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A Harbor Chick is the twenty-fourth chapter on the DVD of Ghostbusters II. In this chapter, the Ghostbusters and the Statue of Liberty head to the Manhattan Museum of Art.

Cast[]

Equipment[]

Environmental[]

Locations[]

Plot[]

Jackie Wilson's "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher" continued to play. The Statue of Liberty walked off of West 54th Street onto Fifth Avenue, stepped out from between the The Canada Building at 680 Fifth Avenue, and headed towards the Manhattan Museum of Art. People stood behind police barricades and cheered. Peter Venkman shouted it was a love fest. Ray Stantz ordered everyone to sing it out. Egon Spengler cheered the people on. Peter sang along with the song. Winston Zeddemore told someone on the sidewalk to sing. The Statue walked past Trump Tower at 725 Fifth Avenue. Egon noted they were running out of time. Winston asked Ray if he could speed up the Statue. Ray conceded the vibrations would shake her to pieces and confessed they should have padded her feet. Egon was confident there was not a pair of Nikes in her size. Peter was not worried and proclaimed she was a harbor chick. The Statue stepped on a police squad car and squashed it in front of Fred's at 703 Fifth Avenue. Ray shouted an apology.

Louis Tully ran down a sidewalk to a bus stop at East 77th and First Avenue. He told people "Happy New Year" as he ran past them and repeated to himself to "stay fit, keep sharp, make good decisions." Louis stopped at a bus stop and a bus pulled up. He was relieved. The doors opened to reveal that Slimer was the driver. He wore a bus driver's cap. Louis was surprised. Slimer gestured him to come in. Louis agreed to his offer, but was not so sure he had his driving license.

Back at the Manhattan Museum of Art, Janosz Poha and Dana Barrett wore New Year's Eve party hats. Janosz noted it was four minutes until midnight. Dana worried about Oscar. A pinkish red ray shined from Vigo onto Oscar. Vigo's face started to overlay onto Oscar. Janosz was amazed. They heard a creak and looked up to see the Statue of Liberty above the skylight dome. Janosz shouted at it to go away. Dana grabbed Oscar off the altar. Vigo groaned and vanished.

Trivia[]

Ghostbusters II Trivia[]

