Actor/Director/Writer Harold Ramis 1944-2014

[Zoneboy]

Link

Harold Ramis was one of Hollywood’s most successful comedy filmmakers when he moved his family from Los Angeles back to the Chicago area in 1996. His career was still thriving, with “Groundhog Day” acquiring almost instant classic status upon its 1993 release and 1984’s “Ghostbusters” ranking among the highest-grossing comedies of all time, but the writer-director wanted to return to the city where he’d launched his career as a Second City performer.


“There’s a pride in what I do that other people share because I’m local, which in L.A. is meaningless; no one’s local,” Ramis said upon the launch of the first movie he directed after his move, the 1999 mobster-in-therapy comedy “Analyze This,” another hit. “It’s a good thing. I feel like I represent the city in a certain way.”

Ramis, a longtime North Shore resident, died early Monday morning after a long illness, according to his wife, Erica Mann Ramis. He was 69.

Ramis’ serious health struggles began in May 2010 after he underwent surgery for diverticulitis and suffered complications related to the autoimmune disease. Unable to walk, he spent four months that year at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., before continuing work at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

A year and a half later, Ramis had relearned to walk and was making good progress on his recovery when he suffered a relapse of the vasculitis, from which he never fully recovered, Ward said.

Ramis leaves behind a formidable body of work, with writing credits on such enduring comedies as “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (which upon its 1978 release launched the film career of John Belushi, a former Second City castmate of Ramis’), “Stripes” (1981) and “Ghostbusters” (in which Ramis also co-starred) plus such directing efforts as “Caddyshack” (1980), “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (1983), “Groundhog Day” and “Analyze This.”

Previously he was the first head writer (and a performer) on Second City’s groundbreaking television series “Second City Television (SCTV)” (1976-79). More recently he directed episodes of NBC’s “The Office.”

“When I was 15, I interviewed Harold for my high school radio station, and he was the person that I wanted to be when I was growing up,” said filmmaker Judd Apatow, who later would cast Ramis as Seth Rogen’s father in “Knocked Up” and would produce Ramis’ final movie, “Year One” (1999). “His work is the reason why so many of us got into comedy. We grew up on ‘Second City TV’ and ‘Ghostbusters,’ ‘Vacation,’ ‘Animal House,’ ‘Stripes,’ ‘Meatballs’ (which Ramis co-wrote); he literally made every single one of our favorite movies.”

Ramis also left behind a reputation as a mensch, mentor and all-around good guy.

“He’s the least changed by success of anyone I know in terms of sense of humor, of humility, sense of self,” the late Second City founder Bernie Sahlins, who began working with Ramis there in 1969, said of him in 1999. “He’s the same Harold he was 30 years ago. He’s had enormous success relatively, but none of it has gone to his head in any way.”

Laurel Ward, vice president of development at Ramis’ Ocean Pictures production company, who worked with Ramis for 15 years, called him “the world’s best mentor.” She recalled that when she first began working for him as his assistant in Chicago, he had to go to California for a month, and he told her that although he didn’t need an assistant out there, she should go anyway because it would be a good experience for her. He made sure her expenses were covered.

“He just did it for me,” she said. “He loved teaching people. He loved helping people. He loved seeing people succeed.”

The son of Ruth and Nathan Ramis, who owned Ace Food & Liquor Mart on the West Side before moving the store and family to Rogers Park, Ramis graduated from Senn High School and Washington University in St. Louis. For his first professional writing gig, he contributed freelance arts stories to the Chicago Daily News in the mid-1960s. He also wrote and edited Playboy magazine’s “Party Jokes” before and during his Second City days.

When, after some time off, he returned to Second City in 1972 to act alongside a relative newcomer in the cast, Ramis said he came to a major realization.

“The moment I knew I wouldn’t be any huge comedy star was when I got on stage with John Belushi for the first time,” he said in a 1999 Tribune interview. “When I saw how far he was willing to go to get a laugh or to make a point on stage, the language he would use, how physical he was, throwing himself literally off the stage, taking big falls, strangling other actors, I thought: I’m never going to be this big. How could I ever get enough attention on a stage with guys like this?

“I stopped being the zany. I let John be the zany. I learned that my thing was lobbing in great lines here and there, which would score big and keep me there on the stage.”

