Harold Ramis: I believe things happen that can't be explained, but so...

When someone's an actor and you're an actor, you meet them and you feel like you know them. We're in the same business, and we all speak the same comedy language.

Harold Ramis

comedy actors language

The trick with sequels is, you have to give people what they liked before, yet be innovative enough so they don't feel like they're seeing the same movie.

Harold Ramis

enough giving people

The comic edge of Ghostbusters will always be the same. It's still treating the supernatural with a totally mundane sensibility. In the world of ghostbusting, there are certain givens. You're always going to have some new invented technology, some pseudo-science that sounds right because we drop enough familiar terms from physics and engineering, and pseudo-methodology, something that people will think they may have read something about before.

Harold Ramis

engineering technology thinking

I'm thinking of doing a marital comedy for one of the studios, but I want it to be so painful that it'll have a profound effect on married couples who see it together.

Harold Ramis

couple profound thinking

Most comedy is not very ambitious. You probably can't name more than a handful of comedies that would qualify for Best Picture.

Harold Ramis

ambitious comedy names

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

groundhog-day laughter laughing

Most comedies are calculated. They tend to pander. They're not about anything important.

Harold Ramis

comedy important

Whatever bliss we think we're going to find, we may find it in brief flashes, fleeting moments that come and go. There's an impossibility to nailing down any good feeling.

Harold Ramis

fleeting feelings thinking

I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression.

Harold Ramis

dramatic comedy expression

Most people live somewhere on the spectrum of anxiety and depression.

Harold Ramis

spectrum anxiety people

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

addiction home character

For me, most comedy scripts fail in the mechanical playing-out of the setup. They'll pay lip service to a moral lesson or a psychological progression.

Harold Ramis

scripts lessons pay

I want to explore marriage without the usual Hallmark Card platitudes. Life is difficult, and I like movies that acknowledge that.

Harold Ramis

usual want cards

Everyone has experienced laughing at a funeral, and not even inappropriately. It could be a response to a moment of absurdity or some fond memory. We're human beings so we understand that laughter and crying aren't always disparate emotions.

Harold Ramis

laughter laughing memories

You can't love somebody into a state of mental health.

Harold Ramis

mental-health states

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.

Harold Ramis

growing-up three robins

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

doctors would-be mistake

I met someone who said they'd figured out my genre: "madcap redemption comedy." I'll buy that.

Harold Ramis

genre redemption comedy

I can't imagine a successful comedy movie without a successful comedy performance at the heart of it.

Harold Ramis

comedy successful heart

I've got to find a compromise where I don't feel compromised. I've got to find something equally good that they don't feel uncomfortable with. At a certain point, it's no longer about what I thought was right, but it's about this new discovery that happens with the actors. It's nice when the actor is also a writer.

Harold Ramis

actors nice discovery

I believe things happen that can't be explained, but so many people seem intent on explaining them. Everyone has an answer for them. Either aliens or things from the spirit world.