How many other chances am I going to get to use the phrase “and
Interesting profile here of Harold Ramis, who of course is the writer and/or star and/or director of such films as Groundhog Day, Ghost Busters, Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, Back to School, and Meatballs. Which is a pretty good track record even if you allow for the fact that he also co-wrote and directed Club Paradise (which actually does have one or two good lines, and a nice performance by Twiggy).
Here’s a little preview to whet your appetite.
“At the age of seven, Ramis began working in the family store on weekends, and he and his older brother used their bar-mitzvah money to buy their parents new wall-to-wall carpeting. Though he listed his life ambition in his high-school yearbook as “neurosurgeon,” as an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis he shunned organic chemistry and began writing parodic plays. “In my heart, I felt I was a combination of Groucho and Harpo,” Ramis says, “of Groucho using his wit as a weapon against the upper classes, and of Harpo’s antic charm and the fact that he was oddly sexy–he grabs women, pulls their skirts off, and gets away with it.”
“He chuckled. After a moment, he said, “Sometimes what people perceive as my smile is a grimace of pain. At this point, it’s a mask, like the Joker in ‘Batman.’ My face is a frozen mask.”
“Ramis wants to believe that his films have affected social attitudes. “People hear a character like Bill’s in ‘Stripes,’ and they’re emboldened to think, I can say these things, I can use them as modes of operating in the world. Of course,” he acknowledges, “our movies haven’t ended war or defeated the Republican Party or inspired huge strides in social justice. By allowing people to laugh at injustice or hypocrisy, satirical comedy enables them to feel like they’ve done something: I’m cool, I get what’s wrong with that. That self-satisfaction works against activism, so satirical comedy might actually be counterproductive.”
