Why Walter Peck was wrong?

[TGLS]

I don't think you need any sort of big conspiracy or consciously laid out political agenda. It's entirely possible (and, given the film, quite likely) that at least some of the filmmakers had a negative view of the EPA, and Walter Peck is a reflection of that.

Isn't it simply much more likely, that the "obnoxious and mad-with-power beaurocrat" is a well established and often used trope and archetype? Oh hey, it is! So sometimes the cigar really is just a cigar...

I dunno. I think there's a fair case it could equally be an artifact from a draft where the EPA actually had a better reason to get involved (maybe a big explosion of slime or something). Or maybe it was about nukes and they decided to downplay that. You might say nuclear material is the pervue of someone else, but this was pre-world wide web when research was less trivial.

[Enterprising]

The film needed a human "bad guy" for the middle of the film, Peck was it and Atherton played him brilliantly. Having another ghost baddie for the middle of the film would have devalued the climax at the end.

It's nothing more or less than that, and I'm frankly astonished the depths people are going to here making stuff up in their minds that was never shown, told, or even hinted at in the movie itself.

[TrueMetis]

I mean as far as cover stories for a pro-Christian Reagenite a Jewish Canadian of Czechoslovak descent who directed films like "Meatballs", "Twins", and "Dave" is a damn good one. In fact I'm shocked and impressed that anyone saw through it.

Seriously, Ghostbusters gets some WEIRD ****ing interpretations. Movie Bob insists this movie is an anti-religion film about using science to slay the Old Testament God.

https://youtu.be/BPoILjs6BYI

That one I think has a reasonable basis. He's not wrong when he says often times in supernatural movies winning means at least following supernatural rules. So for Ghostbusters to be like "nope fuck you we're gonna use basically a ray gun" is an interesting twist.

[Thebestoftherest]

I mean as far as cover stories for a pro-Christian Reagenite a Jewish Canadian of Czechoslovak descent who directed films like "Meatballs", "Twins", and "Dave" is a damn good one. In fact I'm shocked and impressed that anyone saw through it.

Seriously, Ghostbusters gets some WEIRD ****ing interpretations. Movie Bob insists this movie is an anti-religion film about using science to slay the Old Testament God.

https://youtu.be/BPoILjs6BYI

That one I think has a reasonable basis. He's not wrong when he says often times in supernatural movies winning means at least following supernatural rules. So for Ghostbusters to be like "nope fuck you we're gonna use basically a ray gun" is an interesting twist.

I like the guy but there are moments where his politics get in the way of the point.

[CharlesPhipps]

The problem with Movie Bob's interpretation is that Egon is an occultist mad scientist.

He'd scoff saying science vs. magic because magic is scientific to him.

Just like real life quacks.

[CrypticMirror]

I'm frankly astonished the depths people are going to here making stuff up in their minds that was never shown, told, or even hinted at in the movie itself.

Welcome to the internet, you must be new here.

[Thebestoftherest]

The problem with Movie Bob's interpretation is that Egon is an occultist mad scientist.

He'd scoff saying science vs. magic because magic is scientific to him.

Just like real life quacks.

His worst video has to be the one about the predator, one the whole dependant on people believing that animals and people are equals which is a bad argument which can't convince anyone who disagree with you, and seems to say the predator is a jerk for using such more advanced weapons and an idiot for trying to fight fair in hand to hand.

[Thebestoftherest]

I do wonder how much of the Walter Peck is right dogma comes from anti science rhetoric?

[MafiaKirby]

I don't think you need any sort of big conspiracy or consciously laid out political agenda. It's entirely possible (and, given the film, quite likely) that at least some of the filmmakers had a negative view of the EPA, and Walter Peck is a reflection of that.

Maybe, but if so Ramis was never particularly VOCAL about his anti-government views. He did, however, have a tendency to write stories with a 'slobs vs snobs' style, which pitted closed-minded, straightlaced people against laid-back relaxed fun-lovers who annoyed the authorities.

In a movie about college (that was a party fraternity against school administrators. In a movie about a country club, it's an old-money judge against a nouveau-riche goofball and his reliant-on-scholarships caddy. And in a movie about a start-up business, there's two natural options - It's gonna be either a government regulator, or a more established corporation. Only, well, Aykroyd's idea (Ghosthunting = Pest Control) doesn't work as well with an established rival ghostbusting corporation, because then you need to pull the world even farther from ours. So the natural second choice is to have the 'snob' be a government agent.

It's POSSIBLE that Ramis had a negative view of the EPA. I don't know. But the information we have from his filmography gives us plenty of reason to believe that he could well have made an EPA regulator a villain even if he DIDN'T have a negative view of the EPA. It's possible, if he did have a negative view of the EPA, that the reason was that he believed that there should be no federal environmental agency (it's also possible, after all, to believe that there should be an EPA but that the one we have is badly run, or that there should be an environmental protection plan but that the way the EPA is set up isn't particularly helpful.) The thing is, we don't have enough information based on his work to really tell. I'm not going to argue that we can't use text to determine an author's views, but we should tread carefully when things aren't exactly cut and dry. I think it's fair to say it's possible, but I don't think it's really fair to base any judgement of the people on it.

But again, all that is a secondary consideration. As I've repeatedly argued, even if Walter Peck was what the scriptwriter thought the EPA was like, that would in no way make him RIGHT.

So, to summarize my arguments here.

1) It's possible that the filmmakers didn't like the EPA, but we can't know.
2) It's possible that if the filmmakers didn't like the EPA, it was because they were laissez-faire conservatives, but we can't know.
3) The filmmaker's opinions on the EPA do not effect whether or not Walter Peck was right.

[CharlesPhipps]

I'd argue he probably chose the EPA because it's a nonpolitical choice in the 80s.