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

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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.
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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.
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No matter what I have to say, I'm still trying to say it in comedic form.
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I can't imagine a successful comedy movie without a successful comedy performance at the heart of it.
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Never hit anyone in anger, unless you're absolutely sure you can get away with it.
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I have no trouble selling out—I’m a benevolent hack, in a certain way—but I want to pander for something I believe in.
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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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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.
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I was the little guy who knew how to tie a necktie. It came from having absentee parents. They were tremendously loving and caring people who, by circumstance, had to go to work.
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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.
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Some people have a fear of rejecting all the security that comes with family, church and state. They become fundamentalists.
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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.
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