Altered Ghostbusters Historical Photos
That Grease Coke-to-Pepsi alteration was unknown to me, and is frankly terrifying.
Yeah, that was new to me, too. I just found out about the it the other day when I was writing this article. I always knew about the blurring – which has been present since the 1978 theatrical release – but did not know about the “better” alteration.
There are two stories going around about the blurring. One says that they went to Coke for permission and was denied due to the lewd content of the film. The other says that Pepsi was a sponsor of the film and was none-too-happy about the Coke signage. Either way, it was too costly to go back and re-film the scenes, so they resorted to blurring. The technology to do that in 1978 provided rather clumsy results.
Some say that the product placement contract with Pepsi has since expired, so if Paramount went back to the original unblurred negative, they could now use it as is. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I do think that if they went back to Coke now for permission, they would probably grant it since “Grease” has become a bit of a cultural institution.
Of course, Coke would probably want some money in return, and Paramount doesn’t want to pay. They probably didn’t have to pay Pepsi anything since they were an original sponsor, so changing them to Pepsi posters seemed like the cheaper option. As much as I hate alteration, I have to admit, changing the posters seems like a better option than noticeable blurring. I hope it looks seamless in motion. (I don’t own the movie.)
The whole thing about all of this that makes me think is: Why did they film the movie with all of this Coke signage to begin with? It’s not like it’s one small little sign. There’s a HUGE poster on the wall, a smaller one (I think), the logo on the side of a soda machine, and one more logo on a menu board. That’s a LOT of Coke signage to simply “not notice” during filming!
— Paul
I think the full text on the fridge or water cooler or whatever it is, in the deleted Louis/proton pack scene, says “things go better with Coke”. I haven’t found an exact match of that sign yet, but there are many variations to be found on eBay. Some had all the words capitalized, some only capitalized Coke.
