God, Buddha and Jesus Walk into a Bar...The Zen of Harold Ramis

“The Lord is not serious…And certainly we are ridiculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to his humor.”

“I never thought of God as humorous,” said Father Stone.

“The creator of the platypus, the camel, the ostrich, and man? Oh, come now!” Father Peregrine laughed.

- Ray Bradbury The Martian Chronicles 1950

Genesis of a Straight Man

When Harold Ramis died at age 69 on February 24, 2014, of autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis (a swelling of the blood vessels), Time.com journalist Nick Gillespie wrote, “Ramis was nothing less than one of the subversive auteurs behind a whole new way of laughing at the world that mixed brains (he was a National Merit Scholar after all), cheap gross-out gags, and unapologetically anti-authoritarian antics.” During his career, Harold Ramis contributed to the screenplays for “Animal House,” “Meatballs,” “Caddyshack” (which he directed), “Stripes,” “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “Ghostbusters,” “Back to School,” “Groundhog Day” (which he directed), and “Analyze This” (which he also directed).

Chicago-born Harold Ramis had a Jewish upbringing but did not follow any religious path as an adult until he embraced Zen Buddhism. After graduating from college in 1966, he worked in a mental institution in St. Louis, an experience he frequently cited as preparing him for working with actors. As a substitute teacher back in Chicago, he started writing entertainment features for the Chicago Daily News and began studying and performing with Chicago’s Second City improvisational comedy troupe. According to Ramis, he eluded service during the Vietnam War by checking every single box on the medical history form.

Ramis landed a job as a joke editor for Playboy magazine and was later promoted to associate editor. Meanwhile, he developed a stage persona as a deadpan foil for the manic John Belushi in Second City. In 1974, Belushi brought Ramis and other Second City comedians, including Bill Murray, to New York to perform on “The National Lampoon Radio Show.” Belushi, Ramis, Murray, Joe Flaherty, Christopher Guest, and Gilda Radner subsequently starred in the live revue “The National Lampoon Show.”

 

Harold Ramis, Gilda Radner, John Belushi of Second City

Harold Ramis became a performer and head writer on “SCTV” ("Second City Television"), the Canadian-based, late-night sketch comedy series (also featuring John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, and Dave Thomas), during its first three years, 1976-1979. He had turned down an offer to write for “Saturday Night Live” and eventually left “SCTV” to pursue a film career.

 

Harold Ramis mocks John Candy in "Stripes" (1981), which Ramis co-scripted.
Although he once harbored dreams of becoming a lead actor, Ramis realized his
better fit was as a straight man for more uninhibited talents like John Belushi
and Bill Murray.

Tad Friend, who interviewed Ramis in 2004 for The New Yorker, wrote, “The secret of American commercial success is to hijack a subculture and ransom it to the mainstream. What Elvis did for rock and Eminem did for rap, Harold Ramis did for attitude: he mass-marketed the 60s to the 70s and 80s. He took his generation’s anger and curiosity and laziness and woolly idealism and gave it a hyper-articulate voice. He wised it up.” “Comedy is inherently subversive,” Ramis once said. “We represent the underdog as comedy usually speaks for the lower classes. We attack the winners.”

A 1983 article in The Chicago Tribune Magazine noted, “More than anyone else, Harold Ramis has shaped this generation’s ideas of what is funny.” Ramis’ movies have inspired Adam Sandler, the Farrelly brothers, Jay Roach (director of the “Austin Powers” comedies, as well as “Meet the Parents” and “Meet the Fockers”), and Jake Kasdan (the son of “The Big Chill” director Lawrence Kasdan and director of “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” and “Bad Teacher”). Judd Apatow, the writer-producer-director whose résumé includes “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” “Knocked Up,” and “Superbad,” interviewed Ramis for his high school newspaper. “His work is the reason why so many of us got into comedy,” Apatow said. “He literally made every single one of our favorite movies.”

