![\"haroldfilm\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/haroldfilm.jpg\")
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\nSince we started this website, I’ve always felt like I was on a mission. A mission, despite the fact that, at the end of the day, nothing anybody says about art matters at all. \u00a0Art is an individual experience\u2014even in a group, it’s an individual experience.\u00a0 I can’t convince you of anything, and you can’t convince me.\u00a0 And it should<\/i> be that way.\u00a0 But right now, fuck all that.<\/p>\n
Ghostbusters<\/a> is high art.<\/i>\u00a0 Ghostbusters should be thought of the way the Mona Lisa is\u2014as this sacred, unachievable thing forged from genius\u2014because that’s exactly what it is<\/i>, and it\u2019s been my mission to explain that concept.\u00a0 There are only about a dozen great movies, and these movies are untouchable.\u00a0 They are perfect in every way, and they represent the ultimate synthesis of story, performance, writing, color, music, and all the myriad elements that come together to make whatever is on screen at any given moment the perfect thing.<\/p>\n People don’t give a fuck about art.\u00a0 They like things all willy-nilly and just regurgitate whatever fucking nonsense someone says about why Raging Bull<\/a> is brilliant.\u00a0 Fuck all that noise.\u00a0 Movies like Ghostbusters are advanced.\u00a0<\/i> They do all of the artistic shit Raging Bull does, but for the purpose of entertainment, of making you soak into the movie.\u00a0 That is beautiful, that is advanced, that is transcendent, and that could only happen a dozen times in about a century because it’s insanely hard to do.<\/p>\n And Ghostbusters isn’t even his best movie. Harold Ramis was in the upper echelon of artists, of which there may be only about 25 or 50 ever\u2014I’m talking about everyone from athletes to musicians to painters to filmmakers.\u00a0 The guy had a hand in, or created, quite literally some of the best material ever.\u00a0 I say that without the slightest hint of irony or hesitation.\u00a0 Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day are two of the dozen or so best movies ever made.<\/p>\n Ramis started at Playboy Magazine, and was one of those early National Lampoon, Second City guys out of Chicago.\u00a0 These are the guys that transformed comedy from The Three Stooges into the alternative comedy we have today.\u00a0 In 1980, he directed Caddyshack<\/a>, the uneven classic that helped change what a comedy movie could and should be.\u00a0 Caddyshack was originally going to be about Danny Noonan\u2014and you’re saying \u2018who the fuck is that\u2019 because all you remember from Caddyshack are the transcendent moments where Ramis let the movie be what it should be.\u00a0 Danny Noonan is the red-headed kid protagonist of Caddyshack, but when Ramis looked around and saw Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Ted Knight, and Rodney Dangerfield, he realized that instead of a boring story about Danny Noonan, he could let those guys run amuck and create moments of genius.\u00a0 To call Caddyshack the most quotable movie of all time is a slight overstatement, but it did<\/i> warrant a Saturday Night Live sketch premised soley on quoting Caddyshack<\/a>.<\/p>\n My favorite parts of Caddyshack were always the oddest\u2014the moments where it became obvious that Ramis was letting everyone have fun.\u00a0 I particularly love the old man who golfs through a rainstorm while maniacally cheering over having the best putting of his life\u2014only to be struck by lightning.\u00a0 It has nothing to do with the story, and displays a total artistic freedom in a way the cinema had never seen.<\/p>\n On the whole though, Caddyshack is probably overrated.\u00a0 However, what’s remarkable is that Ramis was able to create a new tone in filmmaking, where the story is secondary to the movie’s lapses into brilliant mania.\u00a0 Many of the scenes with Bill Murray mean nothing to the \u2018story\u2019, but the story is just the rhythm, and those scenes are the jazz-like riffs upon it.\u00a0 This style of filmmaking had been percolating at the time, but was truly mastered and solidified by Ramis.\u00a0 What’s funny is that two years before, John Landis had attempted the same thing with Ramis’ script for Animal House<\/a>, but fell short, making a quite forgettable movie.<\/p>\n What’s amazing to me is the stark difference between Caddyshack and Groundhog Day.\u00a0 Groundhog Day is a tight story with no room for lapses, which means Bill Murray must fit his brilliance into a box.\u00a0 But by doing so, he appears even more brilliant for the fact that he hits all of the right emotional beats inside a story, while still being himself. \u00a0That’s what makes him a movie star and not just a comedic actor.\u00a0 Groundhog Day is truly the seminal work of Bill’s career, and it was all shaped by the caring and craftsmanlike eye of Harold Ramis.