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The Scoleri Brothers[1] (also known as Nunzio Scoleri and Tony Scoleri), were convicted murderers sentenced to death by electrocution by Judge Stephen "The Hammer" Wexler.

History[]

Primary Canon History[]

At some point, Judge Wexler tried the Scoleri Brothers for murder and sentenced them to death by electrocution.[2]

In late 1989, Judge Wexler's tirade, while sentencing Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler, negatively charged the Psychomagnotheric Slime among the court exhibits. As a result, the Scoleri Brothers manifested from the slime as apparitions strapped into ghostly electric chairs. Wexler immediately recognized them and they responded by crashing into the judge's bench. The Scoleri Brothers then went on a rampage in the courtroom as Wexler, Peter, Ray, Egon, and Louis Tully ran behind the glass partition to the judge's door.

As Nunzio carried off The Prosecutor into the courtroom's hall, the Ghostbusters and Louis Tully convinced Wexler to dismiss the case and rescind their judicial restraining orders, forbidding them from using their equipment, in exchange for defeating the ghosts. The Scoleri Brothers entered unseen and the chairs in the gallery were knocked aside as they approached the Ghostbusters. After they finally reappeared, the Ghostbusters fired wildly at them and missed. The Scoleri Brothers flew away through the wall behind the judge's bench. Peter yelled. Peter, then Ray, then Egon all laughed. Louis started to calm down but freaked out when the Scoleri Brothers came back. Peter fired at Nunzio in the gallery. He walked past the bar and snagged him. Peter goaded him and declared he was going to take him home to his private zoo. Ray exclaimed, "You got him!" and asked Egon to bring over the Trap.

Egon got the Trap off the exhibit table. Tony Scoleri came through a wall cackling. Egon warned Ray and ducked as he fired. The glass partition shattered and the shards rained down on Judge Wexler's back. Ray soon wrangled Tony Scoleri. Peter backed out of the gallery with Nunzio. Egon instructed Ray to hold Tony and then told Peter to start bringing Nunzio back. Peter continued teasing Nunzio's figure. Ray and Peter returned to the center of the courtroom. Egon told Ray to hold Tony and to keep pulling to the right. Egon placed the Trap on the floor and signaled Ray and Peter. He pushed the Trap across the floor. Ray encouraged Egon to hit the pedal. Egon waited then stomped the pedal. They all turned away. The Scoleri Brothers were pulled into the Trap. Their eyeballs were the last to be seen as the Trap closed. As Louis hoisted the loaded trap, the Ghostbusters announced to the court reporters outside that they were back in business. The Prosecutor was given aid by a paramedic from an unspecified leg injury caused by Nunzio.

Secondary Canon History[]

The Scoleri Brothers' mother, Mama Scoleri, was the brains behind a criminal organization based out of Albany.[3] Nunzio and Tony Scoleri were charged with murder and sentenced to death by electric chair on the order of Judge Stephen Wexler, newly appointed to the bench. When Mama found out they were given the death sentence, Mama killed herself out of grief.[4]

In late 1989, Wexler presided over a public nuisance charge levied on the Ghostbusters for illegally using public utility access. Winston concluded Judge Wexler already decided the Ghostbusters were guilty, so he stepped outside the courtroom. He noticed two police officers with some of the Psychomagnotheric Slime confiscated from the First Avenue incident. Winston tried to warn them it was dangerous but they got irritated and snapped at Winston. They thought he should be brought up charges, too. Before they could finish calling him a scam artist, the ectoplasm collected enough negative emotions and Mama Scoleri manifested. The officers thought it was a publicity stunt to draw sympathy for the Ghostbusters and believed Mama was someone in a costume. They drew their guns and told her to freeze. Mama was amused and shoved them with low-level telekinesis. Winston returned to the stripped down Ecto-1 outside and found one Trap. He decided to pull a "Venkman" and mocked Mama. She flew towards Winston and got trapped. Meanwhile, in the courtroom, Wexler became extremely agitated by the plaintiffs and his negativity reacted with the samples of Psychomagnotheric Slime among the evidence. As a result, the Scoleri Brothers manifested, attached to the electric chairs they were executed in. They took full elemental control of electricity and attempted to take revenge on Wexler.[5] After the charges were dropped and they were allowed to legally use their equipment again, the Ghostbusters quickly captured the Scoleri Brothers. Afterward, Ray told Winston about busting the Scoleri Brothers. Winston figured out he trapped Mama Scoleri.

