The Ghostbusters recently made a visit to the New York Public Library, but not to save it from ghosts.
Improv Everywhere is a group of many in the New York City area that plays silly pranks on a grand scale such as pretending time has frozen and overwhelming Best Buy with people wearing blue polo shirts. They were recently approached by the New York Public Library to perform a prank that it could use to raise awareness of a massive budget cut.
1984 film Ghostbusters opened with a scene in the NYPL, so what better way to remind everyone of the library’s coolness than with a stunt related to the film? Improv Everywhere sent multiple sheet-wearing ghosts into the crowded library and had them look up words in the dictionary and visit The Escapist on their laptops. Egon, Ray, Peter, and Winston enter shortly after, proton packs in tow, to vanquish the surprisingly slime-less apparitions. The prank itself isn’t Improv Everywhere’s best, but it was meant to serve a purpose rather than make a crazy scene.
The idea here is to have the video circulate in a viral-ish manner. The NYPL is facing a $37 million dollar budget cut, the harshest in its history, and needs a little help to save itself. Kids will have nowhere to go after school, hundreds will lose their jobs, and ghosts will roam free within the newly emptied halls of closed libraries. So, while this might not be as funny as freezing time in Grand Central Station, it is a really clever way to make people more aware of the NYPL’s budget crisis.
To help the New York Public Library visit http://dontclosethebook.nypl.org. The Escapist promotes reading books, though honestly we’d prefer you look at our site all day instead.
Source: Improv Everywhere
Published: May 19, 2010 02:37 am