  • In the September 29, 1988 draft:
    • On page 106, the Statue goes up Broadway and turns on Fifth Avenue. After stepping on a car, Peter says the Statue of Liberty is new in town. Jason Locke paints symbols on Mikey that are identical to ones seen in the Vigo painting. Jason uses paint from the canvas.
      • In the movie, the lines and scene are omitted. The symbols are on the altar Oscar is kept on top of.
    • On page 107, sunlight shines through the museum skylight and moves up the Vigo painting. Jason holds up Mikey and he glows.
      • In the movie, it is New Year's Eve night and Oscar is on an altar.
  • In the November 27, 1988 draft:
    • On page 122, Ray muses there aren't Reeboks in the Statue's size.
    • On page 123, the Statue goes up Broadway and turns on Fifth Avenue. After stepping on a car, Peter says the Statue is new in town. Vigo starts to emerge from the canvas and states, "Soon my life begins."
  • In the February 27, 1989 draft:
    • On page 122, Ray's line is now changed to Nikes.
  • Jackie Wilson's "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher" continues to play in this chapter.
  • The interior of the statue was filmed on a sound stage at Burbank Studios in Los Angeles.
  • The last shot done during filming in New York was of the Statue of Liberty marching through Fifth Avenue scene. With two cameras, at 2 am, the Industrial Light & Magic crew filmed around 460 extras yelling and singing at vacant air. The Statue of Liberty would be later added.[1][2]
  • The earliest shots done were in a larger-than-life-full-size-replica of the crown constructed on a sound stage at Burbank Studios. If the crown were built to scale, the actors faces would be obscured and there would be little room to move around with the Proton Packs on. The replica was 30% larger than the original and the glass was left out of the windows since they got in Ivan Reitman's way.[3][4][5][6]
  • The crown was placed on a gimbal mechanism in order to simulate movement of the Statue. The gimbal used dated back to the 1940s and broke down during the first day of shooting. A second was brought in from CBS but it too was old. New cylinders were flown in overnight and the gimbal was restored to working order. During shooting, Ivan Reitman had the actors tilt down even further than usual in order to capture real fear on camera. Bill Murray recalled it was "quite a ride - nausea, sea legs, the whole thing."[7][8]
  • It was very difficult rotowork combining live action plates from New York because it included crowds of people and their props.[9]
  • The Fifth Avenue scenes were done with matte painting out of practicality. It was virtually impossible to shoot at night and get good exposure above street level. Mark Sullivan and Caroleen Green worked on the matte painting. Green had to rework the left side because Ivan Reitman wanted to see the city go on for miles to create a sense of openness and grandeur. The exploding torch was done on a separate stage then matted into shots with Jim Fye in costume. A real-sized foot and standard eight-inch car was used for the scene when the Statue steps on a police car. Charlie Bailey placed a small tube filled with margarita salt into the car. When the foot stepped on the car, the salt would shoot out the window and simulate broken glass. In New York, crews shot a plate with real police car and one without the car but still with people standing behind where the car was. At ILM, the real car was rotoscoped out and inserted into the other plate. The Statue's sandal crushing the car was filmed in against bluescreen. The sandal was matted into the plate and the model was dissolved in for the real car.[10][11][12][13][14][15]
  • When the Statue of Liberty comes off of West 54th Street onto Fifth Avenue, she steps out from between the The Canada Building at 680 Fifth Avenue then her massive foot steps on the street in front of Trump Tower at 725 Fifth Avenue then steps on a police car in front of Fred's at 703 Fifth Avenue.[16]
    • The car is crushed at 703 Fifth Avenue but that would have been before she walks past the Trump Tower.
  • Egon mentions the Nike brand.
  • The crew shot three takes of the scene of the Statue of Liberty stepping on the police car.[17]
  • The intersection of East 77th and First Avenue, where the end of the carriage chase in Chapter 1: Start was filmed, is two blocks from this intersection where Louis' bus stop scene was filmed.[18]
  • In the August 5, 1988 draft, on page 100, Jason Locke reveals he plans to rule a new empire after the current society falls apart. And when his body dies, he plans to house his spirit in his son's body.
  • In the November 27, 1988 Draft:
    • On page 116, Oscar hovers in mid-air in front of the Vigo painting while it weeps onto Janosz's brush which he then uses to paint mystical symbols on Oscar.
    • On page 117, Dana tries to take Oscar but an unseen force pushes her back into her chair.
    • On page 120, Janosz references Gainsborough's Blue Boy after Dana objects to Janosz saying Vigo will rule the world.
      • In the movie, Janosz's Gainsborough's Blue Boy line is moved to the end of the movie when the Ghostbusters arrive to save the world. Times Square is filled with people.
    • On page 121, after Janosz suggests marriage, Dana tells him she'd rather not think about it.
      • In the movie, Dana replies she can learn to love him.
  • The restoration room was filmed in Burbank Studios.

IDW Comics Trivia[]

Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Trivia[]

  • In Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, in the Firehouse basement, on the floor is a box of Happy New Year party hats like the ones worn by Janosz and Dana at the end of Ghostbusters II, first seen in Chapter 24: A Harbor Chick.
    • After Patch 1.3.0., the hats were removed temporarily due to a bug.

See Also[]

References[]

