There are lots of reasons for you to read this excellent interview iwth Harold Ramis, but here’s the big hook: He talks about the probably-never-to-be-filmed idea for Ghostbusters 3:

Ramis Yes. “Ghostbusters go to Hell” was Danny Aykroyd’s concept for it.

What was your favorite scene from that script that we’ll likely never see?

Well, we never really got down to an actual scenario. We had a story. Part of the fun of “Ghostbusters” was developing some kind of lamebrained scientific explanation for what was going on, and I take credit for this:

What Danny had originally conceived was sending us to a special-effects Hell — a netherworld full of phenomenal visual environments and boiling pits and all that stuff.

Interviewer: He does tend to think big when he’s writing these, doesn’t he?

Ramis: Oh, he’s amazing. [laughs] But my thought was that what works so well about the first two is the mundane-ness of it all. So my notion was that Hell exists simultaneously, and in the same place as our consensus reality. But it’s like a film shutter — it’s the darkness between the 24 frames. When we’re blinking on, they’re off — so we blink alternately with this other reality, which is Hell.

So all the Ghostbusters would need to do [to go to Hell] is take themselves “out of phase” one beat. And we create a device to do it, and it’s in a warehouse in Brooklyn. And when we step out of the chamber, it looks just like New York — but it’s Hell. Everything’s gridlocked — no cars are moving, no vehicles are moving, and all the drivers are swearing at each other in different foreign languages. No two people speak the same language. It’s all the worst things about modern urban life, just magnified.

And Heaven was across the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey — which was irony. The Ghostbusters had to make this journey from lower Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge.

Ramis goes on to name the actors who would have been the next-gen Ghostbusters. Don’t miss it.

The Wershovenist Pig explains why, despite what the New York Times is telling you, investing in Big Water is a losing proposition.

Not to be lost in the shuffle of judicial nominations and indictments is Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon’s take on the earlier controversy over remarks by Air Force football coach Fisher DeBerry, who expressed a need for more black players since he considers them to be faster than his white players. Critics summarily called for his head but Wilbon believes “DeBerry has nothing to apologize for.” He goes on:

Since Jason Sehorn retired from the NFL a season or so ago, how many white starting cornerbacks are there in the NFL? The answer, as far as I can find, is zero. And even if I missed one or two, fact is that a position based largely on speed is 99 percent black in the NFL. That’s not the same as making a presumption about the intelligence or character of cornerbacks, black or white. It’s fact, jack. DeBerry didn’t offer any cultural or empirical evidence about cornerbacks; he just said he would like faster ones, and as the NFL demonstrates, the fastest ones are black. That isn’t even debatable.

I’ve heard some black dissent, but mostly I hear objection being raised by white administrators and media colleagues, a sort of misplaced white liberal guilt, if you ask me….

Wilbon also addresses Hank Aaron’s “very disturbing” feelings about the Houston Astros not having any black players on the team:

That’s because we, black American men, have turned away from baseball. Overwhelmingly, we’ve cast our lot with basketball and football, and that’s it. Only 9 percent of the players on Major League rosters on Opening Day were black and American…. But nobody’s keeping black folks from playing baseball now, except mostly ourselves. The peer pressure is to give up everything in life for basketball. The percentage of blacks in the minor leagues, reportedly, is smaller than the percentage in the big leagues. But this isn’t 1944…. But what should never be suggested, not by Aaron or anybody else, is that baseball resort to some quota to have more black major leaguers…. How would it go down if somebody suggested two or three spots on every NBA team be reserved for a white player?

Many thanks to the commenter who gives us this link to the real story of Revenge of the Sith: The fragile, beautiful love affair between Ani and Obi.

Enjoy.

That’s not totally true, but Alexandra DuPont’s review of the Revenge of the Sith DVD is almost enough to convince you that the movie’s pretty good. A sample:

But in Sith, McDiarmid also gets to lay out a coherent philosophy to Anakin during one of their many confrontations. “Anakin, if one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects, not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi,” he says, quite sensibly (in a line that may well have been script-doctored by Tom Stoppard, if the rumors are true). “If you wish to become a complete and wise leader, you must embrace a larger view of the Force. “

You know, who wouldn’t get behind that?

Please notice that I keep bringing up the non-action bits as fine moments in the film. Given what’s come before, do please note how incredible that is. One of my favorite scenes is the one where Palps begins working his seductive magic on Anakin in an opera house. It’s like something out of The Godfather — and McDiarmid (who was suffering from some sort of laryngeal infection when they shot this scene, and used it) knows precisely how much fun to have with every melodramatic syllable.

(Nor is this the only blatant Coppola reference in the film; there’s a moment where a grim-faced Yoda is talking to Anakin in front of some closed shades, with sunlight slatting the wee Jedi Master’s face in chiaroscuro, and I half-expected Yoda to mutter “Fuckin’ Saigon.”)

I also love that Anakin is caught by both pride and a lie. He wants to learn the Dark Side of the Force to give Padme eternal life, but he’s also fooled by Palpatine into believing there’s a genuine Jedi conspiracy against the Chancellor. When Anakin bursts into the room at one crucial moment, all he sees is Mace Windu holding a lightsaber to an unarmed Palpatine’s throat — and after what follows, no one really gets a chance to dissuade him from the notion that Mace was about to assassinate the man who runs the galaxy. For all I know, when he meets Obi-Wan again on the Death Star a couple of decades later, Anakin still thinks the Jedi hatched a plot to kill his boss. The overall sense is of a set of tumblers clicking into place, locking Anakin into his destiny. It’s surprisingly tidy, and kind of merciless.

If only Sith had been a good as this review.

Like other great papers, the Philadelphia Inquirer is in troubled times. Daniel Rubin, at blinq has a heartbreaking post on the massive layoffs looming at the Inky and is asking for ideas on what the future should look like. If you have smart thoughts, send them his way.

To get started on Alito, you should go first to Patterico, who has a long post on what will be, by noon, the famous Casey dissent. This is the definitive post so far.

Judge Samuel Alito seems like a good choice for the Supreme Court. But in the bio being circulated by the White House for him, the very second line reads:

Alito received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and attended Yale Law School, where he served as an editor on the Yale Law Journal.

Why, oh why, has the White House bowed to the yalping of the elitists? Surely it doesn’t matter that Alito went to America’s third-best undergraduate college and top law school? Surely that doesn’t tell us that he’s very, very smart? Only elitist prigs would believe that, right?