Ramis would become the calm center of storms brewed by fellow actors, playing the bushy-haired, low-key wisecracker to Bill Murray’s troublemaker in “Stripes” and the most scientific-minded “Ghostbuster.” Later roles included a sympathetic doctor in “As Good as It Gets” (1997) and the charming dad role in “Knocked Up” (2007), which Apatow said was almost all improvised.

Sahlins, who died last June, said he knew from the start that Ramis “would be an important factor in American comedy. He has all the skills and abilities to be funny and to write funny, but he also is a leader, a very nice guy. He was always looked up to, in Second City to being head writer at `SCTV.’ He was never separate from anybody. He was always one of the boys, but he was the best boy.”

Ramis followed Belushi from Second City to New York City to work with him plus fellow Second City cast member Bill Murray (who would collaborate with Ramis on six movies) on “The National Lampoon Radio Hour.” Those three plus Gilda Radner also performed in a National Lampoon stage show produced by Ivan Reitman, who went on to produce “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and to direct such Ramis scripts as “Meatballs,” “Stripes,” “Ghostbusters” and “Ghostbusters II” (1989).

”I always thought he was a very talented writer who always had a very perceptive and intelligent point of view about the material,” Reitman told the Tribune in 1999. “He managed to get the people to speak in a realistic way but still found something funny in their voices.”
Apatow said he was inspired not just by the spirit of Ramis’ movies but also his frequent collaborations with the same funny people.

Apatow said he was captivated not just by the spirit of Ramis’ movies but also his frequent collaborations with a collective of funny people.

“We noticed this group of friends who were making comedy together — all the ‘SCTV’ people and ‘Saturday Night Live’ people and National Lampoon people — and that seemed the most wonderful community you could ever be a part of,” said Apatow, who has developed his own group of regular collaborators. “In addition to wanting to be comics, we also wanted to make comedies with our friends.”

As zany as Ramis’ early comedies were, they rigorously pursued a theme close to the heart of someone who grew out of the 1960s counterculture: characters rebelling against institutions, be they authoritarian college administrators and pampered rich kids (“Animal House”), a stuffy golf club (“Caddyshack”) or the military (“Stripes”). After the collapse of his first marriage and the flop of his 1986 comedy “Club Paradise” (with greedy developers as the institutional villain), the Jewish-raised Ramis immersed himself in Zen Buddhism.

“It’s my shield and my armor in the work I do,” he said. “It’s to keep a cheerful, Zen-like detachment from everything.”

Ramis’ later directorial efforts, starting with “Groundhog Day” and including “Stuart Saves His Family” (1995), “Multiplicity” (1996), “Analyze This” and his “Bedazzled” remake (2000), reflect a spiritual striving, exploring individuals’ struggles with themselves more than outside forces.

Comparing his later to earlier comedies, Ramis told the Tribune: “The content’s different, but it comes from the same place in me, which is to try to point people at some reality or truth.”

He recalled that at the “Analyze This” junket, a writer told him his genre had become “goofy redemption comedy,” to which Ramis responded, “OK, I’ll take that.”
Ramis had been living in Los Angeles since late ‘70s before he returned to Chicago, basing his production company in downtown Highland Park.

“In L.A., you’re much more aware of an artificial pressure, just that you’re in a race of some kind,” Ramis recalled one morning over a veggie egg-white omelet at the coffee shop downstairs from his office. “You know, if you’re not moving forward, you’re dead in the water, because everyone around you is scheming, planning and plotting to advance themselves, often at your expense.

“I’ve compared it to high school: Am I popular? Am I cool? Am I in? Who’s the in crowd? How do I get into that party? These are not things I ever wanted to worry about. Here I’m so liberated from that.”

After unsuccessfully lobbying Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro to film “Analyze This” in Chicago, Ramis finally got his wish to shoot a movie locally with the 2005 dark crime comedy “The Ice Harvest,” which starred Evanston native John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton.

Until his illness Ramis was out around town a fair amount, whether cheering on the Cubs and leading the occasional “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” or attending theater or appearing at local organizations’ fundraisers or collecting honors, such as an honorary Doctorate of Arts from Columbia College Chicago in 2001 and a lifetime achievement award from the Just for Laughs festival in 2009. And when Second City celebrated its 50th anniversary in December 2009, Ramis joined “SCTV” cast members Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas and Martin Short in a Mainstage set that proved to be the weekend’s hottest ticket.

Ramis was quiet about his illness, but friends did visit, including brothers and Second City castmates Bill Murray, from whom he’d been estranged for years, and Brian Doyle-Murray, who appeared in seven Ramis movies.