  1. Bernard, Jami (July 1989). "Prime Slime with Ghostbusters" Fangoria #84, page 28. Fangoria Publishing, Atlanta, USA. Line reads: "Lady Liberty is stalking up Fifth Avenue, and boy, is she big. As big as, say, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. "Bigger than Stay-Puft!" hisses a publicist protectively. It's a frigid night near Manhattan's Grand Army Plaza, and the same folks who brought you the megahit ectoplasmic comedy Ghostbusters are filming the piece de resistance FX scene of their sequel. Hundreds of bemittened extras search the skyline expectantly for Lady Liberty to appear looming over Trump Tower, ready to save the Free World from the River of Slime biding its time in the maze of New York's sewer system. Of course, you can't really see Lady Liberty. Two cameras from Industrial Light & Magic film an empty Fifth avenue at 2:00 a.m. while the extras sing their lungs out to the vacant air. Later, when they finish rotoscoping, animation, matte work and other trickery, it will look as if these 460 extras really saw something that night."
  2. Bernard, Jami (July 1989). "Prime Slime with Ghostbusters" Fangoria #84, page 28. Fangoria Publishing, Atlanta, USA. Michael Gross says: "This story picks up after the last story," offers Gross at the Lady Liberty location, the last one before moving the tight 67-day shoot to Los Angeles for interiors."
  3. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 34. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "The earliest shots completed involved a larger-than-full-scale replica of the crown constructed on stage at the Burbank Studios."
  4. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 34. Cinefex, USA. Bo Welch says: "When you are up inside the real crown in New York, it's shocking how small it is. If we had kept ours to the exact same scale, you would only be able to see a little of the guys' faces and they would not have had enough room to stand up and move around with their backpacks on. So we made ours a good thirty percent larger than the real one so that we could accommodate the four Ghostbusters and see their faces and shoulders through the windows. We also left the glass out of the windows. That was Ivan's choice simply because the glass got in his way."
  5. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 34, 37. Cinefex, USA. Bo Welch says: "We altered the scale, but everything else is extremely accurate--the colors, the finish, the hair and the underside of the structure. The other license we took was with the base of the statue. The stair that goes up to the head is really a double-helix--it goes up and right underneath it is the stair coming down. We just did a single spiral stair. Basically it's the impression that was important. It felt like the Statue of Liberty."
  6. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 37 footnote. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "A larger-than-full-size replica of the Statue of Liberty crown was constructed for closeups of the actors inside. Mounted on a gimbal mechanism in front of giant photo transparencies, the set piece was able to rock back and forth and from side to side in passable simulation of movement down the street."
  7. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 37. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "The full-scale crown was built on top of a gimbal so that it could be rocked back and forth to simulate the movement of the statue walking. Unfortunately for production, the gimbal broke down during the first day of shooting on the head set. "In the past," Gaspar explained, "gimbals were used a lot in Hollywood. But there are not many left today, and the ones that still exist are old and have not been well maintained. The first one we used for the statue's head was the Burbank Studios gimbal that was probably built around 1940. It has been sitting on the backlot for years. One of the movements that Ivan wanted was a realy heavy jolt when she looks down at the ground, and the rocking put too much of a load on the old casters. We tried to remedy the problem, but then something started to break in another section of the gimbal and I realized that we needed to get another one. I hated to do that because I knew how much it would cost us, but the old gimbal just was not safe. So we got another one from CBC and remounted the head on that. It too was old and some of the swivel joints had cracks in them, so we had new cylinders flown in overnight and repaired it. From then on, we had no problems--the gimbal was better than it had ever been." Riding inside the crown proved to be a unique experience for the actors."
  8. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 37. Cinefex, USA. Bill Murray says: "Actually, it was a little scary. The rig would do strange things and would pitch and turn in ways that even the effects guys did not expect. At one point, Ivan told them to tilt it down even further than usual because he wanted us to be really surprised. Well, that was real fear you see on the screen. It went down so far we thought it had broken again. It was quite a ride--nausea, sea legs, the whole thing."
  9. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 41-42. Cinefex, USA. Tom Bertino says: "Anything that involved the Statue of Liberty with a crowd meant very difficult rotoscope work. I remember when the plate crew came back from New York. One by one as they met me in the hall, the first thing they would say to me was: 'Hi, Tom. Just remember it wasn't my fault.' I didn't quite know what they meant by that until I saw the dailies in the screening room, and I thought 'Oh, my God!' There were scenes where the statue had to be put behind a crowd and there were all these little waving hands--and everybody was dressed for winter so they had tassles and scarfs and little mittens hanging off their hands. Since this was set to occur on New Year's Eve, there were also balloons and flying confetti. One guy was even waving a crutch in the air. They were all so small in the frame that it looked like the ultimate rotoscope nightmare. But some of our star people just did an incredible job. Barbara Brennan did the first scene where the statue is seen walking in Manhattan--where her foot comes out from behind a building. The foot had to be places behind a small crowd that was in the foreground, and the rotoscoping on that was as close to seamless as anything I've ever seen. There were nearly two hundred frames that had to be rotoscoped just in that one shot, and everything had to match from frame to frame."
