Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze in Ghost | Image: Paramount Pictures
Ghost, a Paramount Pictures release in July of 1990, starred the late Patrick Swayze as Sam, a banker married to Demi Moore as Molly, his loving wife with whom he moves into a New York apartment. After Sam is murdered, Molly is tortured by what she thinks is Sam's ghost inhabiting their home. Whoopi Goldberg plays campy, claiming to be psychic Oda Mae Brown. The film was a box office success, grossing over $500 million and made on a budget of $22 million.
In the article linked below, mental_floss features fourteen bits of trivia of which fans of the film may not be aware. Two of them follow; read all fourteen facts here.
14. PATRICK SWAYZE’S SPECTER INFLUENCED HIP-HOP MUSIC.
Because Patrick Swayze’s surname rhymes with “crazy,” there was an influx of rappers rhyming the two words together. Marley Marl’s “The Symphony Part II” features the line, “Reach for the pistol and you’re crazy / Try to blast and I’ll be spinnin’ that ass like Patrick Swayze.” Eventually the word “Swayze” became associated with his Ghost character and became slang for “gone” or “leaving”. On 2Pac’s “Runnin’ (Dying to Live)”, Notorious B.I.G. raps: “That’s why I bust back, it don’t faze me / When he drop, take his glock, and I’m Swayze,” and in 2005’s SNL Digital Short “Lazy Sunday,” Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell sing, “Throw the snacks into the bag and I’m a ghost like Swayze.”
4. DIRECTOR JERRY ZUCKER SAID HE’D CAST PATRICK SWAYZE “OVER MY DEAD BODY.”
In a video that appears on the Ghost DVD, screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin—who won an Oscar for his script—talks about how Zucker was at first against casting Swayze as Sam. 'Jerry wanted to see him on film, so went out and saw the movie Roadhouse, and we walked out of that movie and Jerry said to me, "Over my dead body,” recalls Rubin. Swayze really wanted the role, and because Zucker appreciated Swayze’s gusto, he let Swayze audition. After Swayze read the end of the script aloud, Zucker changed his mind. “We all had tears in our eyes, right there in the office—and we knew how it ends,' Zucker told People in 1990. 'I saw a side of Patrick that I never knew existed.'"