“He was like the campfire that we all gathered around for light and warmth and knowledge,” his adult daughter Violet Stiel said.

“And that’s the truth,” added Erica Ramis.

He is survived by Erica Mann Ramis, Stiel, sons Julian and Daniel Ramis and two grandchildren. Erica Ramis said a private service is planned for this week with a public memorial in Chicago to take place probably in May.

Read more: http://wgntv.com/2014/02/24/chicago-...#ixzz2uGOPsYtO

[Marvo301]

I remember Harold Ramis from his work on "SCTV". His most well known character on that show was Staton Manager/Dialing for Dollars Host Moe Green. I also remember his work with John Candy in the movie "Stripes"!
Rest in peace Harold Ramis

[Penny Lane]

Love his movies! RIP

[McGillicuddy]

He got his start on Second City schetch comedy show.

[Janice]

So sad. He was a very talented man. Too young to die.

[shotzette]

So sorry to hear this. Harold Ramis was a wonderful blend of brilliance and geeky hotness in his prime. As Janice said, "too young to die".

[mets82]

Shocked to hear his passing. Loved him in Stripes. RIP.

[HauntedThunderman94]

RIP Harold

[TMC]

A language warning for the video below!

http://www.looper.com/9594/ghostbust...ever-happened/

At the time of this writing, the female-led Ghostbusters reboot is in the can and slotted for a coveted summer blockbuster release date. With a built-in audience of diehard fans and a comedically proven cast, this new incarnation of everyone’s favorite supernatural sleuths is poised for great success. But it’s a real departure from the original Ghostbusters concept, and it comes nearly three decades after Ghostbusters II debuted. Why did this new project replace the original characters and universe of the first two movies? Are we really never going to see Venkman, Stantz, Spengler, and Zeddemore again? Here’s why Ghostbusters 3 never happened.

BILL MURRAY ACTED SUPER BILL MURRAY ABOUT IT

As incredible as Bill Murray is on screen, he’s as quirky in real life to the point of becoming somewhat of a living legend. Stories about him range from randomly showing up at house parties to drunkenly joyriding a golf cart around Stockholm. He’s also notoriously picky about the projects he chooses despite the fact that Garfield and Aloha will forever disgrace his IMDb page. For years, Murray turned down script after script for the third Ghostbusters installment without speaking publicly about it, a move that sort of accidentally vilified him in the process. He eventually addressed it—presumably because nerds wearing homemade proton packs were threatening to kill him—to Variety and it turns out, he just wasn’t that impressed. Telling them the scripts were “not well executed,” or “too crazy to comprehend,” Murray gave the kind of vague, non-committal Murrayism that everyone should be expecting at this point. This is a guy who the director of St. Vincent couldn’t actually get on the phone for days at a time during production of the film, so it’s kind of amazing that he bothered to read the scripts in the first place.

HAS EVERYONE FORGOTTEN ABOUT GHOSTBUSTERS 2?

Even Harold Ramis, who played Dr. Egon Spengler, has admitted that Ghostbusters 2 was a critical flop despite a healthy showing at the box office. The fans who paid for those theater tickets weren’t that impressed either. Ghostbusters 2 made money because Ghostbusters was so great and popular, but the general consensus of the sequel was that it failed to improve upon the concept and ultimately left people wondering what happened. So, when asking the question of how such a groundswell of support for a third movie even existed, it becomes obvious that it sort of didn’t. Well, for a few decades anyway. With the release of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, and the fact that Dan Aykroyd never stopped working on drafts of the next sequel, excitement for Ghostbusters 3 emerged. Any wariness about Bobby Brown songs or psychomagnotheric slime has been replaced by “Ooh! There’s a new version of a thing I liked when I was a kid!” which if you think about it, kinds of brings us right back to having no good reason for Ghostbusters 3 to exist at all.

DAN AYKROYD’S GHOSTBUSTERS 3: HELLBENT SCRIPT WAS COMPLETELY NUTS

One of Aykroyd’s scripts, and presumably the one Murray referred to as “too crazy to comprehend,” was titled Ghostbusters 3: Hellbent. It wasn’t just a clever name. According to the Ghostbusters Wiki, the script has the original Ghostbusters alongside several new additions (including two female ‘busters) traveling to Hell, which is basically a parallel universe to our own. Since the films take place in NYC, this time it’s in Manhellton. You read that right, Manhellton—a place where the cops are blue Minotaurs for some reason, and the devil is Donald Trump. Only one of those aspects makes any sense at all, and we feel confident that even if Bill Murray would have agreed to do the movie, no studio would have greenlit the thing. Seriously, Aykroyd, Manhellton? It’s alright, Dr. Stantz, you’re still our favorite Ghostbuster.

