I was very sorry to hear of Harold Ramis' death today. He was one of my favorites on SCTV in the '70's. Watching that show as an 8th grade super 8 filmmaker, I never dreamt I would one day get to work with Moe Green himself.
Thirteen years later, Tom Wilhite at Hyperion Animtion hired me to direct the feature Rover Dangerfield. I was only 26, and had more hubris than experience. It was Rodney Dangerfield's baby, and he got Harold Ramis to write a script. It wasn't a horrible first draft, though Harold did not put his name on it. With story artist Rebecca Rees, who was pregnant with her son Ian, we started working to improve the script.
I had a meeting with Rodney in his suite at the Beverly Hilton. Just me and him. He started to read the script aloud - a 120 page script. He would read a little, stop and talk about it, then read some more. Feeling trapped, I tried to talk about some of the broad strokes changes I wanted to make, as if the 69 year-old comedy genius gave a firm crap about the story ideas of a 26 year old kid. "I thought you liked the script." Rodney kept saying. I backpedalled like Ralph Kramden, "Hamina hamina hamina…." Not only was this not a first draft for him, it was the shooting script.
