“He’s cool. He’s jolly. The funny thing is that when I first met him [the Dalai Lama], the Tibetans were all familiar with Groundhog Day, but they didn’t understand the Dalai Lama speech in Caddyshack. They’re like, ‘The Dalai Lama does not play golf.’ I said, ‘I know, I know. But if he did…’“
As part of the Year One roll out, GQ publishes a wide-ranging and worthwhile interview with director Harold Ramis, one that pauses to consider Animal House, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Meatballs, and the strange headspace of Bill Murray. “Everybody has a Bill Murray story. He just punishes people, for reasons they can’t figure out. He was a student of Gurdjieff for a while, the Sufi mystic. Gurdjieff used to act really irrationally to his students, almost as if trying to teach them object lessons.“
On a movie related note, I wanted to draw your attention to flickchart.com. I don’t have any more invitations (still in beta), but I bet you’d enjoy it and cinematical seems to have a way to bypass the invitation process to get registered:
http://www.cinematical.com/2009/06/27/flickchart-easily-the-coolest-movie-site-of-the-year/
It’s a little addicting. If you try it out, look me up on there … http://www.flickchart.com/cdogzilla … I’d be interested in seeing how your list shapes up.
I played with it for awhile last night. Seems simple and deceptively addictive in a Skinner Box kinda way, but I’m not really sure what the phase 2 will be. There’s gotta be more than just rankings…right?
Also, I wish it was easier to fine-tune your rankings (tho’ perhaps it is — I couldn’t get the “my top films” link to work last night). FlickChart seems to have gotten it in its head that Reservoir Dogs is my favorite film ever, when really there are at least a dozen movies in my top 20 and beyond that I’m trying to get to leap over it.