"Ghostbusters": mourning for cult director Ivan Reitman

Created: 02/14/2022, 17:15

By: Michael Schleicher

Ghostbusters: Legacy premiered: Ivan and Jason Reitman last fall.

© Angela Weiss/AFP

Ivan Reitman wrote cinema history with "Ghostbusters", turned Arnold Schwarzenegger into the "Kindergarten Cop" and let Harrison Ford and Anne Heche spend "Six Days, Seven Nights" together.

Now the director, who was born in Czechoslovakia, has died at the age of 75.

Anyone who shot comedies in Hollywood in the 1980s must have felt like they were in a gaming paradise.

There were umpteen opportunities to let off steam;

something could be built up and destroyed again in every film, come hell or high water.

There was usually very cool music.

The border between action and slapstick was not fluid at that time.

She didn't exist.

And if you were good at what you did, even the cool ones wanted to play with you.

Ivan Reitman, who has now died at the age of 75, was good.

Very well.

"Ghostbusters": Sigourney Weaver was determined to play

Sigourney Weaver, for example, who has been a well-booked action star since "Alien" (1979), did everything in his power to be in Reitman's "Ghostbusters" in 1984.

She really wanted to show the cinema world that she can also be funny.

When Reitman was in the director's chair, he even teased the joke out of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The man who was previously in demand as "Conan the Barbarian" made a few funny films with the Canadian, which opinions differed on - and they still do to this day.

But that doesn't necessarily speak against works like "Twins" (1988) or "Kindergarten Cop" (1990).

Reitman knew that getting the big audience in a movie theater to laugh required "really precise and intricate work."

He didn't shy away from it.

Ivan Reitman was born in Komárno

Anyone who looks at his family history suspects that the man could not help but look at the world with a smile, than "always looking for the magic in life", as his three children now say so touchingly in the news of death write to her father.

Ivan Reitman was born in Komárno in what is now Slovakia in 1946.

His parents were Jews;

the mother had survived Auschwitz, the father fought as a partisan in the resistance against the German occupiers and after 1945 rose to become the largest vinegar manufacturer in Czechoslovakia.

When the communists cracked down on entrepreneurs in the late 1940s, the Reitmans fled.

Ivan was four when he and his parents escaped to Vienna while hiding on a barge and from there traveled on to relatives in Toronto.

In Canada, the boy quickly discovered the stage for himself: puppet theater, a folk band that actually left the rehearsal room for concerts, and finally studying (music and drama) in Hamilton.

He made short films while he was still at university. In 1973, in just over a week, with friends in front of and behind the camera, he cranked out “Cannibal Girls” for 12,000 Canadian dollars.

A first business card.

"Ghostbusters" is one of the most successful films worldwide

After college, Reitman worked for television.

He met Dan Aykroyd, who introduced him to John Belushi, Bill Murray and Gilda Radner.

An encounter with far-reaching consequences – for those involved and for film history: Reitman made Murray a star, whose potential he was one of the first to recognize: He gave him his first leading role in “Baby Fat and Meatballs” (1979) and cast him in the anarchic “I Think a moose is kissing me!” (1981) again.

Then it was finally time for Ivan Reitman to raise the bar for Hollywood comedy.

In 1984 he realized "Ghostbusters", the story of the ghostbusters had dreamed up Aykroyd and Harold Ramis.

Both starred in the film, with Murray replacing Belushi, who died of heroin addiction.

"Ghostbusters" cost almost nothing (ie $31 million) and grossed more than $290 million worldwide.

The production is one of the ten most successful cinema works of all time - and has lost none of its charm, humor, excitement and coolness to this day.

Last year, Reitman's son Jason released Ghostbusters: Legacy, a wonderful tribute and continuation of the work.

His father was there as a producer.

It was his last work - and it must have made him laugh.

Just like he us, his audience.