Ghostbusters in Concert

Ghostbusters Director & Producer Ivan Reitman (1946-2022) – has been the creative force behind films beloved by audiences around the world – from raucous comedies like Animal House, and Stripes, to more sophisticated delights like Dave, Six Days Seven Nights, and Twins.

2019 was a busy year for Reitman when he worked closely as a producer with director and son Jason Reitman on the next chapter of the Ghostbusters franchise, Ghostbusters: Afterlife in addition to A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster-Hunting for Netflix.

The career that has brought so much laughter to us began in Canada, where Reitman’s family emigrated from Czechoslovakia when he was four-years-old. Reitman studied music at McMaster University, but soon turned his talents to film and theater, when he joined forces with the National Lampoon and brought us the groundbreaking sensation, Animal House. Following the success of that film, Reitman returned home to Canada to direct Meatballs, still considered one of the most successful films made in Canada.

His string of hits continued with Stripes and the Ghostbusters series, which teamed Bill Murray with Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis; Dave, starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver; Legal Eagles, starring Robert Redford and Debra Winger; Six Days Seven Nights, with Harrison Ford and Anne Heche; Evolution, starring David Duchovny and Julianne Moore; and a series of films that revealed an untapped comic persona for action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger: Twins, Junior, (both co-starring Danny DeVito) and Kindergarten Cop.

In 1984, Reitman was honored as Director of the Year by the National Association of Theater Owners and the next year received a Special Achievement Award at the Canadian Genie Awards. In 1979, and again in 1989, for the films Animal House and Twins, Reitman was honored with the People’s Choice Award. In November of 1994, Reitman became the third director honored by Variety magazine in a special “Billion Dollar Director” issue. At the end of 2000, Reitman’s films Animal House and Ghostbusters were honored as two of this past century’s funniest movies by the American Film Institute. Reitman led The Montecito Picture Company, a film and television production company, with partner Tom Pollock. He was married to former Quebec film actress Genevieve Robert for more than 40 years. Together, they had three children and lived in Santa Barbara, California.

In the history of film music, Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004) is among the iconic and the legendary. With a career that spanned an unparalleled 5 decades, he composed more than 150 original movie scores and nearly 80 for television, creating some of the most recognizable and memorable themes in Hollywood history and in doing so redefining how movies were scored. His score for The Man With the Golden Arm brought intense, aggressive jazz to the big screen; the rousing Western anthem of The Magnificent Seven set the standard for western scores for years to come; the lyrical and quietly moving music of To Kill a Mockingbird is simply timeless; and the jaunty, thumb-nosing march of The Great Escape is still heard 50 years later. In the ’70s and ’80s his comedy scores for National Lampoon’s Animal House and Ghostbusters changed the way comedy films have been scored ever since. Working for everyone from Cecil B. DeMille (The Ten Commandments) to Martin Scorsese (The Age of Innocence), his career connects Old Hollywood to the new. He is also the only person to be nominated for an Academy Award in every decade from the 1950s to the 2000s.