C I P R I A N I

I’ve been looking for the exact interview online for quite a little bit and I can’t track it down. I’m not sure if it was in Esquire, Premiere, or Rolling Stone, but I seem to remember it was in print around the time Harold Ramis directed the Bedazzled remake. From what I recall, it was a series of quick questions about his career and a little bit of “meaning of life” stuff. One of his comments was something to the effect of not comparing oneself to other people because, in Ramis’s words: “There’s always going to be Spielberg.”

This stuck with me. I actually go back to that thought quite a bit. And it hit me a little harder when Harold Ramis passed away at the age of 69 just a few weeks ago. He was only a few years older than my parents.

I still remember when I was a kid watching Animal House (which Ramis co-wrote) for the first of who knows how many times with my father in my living room on HBO. I watched Striped endlessly with my friends and I don’t know if I loved college so much because of Animal House or if I love Animal House so much because of college, but the two are married in mind. Speaking of marriage, I knew I was going to marry my wife when we were first dating and looking for a place to eat and walked by Gladstone’s, a seafood restaurant. I looked to her, deadpan, and said “We could go there. Order some fish. For you and Audrey and mom.” This was our second date and rather than look at me blankly and wonder what the hell I was talking about, she tossed the preceding line from Vacation back at me without missing a beat: “She took your order?” Twelve years and two kids later we continue to toast our “renewed love affair” (also from Vacation).

Movies have always been important to me, but not just because of what the movies were about, but because of who I watched them with and the memories around them. Whether I was watching Stripes in a friend’s basement, Vacation in a dorm room or Analyze This at its Premiere in Westwood – which, come to think of it, was the first Premiere I ever went to – Ramis is a part of a lot of my memories.

One of the greatest movie theater experiences of my life was when I saw Ghostbusters (which Ramis co-wrote and starred in) with my mom and brother one afternoon in the summer of 1984 in Steubenville, OH. A few months later, I found myself discussing the movie with my uncle and despite his insistence (and not because he didn’t think it was spectacular), I simply could not wrap my head around why Ghostbusters wouldn’t be nominated for Best Picture that year (The Karate Kid, Sixteen Candles, The Terminator, Beverly Hills Cop, This is Spinal Tap, Gremlins, Splash, Romancing the Stone, The Natural, Star Man, The Flamingo Kid, and Kidco – among others – were also shut out that year).

I had no idea about Ramis’s poor health over the past few years. I only know that the movies I’m the fondest of, laughed the hardest at, and watched the most over the years seem to have one thing in common: Harold Ramis.

This is probably one of the least unique things about me because if you enjoy movies, he was involved in at least one of your favorites.

Unless you don’t like comedies.

After watching so many hours of various worn TDK VHS tapes as a kid, it was probably Harold Ramis that first impressed upon me the idea of a body of amazing work – a career. Or John Hughes (who wrote Vacation, incidentally). Not that folks from Frank Capra and, yes, Steven Spielberg, weren’t on my radar – It’s just that Ramis’s movies were almost always in my central consciousness during the formative years of my life.

And they are so damn watchable.

I never wanted to be an actor. The idea of being a writer / director of beloved movies was something that was so exciting to me as a kid, just as it is today – and probably just as elusive. The irony is that Ramis inspires us to create the stuff, but thanks to VHS (which he outlived), the web, iTunes, cable and DVD’s (which will probably fade away soon) – everyone is in competition with the master until the end of time.

Seriously, would you rather watch Vacation or Ghostbusters for the 1000th time …. or anything made this century?

Animal House, Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Vacation, Ghostbusters, Back to School, Groundhog Day, Analyze This. Look at that. He either wrote or directed or wrote and directed all of them. It’s hard to just read the words without getting a little smile on your face. So it appears to me that Ramis’s talent is matched only by his humility, because while I love Steven Spielberg, Ramis’s filmography speaks for itself. Of course, Schindler’s List is brilliant, but I can’t imagine watching it over and over and over and over again – Groundhog Day, which incidentally came out the same year as Schindler’s List, was, like Ghostbusters, also shut out of Oscar consideration.

Which brings me to the Oscars themselves. For the first year since I don’t know even know when, hell, probably 1984, I did not watch the Oscars telecast. I’ve got kids, time is precious, I was finishing a screenplay and there’s this invention called the Interweb with a Google machine that lets you cut out all the boring parts,. So I was able to “watch” the Oscars in about a minute this year.

Apparently, the host ordered a pizza and took a picture that was retweeted and just about everyone I thought was going to win, did. And from what I gather, the only “tribute” to Harold Ramis, aside from his snippet during the “In Memoriam” segment, was an off script shout out from frequent collaborator and fellow genius, Bill Murray, seen here:

Granted, Ramis passed away a few days before the ceremony and the show’s producers probably had the show already planned and didn’t have the time to squeeze in a longer tribute to him. Again, I did not see the pizza bit or the part where Ellen DeGeneres took a picture of herself with a bunch of celebrities. It sounds amazing – I’ve been seeing a lot of folks online referring to this “re-tweeted” picture as “the best photo ever”.

The. Best. Photo. Ever.