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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.
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
Thing
Eventually
Seemed
Loved
Point
Idea
Living
Devolve
Ideas
Remote
Writing
Performing
More quotes by Harold Ramis
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
I'm not a believer in the pratfall. I don't think it's funny just to have someone fall down.
Harold Ramis
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
I've never taken a script to the stage or to principal photography and said, This is perfect. This is as good as it can possibly be. It's not Shakespeare, you know you know it can probably be better.
Harold Ramis
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
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
I collect spores, molds, and fungus.
Harold Ramis
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
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
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.
Harold Ramis
I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression.
Harold Ramis
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
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
Analyze This is a good movie because Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal are really good. But without the material to put on the play, of course, they couldn't be good. For me, it starts with the writing.
Harold Ramis
Just expressing contempt for your leaders doesn't really accomplish anything.
Harold Ramis
I can't imagine a successful comedy movie without a successful comedy performance at the heart of it.
Harold Ramis
I always think that the writer is doing the vast majority of the director's work, in a sense. If you're a writer who is also going to direct, you're doing all your preparation: You're already visualizing everything, you're imagining how the lines are going to be read, you see the blocking in your head, and you know the rhythm and the pacing.
Harold Ramis
If you're doing six takes, instead of doing six variations on the same words, why not just throw out the words and make them up as you go along, if you're comfortable with it? It gives the movies a slightly rangier feeling, and more of an accidental feel, but it also makes them edgier.
Harold Ramis
Find the most talented person in the room and if it's not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. try to be helpful.
Harold Ramis
You don't have to know much, just a little bit more than everybody else.
Harold Ramis
