![]() SD: I was born into the Hollywood culture. Stephen Dane in his studio holding his mother’s Oscar® for ‘Joan of Arc’ So, we took the time and sat down with him again, cameras off, and allowed him to talk and fill in the blanks about an amazing 6 weeks of work in 1983.īTM: How did you get your start in the Hollywood design industry? We thought we had covered a lot during our BTM: The Web-Series interview with him at Sony, but we realized very quickly that we’d only scratched the surface of what he could tell us about his involvement in working on Ghostbusters. Discussion of one film leads to another and you quickly realize that the man has more stories than you can possibly document in one sitting. Talking to Stephen about his career is like opening Pandora’s Box. Stephen was thrilled at the opportunity to revisit the car he designed 30 years ago and his colorful personality and excitement could not be contained. To make a long story short, Beyond the Marquee called in a favor to our good friend, futurist Syd Mead, and within less than a day we had found Stephen Dane and invited him to join us at Sony. While in preparation for our shoot at Sony, the question of, “who really designed this car and where are they now?” came up. The end result was a stunning transformation back to the car that everyone remembers from the 1984 film and it was a lot of fun for our crew to receive unlimited access to it. In 2009, Sony shelled out over $50,000 to completely refurbish the car after years of neglect had left it almost unrecognizable. With the 30th Anniversary of Ghostbusters this summer, Beyond the Marquee was provided a great opportunity to head down to the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, CA to take a good look at the original Ecto-1 car. Recently, some of Stephen’s designs were shown to a handful of top designers in the film industry and the general consensus from all of them was essentially, “you just don’t see talented hand-drawn work like that nowadays.” In this day and age of computer-generated artistry, hand-drawn blueprints and sketches, especially in the field of movie production design, tend to be a rarity. Taking a look at Stephen’s original sketches for Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II is like getting a glimpse at a long lost talent. Working one-on-one with the director of Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman, Stephen helped design some of the most popular and memorable movie props of all time…and he and a crew of prop builders only had six weeks in which to accomplish the task! That credit tends to hide the fact that he was the man responsible for designing one of the most recognizable movie cars in cinematic history, the Ghostbusters Ecto-1 Ectomobile. It was in 1984, however, that Stephen Dane was given the obscure screen credit of ‘Hardware Consultant’ along with a misspelling of his first name. The original Ecto 1 on the Sony Studios lot today If you’ve ever taken a ride back in time on Universal Studios’ Back to the Future: The Ride, you’ve no doubt been exposed to a lot of Stephen’s design work as he was responsible for much of the look of the ride interiors, props and the building that contained it all. He’s also had his hand in quite a few television shows including The Dukes of Hazzard, AirWolf, SeaQuest, Quincy, and BJ and the Bear (anyone remember that one?) Well-known films such as The Electric Horseman, More American Graffiti, Red Dawn, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, and Home Alone 2 also bear Stephen Dane’s creative mark.Īside from the film and television work he’s done, Stephen has also been involved in the construction of many theme parks and attractions throughout the world. At the very top of that list is Ridley Scott’s highly-regarded, Blade Runner (1982), for which Stephen’s name is very well known to fans of that film. While that resume length may seem extreme to most people nowadays, in this case it’s absolutely necessary to help sum up the career of a man who has worked on some very impressive film, TV, and theme park projects throughout the years. If you were ever given a chance to look at the resume of designer Stephen Dane, you’d probably be surprised to receive 8-pages worth of information. It’s a reunion 30 years in the making as Beyond the Marquee interviews the designer of the original Ectomobile, Stephen Dane! ![]() However, it’s the 30th Anniversary of Ghostbusters this summer that has shined the Slimelight back onto the original Ecto-1.īeyond the Marquee was recently given an opportunity to check out the Ecto-1 at Sony Pictures Studios and we brought along a special guest who hadn’t seen the car in a long time. It’s one of the most recognizable and beloved cars in cinematic history and this year, it turns 55 years old. ![]()
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