All posts by Landon Evanson

Editorials

HOW 90 SECONDS LED TO ETERNITY FOR ‘GHOSTBUSTERS’

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First of all, how the hell has it been forty years? GHOSTBUSTERS opened on June 8, 1984 (alongside another classic horror comedy that starts with “G”, outlined by our fearless leader Patti Paultergeist) and is one of those magical movies that have transcended cinema to become a part of American culture. And beyond.

What separates GHOSTBUSTERS from the field is what made THE DARK KNIGHT the GODFATHER of superhero films: they took it seriously.

Before anyone throws their arms up in protest because GHOSTBUSTERS is very much a comedy, what I mean by “taking it seriously” is that they didn’t skimp on the horror. Think about Bill Murray’s delivery on “She says she’s the Gatekeeper. That make any sense to you?” which was absent any and all humor long before we knew he could ACT act. Or Sigourney Weaver’s hyperventilation and growling “there is no Dana, only Zuul”, to say nothing of the shot of her looking out at the city through the blown out side of her apartment as Mick Smiley’s “I Believe in Magic” swelled underneath. And if we’re honest, Gozer (Slavitza Jovan) and the “OK, who brought the dog?” gargoyles atop Spook Central are nothing short of creepy.

Though brief, by playing these scenes honest to the horror, it set GHOSTBUSTERS on the path it remains upon today: seminal.

No scene compares to the underutilized Winston Zeddmore (Ernie Hudson) piloting the Ecto-1 as he engaged Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) in a conversation about Judgment Day. Look, we all have our favorite moments and lines, but Judgment Day is 90 seconds that shuts down the room. I don’t care how many times you’ve seen it, nor do I care how hilarious and raucous the back-and-forth may be with the friends you’re watching with, when Winston says “Hey, Ray…” it’s Quint talking about the Indianapolis. Everything stops.

When the violins fade in with Ray’s rationalization that every ancient religion has its own myth about the end of the world, the chills still crawl up my spine at the knowledge of what’s coming–and Hudson does not miss.

“Myth?! Ray, has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason we’ve been so busy lately is because the dead have been rising from the grave.”

The violins intensify and thunder crashes as Ray slowly turns his head to look at his fellow Ghostbuster, a thought whirling through his mind that he has no desire to dance with.

Ray looks to break the tension with “How ’bout a little music?” and Winston offers a scoffed “yeah” as the funky tune plays and the camera pulls back on the Ecto-1 heading toward an inevitable showdown.

The reasons are endless, but GHOSTBUSTERS is as magnificent today as it was when it debuted four decades ago, and will remain so for the rest of time. But for my money, it begins and ends with a 90-second chat between colleagues. Because Ivan Reitman, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson chose to leave laughs by the wayside and play it straight. A moment that clearly communicated that there was more at stake than jokes. GHOSTBUSTERS’ Indianapolis scene is what took it from great to undeniable. And if you don’t believe me, go watch the Judgment Day scene right now and tell me you don’t get chills.

Seriously. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Editorials

‘ANNIHILATING THE WORLD BEFORE YOUR VERY EARS’: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS RADIO BROADCAST AT 85

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“In the thirty-ninth year of the 20th Century came the great disillusionment…”

Tonight, when the clock strikes 8 Eastern Standard Time, it will have been exactly 85 years since The Mercury Theatre on the Air unleashed its version of H.G. Wells’ THE WAR OF THE WORLDS over CBS radio airwaves. Though the national panic resulting from the broadcast has been embellished historically, it made Orson Welles a household name and eight-and-a-half decades later, remains the coolest thing I have ever heard.

When reporter Carl Phillips (the brilliant Frank Readick) breathlessly relayed his observations from the Wilmuth farm in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, it didn’t require much effort to see how channeling Herbert Morrison’s coverage of the Hindenburg disaster the previous year could terrify millions. To my thinking, all it would have required was for someone to tune in a few moments late. Missing the program’s introduction was all it would have taken.

This was 1938. The Golden Age of Radio. It would be a lifetime before 24-hour news networks and social media would conquer our cultural landscape. So, when a reporter on the radio asked for a moment to get a better vantage point during a “news bulletin,” one would have been glued to the radio, nervously awaiting their next communication.

That’s when the magic happened.

After a brief piano interlude, with sirens blaring and the voices of uneasy onlookers murmuring in the background, Phillips re-started his transmission. Only a few words in, Readick–in a stroke of genius–tilted his head away from the microphone asking his broadcast partner, “am I on?” A subtle gesture that added incredible authenticity to the proceedings.

It wasn’t long before Phillips was talking about a small beam of light setting men in the field ablaze, frantically describing the jet of flame as it approached “about twenty yards to my ri…”

Dead air.

