This is the stuff of near-Sirkian melodrama, sans German sarcasm emotionally universal but completely connected to the culture of the time – Pop Filmmaking 101. The existence of Sam of Molly is one that only subsists inside of motion pictures, and helps to heighten the starry-eyed make-believe Ghost indulges. They’re an NYC dwelling duo comprised of a moralistic man (with seemingly unlimited access to money), who is able to help build a home for his sculptor partner, complete with a studio in which they can have sloppy clay sex (OK – so maybe the clay sex wasn’t in anybody’s dreams).
Yet for all of the trappings of its time period, these choices seem deliberate, not only from a pop standpoint (as Zucker is very much working in a commercial mode), but also in how they help to establish the fantasy world of Ghost. Sam and Molly were very much the unattainable ideal for many people alive and going to the movies in 1990. Perhaps the biggest casualty to this “yuppie chic” motif is Tony Goldwyn, whose scheming bad guy is basically one Brooks Brothers suit away from existing as a cousin to Patrick Bateman, right down to the murderous impulses. The impossibly massive loft Sam and Molly were set on spending their lives in is a marvel of gaudy pillars and perfectly arranged furniture, each piece looking hand-picked from the trendiest outlets. Moore is draped in overalls and fashioned with a Caesar haircut that is still anomalous twenty-five years on. Ornamenting these seemingly impenetrable palaces are the fashions and décor that would come to dominate Hollywood output during the 1990s. It’s in these bastions of manufactured taste that Sam and Molly attempt to wall themselves off from the city’s danger. Where Spike Lee was perfectly capturing the volatile, racially diverse Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn just a year before with his masterpiece, Do the Right Thing, Zucker’s picture is incredibly Caucasian, existing in high-ceilinged strongholds.
Though the basic themes of Ghost are indisputably timeless, Jerry Zucker’s first directorial effort away from his ZAZ partners belongs to the decade it helped kick off. It was a staged attack set up by Carl (Tony Goldwyn), a man he thought to be his best friend, but who actually had Sam murdered after the banker stumbled onto suspicious accounts, into which Carl was embezzling money. All the while, he’s forced to watch Molly grieve his passing as he investigates his own murder, discovering that the robbery wasn’t random at all. Sam now finds himself to be the titular phantom, wandering around New York as he learns the ropes of the spirit world. One night – after seeing a production of a similar fictional “charmed life” in Macbeth – Willie Lopez (Rick Aviles) mugs the couple, shooting and killing Sam after demanding his wallet. Sam Wheat* (Patrick Swayze) is a Master of the Universe-type banker who recently moved into a new, gargantuan Manhattan apartment with his sculptor girlfriend, Molly (Demi Moore). For example: if you had to pick one outfit from your closet to spend the rest of eternity in, you surely wouldn’t throw on just any old long-sleeve polo. However, even on an aesthetic level, it asks the audience to consider choices they make in their everyday lives.
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Ghost takes the idea of the horror movie and morphs it into something peculiarly saccharine a chronicling of one prematurely deceased’s inability to say goodbye to the woman he loves. Were you able to pick and choose your hauntings, who or what would they be? Yet outside of these primordial, intrinsic miseries, it’s a spectral story about the things we never want to leave undone once we shuffle off of this mortal coil. The film addresses a fear/fascination all are faced with – namely, the act of dying and moving into the beyond. It’s not hard to understand why Ghost became such a massive box office success ($505 million worldwide on a budget of $22 mil).