. The movie -- "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" surely benefitted from the "gang's all here nostalgia" in general -- and Murray's continuing "nice guy" warmth in coming back but -- it didn't really feel like the kind of movie that Ghostbusters really WAS back in 1984.

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