In Memory of Harold Ramis
Written by: Ben
It is with a sad heart that I need to write this piece as Harold Ramis was one of those celebrities who I always greatly admired. Yes its true other greats like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Shirley Temple recently passed as well, but Ramis truly stuck with me. He had been a star I recognized and part of my life since my childhood for his most well known role as Egon in Ghostbusters but as I got older I recognized his contributions even more than that. As such I felt it only right that I write this to cover this and properly honor him, so please follow me after the jump for the meat of this.
Most people remember Ramis as I knew him as a child as Egon and possibly also as Russell Ziskey from Stripes but that is truly just the tip of the iceberg. After those roles he mostly was in smaller roles as he went back to doing what he had been doing well before them which is writing and directing brilliant comedies. If you think of you favorite comedies of the 80’s, the fact of the matter is that Ramis probably wrote and/or directed it. If you don’t believe me, go check IMDB right now and you’ll see that he wrote Animal House, Meatballs, and Caddyshack all before writing and starring in Stripes as his first movie role. He then kept going with Armed and Dangerous, Back to School, Rover Dangerfield and then writing and directing Groundhog Day, Analyze This, Analyze That, and Dedazzled just to name a few.
So are you getting a better picture of why I revere Ramis so much? Even if you want to address his worst movies you can’t negate the quality of those other films. Its hard to have a track record half as good as that and just considering his career kept going strong for that long was amazing enough.
But really my connection to Ramis may have gone a bit further then just respect for his work. Let’s go introspective and turn the clock back a bit: my older brother Scott was a massive Ghostbusters fan as a kid. I’m not just saying he was a fan, I mean massive! My Mom had made him a custom Ghostbusters uniform (seriously was awesome and I wore it a lot when I got older), and wearable Proton Pack which he wore to visit my Mom after I was born. That’s right, my first day in the world my brother came in dressed to meet me as a Ghostbuster so its easy to understand that those movies were a big part of my life. I forget if it was one for Egon Spengler but truly it wouldn’t have surprised me, but my memory is a bit hazy.
Egon in particular stuck out to me because he was a kind of quiet and super nerdy Jewish guy, and that reminded me of my Dad. I’m not ashamed to say I take after my Dad a lot and I was a fairly quiet nerd for a while, at least until I became a big mouth with a blog. There’s not a lot of times there is a smart and funny guy you can look up to in 80’s movies full of action stars Karate Kid type high school movies. Even if Ghostbusters is a technically a comedy, its truly more of an action comedy and as a star in it Ramis can be considered the rare Jewish action stars. Seriously, name 3 others, I dare you. There aren’t many others for the same reason there are few great Jewish athletes outside of Karl Yastremski and the Israeli Olympic team. Back back to Egon…he was smart, he was funny, and even if Venkman was more the main character, Egon really was more the guy in charge as he managed everything.
He was a role model and even being a little anti-social he was normal and funny and interesting and honestly he was my favorite…or at least tied with Venkman. There’s a lot for kids to latch on to Ghostbusters which is why it is still one of the most revered films of the 80’s and the so loved regardless of generation. It is so special to me to have been able to find a role model whom I could connect to as he was like me, and then be able to still revere even further as a movie fan 20+ years later. So I hope that you don’t think me over dramatic when I say again that Harold Ramis was a huge part of my childhood and a huge role model to me as a writer and (wannabe) film maker who will be dearly missed. Goodbye Egon, and rest in peace.
3 Notes/ Hide
- shanhalen liked this
- missanthropicprinciple liked this
- sobeaux liked this
- moviereelizations-blog posted this