<\/p>\n It was that same eye that took the bizarre and unwieldy script for Ghostbusters\u2014written by Dan Aykroyd as a John Belushi vehicle set in the future\u2014and worked it into genius. \u00a0But with all of these works, I don\u2019t want to discredit Ramis’s collaborators.\u00a0 From Murray to Aykroyd to Reitman\u2014and Danny Rubin, who he co-wrote Groundhog Day with\u2014it certainly took a community to make these films, which is proof positive that filmmaking is the ultimate blend of committee and auteurism.<\/p>\n I could go on and on about his films, and maybe someday I will\u2014about the underseen and underappreciated Bedazzled<\/a> remake, and Multiplicity<\/a>, and the fact that he fuckin\u2019 directed National Lampoon\u2019s Vacation<\/a>, and was awesome in Orange County<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s such a rich body of work that trying to tackle it all in a rush just to talk about the guy would be a huge disservice.<\/p>\n Instead, I want to talk about the mushy stuff.\u00a0 When I was a little kid, my mom showed me Ghostbusters, because she grew up with those guys on Saturday Night Live.\u00a0 She was a fan of SCTV and SNL and wanted to share that with her son.\u00a0 I watched, wide eyed, as this peculiar band of characters interacted with each other.\u00a0 This was different than a normal movie\u2014these guys seemed like they really knew each other, like they had a history together. \u00a0But at the same time, it didn’t feel insular\u2014there was nothing foreign about it, nothing distancing. \u00a0You felt included. \u00a0And at every turn in the story, the next thing that happened\u00a0made sense<\/i>\u2014and the weirder it got, weirdly enough, the more<\/i> it made sense.\u00a0 When you’re a kid, you don’t consider the work that goes into that\u2014the sensibility, the writing, the performance, the compositions, the editing.\u00a0 You don’t understand how these things work together to transfix you into a mesmerized state of wonder\u2014you just know that you’ve watched the tape twenty times in a row and now have to adjust the tracking.<\/p>\n Igon is a part of my life the same way former pets are, or close friends.\u00a0 He’s someone I think about a lot, and quote, and feel like I know intimately.\u00a0 When that person dies, it’s a very bizarre wakeup call.\u00a0 It’s a reminder that art lives and people die, and that the man\u2014whom I know almost nothing about as a person but did all these great things I love\u2014has died.\u00a0 And all I can do is hope he had a good life, hope his family is okay, and celebrate his life by watching his movies.<\/p>\n Harold Ramis touched and shaped my life closely from afar.\u00a0 He helped teach me what art is, and how it works.\u00a0 He made me feel impressed, and in awe, and thoughtful.\u00a0 And most of all, he made me laugh.<\/p>\n I’ll leave you with one last thing.\u00a0 When I was ten years old, I saw As Good As it Gets<\/a> with my mom in the theater because I have a cool mom.\u00a0 I loved it, because it made me feel like an adult\u2014it’s two hours of people talking, and it’s dramatic and funny in a different way than a kid is used to.\u00a0 To this day, it holds up\u2014I think it’s the best James L. Brooks movie.<\/p>\n In it, there\u2019s a small, pivotal scene where Nicholson’s character brings a doctor for Helen Hunt’s kid\u2014a doctor who makes a house call and kind of saves the day.\u00a0 In the story, it’s a very meaningful turn, a real plot fulcrum for other things to come.\u00a0 The doctor is only in one scene, a very small role, but the actor has to command a lot.\u00a0 Harold Ramis plays the doctor, and there is nobody on earth that I can think of that could\u2019ve make my ten-year-old mind in that theater feel more warm and safe.\u00a0 He was no longer Igon, he was older and more round, and he didn’t feel like Igon, either\u2014he felt like a warm, caring, intelligent person.\u00a0 He was perfectly cast.<\/p>\n I love you, Harold Ramis.\u00a0 Goodbye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\nOn the commentary for Groundhog Day<\/a>, Ramis talks about how he fought with Bill Murray about it.\u00a0 Bill wanted it to be more philosophical. \u00a0Ramis understood that the philosophy should\u00a0be there, but it should be in the subtext\u2014make it as a comedy, but with the philosophy underneath, guiding the tone.\u00a0 That is how you craft a perfect tone like Groundhog Day has\u2014a movie that deftly walks the line between sweet Hollywood romantic comedy and subversive art film.\u00a0 Bill Murray is a genius, don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014but, so was Harold Ramis.<\/p>\n
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\nSince we started this website, I’ve always felt like I was on a mission. A mission, despite the fact that, at the end of the day, nothing anybody says about art matters at all. \u00a0Art is an individual experience\u2014even in a group, it’s an individual experience.\u00a0 I can’t convince you of anything, and you can’t convince me.\u00a0 And it should<\/i> be that way.\u00a0 But right now, fuck all that.<\/p>\n