In 1993, Harold Ramis told the Los Angeles Times that he took pride in having made two, perhaps four, films that might earn a footnote in history, although he declined to specify which ones. “That gives you a tremendous sense of validation,” he reflected, “but at the same time you suffer the possibility that the next thing you do will be awful, and you have to face getting older and I’m not really looking forward to being 77 and being out there directing ‘Caddyshack XII.’”

Nick Gillespie noted, “As with many talented creators, virtually all elements of Ramis’ repertoire were on display in his earliest work…Ramis’ oeuvre flattened out after “Groundhog Day.’ In the wake of critical and commercial success, his output became increasingly programmatic and uninteresting.”

Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal read over director Harold Ramis' shoulder
on the set of either "Analyze This" (1999) or its 2002 sequel, "Analyze That."

Harold Ramis’ last commercial success was 1999’s “Analyze This,” pairing Robert De Niro as an angst-ridden mobster and Billy Crystal as his reluctant psychiatrist. In 2005, Ramis directed “The Ice Harvest,” a brave but risky departure for him in its darkly comedic take on the film noir staple of a perfect crime gone wrong, featuring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Platt, and Randy Quaid.

Billy Bob Thornton, John Cusack in "The Ice Harvest" (2005)

Harold Ramis’ final film as writer-producer-director and actor was 2009’s “Year One,” starring Jack Black and Michael Cera as Zed and Oh, prehistoric boneheads who are banished from their tribe of hunter-gatherers and encounter various Old Testament characters on their way to the wicked city of Sodom. The picture was co-produced by the aforementioned Judd Apatow.

Asked about the genesis of “Year One,” Ramis said, “The influences have been kicking around in my head for my whole life.” He remarked, “I love the idea of taking characters with a contemporary consciousness and interpreting the past through them.” He specifically cited Mel Brooks’ classic 2000 Year Old Man sketch with Carl Reiner. “I thought that was hysterically funny when I was in college. I memorized all that material.” Ramis also admired “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Life of Brian” and “thought these are very good expressions of the same kind of juxtaposition.”

“And then my religious and theological interests and my interest in history started to come together,” he said. He started thinking about “fundamentalism and orthodoxy and the role they play in world conflict. The history of religion seems like an ongoing tragedy of some kind – persecution and injustice, torture, inquisition, and the way religion is used to justify politics.” Ramis read the history of Islam, read a biography of Mohammed, “and I started to get into my own Judaism in a small way…”

“So I thought about trying to track some of my religious and political ideas through the dawn of man, and then I thought, Why not Genesis? And I started using the early start of Genesis as a template for these ideas.” Ramis noted, “You can’t really read the Bible as history. Someone said, ‘Genesis starts off as mythology, then it becomes legend and then it becomes history.’ So I wanted to connect it all, connect what in the real world might have given rise to the mythologies and the legends, and bring it up to the beginning of urban civilization.”

Brooks and the Book

The abovementioned 2000 Year Old Man was inspired by an impromptu tape recording Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks made at a party, with Brooks, in a thick Yiddish dialect, adlibbing answers to Reiner’s historical questions. The duo, who had worked as writers on comedian Sid Caesar’s live sketch comedy series “Caesar’s Hour” in the late 1950s, first performed the bit on TV in 1961.

 

Carl Reiner interviews Mel Brooks as the 2000 Year Old Man.

Brooks’ off-the-cuff recollections of figures factual and fictional included Joan of Arc (“Knew her? I went with her, dummy!”) and Robin Hood (“He stole from everybody and kept everything!”). When Carl Reiner asked “Is it true you were at the scene of the Crucifixion?” the 2000 Year Old Man responded, “Oh Boy! I knew Christ. Thin lad. Always wore sandals. Hung around with twelve other guys. They came in the store, no one ever bought anything. Once, they asked for water.”

Undoubtedly, Brooks’ experience as the 2000 Year Old Man impacted his script for the Stone Age and Biblical segments of 1981’s "History of the World Part I." On Mount Sinai, the voice of God (an uncredited Carl Reiner) booms, “Moses! Do you hear me?!” Moses (Brooks) replies, “Yes, I hear you, I hear you. A deaf man could hear you!” He descends from the mountain, struggling with three stone tablets. “Hear me, all pay heed!” he proclaims. “The Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen –“ whereupon he drops one of the tablets, which shatters on the ground. “Oy! Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey!”