A couple of weeks into the Tiamat incident, the Scoleri Brothers appeared on Hart Island amid the Hart Island Ghosts raised by Vigo. Peter recognized the duo but recalled they were trapped. Ray confirmed this but had no idea how they got out the Containment Unit. He briefly speculated on a containment breach as the reason for their escape. Regardless of whether they were copies or temporarily removed, the Scoleri Brothers continued to be confined in the Containment Unit after the incident.[6][7] Winston was asked about his role in the first bust by Erik and Luis, who were writing a new book about the Ghostbusters. Winston told them the story to squash some conflicting stories and theories. Erik and Luis were stunned that's all that happened. Winston told them not every case was flashy.

Description[]

Tony Scoleri[]

Tony Scoleri is the skinny one of the Scoleri Brothers. The front cover of the 1999 DVD front cover suggests his skin color may be an ugly brownish-yellow. He was confined by Ray and with Nunzio, was trapped by Egon.

Nunzio Scoleri[]

Nunzio Scoleri is the heavy set one of the Scoleri Brothers. The front cover of the 1999 DVD front cover suggests his skin color may be a dark purplish-blue. He carried out the prosecutor shortly after breaking free of his chair. He was confined by Peter and with Tony, was trapped by Egon.

Classification[]

Primary Canon Classification[]

The Scoleri Brothers are not classified during the events of the movie but the February 27, 1989 version of the movie script first lists them as Full Torso Apparitions upon their manifestation in the court room.[8]

Secondary Canon Classification[]

Insight Editions[]

The Scoleri Brothers are anchored Class IV Noncorporeal Elemental Spirits.[9]

Tertiary Canon Classification[]

Egon's Journal[]

On page 10, the Scoleri Brothers are Class IV Noncorporeal Elemental Spirits.

Behind the Scenes[]

In a first draft script, the Scoleri Brothers were simply described as 'Big in life, even bigger in death, the Scoleri Brothers sweep into the courtroom.'[10][11] Tim Lawrence was inspired by the Blues Brothers and designed the Scoleris based on them. Visual Development Artist Henry Mayo helped refine the designs with extensive input from producer Michael C. Gross. Lawrence's original concept played more into the electricity motif. As they took steps, the floor would explode and their feet would become less distinct in the air without an electrical ground. The Scoleris were also to have spoken in Italian epithets.[12] The Scoleri Brothers were the first ghost designs to be green-lit for the movie.[13] Ivan Reitman became concerned the designs might have been over the top but Gross believed it would lighten the moment. Storyboard artist Thom Enriquez was tasked with boarding the scene while Reitman was finishing his work on another movie "Twins" and the courtroom set was still being built.[14][15][16]

Camilla Henneman was tasked with creating a fat suit for Nunzio Scoleri, who was scripted to weigh in excess of 800 pounds. Henneman took cues from Weird Al Yankovic's "Fat" video parody. Spandex pouches filled with gelatinous materials were used to simulate the undulating quality of Nunzio's flesh. The suits were then outfitted with singed prison garments. As the suits were being made, the concept of the Scoleris had changed to that they were all flying. Flying harnesses were incorporated into the suits.[17] Nunzio's gaping mouth was created by dividing the head into two separate units. The lower jaw was attached to Lawrence's shoulders and the upper on the skullcap. Both units would be joined by a single foam latex skin so that each part could move in opposite directions.[18]

Tony Scoleri went through three stages of development. The first stage involved using a full-sized puppet with an articulated head. Tim Lawrence thought of a skeleton costume Mark Bryan Wilson made for Halloween a few years ago and asked if he could come up to ILM and build a similar puppet what would move based on a puppeteer's movements. Wilson built a prototype puppet of Tony Scoleri in a week from Monday to Friday with one of the regulars at the ILM creature shop, Bob Cooper. Dennis Muren was impressed but told Wilson there was no more work to do and to go home and they would be in touch. Dennis Muren believed the rotoscope load required would hamper the production schedule. After a week passed, Wilson called up Lawrence to check on the situation. Lawrence informed him they were going in a different direction with people in suits.[19][20] Auditions were held. Lawrence was leaning towards hiring Allan Trautman but Ned Gorman pointed out to Lawrence that Jim Fye was already on contract to portray the Statue of Liberty. Tony was redesigned to be portrayed by Jim Fye. Tony's head was attached to a skullcap positioned in front of and on top of Fye's head. The collarbone was lowered to elongate the neck and add to the emaciated torso design. Oversized shoes, extra lengths of cloth strips, droopy pants, and finger extensions were added to complete the skeletal look.[21][22]