Eventually the studio host returned, the show progressed to its next stage, and later it should have been clear THE WAR OF THE WORLDS was all a radio play meant to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve. But the very instant the air went dead is a moment that quickens the beating of the heart to this day. One can only imagine its impact in the fall of 1938. It was Readick, not Welles who sold the program, however. The exquisitely simple act of looking away from his mic, and the mid-sentence cut to dead air was perfection.

When I heard THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for the first time, I was in college. Shortly after, I owned the broadcast on CD and even fashioned an Audio Production group project around those first fifteen delicious minutes.

In fact, during the pandemic I made a return to radio and ordered a face mask featuring Orson Welles, sleeves rolled up and and arm held high as he intensely read the words from Howard Koch’s magnificent adaptation. And whenever anyone glanced at it and asked what it was, I gave them a quick “I can’t work in radio and not hype THE WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast.” None needed further explanation — they just got it.

One could say that THE WAR OF THE WORLDS radio broadcast is 85 years old, but never could one claim that it’s 85 years in the grave.

Take it, Orson:

“This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that THE WAR OF THE WORLDS has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying ‘boo!’ Starting now, we couldn’t soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the next best thing: we annihilated the world before your very ears and utterly destroyed the CBS. You’ll be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn’t mean it and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye, everybody, and remember please for the next day or so the terrible lesson you learned tonight: that grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian — it’s Halloween.”

Editorials

HAPPY ACCIDENTS: THAT TIME BOB ROSS DEFEATED DEADITES

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To the glee of horror aficionados, Shudder’s CREEPSHOW is teeming with Easter eggs, and no episode filled the basket quite like the Season 2 debut chaser, “Public Television of the Dead.”

The set-up alone was intoxicating. A play on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW featuring EVIL DEAD veteran Ted Raimi querying about a book he’d had “in [his] fruit cellar for years.” Of course, Raimi was playing himself, the book in question was the Necronomicon, and the Pittsburgh-based station (hello Romero reference) even featured a program with a puppet named–you guessed it–Henrietta. When the host of THE APPRAISER’S ROAD TRIP began reading the “wretched incantations,” all hell broke loose. But in the next studio, a gentleman who struck a striking resemblance to Bob Ross was filming, not THE JOY OF PAINTING but THE LOVE OF PAINTING. Played to placid perfection by Mark Ashworth, the character of Norm Roberts was merely Ross’ given name rearranged: Robert Norman Ross.

Fresh off a floating and brilliantly delivered “pledge to us,” Raimi’s Deadite wandered onto Roberts’ set, and the calm craftsman immediately leapt to action, confronting Raimi with a cool “I don’t know who you are, sir. But if you’re not gonna behave, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.” Battle ensued. From a 2-inch brush to paint thinner and making a Gattling gun out of a snowblower, Norm went full MacGuyver, utilizing the tools of his trade to decimate Deadites. “We’re gonna beat the Devil out of you.” To the surprise of no one, Roberts saved the day, and his show–which was slated for cancellation–went national.

On its face, the premise of the episode seems outlandish, but it’s closer to the truth than you might think. The Roberts character was supposed to be a Vietnam veteran who fought on the front lines of the Tet Offensive in 1968, and believe it or not, Ross was a service veteran. Joining the United States Air Force in 1961, the not-yet-permed-painter was a medical records technician before being stationed in Alaska where he discovered a love for the snow and mountains that would inhabit so many of his works. Ross rose to the rank of master sergeant, but after acting as the heavy who was “the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work,” upon discharge Ross vowed he would never raise his voice again.

Simply stated, “Public Television of the Dead” was a love letter to Ross. THE JOY OF PAINTING aired for eleven years (1983-1994) and thanks to its magical host, enjoys a cult following to this day. Bob Ross’ official YouTube channel has over 5.6 million subscribers as of October 26, and one episode alone–the Season 29 opener–boasts of 45 million views. And by the way, the color code for Van Dyke brown is #664228. If you know, you know.

Who among us doesn’t reflect on childhood afternoons watching in awe as Ross painted amazing scene after amazing scene, his words of encouragement and love a ray of sunshine acting as a soothing salve for the lashes of life. To this day, when I need a calm voice to help slow my mind so I can sleep, I pull up an episode of THE JOY OF PAINTING because Bob Ross was who we–and episode writer Rob Schrab–thought he was: a superhero.

“I think each of us, sometime in our life, has wanted to paint a picture.” For many of us, it’s because Bob Ross existed. The serene sculptor would have been 81 today, and as we celebrate the memory of someone who touched us all, we echo Ashworth’s Roberts: “good night, day. Thank you for everything.”