Dr. Egon Spengler
"For my character," says Harold Ramis in an 1985 interview. "we went for a human computer -- someone who has no emotional life whatsoever, who only deals in facts an information -- a 'new wave' Mr. Spock. For actors, especially in group comedy, (distinctive) archetypes always seem to work."
The shooting script describes Egon as: "Spengler is a real egghead, who single-handedly got Venkman through graduate school. Spengler is incredibly intelligent but amazingly dense at the same time."
Egon is the little mentioned and little
known about Ghostbuster. If Ray is the "heart", then
Egon is the backbone of the Ghostbusters. Without his scientific
knowledge, the Ghostbusters would have never came into being. We
get very few opportunities to see into his persona, the biggest
being his love of candy bars. Most of the scenes involving his
"secondary" love interest, Janine, ended up on the
cutting room floor.
"Most
of the Janine and Spengler scenes were shot but, ultimately,
their romance was not really close enough to the crux of the film
for us to spend a lot of time on it." Harold Ramis said in Making
Ghostbusters. "I think the audience got a slight hint
that there was something going on between them and that was
enough."