Because
he’s the guy we didn’t notice as prominently as people like Dan Aykroyd or Bill
Murray, but whose sense of how to play the “straight” role made the characters
those other two played seem all the more off-the-wall, funny and entertaining.
RAMIS,
WHO DIED early Monday at age 69 from a condition that caused his blood vessels
to swell, was one of the Ghostbusters, along with Aykroyd and Murray.
He
also was the friend of Murray’s “John Winger” character who got conned into
enlisting in the U.S. Army along with him, thereby giving him somebody to watch
his back – and join him when the two have to go into then-Communist-controlled
Czechoslovakia to retake their army unit.
Who,
by the way, were only captured because they were searching for the Murray and
Ramis characters – who had taken the Army’s experimental prototype of a
combat-ready recreational vehicle out for a spin to pick up some girls.
It
literally is a line from Stripes (along with Murray’s quip about how Tito
Puente was unappreciated in life) that still gets quoted by my brother.
WITH
MURRAY’S CHARACTER telling Ramis’ role: “Come on, it’s Czechoslovakia. We zip
in, we pick them up, and we zip right out again. We’re not going to Moscow. It’s
Czechoslovakia, it’s like going to Wisconsin.”
To
which Ramis’ “Russell Zitsky” character responds, “Well, I got the shit kicked
out of me in Wisconsin once. Forget it!”
Much
of the humor was in the timing. It’s funnier on film than it is on the written
page. Although I’m not about to reduce Ramis’ working life to a single quip
about the cheeseheads to the north of us.
It
was just this past weekend that I happened to be stumbling my way through
television channels when I came across “Meatballs,” a Bill Murray comedy from
back in that period right before I began high school.
WHICH
MEANS ITS overly-horny prepubescent characters and trivial nonsense were at
about my age level (I drooled back then over the blonde who, looking at her
now, makes me feel like a dirty old man). With Murray as the out-of-control
camp counselor who befriends a particularly vulnerable summer camper.
Ramis
co-wrote that script.
While
I don’t doubt that Murray can improvise with the best of them (the film was
basically Bill Murray saying and doing outrageous things), it was Ramis who put
the thoughts and images onto the page of a script so they could be turned into
something resembling reality on the movie theater screens (and now our
television screens every time we watch it).
Although
I thought that the repeated running gag about the head camp counselor
repeatedly finding his bed moved in the middle of the night (with him still in
it) to various locations (up in a tree, alongside a lake, at the entrance to
the camp) was a bit overdone.
THEN
AGAIN, THIS is the man who also wrote the script for Ghostbusters who
envisioned the idea that all of mankind could be threatened by a gigantic
Stay-Puft Marshmallow man.
Which
brings to mind Murray’s celluloid response of a quip, “Now that’s something you
don’t see every day.”
Although
it’s not just these moments that Ramis gave us. He also was the director of “Analyze
This” (and the sequel, “Analyze That”), which purported to give us the concept
of an organized crime boss (played by Robert DeNiro) having to see a
psychiatrist (portrayed by Billy Crystal).
Which
is very “The Sopranos” sounding. Although we should remember the Sopranos scene
where the late actor James Gandolfini appears like he wants to smack upside the
head the psychiatrist who tells his “Tony Soprano” character that he understands
“the mob” because he saw “Analyze This.”
THESE
ARE JUST a few of the career moments that have given us humor. It is why we’re
better off that a one-time Rogers Park resident who actually once wrote
freelance stories for the old Chicago Daily News decided there were better
things to do with his life than try to report the news.
He’s
given us moments to brighten our day, for so long as all those DVDs of his
films continue to function properly.
-30-