Puppeteers controlled the Scoleris' heads with servo mechanisms and pneumatic cylinders while a computerized Synthetic Neuro-Animation Repeating Kinetics (SNARK) system helped control facial expressions in order to achiever full lip-sync on the characters.[23][24][25]

Lawrence brought in Bob Cooper to make Tony's torso, Mike Smithson to make the heads, Bill Foertsch to make Nunzio's arms, and Buzz Neidig to work on additional details such as teeth and tongues.[26] Fye and Lawrence wore the completed full body suits for hours at a time while hanging in front of a bluescreen. The Nunzio suit wore close to 80 pounds. When the Scoleri Brothers first manifest, they are seated in electrical chairs. For filming, Fye and Lawrence had to pretend to be sitting in midair. Others in the crew stayed underneath and pushed their feet up so their legs bent properly. Despite the scene of them bursting from the chairs being difficult in theory, it was filmed rather quickly. One brother was filmed in the morning and the other in the afternoon. About 5-6 shots of each were achieved each day of shooting. By the time they finished filming, the Scoleri Brothers concept had changed to much that third-scale marionettes on wires could have been used.[27][28]

Peter Daulton, an effects cameraman, created the movements of the Scoleri Brothers through the composite frame on a track camera. He incorporated mirror trickery, employed overall to make the ghosts of Ghostbusters II look different from the first movie. With mylar, they could squish and squash the shapes like how a funhouse mirror would distort an image. The images of the Scoleris were rephotographed on a rear projection screen then reflected onto mylar that was manipulated with motion controlled rods. This allowed for the Scoleris to move around curves, stretch at certain points, and bulge in the final version.[29][30]

The ILM animation department also expanded on the Trap and its interaction with ghosts. Instead of just having the ghosts disappear into the Trap, the team animated the ghosts coming apart and added comets and lightning to the inside of the trap cone field. Mike Lessa devised a staggered effect where Nunzio was sucked into the Trap head first and his shoes would be left behind for a few seconds. Dennis Muren suggest Tony Scoleri's eyes to be left behind for an instant.[31]

See Also[]

Trivia[]

  • In the Ghostbusters II August 5, 1988 draft, the Scoleri Brothers erupted from the judge's bench.[32]
  • In the Ghostbusters II August 5, 1988 draft--and in many offshoots, such as in trading cards, the novelization, and so on--the Scoleri Brothers had the power to shoot lightning from their fingers.[33]
  • At one point, it was considered that the static electricity generated by the Scoleri Brothers would cause everyone's hair to stand on end throughout the rest of the sequence.[34]
  • In the September 29, 1988 draft:
    • On page 39, the Judge tells them he had the Scoleri Brothers electrocuted at Ossining in 1948.[35] Peter speculates they want to appeal. The ghosts pound the bench then blast it with finger lightning.
      • Harris Yulin was 52 years old at the time of filming. If one assumes an age of 60 in 1989, this means that Judge Wexler would have been 21 years old in 1948 at the trial of the Scoleri Brothers, far too young to preside over a death penalty case.
  • In the November 27, 1988 and February 27, 1989 drafts:
    • On page 46, the Scoleri Brothers blast the defense table with finger lightning then punch through the jury box in search of the Judge. He rescinds the restraining order and dismisses the case. The Ghostbusters jump over the rail and dash across to the exhibit table.
    • On page 47, they put on their Proton Packs while the ghosts tear up chairs in search of the Judge. Ray tells everyone to switch to full neutronas. Peter asks the ghosts to pick on someone their own size.
  • The Scoleri Brothers are played (uncredited) by Tim Lawrence and Jim Fye in latex suits with animatronic masks. Ostensibly, Tony and Nunzio are very loosely based on the real-life Scoleri Brothers, who once robbed Harold Ramis's father Nate Ramis' store and assaulted him:
    • "The ghosts themselves were very loosely based on the fact that my father [Nate] was a storekeeper who was once robbed and assaulted by the Scoleri Brothers."[36]
  • Some however have suggested that they might be based instead on Tony and Eddie Scoleri, who were convicted of robbing and killing a store owner in Philadelphia in the 1960s. None of this is known for certain however.
  • A size reference sheet depicts Tony as 11 feet 3 inches and Nunzio as 9 feet 4 inches in height.[37]
  • The stuntwoman who was in place of the Prosecutor when she is carried off by Nunzio Scoleri wore a pair of flying pants and vest with a cable running up her leg to the ceiling track above. Reitman wanted one leg dangling, something very easy if she weren't upside down. As the stuntwoman went along the track, her head barely missed the chairs still standing in the room.[38]
  • They appeared as bosses in the New Ghostbusters II Video Game and the Ghostbusters II Game Boy game. They were also rumored to appear in Ghostbusters: The Video Game, but didn't.
  • In NOW Comics The Real Ghostbusters starring in Ghostbusters II part 1 they are depicted as green skinned with yellow eyes with red irises.
  • On the Convention Cover of Ghostbusters: Get Real Issue #1, the Scoleri Brothers makes a cameo under the creative team's names.
  • The Scoleri Brothers appear on the IDW Convention Variant cover of 35th Anniversary: Ghostbusters.

