In the lobby of the Second City Theater in Chicago, the walls are lined with old cast photos from the ’50s to the present. Among the faces, you’ll find some of the biggest names in comedy, like John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, and… well, some skinny kid with nerdy spectacles and a truly staggering Afro. If you don’t recognize him, you’re far from alone. Harold Ramis never became a household name like many of his Second City castmates. But without him, the national comedy landscape would look very different.

Ramis has written and/or directed some of the most popular comedies of the past thirty years. His credits include Animal House, Stripes, Meatballs, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Analyze This, Groundhog Day… actually, it might be easier just to mention the comedies that he didn’t write or direct. Like, say, Home Alone. Or Old School. I’m pretty sure he had nothing to do with either of those films.

You can also blame Ramis for those quotable lines that have become such oft-repeated clichés. Every time a frat guy starts bellowing about toga parties, or some drunk dude summons his best Bill Murray impression and announces to the room, “We came, we saw, we kicked its ass,” just imagine that somewhere Ramis is smiling sheepishly and muttering a silent apology. Honestly, he had no idea that his words were going to have such staying power.

These days, Ramis lives a quiet life in Chicago, where he continues to churn out movies at a frightening pace—his latest being the critically lauded black comedy The Ice Harvest. He agreed to speak with me by phone on the condition that I did not, at any point in the interview, refer to his career as a “Cinderella story.” Somehow I resisted the urge, which is more than I can say for every other Caddyshack fan on the planet.

—Eric Spitznagel

I. “MY BROTHER AND I WERE
LATCHKEY KIDS, LEFT TO OURSELVES.
INSTEAD OF TURNING THAT INTO
A DELIGHTFUL DELINQUENCY,
WE BECAME OVERLY RESPONSIBLE.”

THE BELIEVER: You joined the Chicago cast of Second City in the late ’60s, during a pretty volatile period in the city’s history. Did it feel at the time that the comedy you were doing had more social significance than it does now?

HAROLD RAMIS: Oh, sure. We called ourselves “the Next Generation,” because we were the longhairs and we were bringing in this whole new consciousness, or so we thought. Up to that point, the Second City had a reputation for...