 

Mel Brooks as Moses in "History of the World Part I" (1981)

As Comicus, a standup philosopher in the Ancient Rome segment of “History of the World Part I,“ Brooks is working as a waiter in Judea when he blunders into a room marked “Private Supper,” where Jesus (John Hurt) is seated with his disciples. “Does everybody want soup?” Brooks asks. “Please, we must talk,” one of the apostles says, “this might be our last supper!” Brooks declares, “It’s my first order! Look, one little question and I’ll let you all go. Are you all together? Or is it separate checks?” “Leonardo” comes in to paint a group portrait and has everyone move to one side of the table. Comicus ends up behind Jesus, holding up his serving tray as if it were an aureola.

Which prompts the pertinent question of whether or not the Supreme Being has a sense of humor.  The Moviehouse ran across this intriguing query on a random Christian website: “How can we, His creatures, think things are funny unless the whole idea came from God in the first place?” Like the questioner, we cannot recall having heard a sermon about the Creator’s sense of humor nor reading a theological study of laughter as one of His immutable characteristics.

Famously, the shortest verse in the Bible is the saddest, John 11:35: “Jesus wept.” Unfortunately, there is no complementary verse: “Jesus laughed.” In Luke 10:21, we do read, “…Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.”  Surely, the Nazarene had to be smiling, if not laughing, in his rejoicing.

 

Speaking of rejoicing, Willem Defore (left) as Jesus, in director Martin Scorsese's
"The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988), celebrates a wedding in Cana, where,
before restoring sight to the blind, healing cripples, curing lepers, and raising
the dead, Jesus performed his first miracle by (SPOILER ALERT for MADD)
turning water into wine. (Right) The popular charcoal sketch of "Laughing Jesus"
by renowned allegorical figurative artist Fred Berger was used in 1969 to
illustrate an opinion piece titled "For Christ's Sake" in Playboy magazine.

The Bible does contain what might be arguably the Scriptures’ sole attempt at toilet humor, in Matthew 15:17: “Do you not realize that everything that enters the mouth, passes into the stomach, and is expelled in the latrine?” On the other hand, Paul, in Ephesians 5:4, warned, “Let there be no obscenity nor foolish talk nor crude joking (coarse jesting), which are out of place…” Pages back in the Old Testament, Proverbs 10:10 cautioned, “Whoever winks maliciously causes grief, and a chattering fool comes to ruin.”

 

If anyone is interested, most scholars believe the Apostle Paul actually
dictated his letters to a secretary instead of penning them himself.

Speaking of malicious winks and chattering fools, Mamie Van Doren, one of the first buxom blonde bombshells molded by studios into a Marilyn Monroe clone (Jayne Mansfield would soon follow), starred in 1960’s “The Private Lives of Adam and Eve.” A bus bound for Reno is waylaid by a flash flood, forcing the driver and passengers to seek refuge in an abandoned church. Van Doren and Martin Milner (future costar of TV’s “Adam-12”) play a troubled married couple who dream they’re Adam and Eve. (The role of Adam was originally offered to Jayne Mansfield’s husband, bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, but, according to Van Doren, “Jayne made such a fuss about him working with me that he had to turn it down.”) “If I had a mother,” Eve pouts, “I’d go home to her!” to which Adam declares, “Don’t be silly – I am your mother!”

The supporting cast included Mickey Rooney (who co-directed the comedy) as a leering casino owner who shows up in the Garden of Eden as The Devil, Mel Torme as a traveling salesman, Tuesday Weld as a teen runaway, Paul Anka as rock ‘n’ roller Pinkie Parker, and frequent Playboy magazine model June Wilkinson. The scenes in Eden were filmed in a chintzy tinted process called “Spectacolor.” Interestingly, producer-co-director Albert Zugsmith, who also cast Mamie Van Doren in “High School Confidential,” “The Beat Generation,” “Girls Town,” and “Sex Kittens Go to College,” produced Orson Welles’ 1958 film noir classic “Touch of Evil.”