Appearances[]

Primary Canon Appearances[]


Expanded Universe

  • Ghostbusters II
    • Deleted Scenes
      • Wow (not yet inserted into scene)

Secondary Canon Appearances[]


References[]

  1. Stephen Wexler (1999). Ghostbusters II, Chapter 11: The Scoleri Brothers (1989) (DVD ts. 32:50-32:51). Columbia Pictures. Stephen Wexler says: "Scoleri Brothers!"
  2. Stephen Wexler (1999). Ghostbusters II, Chapter 11: The Scoleri Brothers (1989) (DVD ts. 32:53-32:56). Columbia Pictures. Stephen Wexler says: "I tried them for murder! Gave them the chair!"
  3. Winston Zeddemore (2017). IDW Comics- "Ghostbusters Annual 2017" (2017) (Comic p.11). Winston Zeddemore says: "Turns out Mama Scoleri was the brains behind a criminal organization in Albany."
  4. Winston Zeddemore (2017). IDW Comics- "Ghostbusters Annual 2017" (2017) (Comic p.11). Winston Zeddemore says: "Killed herself out of grief when she heard her baby boys got the chair -- it was in all the papers."
  5. Narrator (2016). Insight Editions- "Tobin's Spirit Guide" (2016) (Book p.19). Paragraph reads: "The Scoleris appeared to be attached to the electric chairs they were executed in and were able to take full elemental control of electricity, which they used to attempt to revenge themselves upon the judge."
  6. Ghostheads United Facebook Erik Burnham Reply 6/12/18Erik Burnham says: "Tiamat has a lot of power and arranged that. It wasn't important that it be made explicit whether these were copies she created, or just temporary removal from where they were trapped. They're all back where they belong now. (the real reason they were out was Tom wanted to see them in the anniversary story and Dan wanted to draw them.)"
  7. Still of Ghostheads United Facebook Erik Burnham Reply 6/12/18
  8. Aykroyd, Dan & Ramis, Harold (1988). Ghostbusters II (February 27, 1989 Draft) (Script p. 43). Line reads: "Then suddenly all Hell breaks loose as TWO FULL-TORSO APPARITIONS explode out of the specimen jar."
  9. Narrator (2016). Insight Editions- "Tobin's Spirit Guide" (2016) (Book p.18). Paragraph reads: "CLASS IV. NONCORPOREAL ELEMENTAL SPIRITS. ANCHORED TO THE FOLEY SQUARE COURTHOUSE."
  10. Aykroyd, Dan & Ramis, Harold (1988). Ghostbusters II (August 5, 1988 Draft) (Script p. 37). Line reads: "Big in life, even bigger in death, the ghostly Scoleri brothers seem ten feet tall."
  11. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 14. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "In the first draft of the script that I saw, the description of the characters was quite vague--as is often the case with fantasy characters that have not yet been fully designed. I believe the script read something like, 'Big in life, even bigger in death, the Scoleri brothers sweep into the courtroom.' Knowing that Dan Aykroyd had written this bit, one of the first images that came to me was the Blues Brothers--and it was this idea of a tall thin guy and a short fat guy that colored my thinking as I developed the characters."
  12. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 14. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "Knowing that Dan Aykroyd had written this bit, one of the first images that came to me was the Blues Brothers--and it was this idea of a tall thin guy and a short fat guy that colored my thinking as I developed the characters. I began by generating some rough drawings in my very cartoony style, and then I involved a longtime friend and collaborator, Henry Mayo, to help me firm the concepts into something that was more realistic, yet still broad in intent. It seemed to me that the original draft of the script was 'monster shy' and the ghostly apparitions that did appear were very much of the see-through person variety. There was no marshmallow man, no terror dogs--just a variety of vaporous people.. I could not imagine a Ghostbusters movie without any creature-type ghosts, so I very consciously began pushing the concepts for the Scoleris into a broad caricature direction. I took my cues from the script and extrapolated my own interpretation along lines that I felt would represent the brothers' internal evilness rather than merely suggest what they looked like in life--hence the very exaggerated ghosts that appear in the movie. Both Ivan and Michael were enthusiastic about this approach, and so I hoped to generate further characters of this type of work progressed."
  13. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 14. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "Ultimately, the Scoleri brothers would be the first ghost designs in the show to be green-lighted."
  14. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 13. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "To bring the Scoleris to life, Reitman and Gross turned to storyboard artist Thom Enriquez--another Ghostbusters veteran--to first lay out the basic action in the scene."