  10. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 42. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "Several shots did not involve background plates. For one closeup of the statue turning the corner of Fifth Avenue, Jim Fye was filmed in costume walking among model buildings."
  11. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 42. Cinefex, USA. Mark Sullivan says: "The main reason Fifth Avenue was done as a painting was because it is virtually impossible to shoot in New York at night and get a good exposure above street level. There is just no way to light up all the buildings. Caroleen Green did all the matte painting, and she not only had to work with the buildings that were there in reality, but she also had to rework the left side to open up the view. Ivan did not want the city to appear claustrophobic. He wanted to see it go for miles so the shot would have an openness and grandeur about it."
  12. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 42. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "The view of the torch exploding to life--and then subsequent where it is seen burning--involved shooting pyrotechnic elements on a separate stage and then matting those into either shots of a double-sized torch or shots with Fye in his costume."
  13. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 42. Cinefex, USA. Bill George says: "We wanted to build a big foot and a big car thinking, of course, that the larger the scale the more successful the crush would be. But Dennis was concerned about a big foot looking mechanical, so he wanted us to use a real-sized foot and build the car to match the scale. We figured out what scale would be, and it turned out to be the size of a standard eight-inch long model car. We located a car kit that matched reference photos we had of the real police car in the plate. Then we made a mold of it and cast a bunch of them out of wax that were hollow inside and without windows. Charlie Bailey--who built the cars--put a small tube inside each one and filled it with margarita salt. Then , when the foot came down and crushed the car, he blew through the tube and margarita salt would shoot out the window areas and simulate broken glass."
  14. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 42. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "The key to the shot was the manner in which the wax car was inserting into the plate. In New York, the crews shot a plate of the real police car on the street. Then they shot the exact same setup without the police car, but with people standing behind where the car had been. At ILM, the real car was rotoscoped out of its plate and inserting into the other so that it looked as though it was now in front of people. The next step was to film the Statue of Liberty sandal against bluescreen as it stepped down and crushed the wax model . Next the foot was matted into the plate. As the foot came down, the real car fell under its shadow. At that instant, the wax car was slowly dissolved in over the real car so that by the time the foot made contact, it appeared to be crushing the real car though it was actually the wax one. Then the foot lifted back up and continued on its way, leaving the crushed wax car in the plate with people reacting behind it. To help add to the realism of the shot, the wax model was built with a light bar on top and an additional flashing element was laid over the completed scene."
  15. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 42. Cinefex, USA. Michael Gross says: "The whole effect was life sleight of hand. The foot did not step on the real car, but it looks like that to your eye in the final shot. Originally they had people running across the front of the scene to help hide the switch of the cars, but Ivan said, 'I can't have guys running in front of it.' We laughed about it. It was like they were trying to pull a magician's trick--a little misdirection to conceal the switch. But if we had shot a real car being crushed, we would never have had people walking in front of the action, so Ivan said the people had to go. Of course, the ILM guys changed it and it worked wonderfully. It was really just one example of the entire Liberty sequence. We never had any doubts that ILM's statue would look like the real thing and be perfect. And in the end, our confidence was justified. The Statue of Liberty sequence is the one I am most proud of. One shot that I doubt anyone will know is an effects shot is the one where they guys are first seen inside the statue. You see them inside and then the camera pulls away until you see the whole head and shoulders. It looks so real you would think it was a helicopter shot pulling away from the real statue, but it was a bluescreen shot of the boys and the model--an amazing composite."
  16. Spook Central Filming Locations Fifth Avenue
  17. ebay Tim Lawrence "Ghostbusters 2 (1989) Orig. Prod. Artifact: “Crushed Police Car” - Liberty Scene" retrieved 9/16/16 Tim Lawrence says: "This is the miniature wax car from 'Take 2' of the shot where Liberty's foot crushes a police car with her foot (in closeup). We shot 3 takes. I don't remember which 'Take' wound up in the movie, but it could have been this one."
  18. Spook Central, "Dana's apartment"

Gallery[]

Primary Canon Images[]

Secondary Canon Images[]

Tertiary Canon Images[]

Behind the Scenes Images[]

Storyboards of Final Version[]

Storyboards of Previous Drafts[]

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Chapter 23: The Statue of Liberty Chapter 25: Breaking and Entering
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