 

The Devil (Mickey Rooney) ogles Eve (Mamie Van Doren) in "The Private
Lives of Adam and Eve" (1960). In her 1987 autobiography Playing the Field,
Mamie Van Doren recalled, "Each day, a lifelike balloon-rubber cover had to be
glued over my breasts, my hair glued down to the rubber. Then a fern had to be
glued in place over my belly button."

The Catholic Legion of Decency condemned “The Private Lives of Adam and Eve,” but overall, the movie was a harmless burlesque. When it comes to poking fun at the Book, filmmakers apparently feared to wade into the water, much less walk on it, for decades, opting instead for the comfort of pious if bloated epics like “The Ten Commandments,” “King of Kings,” “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” and “The Bible…in the Beginning.” That trend of excess returns this year (thanks to a glut of computer-generated special effects) with “Noah,” starring Russell Crowe, and “Exodus,” with Christian Bale as Moses.

 

Christian Bale as Moses in the upcoming "Exodus," directed by Ridley Scott

Oh, sure, there was that cute little comedy “Oh, God!” in 1977, with George Burns in a role he was born (81 years earlier) to play, namely the Almighty, who, unsurprisingly, acts a lot like George Burns. The Oscar-nominated screenplay for the film, directed by Carl Reiner, was written by Larry Gelbart, best known as the creator-writer-producer of the hit TV series “M*A*S*H.”

 

John Denver, George Burns in "Oh, God!" (1977), which ends with God (Burns)
reassuring the audience, "If you find it hard to believe in Me,
maybe it will help to know that I believe in you."

And Now for Something Completely Different

In the end, “Oh, God!” was safe, family-friendly, even reverent, three adjectives one would never use to describe 1979’s “Monty Python’s Life Brian,” an inspired, iconoclastic spin on the New Testament from the British comedy troupe of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, depicting the life of one Brian Cohen, a hapless schlemiel born on the same day as – and next door to – Jesus in Bethlehem, who is continually mistaken for the Messiah.

On a U.S. promotional tour for “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the troupe was growing weary of questions about their next film until Eric Idle blurted, “Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory.” Idle recalled getting drunk in an Amsterdam tavern with Terry Gilliam when the two started making “bad-taste carpenter jokes about J.C. …being nailed inadequately to a cross by a poor workman, and trying to give the carpenters advice since they were so bad…the cross kept falling over and he went slop face first into the mud – those sort of sophomoric gags which are hilarious when you are in a nice warm bar in Amsterdam with several bottles of Dutch beer inside you.”

Back in London, the group discussed the idea seriously. “What attracted us,” Idle noted in the 2005 book Monthy Python Speaks, “was the freshness of the subject – nobody had made a Biblical comedy film.” He emphasized, “Of course it became clear early on that we couldn’t make fun of the Christ since what he says is very fine (and Buddhist), but the people around him were hilarious, and still are! So it really is an attack on Churches and pontifications and self-righteous assholes who claim to speak for God, of whom there are still too many on the planet.”

Not unlike the later “The Last Temptation of Christ” (directed by Martin Scorsese and featuring Willem Defoe as Jesus, Harvey Keitel as Judas Iscariot, and Barbara Hershey as Mary Magdalene) and “The Passion of the Christ” (directed by Mel Gibson with Jim Caviezel as Jesus), “Life of Brian” was persecuted and condemned by numerous religious groups even before its release. Two towns in the English county of Surrey that didn’t have movie theaters banned it anyway. Terry Jones, who also directed the movie, remarked, “I thought it would be controversial…the controversy surrounding it usually came from people who hadn’t seen the film, people who just didn’t like the idea of it.”

 

The Pythons - Michael Palin, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle,
Terry Giliam, Terry Jones - pose for a publicity photo on-location for
"Life of Brian" (1979). The production benefited from utilizing sets in
Tunisia left over from director Franco Zeffirelli's 1978 miniseries
"Jesus of Nazareth."