  15. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 13. Cinefex, USA. Thom Enriquez says: "On the first film I boarded the capture scene in the banquet room, and that was the toughest scene I had to do. I had the same problem with this--how do you make the action interesting in a room that has four walls and a ceiling? Also, Ivan was really busy finishing Twins, so he was not around a lot when I was boarding the scene. It became even more difficult when I was told that, because of time, the courtroom set was being built at the same time I was boarding the action and they needed the boards to match what the expense account could afford for special effects. For instance, there were only a certain number of chairs that could be thrown about in the scene because the rest were rented and they did not want to touch those. So I had to board the scene keeping in mind that I could use only fourteen chairs. I could also only blow up four pillars and break one wall of glass ."
  16. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 11 and 13. Cinefex, USA. Michael Gross says: "The Scoleri brothers we deliberately made slightly cartoonish in their design and actions. At one point Ivan got a little worried about this and asked me, 'Do you think we've gone over the top!' I said: 'We need it in the picture at this point. Given how scary some of the other sequences are, it would be good to go over the top with these characters.' I thought it would lighten the moment. It was the first time we saw full-scale ghosts in the film, and I thought we really needed them to be as wild as they were."
  17. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 14. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "As designed, Nunzio appeared to weigh in excess of eight hundred pounds. To achieve this bulk--as well as other specialty costume requirements for the film--Camilla Henneman was engaged to develop a fat-suit that Tim Lawrence himself would wear during the effects shoot. Using techniques akin to those she had employed to put similar poundage on Weird Al Yankovic for his 'Fat' video parody, Henneman constructed an assemblage of spandex pouches filled with a variety of gelatinous materials to simulate the undulating quality of fleshy masses. The finished suit was then sheathed in an appropriately singed prison garment. While the suit construction was in progress, the concept for the overall sequence continued to evolve as the brothers went from walking through the courtroom to walking and sometimes flying to finally being totally airborne. By the time their all-flying status was settled upon, the costumes were too far along to abandon altogether and so flying harnesses were incorporated into the configuration."
  18. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "For the Nunzio character, I wanted a great gaping mouth. I also had an idea to divide the head into two separate units--the lower jaw to be attached to my shoulders and the upper head to rest on a skullcap, with the two joined together by a single foam latex skin. With this approach, the lower jaw could be sent mechanically in one direction while I turned my head in th opposite direction, thus creating a ghastly twisted cavern in the center of Nunzio's face. Al figured out how to do it using a series of proportionally controlled pneumatic cylinders to move the mass of the lower jaw with speed and precision."
  19. TCU Collectibles facebook "Mark Bryan Wilson (Slimer Performer/Creature Shop, Ghostbusters) Interview" 30:00-30:05 8/30/2020 Mark Bryan Wilson says: "Well, we want you to come up. We saw your Halloween costume you did a few years ago. Of course Tim saying this, "That skeleton that was all in front of your body and then all the movements that you did. It would move also." "Yeah." He said, "Well, we wanna do something like that so we wanna put the puppet in front you almost like bunraku and slave it off your movements. We actually built a puppet of the finished Scoleri Brother I'm not sure what his name is, you probably know. At first it was going to be a puppet."
  20. TCU Collectibles facebook "Mark Bryan Wilson (Slimer Performer/Creature Shop, Ghostbusters) Interview" 31:16-33:31 8/30/2020 Mark Bryan Wilson says: "I started on a Monday. I don't live in that area. That's up in Northern California. So I drove up on the weekend. On Monday, I started to work. Tim gave me the drawings but Bob Cooper joined me as a co-builder and he's a regular. He was in the creature crews at ILM so Bobby and I jumped into the foam. I had already bought some of the materials when he started I think on Tuesday or Wednesday. Sheets of foam glued, glued them together but put them around the metal figure, figure out how to connect the head to build the puppet, even got a chance on Friday to shoot some tests. Dennis Muren was there and Dennis, of course, is one of the key people over at Industrial Light and Magic and he was impressed with my work. He said, "I really like the one that's moving. Who's