William Forsche, a name you might remember from his YouTube, behind-the-scenes videos of Ghostbusters 2, has a Facebook page, where he’s been posting behind-the-scenes stills from Ghostbusters 2! Score!
- Vigo head sculpt
- Statue of Liberty mask
- Sculpting the mask
- Testing Janosh’s carriage rig
- Lifecasting Wilhelm von Homburg
- Setting up Slimer suit
- Slimer statue
- Glen Eytchison/Pageant of the Masters’ Vigo painting (as you might recall)
- Recreating the painting as a living piece
- Dennis Muren and Wilhelm von Homburg setting up living painting
Besides all these awesome shots, Forsche also confirmed what was long taken as a given – that Max von Sydow did the voice for Vigo in GB2. Sydow has an unofficial credit in the GB2 IMDB listing and his appearance in the Ghostbusters video game served only to support that credit. Now Forsche has added to the story;
William Forsche
And poor Wilhelm von Homburg, it seems noone told him his voice was
replaced with Max von Sydow’s. He found out first hand at the screening
and soon after stormed out of the theater.
: (
In fact, the comments, where Glen Eytchison, William Forsche, and other GB2 effects guys all reply to questions about the photos, are filled with great info.
On Slimer;
Jason Barnett [Not Involved With Filming]
No offense to anyone, but design-sufferage. Any reason for not using the original molds/design?William Forsche
No offense taken Jason, we all new this at the time but it was a studio corporate design committee forcing everyone to have it look more like the cartoon.
But the best is when Forsche admits that a 1/4 scale Vigo sculpt was re-purposed to make the actor, Wilhelm von Homburg, a one-of-a-kind soap-on-a-rope of his own head!
Big thanks to Ectofiend, who’s always digging up the primo stuff – one day, I will find him, eat his heart and thus gain his power… and collection of GB materials. And he knows I mean that in the nicest way possible. 
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So Max von Sydow voiced Vigo in both Ghostbusters II and in the video game? Were the interview answers that the video game would be using a soundalike for Vigo (because Wilhelm von Homburg died) misinformed or just toeing the party line?
You didn’t know that Steven?
Terminal Reality confirmed it awhile ago. There was a great read about how they got Max to voice Vigo in the game.
I still wasn’t entirely sure because it just didn’t really sound like him in the movie to me, but now that I know its true, you can definately tell its him in the line “the season of evil begins with the birth of the new year” at around 1h 12m 40s into the film.
I should note though that I was going back to his first speech in the film to see if it was, never looking at the scene I mentioned in my previous comment. I would have totally believed it earlier if I had gone to that scene in the first place.
Here we go. Apparently it was a former executive on the game that confirmed it. Didn’t PC link to this? I don’t remember. This interview is from way back in June.
http://bitURL.net/?6rk8dz
great pics!
That’s awesome. The story about Wilhelm not knowing his voice was going to be replaced and finding out at the screening sounds just like the story about David Prowse who didn’t know James Earl Jones was doing the voice for Darth Vader (Prowse was the guy in the suit)
You can bash Sony for making the film cartoony all day long but the truth is, if it weren’t for GB2, kids might not have latched on so hard and we’d not be talking about GB3 today, nor have the superb videogame.
It wasn’t Sony making Ghostbusters 2. Sony didn’t buy columbia until after GB2 had been made and released in 1989. We’ve yet to see how terribly Sony can tamper with a Ghostbusters film. Judging from how bad they’ve done other franchises Spider-man, Resident Evil. This could be a very very terrible thing. In a way ghostbusters was always Cartoony, although in all actuality was there such a vast difference in Slimers appearance where kids actually noticed? No. Studio tampering is probably why there’s a mixed reception on GB2. Now GB3 should just be called “Sony’s Ghostbusters 3″. Tell you the truth I wish they’d go back to making VCRs.
John,
Ghostbusters didn’t start out as a kids franchise… There’s a lot of adult humor and Ghostbusters was originally intended for the teen/adult audience, definitely not kids. When it became popular, they made a cartoon out of it, and kids latched on to that. They could’ve easily made a Ghostbusters 2 that wasn’t as influenced by kids and had it be successful and we’d still be talking about Ghostbusters 3 today.
The Batman franchise doesn’t depend on children (sure they have kids as an audience too, but The Dark Knight was certainly not marketed mainly towards kids). Indiana Jones isn’t mainly made for children. I mean there’s plenty of examples that you can make where sequels to movies can be made without pandering to children, just because it has become popular with children even though that’s not who it was originally intended to be for.
Superstarseven,
Thanks for the link. I may have had this interview in mind:
“Vigo will be making a cameo appearance. Unfortunately that actor had passed away so we’ll have a sound-alike.” — Creative Director Drew Haworth
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/839/839501p2.html
I’m not going to pretend that I knew the truth about Max von Sydow, because I didn’t. However, it was fairly obvious to me, even at a young age, that the “Vigo” actor wasn’t actually the one saying the lines.
What’s this talk of GB2 making the series popular with kids? RGB established the series as being popular with kids years before GB2.
Man, that really doesn’t sound like Father Merrin (The Exorcist). I’ve seen a couple other movies with Von Sydow, and it seems like he had the same voice as Merrin, but I could be wrong…of course, he was a lot younger in The Seventh Seal than he was when he voiced Vigo…and he hadn’t aged as much by 1973 as the character he was playing in The Exorcist…and i can’t remember what else he was in that I’ve seen…but that really doesn’t sound like him…maybe they did some voice effects or something…hmm…