Eric Idle pointed out “anger is the hallmark of the closed mind, and we certainly flushed out some raving bigots, and that was part of the joy of it.” Michael Palin, who believed they had created “something intellectually defensible,” said he “quite enjoyed the reaction. Because in many ways it made us exactly what Python is about, really the reaction from the sort of people who were inspiration for Python: the little petty officials who close cinemas…because they don’t like the comedy film about the Bible story.”

 

In a divinely inspired tweek of the Sermon on the Mount, onlookers in the
cheap seats on the outskirts misinterpret Christ's messages as "Blessed are
the cheesemakers" and "The Greek shall inherit the earth."

“If you do want to make a success of a movie,” John Cleese stated, “get people cross and angry and protesting. It’s extraordinary! They have actually made me rich! I feel we should send them a crate of champagne…”

For Jones, the picture may be heretical but not blasphemous. He maintained, “It’s not blasphemous because it accepts the Christian story, but it’s heretical in terms of (being) very critical of the Chruch, and I think that’s what the joke is…here is Christ saying all these wonderful things about people living together in peace and love, and then for the next two thousand years people are putting each other to death in His name because they can’t agree about how he said it, or in what order he said it.”

 

Eric Idle (left) caps off the film's mass crucifixion scene with his song "Always
Look on the Bright Side of Life" ("Life's a piece of shit / When you look at it /
Life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true / You'll see it's all a show / Keep 'em
laughing as you go / Just remember that the last laugh is on you"). Idle somehow
worked the tune into his 2005 Tony Award-winning musical "Spamalot," based
on the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Historically, during the
Falklands War, on May 4, 1982, the British destroyer HMS Sheffield was struck
by an Exocet missile, and as the ship was sinking, the crew, waiting on deck to
be rescued, struck up a chorus of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."

“One of the themes in the film,” according to John Cleese, “is, ‘Do make up your own mind about things and don’t do what people tell you.’” Offering the benediction on “Life of Brian,” Cleese noted, “What we are is quite clearly making fun of the way people follow religion but not of religion itself…I would defend ‘Life of Brian’ as being a perfectly religious film.”

Was This Exodus Really Necessary?

In 1975, Eric Idle, along with musician Neil Innes (sometimes referred to as the “Seventh Python”), created The Rutles, a faux band parodying The Beatles, for a British TV special. The four-man combo (nicknamed “The Prefab Four”) unexpectedly became an actual band (including Idle and Innes), touring and releasing a number of singles and albums. In 1978, a mockumentary (predating director Rob Reiner’s “This Is Spinal Tap” by six years) called “All You Need Is Cash” premiered on television, co-directed by Idle and Gary Weis. George Harrison, a longtime Monty Python fan, had a cameo in “All You Need Is Cash.”

Gary Weis, who co-produced the 1973 documentary “A Film about Jimi Hendrix,” had taken over making short films for “Saturday Night Live” from comedian Albert Brooks after the first season of the series. One of Weis’ memorable shorts for “SNL” featured an elderly, deadpanned woman showing off the wares in her New York City novelty gag shop.  In 1979, Weis produced and directed “80 Blocks from Tiffany’s,” an acclaimed documentary about two rival African-American and Puerto Rican gangs in the South Bronx. He would go on to direct music videos for Paul Simon (“You Can Call Me Al,” featuring Chevy Chase), The Bangles (“Walk Like an Egyptian”), and George Harrison (“Got My Mind Set on You”).

Weis’ gig at “Saturday Night Live” led to his move to the majors as the director of the feature motion picture “Wholly Moses!” (1980), a bold-faced, shameless rip-off of the previous year’s “Life of Brian,” casting Dudley Moore (between his two hit comedies “10” and “Arthur”) as a self-deluded schmo named Herschel (a name that’s already a setup for ensuing hilarity, right?) who is convinced he – not brother-in-law Moses - is the chosen deliverer of the Hebrews from Pharaoh’s bondage.

Even the poster for "Wholly Moses!" is a Monty Python wannabe.

