We had a small 35th anniversary screening of Ghost at Kingston last Saturday and I had a talk with Bruce Joel Rubin, who wrote the screenplay and won an Oscar for it.

The movie was the biggest box office hit in 1990 even though it was an original screenplay and a story that was both melodramatic, funny, scary, and spiritual at the same time. “Just like life,” as Bruce would say. It’d be hard to imagine a movie like that would be noticed today or even made when every movie has to be a remake of a new installment of an existing franchise. Bruce also wrote Jacob’s Ladder, which was filmed at the exact same time in New York as Ghost and came out the same year, too. They are in a way the same story, just different manifestations of it.

—Evgenia

PS: There was a problem with recording the audio at the event so I’m using my iPhone recording here instead. It starts about a minute into the talk.

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