in there?" and I was all dressed in black. The conversations went on, he said, "No, no, wait." You know five minutes go by and he says, "I wanna know who's in that, I really like the movement." So I got a chance to meet Dennis while still dressed in a pup and they said, "Okay, that's great. We like that character, go ahead – we don't have any work for you this week so why don't you go ahead and go on home and we'll get a hold of you... and I waited and waited and waited and that's been a week. I better contact them. So I contacted Tim to find out what was going on. "Oh, well, I think we're gonna go in a slightly different direction. We've decided that since we're gonna stretch their images around that we don't have to go as thin on the wrists and stuff so they decided to go with the guy in the suit."
  21. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 14. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "Tony Scoleri underwent three successive stages of development. Where Lawrence and crew had gone for the impossibly fat Nunzio, they wanted Tony to be impossibly thin. "Our first approach was a full-sized puppet with an articulated head directly and analogously attached to a puppeteer. To develop this version, I secured the services of another longtime associate, Mark Wilson, and a prototype was quickly assembled and video tested against black. We achieved a very eerie look--a skeletal locomotion unseen outside of stop-motion, yet with more of a sense of gravity." Though Dennis Muren was impressed with the results, he determined that the rotoscope load for such an approach would seriously compromise the production schedule and so the character was redesigned to fit actor Jim Fye. "We attached the head to a skullcap that positioned it in front of and on top of Jim's own head. Then we lowered the collarbone in the emaciated torso sculpture--which elongated the neck--and styled the hair in such a way that it concealed Jim's head. We dressed him in oversized shoes so that when he was suspended he could direct the toes down or behind, adding a sharper pointed look to the legs. We tattered his prison suit and added extra lengths of cloth strips which were blown about with a fan. We also added small details like finger extensions and droopy pants. All of these measures helped put over the illusion of a much more skeletal being than was actually there." A third-scale marionette was also made in prototype form , but abandoned when the costume approach proved fully workable."
  22. The Good, The Bad, and The Sequel Stitcher "Special Effects Master Tim Lawrence" 36:30-37:20 4/17/2019 Tim Lawrence says: "My original idea was because I wanted him to be, Tony, to be impossibly tall and skinny such that it couldn't be a guy in a suit. I had hired Mark Wilson to come up and build a prototype of a Japanese style puppet built off of his body. And we shot tests with that that they liked but they said, "The amount of roto to make this work is just not going to fit our schedule" so it had to be a guy in a suit for that reason. And then I auditioned again and Allan Trautman I liked a lot for that but then Ned Gorman, associate producer for ILM -- line producer, came to me and said, "You know we've already got Jim Fye on contract..." and I went ding ding ding."
  23. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 14. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "Both character heads were actuated via servo mechanisms and pneumatic cylinders. A computerized SNARK system – akin to a motion control model mover – allowed precise and repeatable recording of specific facial articulations for subsequent playback at normal or altered speeds. By employing the system, puppeteers were able to achieve full and convincing lip-sync on the characters."
  24. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "To facilitate the lip-sync aspects of the sequence, Lawrence drew upon his prior experience in audio-animation to assemble a memory playback system for the mechanics. Though crude in many respects, the Synthetic, Neuro-Animation Repeating Kinetics module--dubbed the "SNARK" system--performed a number of functions and allowed for considerable flexibility of the characters. From parameters outlined by Lawrence, Coulter supervised the efforts of Tim Gillett in the construction of the electronics necessary to link the characters' servos and pneumatics to a computer."
