The 1984 Ghostbusters returns to a big screen in Brookville on Tuesday, October 20, and this time the music in the room is real. Ghostbusters in Concert puts the full film on a large HD cinema screen at Tilles Center's Concert Hall while an orchestra performs Elmer Bernstein's score live, synced to the picture scene for scene.
The event starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Concert Hall at 720 Northern Boulevard, on the LIU Post campus, and tickets are on sale now through Ticketmaster.
The Ecto-1 parks outside at 4:30
The evening is built out well beyond the screening. From 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., a replica of the Ghostbusters Ecto-1 sits on the South Plaza for photos, courtesy of AutoMat Custom and Restoration. From 5 to 6 p.m., the Goldsmith Atrium hosts a Halloween costume contest with prizes, judged by the evening's performers, while the Tilles Cabaret Company performs. A full bar, light snacks and non-alcoholic drinks are available for purchase before the show.
A film score, played the hard way
Bernstein's Ghostbusters score was written for an orchestra, and this production performs it that way: musicians playing the cues live underneath the dialogue and effects, matched to the film's timing. It is the same format that has brought scored screenings of other classic films to concert halls, applied to the movie that gave pop culture the proton pack, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and a firehouse full of ghost traps.
The film itself needs no introduction for most of the audience it will draw: the 1984 comedy follows three parapsychologists who go into business catching ghosts in New York City, and it turned its theme song, its logo and its ambulance-turned-ghostmobile into fixtures that four decades have not dislodged. Seeing it with the score played in the room adds the one thing the movie never had in theaters, which is the sound of the orchestra doing the work in real time.
The screening lands the week before Halloween, which is the point: it is a night at the movies a family can dress up for, eleven days before the costumes get their official outing.
If you go
Ghostbusters in Concert is Tuesday, October 20 at Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, 720 Northern Boulevard in Brookville. Pre-show activities begin at 4:30 p.m., the costume contest runs 5 to 6 p.m., and the concert starts at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are through Ticketmaster, linked from the Tilles Center event page.

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