Herschel’s tedious 103-minute “exodus” – from retail idol statue carver to court astrologist to salt mine slave to humble shepherd to false prophet – is simply an excuse to parade one comedic guest star after another in front of the camera for a minute or two of abysmally humorless business.

Laraine Newman, Dudley Moore, Jack Gilford in "Wholly Moses!" (1980)

On the Moviehouse stopwatch, here’s how the stellar cameos timed out: John Ritter, in a ridiculous K-Mart Halloween costume as the Devil (two minutes); David L. Lander (best known as “Squiggy” on TV’s “Laverne & Shirley”), as a lamely humorous crippled beggar (two minutes, 30 seconds); Madeline Kahn, as a traveling snake oil peddler (two minutes, 45 seconds, without a single punchline); John Houseman, as the Archangel, whose wry banter with a Sodom landlady elicits rare chuckles (two minutes, 45 seconds); and Jack Gilford (a Moviehouse favorite for his role as the cross-dressing Hysterium in director Richard Lester’s manic musical farce “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”) as a kibitzing villager (three minutes, 15 seconds).  Actually, in the briefest of cameos (all of one minute, five seconds), Dom DeLuise provides a genuine laugh as a desert wanderer. Oh, and if you blink, you’ll miss SCTV’s Andrea Martin as Moses’ wife Zipporah.

Richard Pryor drops in at movie’s end for five minutes of screen time as Pharaoh. His shtick was scheduled for the last day of shooting, but when he didn’t show up and frantic calls went unanswered, filmmakers considered replacing him with “Blazing Saddles” star Cleavon Little. Pryor eventually showed up but refused to play the scene as scripted with a trained lion by his side.

Inexplicably, Richard Pryor performs his entire scene without another actor
onscreen with him; this is a publicity photo of Dudley Moore and Richard Pryor.

Admittedly, James Coco’s exuberant performance as Moore’s father is too good for this picture, which, by the way, may be the only starring role for original “Saturday Night Live” Not Ready for Prime Time Player Laraine Newman, as Moore’s wife, Zerelda (pretty face, cute lamb impression, but somebody ought to give her a sandwich). And Paul Sand is comically pathetic as a fallen angel, but nothing can atone for the end result being an annoying, painful viewing experience.  Everything about the production looks cheap, and the directing is just plain sloppy. “Wholly Moses!” began and finished Gary Weis’ feature film career.

Around a dozen years before portraying the shepherd played for a chump by God in “Wholly Moses!”, Dudley Moore found himself repeatedly shortchanged by the Devil in the 1967 comedy “Bedazzled,” directed by Stanley Donen (forever linked in filmdom with the incomparable Gene Kelly for their directing collaborations on “Singin’ in the Rain” and “On the Town”). Set in the swinging London of the 1960s, “Bedazzled” cast Peter Cook (Moore’s frequent comedy partner on British stage and television) as the Devil incarnate who offers an unhappy, burger-slinging cook – hopelessly infatuated with an icy waitress – seven wishes in exchange for his soul. Each wish, however, ends horribly (and often hilariously) wrong for the pathetic sap.

Stanley Moon (Dudley Moore) meets Lilian Lust (Raquel Welch)
in "Bedazzled" (1967)

Peter Cook based his screenplay on the German legend of Faust, a fictitious scholar who, dissatisfied with his life, makes a pact with the Devil and trades his soul for limitless knowledge and earthly delights. The timeless morality tale was the basis for two landmarks of theater - Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe’s 16^th century play “Doctor Faustus” and German poet Josef von Goethe’s early 19^th century tragedy “Faust” – and inspired a number of unique screen adaptations.

Elizabeth Hurley, Brendan Fraser star in director Harold Ramis'
"Bedazzled" remake.

But we digress. Or do we? Harold Ramis gave the Peter Cook-Dudley Moore comedy an amusing, just OK, but ultimately unnecessary makeover in 2000’s “Bedazzled,” starring Brendan Fraser as a friendless computer geek and Elizabeth Hurley (the British model and onetime girlfriend of actor Hugh Grant who played Vanessa in 1997’s “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery”) as Satan. Again, each wish the Devil grants the poor chump backfires, until he gets it right.