  25. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "The technology for this kind of control has been around for decades. I worked with animation control systems more than ten years ago, and many of the people I count as valuable coworkers were first met in this Hollywood satellite industry. Only within the past few years, however, has the hardware and software approached an off-the-shelf availability, and we incorporated some of this available technology into an original contour with considerable custom interfacing to arrive at the system we used in Ghostbusters II. With the SNARK system, we could either perform the character totally live--as the information outputs were typical joystick conformation--or we could record the initial performance, keep the parts we liked, and then go back in and electronically edit the other functions a channel at a time until a complete and satisfying performance was in the memory. This could then be played back as stored, or speeded up and slowed down at the touch of a keystroke. There is also an override switch for each function allowing partial playback and partial live performance, as in an instance where an eyeline might be critical yet you would want to keep the animated lip-sync. It is all very similar to photographic motion control. The potential of this concept for creature work is immense."
  26. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "To sculpt the body parts not directly fabricated by Henneman and her staff, Lawrence brought in Mike Smithson to fashion the heads, Bob Cooper to provide Tony's torso and Bill Foertsch to supply Nunzio's arms. Additional details such as tongues and teeth were handled by Buzz Neidig. To provide the broad articulation required of the Scoleri brothers, mechanical animator Al Coulter and his crew employed some nontraditional technology."
  27. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "Bringing Nunzio and Tony to cinematic life meant that Lawrence and Fye had to wear the full body suits for hours at a time while hanging from wires in front of a bluescreen. Given the bulk of the suits themselves--Nunzio weighed close to eighty pounds--a great deal of acting and patience was required. "I've done a lot of these types of characters," Lawrence explained, "and I've learned that the trick to performing in suites such as these is to have in your mind a perfect mental image of what you look like in the suit. It takes a while to get that knack, especially since you cannot see yourself and often you cannot see a monitor when you're doing a shot. It's actually a lot like acting through appliances where you have to really move your face around behind them to get them to register. With a big foam suit, you have to move a lot and be exaggerated to have something come through. You also have to know how to temper your moves--otherwise it looks like just a bunch of waving around. Actually, with the Scoleri brothers that was kind of what the producers wanted--a lot of extreme motions." When the brothers first appear, they are sitting in the electric chairs that ended their lives. In reality, the chairs were miniatures that were shot separately from the ghosts. To make the two elements merge, Lawrence and Fye had to hang in midair and pretend to be sitting. "In the Nunzio suit," Lawrence admitted, "it was very hard to pretend like I was sitting in midair. Fortunately, one of the crew members was underneath and helped me push my feet up so my legs were bent properly at the knees. Then on a certain count, he would duck away and I would pretend like I was bursting out of the chair and falling forward in a dive. To get the best negative, we needed the biggest image we could get--so we had to stay in the center of the frame. Therefore, if Nunzio was sitting and he had to burst out of his chair in an upward arch and then dive back down, I had to move my arms and feet accordingly, but I could actually swing through the frame. Sometimes if it was a particularly difficult shot, we would do a black-and-white test and make a quick composite to check our moves. Despite the complications, we actually shot the sequence really fast. We filmed on one brother in the morning and one in the afternoon, and we could usually get five or six shots a day of both." Though the results were impressive, the essential concept for the Scoleri brothers sequence was ultimately altered and simplified to such an extent that the characters could have been achieved much more simply in other ways."
  28. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "By the time much of the work had been done, the concept had changed to the point that the brothers were now always in flight, never really spoke, were very transparent and also heavily augmented with roto effects. The facial animation--while excellent--was now all but superfluous. The characters could easily have been done with third-scale marionettes on wires. You just never know how the stuff is going to be used until it is. With the script changing daily, all you can do is adapt and hope you are prepared for anything."
  29. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17-18. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "The movements of the Scoleri brothers through the composite frame were created later on a track camera by effects cameraman Peter Daulton. At the same time he was adding moves to the ghost elements, Daulton was also incorporating an additional effect using mirror trickery."
