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Films are big hits when they touch a lot of people. Things are not funny in a vacuum, they're funny because we respond to some personal dislocation, some embarrassment, some humiliation, some pain we've suffered, or some desire we have.

Harold Ramis

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Harold Ramis
Age: 69 †
Born: 1944
Born: November 21
Died: 2014
Died: February 24
Actor
Comedian
Director
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Television Actor
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Harold Allen Ramis
Film
Respond
Things
Touch
Dislocation
People
Films
Vacuums
Personal
Vacuum
Funny
Embarrassment
Bigs
Humiliation
Pain
Hits
Desire
Suffered

More quotes by Harold Ramis

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I'd rather do comedies that strike at some bigger ideas.
Harold Ramis
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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.
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Whenever a critic mentions the salary of an actor, I'm thinking, He's not talking about the movie.
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Groundhog Day was pretty clean. It may have to do with some puritanical feeling that comedy is a forbidden pleasure in a certain way. They make you laugh, and laughter is somehow an inferior emotion to tragedy.
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I try to measure the amount of truth in a work rather than just looking at the generic distinction between comedy and drama.
Harold Ramis
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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.
Harold Ramis
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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.
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When I've written for Bill Murray - I've written six films for him - people would read it and say, Oh, that's so perfectly Bill. He'd read it and say, Are you kidding? I can't say these words. So it's all about perception.
Harold Ramis
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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.
Harold Ramis
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I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression.
Harold Ramis
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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.
Harold Ramis
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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.
Harold Ramis
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I collect spores, molds, and fungus.
Harold Ramis
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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.
Harold Ramis
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My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules.
Harold Ramis
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Never hit anyone in anger, unless you're absolutely sure you can get away with it.
Harold Ramis
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At a certain point, you have to convince the actors that you've done the right thing. The way I work, if I can't convince them, I've got to move on. I can't coerce them or browbeat them.
Harold Ramis
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We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough.
Harold Ramis
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If Chevy Chase had not been an actor, he might have been a very popular guy in advertising or whatever field he would have gone into, because of his charisma.
Harold Ramis
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Billy Crystal knows how to make people laugh. He's got 30 years on stage... there's no telling him what's funny.
Harold Ramis