The Buddha of Comedy

Finally getting it right is seemingly a tenet of Buddhism, a religion Harold Ramis turned to after the collapse of his first marriage and the failure of his 1986 comedy “Club Paradise,” starring Robin Williams and Peter O’Toole. Ramis said of Buddhism, “It’s my shield and my armor in the work I do…to keep a cheerful, Zen-like detachment from everything.” Some of his later directing assignments – “Groundhog Day,” “Multiplicity,” “Analyze This,” even “Bedazzled” – include Buddhist elements.

Apparently, Harold Ramis and Buddha share the same sense of humor.

Comparing his later comedies to his earlier work, Ramis said, “The content’s different, but it comes from the same place in me, which is to try to point people at some reality or truth.” At a press junket for “Analyze This,” a writer concluded that Ramis’ genre had become “goofy redemption comedy,” to which Ramis responded, “OK, I’ll take that.”

“Groundhog Day” has earned a reputation as Hollywood’s only Buddhist message movie. It’s been written that the spiritual pull of Buddhism is on full display in the comedy (which was scripted, with Ramis, by Danny Rubin, also a Buddhist) as Bill Murray’s character relives the same day until he ultimately realizes what takes many lifetimes to understand – that every cycle of birth-death-rebirth is the same: depressing, painful, and bound by karma – until one awakens and makes a conscious decision to alter that destiny, turning outward with a concern for others rather than one’s personal desires.

Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott in "Groundhog Day" (1993)

While Buddhists embraced the film as an interpretation of their own message of rebirth and selflessness, Catholics, not to be left out, saw the film as a representation of Purgatory.

Even “Caddyshack” (written by Doug Kenney, Harold Ramis, and Brian Doyle-Murray) has its moments of spirituality in pseudo-Buddhist toss-offs by Ty (Chevy Chase) and Carl (Bill Murray). “The Zen philosopher Basho once wrote,” Ty says, “ ‘A flute with no holes in not a flute, and a doughnut with no hole is a Danish.’ He was a funny guy.” Relating his encounter with the Dalai Lama, Carl says he was told, “ ‘When you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.’ So I got that going for me, which is nice.” (Bill Murray’s pet project, the 1984 film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge, has Buddhism at its core. At one point, a Tibetan monk tells Murray’s character, Larry Darrell, “The path to salvation is narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor’s edge.”)

Assistant groundskeeper Carl (Bill Murray) explains his divine revelation
from the Dalai Lama to a captive audience in "Caddyshack" (1980).
When he had the opportunity to interview the Dalai Lama, then Minnesota
Governor Jesse Ventura asked him if he had ever seen "Caddyshack."
The high lama laughed but said he hadn't the pleasure yet. (When recalling
"Monty Python's Life of Brian," Eric Idle made the point, "The film has
appealed to many seriously religious people, including the Dalai Lama.")

Incidentally, the opportunity for Christian sensitivity in “Caddyshack” does not fare as well, as the character of Bishop Fred falls from grace after being struck by lightning and regresses to his earlier days as a hard-drinking Navy man.

And, believe it or not, a film as silly as “Year One” has its share of Buddhist sentiments. Once Zed (Jack Black) takes a bite out of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he embarks on a journey to discover all the world outside his village has to offer. On the DVD commentary, Ramis cracks, “For those students out there…eating the fruit is the dawning of existential consciousness. Make a note of that. You will be tested later.” Jack Black said of Ramis, “He’s a very Zen leader.”

In a moment of crisis, Oh (Michael Cera) tells Zed, “Maybe God doesn’t exist.” Zed says, “So everything is just random? Then nothing would mean anything. What would be the point?” “That is the point,” Oh replies.

Of course, a comedy is only as good as its laughs. For starters, Jack Black’s cocksure, cheerfully inept bluster plays well off Michael Cera’s timid, delicately gentle uncertainty. The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis commented, “The film brings to mind a Hope and Crosby road movie, though only if Bob and Bing, after studying the Bible as children and reading Nietzche as adults, were grappling with issues of faith.”