  30. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 18. Cinefex, USA. Dennis Muren says: "In our efforts to make the ghosts look really different in Ghostbusters II, we decided we wanted to try and alter their shapes in unusual ways. Using mylar--or mirrorplex material--we could squish and squash the shapes like something in a funhouse mirror. To do this, we used very thin mirrorplex that was about a thirty-second -of-an-inch thick and very flexible. If you poke this material on the back with your finger, you get a bump, the image is distorted. By controlling how you move and shape the mirrorplex, you can get different types of distortion. And if you put two pieces next to each other and push one and pull the other and line it up to a reflected image, you can make things twist."
  31. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 20. Cinefex, USA. Tom Bertino says: "Instead of just having ghosts get sucked into the traps and disappear, we wanted the audience to get the feeling that everything that happened to the ghosts happened for a specific reason. So when these hunks of unearthly ectoplasm get sucked into the traps in this film, we created animation of them coming apart. We also added comets and lightning inside the trap cone field that appear to have a direct effect on the ghosts. For the scene when Tony and Nunzio finally get sucked into the trap, Mike Lessa devised a great staggered effect where Nunzio went in head first, leaving his shoes behind for just a second before they too dropped in. Then at Dennis' suggestion, we had Tony leave his leave his eyeballs behind for just an instant so that the last thing we saw were these two glowing orbs. We wanted to suggest that the ghost trap was literally pulling these guys apart."
  32. Aykroyd, Dan & Ramis, Harold (1988). Ghostbusters II (August 5, 1988 Draft) (Script p. 36). Paragraph reads: "Then suddenly all Hell breaks loose as TWO FULL-TORSO APPARITIONS explode out of the judge's bench."
  33. Aykroyd, Dan & Ramis, Harold (1988). Ghostbusters II (August 5, 1988 Draft) (Script p. 37). Paragraph reads: "They pound the judge's bench to splinters, then turn toward the defense table and blast it with high-voltage finger-lightning."
  34. Ghost Corps Facebook 6/16/17
  35. Aykroyd, Dan & Ramis, Harold (1988). Ghostbusters II (September 29, 1988 Draft) (Script p. 39). The Judge says: "They're the Scoleri brothers. I tried them for murder. They were electrocuted up at Ossining in '48."
  36. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 11. Cinefex, USA. Harold Ramis says: "The Scoleri brothers sequence was one of those nice discoveries. At one point we committed ourselves to having the Ghostbusters fight their way back to being Ghostbusters rather than starting out with them as successes. With this in mind, we were working toward a courtroom scene, but we did not know exactly what should happen there. Meanwhile, the ghosts themselves were very loosely based on the fact that my father was a storekeeper who was once robbed and assaulted by the Scoleri brothers. The whole point of our trial was that the legal system of New York was completely skeptical of the supernatural. At some point, the idea of the courtroom and the Scoleri brothers came together. We thought, what better way to reinstate the Ghostbusters than at the moment of their sentencing to have two ghosts appear in the courtroom? It was one of those nice discoveries that brings ideas together and says what you want to say. It also connected with the notion that negative human emotions have an impact. The judge is angry--a tyrant in his own courtroom--and he pays the price."
  37. Ghost Corps Facebook 6/16/17
  38. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 14. Cinefex, USA. Chuck Gaspar says: "The stuntwoman in the scene wore a pair of flying pants and a vest, and the cable ran up from her leg to the ceiling track above. Ivan wanted her to have one leg free so it could dangle--which made things more difficult. All the weight was on her shoulders when she was upside down, so that was not a problem--but she had to try to hold her leg out and kick and flip it around. There were also all these chairs underneath, and her head was just missing the tops of the ones that we had not already blown out of the way."
  39. Ray Stantz (2014). IDW Comics- "Ghostbusters Volume 2 Issue #18" (2014) (Comic p.14). Ray says: "Oh, man. Vigo? The Scoleris?"
  40. Luis (2017). IDW Comics- "Ghostbusters Annual 2017" (2017) (Comic p.8). Luis says: "The editor wanted to ask about the Scoleri Brothers case."
  41. Winston Zeddemore (2017). IDW Comics- "Ghostbusters Annual 2017" (2017) (Comic p.8). Winston Zeddemore says: "Well, the Scoleris... I wasn't in on that."


Gallery[]

Primary Canon Images[]

Secondary Canon Images[]

Behind the Scenes Images[]

Scoleri Brothers Images[]

Nunzio Scoleri Images[]

Tony Scoleri Images[]

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