HAROLD RAMIS DIED

Having shepherded a script from The Office alums, Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, then a rewrite by Etan Cohen, Harold Ramis was actively involved in the development of Ghostbusters 3 alongside Dan Aykroyd. Not to mention, he was one of the lead characters. When Ramis died in 2014, a lot of the wind left the sails for that version of the project. Ivan Reitman, who helmed both Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II, stepped down from the director’s chair, but agreed to stay on as a producer. He and Ramis had both previously acknowledged that the movie would include the original characters in some capacity, but in more of a “baton passing” way to a new, younger cast. With Ramis’ passing and Murray’s non-commitment, the script would obviously need a major rewrite. Despite all of this, Sony quickly announced plans to move forward with the project, because once a studio knows they’ve generated significant social buzz, that’s not something they let go of easily.

THE DECISION TO REBOOT

Paul Feig was already on Sony’s short list of directors to take the helm after Ivan Reitman stepped down. He had tremendous success with Bridesmaids and was a fan of the original Ghostbusters movies, but he kept declining the offer because he wasn’t sure how to handle the project. The all-female reboot seems to have been Feig’s brainchild. It was also the only way he was going to agree to do the movie. Apparently, he was such a top pick for the studio, they ran with his idea. Though Sony never confirmed having serious talks, Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow were supposedly approached for Ghostbusters, because the comedy world hasn’t been oversaturated with those guys at all, right? None of those rumors matter now anyway, because Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones have gotten the proverbial “call.” We just hope they ain’t afraid of no ghosts.

[Zoneboy]

I Just wasted almost 12:18 of my life that I can't get back watching that video. It was actually good until the clown felt that he had to throw an F-Bomb in at the 12:17 mark.

[JamesG]

Originally Posted by Zoneboy

I Just wasted almost 12:18 of my life that I can't get back watching that video. It was actually good until the clown felt that he had to throw an F-Bomb in at the 12:17 mark.

Come on... grow up.

[Vahan]

And why did TMC bump this thread? Doesn't he know damn well not to bump threads in this section for two or more years?

But of course he doesn't know this. He is this master thread bumper, and he refuses to take the hint.

[JamesG]

Originally Posted by Vahan

And why did TMC bump this thread? Doesn't he know damn well not to bump threads in this section for two or more years?

But of course he doesn't know this. He is this master thread bumper, and he refuses to take the hint.

I decided to keep it because it featured an update about something current (Ghostbusters reboot.)

I would have taken it down if I felt the need to.

[Zoneboy]

Originally Posted by JamesG

Come on... grow up.

Sorry, but I have no use for idiots that feel they have to use that word as part of their everyday vocabulary. Unfortunately, my brother uses it on a daily basis which is why I very little to do with him.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by Vahan

And why did TMC bump this thread? Doesn't he know damn well not to bump threads in this section for two or more years?

But of course he doesn't know this. He is this master thread bumper, and he refuses to take the hint.

I guess you didn't catch this portion of my post in regards to why we're suddenly getting an all-female Ghostbusters movie instead of a proper third one (and how Harold Ramis' death may contributed or pertained to such a thing):

http://www.looper.com/9594/ghostbust...ever-happened/

HAROLD RAMIS DIED

Having shepherded a script from The Office alums, Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, then a rewrite by Etan Cohen, Harold Ramis was actively involved in the development of Ghostbusters 3 alongside Dan Aykroyd. Not to mention, he was one of the lead characters. When Ramis died in 2014, a lot of the wind left the sails for that version of the project. Ivan Reitman, who helmed both Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II, stepped down from the director’s chair, but agreed to stay on as a producer. He and Ramis had both previously acknowledged that the movie would include the original characters in some capacity, but in more of a “baton passing” way to a new, younger cast. With Ramis’ passing and Murray’s non-commitment, the script would obviously need a major rewrite. Despite all of this, Sony quickly announced plans to move forward with the project, because once a studio knows they’ve generated significant social buzz, that’s not something they let go of easily.