Oh (Michael Cera), Zed (Jack Black), Cain (David Cross) in "Year One" (2009)

David Cross (“Mr. Show”) is delightfully despicable as an ingratiating Cain who repeatedly befriends and betrays the two cavemen. (Paul Rudd appears unbilled as Abel). And Hank Azaria (best known for providing numerous voices on “The Simpsons,” including Moe, Apu, and Chief Wiggum) steals his scenes, depicting Abraham as a deranged Borscht Belt comic: “We are the Hebrews, a righteous people, but not very good at sports.” Azaria based his raspy, over-the-top delivery on George C. Scott’s performance as Abraham in director John Huston’s “The Bible…in the Beginning.”

Abraham (Hank Azaria) almost sacrifices his son Isaac (played by Christopher
Mintz-Plasse, best known as McLovin in "Superbad") with his good knife.

When Abraham attempts to sell Zed and Oh on circumcision, Oh offers, “Couldn’t we pierce our ears?” Abraham responds, “No, trust me. It’s gonna be a very, very sleek look. This is gonna catch on. I’m gonna get my good knife. And after, we’re all gonna have wine and sponge cake.”

Other noteworthy performers in “Year One” include Oliver Platt as a very hairy, very gay High Priest with a crush on Oh; Horatio Sanz as a caveman with the improbable name Enmebaragesi; Bill Hader, virtually unrecognizable as the village shaman; Vinnie Jones as the commander of the palace guard; Kyle Gass (Jack Black’s bandmate in Tenacious D) as a palace eunuch; and Harold Ramis himself as Adam.

Director Harold Ramis on-location with "Year One" stars Michael Cera, Jack Black;
Ramis, who had directed episodes of the hit TV series "The Office," brought in two
writers from that show, Gene Stupinsky and Lee Eisenberg, to co-write the screenplay.
"They represent a younger sensibility for a younger audience," Ramis said. "So I wanted
the movie to have broad appeal, not just appeal to people my age."

Harold Ramis was once asked how, when many writer-directors from his generation had dated themselves into irrelevance, he seemed to remain contemporary. He replied, “Well, by remaining immature myself. Some of the issues of my youth have really not gone away…I’m still outraged by the same things in the political world, and I’m still wrestling with the same adolescent issues of shame and peer pressure…I have this active relationship with adolescence, both internal and external.”

Postscript:

In happier times...Bill Murray, Harold Ramis in "Stripes" (1981)

After “Groundhog Day” in 1993, Harold Ramis and Bill Murray (who had worked with Ramis on five earlier films) had a falling out. Murray’s marriage was dissolving at the time, a period Dan Aykroyd referred to as “the Murricane.” And it probably didn’t help matters when Murray was bitten not once but twice by the groundhog, requiring anti-rabies shots.

Murray refused to speak to his former buddy for years. In 2004, Ramis told Time magazine that the absence of Murray’s friendship left a “huge hole” in his life. “But there are so many pride issues about reaching out,” Ramis said. “Bill would give you his kidney if you needed it, but he wouldn’t necessarily return your phonecalls.” In 2005, Ramis beseeched Murray’s brother, Brian Doyle-Murray, to offer Bill a role in “The Ice Harvest.” Doyle-Murray reported back that his brother wasn’t interested. “It’s a little heartbreaking to me,” Ramis remarked. “I don’t know that he’s heartbroken.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, Bill Murray visited Harold Ramis when he learned of his fatal illness. Afterward, Murray stated, “He earned his keep on this planet.”

In a statement following Ramis’ passing, President Barack Obama noted, “Our thoughts and prayers are with Harold’s wife, Erica, his children and grandchildren, and all those who loved him, who quote his work with abandon, and who hope that he received total consciousness.”

The young Harold Ramis, according to Dan Aykroyd in The New Yorker,
was the one who announced after all-night parties: "That was fun, but now
we've got to take the cars out of the pool."