Raising the question, “Is there anything he won’t bust?!” Adam Savage of MythBusters fame has released a YouTube video detailing a near movie-perfect Ghostbusters costume he painstakingly assembled himself. Hosted in Savage’s own workshop brimming with horror and sci-fi film props and replicas (severed-head-spider creature from The Thing, for instance, tossed onto a high shelf like your dad might do with an old coffee can full of loose nuts and bolts), the video is the latest from the Tested YouTube channel he runs with a team that includes MythBusters co-host Jamie Hyneman.
Savage presumably sets off an international cacophony of rage-filled nerd howls on calling the proton gun an “uh…Slimer…gun?” Yet surely even the most aggrieved nerd will be won back by the time the video ends, upon seeing just how much dedication he has shown to assembling his outfit. Among the elements of the costume, Savage says, are cosplay-type materials ordered online, pieces gathered from a junkyard, and lightly modified versions of eBay-ordered, limited-edition Mattel toys based closely on props from the original movie. While his ghost trap does not make an appearance, he says he does in fact have one buried under some of his genre geek detritus and casually drops the fact that he put it together while working for ILM in 2000.
Despite the countless hours and a seemingly not-insignificant amount of money spent on gathering materials for the costume and putting it together, Savage says his brand of ghost busting is a particularly populist form of geek culture roleplaying. Compared to the high barrier to entry for something like a Boba Fett costume, he says, it is not too hard to get halfway there with Ghostbusters with a tan jumpsuit; he also points out that the blueprints and parts lists for a costume like his are widely available online. Let that be a lesson, Paul Feig: No need to hire some union fat cats to do the costuming on Ghostbusters 3. EBay and pokin’ around a dirty old junkyard should do just fine.