Harold Ramis Dies At 69 136
samzenpus writes "Writer and comedian Harold Ramis has passed away at 69. Ramis had a hand in many classic comedies but is especially loved for playing the ghost-hunting Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters. 'His creativity, compassion, intelligence, humor and spirit will be missed by all who knew and loved him,' said his family in a statement."
Egon's sexuality (Score:4, Interesting)
While his character was supposed to be a little dorky I suppose, he was just pure awesome to me.
One of the things I enjoyed about his character in the movies as I got to be older was his relationship to Jeanine was a bit complicated. She clearly puts the moves on him...but unlike nearly every male movie character I can think of (who isn't implied to be gay) - he's ambivalent, tolerates, or rebuffs her. The stereotypical reaction from male movie characters is "Yeah, let's get it on!", especially in action movies.
However, there's a scene - I can't remember which - where he says something, she responds with "OH EGON, I just blah blah blah" and he responds with a look that's half "Yeah, baby. You know you like it" and half "siiiigh, ok, I'll console you, fine..."
Now...if only Winston's character hadn't been so racist. That's the part I hate the most about Ghostbusters; Winston Zedmore is pretty much just there to bounce jokes off of or be the 'dumb black clown' character. I feel like the cartoon actually gave him character development and whatnot more on par with the others (although did they ever show any of his family, for example?) The series definitely played up the "the most normal and people-skills-equipped of the group" elements.
Re:look at his lines (Score:4, Interesting)
That's largely because he and Bill Murray were the only strictly sane people in the entire movie. He was just an average joe looking for a job, and Murray was a con artist. Everyone else was, to be blunt, to one degree or another out of their minds.
This is the first time I've ever be introduced to the notion that Winston was merely the obligatory black character.
Caddyshack documentary (Score:4, Interesting)
Not acting per se, but he was excellent in the Caddyshack documentary. Some of the insights into how that movie got made were awesome. Especially his observations about the direction a movie can take when you decide to make an animatronic gopher one the lead characters.
And PC too (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I thought Winston was the most real character in the whole zoo; a necessary character to ground all the others. And I loved his "I've seen shit that'll turn you white!" line--and I'm black.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:See you on the other side, Egon (Score:5, Interesting)
I concur. An inspirational nerd.
I sympathise, but as an old Canadian geezer, I always felt that by the time the US audience finally heard about them, the SCTV alumni had already done their best work. That troupe - and their cheezy, low-budget show [wikipedia.org] - formed my sense of humour more than anything else. Dave Thomas, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara... all of them went on to make memorable comedy in the US. I think Joe Flaherty was the only one who didn't make a big splash. (Which is America's loss, not his.)
But there was a time when all of them were callow, reckless youths with nothing to lose by making asses of themselves week after week on a second-rate Toronto-based network that was so small (it had only 13 stations at the start) it too had nothing to lose.
Back in junior high school, my week was centred around that blessed moment when the Indian-head test pattern would appear and the announcer would say, 'Don't touch that dial. Don't touch that one either. And stop touching yourself.' I still remember the intonation....
(... I never did stop touching myself, but that's another story.)