Scoleri Brothers
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The Scoleri Brothers are two fictional electrical ghosts who appear in the film Ghostbusters II. Their names are Tony Scoleri (the thin one) and Nunzio Scoleri (the overweight one), and they were played by an uncredited Tim Lawrence and Jim Fyfe in latex suits with animatronic masks.
The Scoleri Brothers are two murderers who were convicted and sentencted to death in the electric chair by Judge Stephen Wexler. Who they killed and why is never revealed, but their Italian name suggests they were possibly involved with the mafia. In the film, the Ghostbusters are on trial for violating a judicial restraining order barring them from acting as paranormal investigators and eliminators. Judge Wexler is the presiding judge over the trial, and he is ready to send them straight to jail. However a long line of angry outbursts and insults thrown towards the Ghostbusters by Judge Wexler results in both Tony and Nunzio manifesting in the middle of the courtroom at the moment of their sentencing, bursting forth from the beaker of "mood slime" on the evidence table.
The ghostly brothers throw the courtroom into total chaos as they come after the judge, intent on getting revenge against him for sending them to death row. A panicked Wexler rescinds the restraining order, allowing the Ghostbusters to grab their proton packs from the evidence table and deal with the Scoleri Brothers. Venkman grabs Nunzio using his particle thrower, and Stantz manages to capture Tony. Both ghosts are then sucked into the handy ghost trap thrown out by Spengler, saving the judge and everyone else in the courthouse and re-establishing the Ghostbusters as heroes to the public.
It's interesting to note that unlike most of the other ghosts who were once living people, the Scoleri Brothers are monstrous and deformed-looking, with exaggerated body structures and facial features (Nunzio is "impossibly fat," Tony is "impossibly thin"). The idea behind their deliberately cartoonish appearance is twofold: one, was that it was meant to suggest their "internal evilness" rather than represent what they had looked like in life, and two, the filmmakers wanted some "creature-type" ghosts earlier in the film.
[edit] Development
Ostensibly, Tony and Nunzio are based off of the real-life Scoleri Brothers who once robbed Harold Ramis' father Nate Ramis' store. "The ghosts themselves were very loosely based on the fact that my father was a storekeeper who was once robbed and assaulted by the Scoleri Brothers." Some however have suggested that they might be based instead on Tony and Eddie Scoleri, who were convicted of robbing and killing a store owner in Philadelphia in the 60s. None of this is known for certain however.
What is known, though, is that Tim Lawrence, the special effects supervisor who also played Nunzio in the film, designed the overall look of the two brothers on the Blues Brothers: "In the first draft of the script that I saw, the description of the characters was quite vague--as is often the case with fantasy characters that have not yet been fully designed. I believe the script read something like, 'Big in life, even bigger in death, the Scoleri brothers sweep into the courtroom.' Knowing that Dan Aykroyd had written this bit, one of the first images that came to me was the Blues Brothers--and it was this idea of a tall thin guy and a short fat guy that colored my thinking as I developed the characters."
[edit] Trivia
Some Ghostbusters II coloring and activity books that were released into bookstores after the movie was released featured the Scoleri brothers on many pages.
[edit] Sources
| Ghostbusters | |
|---|---|
| Movies: | Ghostbusters | Ghostbusters II | Ghostbusters III |
| Television: | The Real Ghostbusters | Extreme Ghostbusters |
| Video Games: | Ghostbusters (Activision) | Ghostbusters II | Ghostbusters (Sega) | Ghostbusters (Xbox 360) |
| Technology: | Proton pack | Ectomobile | Ghostbusters equipment |
| Characters: | Peter Venkman | Egon Spengler | Ray Stantz | Winston Zeddemore | Janine Melnitz | Ivo Shandor |
| Ghosts: | Slimer | Stay Puft Marshmallow Man | Vigo the Carpathian | Scoleri Brothers | Samhain | Bogeyman |
| Misc: | Ghostbusters: Legion | Ghostbusters: The Return | Ghostbusters (role-playing game) | Filmation's Ghostbusters |
