Harold Ramis Gets Stoned With Jack Black and Michael Cera

Writer/director Harold Ramis has gotten biblical after all those years busting ghosts. Ramis spent some time with Heeb this month to talk about his new movie Year One and the maturity levels of his Stone Age hunter-gathers – Jack Black and Michael Cera.

I feel like moviegoers have been burned in past by the caveman comedy: Encino Man, The Flintstones, even that Shelley Long movie from way back when. Was this at all part of the roundtable discussion when putting this movie together?

This is definitely not a “caveman” movie. Our heroes are Stone Age hunter-gatherers living an Edenic existence until Jack Black makes the mistake of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It all tracks through Torah, developmental biology, anthropology and Freudian psychology … the usual stuff you get in a summer youth comedy.

What about Year One made you sign up for it? Aside from the money, I mean?

I’ve always liked the comic conceit of putting characters with a contemporary consciousness in the ancient world, and I’m a history dilettante. After 9/11, I started reading more about the history of religion and wanted to say something about the fundamentalisms and orthodoxies that were shredding human society in conflicts all around the world.

I was afraid to go after Christianity or Islam–those guys will kill you–but no one cares if you start bashing a defunct pagan religion. Not many Shamash or Moloch worshippers around these days. Of course, the Hebrews get some gentle joshing, too, but I think most Jews can take a joke.

Another characteristic this movie obviously has is the whole characters-trekking-through-historical-moments thing, a la Forrest Gump or To Live. Did titles like these come up in conversation, too?

Someone said it was like “Forrest Gump in Bible Land,” and I’ve called it "Abbot and Costello Go to Sodom." Others have described it as a Bing Crosby-Bob Hope Road picture. The Forrest Gumpy aspect is definitely there.

I gotta ask: Were you responsible for writing the standoff scene in Back to School between Rodney Dangerfield’s Thornton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) and Sam Kinison’s history professor?

That was based on a history teacher I had in high school who turned insanely angry when the subject of Franklin Roosevelt came up: ‘He sold us down the river at Yalta!’ she’d scream.

I’m proudest of the dialogue at the ritzy cocktail party. Melon knows his wife is cheating on him, and a guest comes up to him and says, ‘Your wife was just showing us her art collection. She has a magnificent Klimt.’ ‘Jeez!’ Melon says, ‘She’s showing to everybody!’ ‘Well, she’s very proud of it,’ the man says. ‘I’m proud of mine, too,’ says Melon, ‘But I don’t go wavin’ it around at parties.’

The first and probably only Gustav Klimt joke ever made.

Back to Year One: Were there biblical moments you wanted to include but couldn’t figure out how?

We took the liberty of compressing the timeline of Genesis so Cain and Abel could co-exist with Abraham and Isaac. My favorite question during one of the market research focus groups came from a young guy who wanted to know how they could all be in the movie since Cain and Abel were more than a 1,000 years before Abraham. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘you mean the real Cain and Abel. This is a different Cain and Abel.’

We originally had a Noah section in the script, too; they make their way to the sea coast where it’s been raining for 40 days and 40 nights. ‘Some think it’s a punishment from God,’ they’re told, ‘Others say it’s just climate change.’ It was very funny at our table read for the Columbia Pictures execs. Stanley Tucci read Noah, but the sequence would have been incredibly expensive to shoot, had little story value, and Evan Almighty had just squandered any possible interest.

Who else was in consideration for the roles of Zed and Oh?

My first thought was Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller because I really liked Zoolander, but, when it came down to it, I went after Jack Black. From the first time I saw him in High Fidelity (I appear as John Cusack’s father on DVD only) I thought he was brilliant. Then Jack and I appeared together in Jake Kasdan’s Orange County, and I came to think of him as a healthy John Belushi. But comparing him to anyone just diminishes his comic spirit and inherent goodness, intelligence and decency. Once he was cast for our table read it was impossible to imagine anyone else in the role.

Michael Cera was Judd Apatow’s idea. I’d loved all the players in Arrested Development, and Judd showed me scenes from Superbad prior to its release. Michael’s intelligence, sweetness, and natural delivery were really impressive. My only reservation was the age difference between Michael and Jack, but, given Michael’s maturity and Jack’s immaturity, they kind of meet in the middle.

I also have to know what’s up with this "in development" tag for a Meatballs remake on your IMDB. What’s up with that?

I have no idea. I worked on the script of the original Meatballs, and that was it. IMDB isn’t always that reliable.

You are also responsible for giving Warren Oates his career swan song in Stripes.

Warren Oates was really cool, and working with him was a pleasure. His history with Sam Peckinpah and his inherent “manliness” made us feel like Hollywood pussies, but he brought strength, credibility and real meaning to his role and elevated it beyond the broader comedic stereotype of the tough sergeant.

Writing and directing aside, you’ve played some fun roles on screen. Egon from Ghostbusters, of course, but you also got to work with Diane Keaton in Baby Boom.

By nature and temperament, I should have played the good guy Diane Keaton falls in love with, but that was Sam Shepard’s role. I played the vain, self-involved, investment banker boyfriend who ends up bailing on Diane when the prospect of her raising a child comes up. The good news was that I got to spend two days in bed with Diane Keaton shooting one sequence; the bad news was that she wore a flannel nightgown and wool socks the whole time.

I’ve always read how the original cast for Animal House was supposed to be filled with SNL players (Chevy, Bill, Aykroyd) but was instead replaced with lesser-known talents (Tim Matheson, Bruce McGill). Was the studio worried that, by not having the big names, the movie would flop?

We wrote [Animal House] thinking of the funny people we knew best: Belushi, Aykroyd, Chevy, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, et cetera. I think Chevy declined because he generally ‘didn’t play well with others’ and had visions of breaking into more adult, mainstream films.

[Director] John Landis had no connection to Second City, SNL, or the National Lampoon, didn’t want to be treated like an outsider, and probably wanted to avoid the perception that this was somehow a ‘Saturday Night Live movie.’ The studio was happy to have Belushi, didn’t want to run up the meager budget with other potentially costly ‘names,’ and everyone felt the script was so funny that no other stars were needed. Matheson, Peter Riegert, McGill, Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst were brilliant in their auditions and probably cost about a dollar and a half, which was what we were paid as writers.

Last question: A few years back I interviewed Scott Colomby for his performance as the greaseball golfer in Caddyshack. He got pretty choked up talking about Rodney. Told me about how, every day after filming, everyone held up at night at some hotel, and that, whenever someone wanted to get high, they would go down to the laundry room … "Hey, Scott," Rodney would say, "Wanna go do some laundry?" … Did you ever take part in this with Rodney?

No, I had my laundry sent out.

What do you think?