Harold Ramis
When you grow up in Chicago, your whole family is counting on you to go to college and do something distinguished. The last thing you're thinking is that you're going to make a career in show business.Collection: Growing Up
I loved writing and performing, but the idea of doing it for a living seemed so remote. But I eventually let it devolve to the point where it was the only thing I could do.Collection: Writing
I'm sure that the liability for doing a tracheotomy would be tremendous. You make one mistake, and it's over. Most doctors won't even do it.Collection: Mistake
I have tons of rescuing fantasies based on the movies I saw when I was growing up. I wanted to be Robin Hood and the Three Musketeers and the Scarlet Pimpernel.Collection: Growing Up
The times change, and to the extent that comedy captures the spirit of the times, it will enjoy success.Collection: Spirit
When someone's an actor and you're an actor, you meet them and you feel like you know them. We're in the same business, and we all speak the same comedy language.Collection: Actors
I made a handshake agreement with my best friend in college, Michael Shamberg, who is now a movie producer. We used to write shows together, and we said, "Let's only do what's fun. Let's never take a job where we have to dress up in a suit."Collection: Jobs
Chicago still remains a Mecca of the Midwest - people from both coasts are kind of amazed how good life is in Chicago, and what a good culture we've got. You can have a pretty wonderful artistic life and never leave Chicago.Collection: Good Life
I've tried to stay away from mild satire. I want an audience to feel something more powerful for their ten bucks. If they're going to spend two hours with me, and trust me to lead them around, I'd like to take them someplace special.Collection: Powerful
I realized that my righteous indignation was a form of entertainment for me. I loved getting pissed off at injustice. I didn't do anything about it, I just liked the feeling of being pissed off.Collection: Feelings
I'm a writer-director-actor, which I've always kind of enjoyed. I compared it to the Olympic biathlon. "Not only can he cross-country ski, but he's a terrific marksman as well." I want people to say, "You mean that writer performed a tracheotomy?" That's right, I do everything.Collection: Country
As an actor, you're completely at the mercy of other people. You basically go begging for the opportunity to work. As a writer, at least nobody can tell me what to do. I can write what I want. I might not sell it, but at least I'm in control.Collection: Writing
When a director writes, there's a compulsory arbitration. You have a right to challenge any of the arbitrators, but they pick three of four arbitrators who read all the drafts with no names attached and then allocate credit.Collection: Writing
The rule of thumb for a director or producer - which prevents them from just sticking their names on everything - is that you have to contribute substantially more than 50 percent of the character dialogue and story.Collection: Character
I think of myself as a real writer, not just someone who dabbles in it, so I deserve some credit.Collection: Real
I think satire is a luxury of literate middle-class people. People who are well fed and relatively secure in their beds can laugh at their troubles. They can enjoy sitcoms. For those who aren't quite so lucky, well, the irony might be lost on them.Collection: Thinking
I had developed a survival skill of using my wit to score for myself. If a scene was dying, I'd lob in these little bombshell lines that would get me some attention and a laugh without really helping the scene.Collection: Skills
I've always had that overweening desire to be liked by the audience.Collection: Desire
I did a comedy with Al Franken about his character Stuart Smalley, which was really about alcoholism and addiction and codependency. It had some painful stuff in it. When we showed it to focus groups, some of them actually said, "If I want to see a dysfunctional family, I'll stay home."Collection: Home
For me, most comedy scripts fail in the mechanical playing-out of the setup. They'll pay lip service to a moral lesson or a psychological progression.Collection: Lessons
A friend of mine is trying to do a documentary where he brings Jewish and Arab comedians to occupied territories in Israel. He wants to do shows as a way of finding some comedic common denominator. When he proposed the idea to one of the officials at the Jenin refuge camp, the guy just stared at him and said, "This is not a joke to us. We don't think that laughing is the answer."Collection: Thinking
Once you're alienated, you're on your own. That takes you to the world of the existential, where things just kind of float.Collection: World
There's something very edgy about Bill Murray out there improvising.Collection: Bills
I'm thinking of doing a marital comedy for one of the studios, but I want it to be so painful that it'll have a profound effect on married couples who see it together.Collection: Couple
Somebody once told me that if you laugh at a George Bush joke, or you send an email cartoon to your friends that makes Bush look like a fool, you feel like you've done something significant. But really, what have you actually done? Just expressing contempt for your leaders doesn't really accomplish anything.Collection: Laughing
I have a great respect for the moviegoing experience. It's such a unique thing. You're not getting up and walking around the house or flipping channels during the dull parts. You're in a dark space, and the movie fills most of your field of vision. You're surrounded by sound, and the colors are deeply saturated, and faces are fifteen feet high. If it's done well, you're really going to feel some big emotions or have some big belly laughs.Collection: Dark
I collect spores, molds, and fungus.Collection: Mold
You can perceive life as tragic, or you can laugh at the tragedy of it and that turns it into comedy. It doesn't change the circumstances.Collection: Laughing
Everyone has experienced laughing at a funeral, and not even inappropriately. It could be a response to a moment of absurdity or some fond memory. We're human beings so we understand that laughter and crying aren't always disparate emotions.Collection: Laughter
If you're doing six takes, instead of doing six variations on the same words, why not just throw out the words and make them up as you go along, if you're comfortable with it? It gives the movies a slightly rangier feeling, and more of an accidental feel, but it also makes them edgier.Collection: Giving
I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.Collection: Capacity
It doesn't take any longer to improvise 10 takes than it takes to shoot 10 takes of the same thing. It turns out to be just as responsible from a business point of view as anything else.Collection: Views
I've never taken a script to the stage or to principal photography and said, "This is perfect. This is as good as it can possibly be." It's not Shakespeare, you know; you know it can probably be better.Collection: Photography
I met someone who said they'd figured out my genre: "madcap redemption comedy." I'll buy that.Collection: Redemption
Most comedies are calculated. They tend to pander. They're not about anything important.Collection: Important
I learned over the years that it's easy to appear smart referencing things that people don't know.Collection: Smart
I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression.Collection: Expression
I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression. I try to measure the amount of truth in a work rather than just looking at the generic distinction between comedy and drama. There's a lot of bullshit drama that leaves you totally cold. And there's a lot of wasted comedy time too. But when you get something honest, it doesn't matter what label you give it.Collection: Drama
If people offer me decent roles in good films, of course I'll take it. But I just didn't like the actor lifestyle. You end up focusing all your energy on trying to get parts you don't even want.Collection: People
No one will laugh at how great things are for somebody.Collection: Laughing
As much as I liked acting for its playfulness and the reward of hearing big laughs wash over you on a stage, I always felt I should do something that I could control.Collection: Laughing
We tell our kids that policemen are good and God protects us and our country is noble, and at a certain point - and for some it comes quite early, five or six years old - we start to realize that it's all a facade.Collection: Country
I'd rather do comedies that strike at some bigger ideas.Collection: Ideas