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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.

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
Feelings
Laugh
Groundhog
Certain
Clean
Puritanical
May
Laughing
Inferior
Way
Emotion
Inferiors
Make
Comedy
Forbidden
Pretty
Somehow
Feeling
Tragedy
Pleasure
Laughter

More quotes by Harold Ramis

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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.
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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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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.
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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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You can't not have feelings about country clubs, whichever side you're on.
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Most comedy is not very ambitious. You probably can't name more than a handful of comedies that would qualify for Best Picture.
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When you're young and you first see the extent and depth of the world's hypocrisy, it's fun to go after it. But by the time you're sixty, it's so commonplace. What's the point in ridiculing people anymore? Their existence itself is a sort of sick joke.
Harold Ramis
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Most people live somewhere on the spectrum of anxiety and depression.
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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.
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I never read Playboy before I started working there and stopped reading it the day I quit.
Harold Ramis
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I'm not a believer in the pratfall. I don't think it's funny just to have someone fall down.
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.
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Just expressing contempt for your leaders doesn't really accomplish anything.
Harold Ramis
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It's like the old rule-if you introduce a gun into the first act of a play, it's going to be used in the third act. So if you do a movie about criminals, you have to accept there's going to be Some action.
Harold Ramis
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The cutting room is where you discover the optimal length of the movie.
Harold Ramis
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My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don't have interesting characters and a good story to tell.
Harold Ramis
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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.
Harold Ramis
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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.
Harold Ramis
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No one will laugh at how great things are for somebody.
Harold Ramis
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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