Gary: Harold I am so excited to do this interview. For the people at home I am sitting here with comedy writing and directing LEGEND Harold Ramis. Harold you have written and or directed some of my favorite movies of all time, not just some of the best comedies but also some of the best films. Quickly because your resume speaks for itself, you have written so many great films, Animal House, Back to School, Ghostbusters, Strips and you have directed so many classics, Caddyshack, Vacation, Groundhog Day, Analyze This, and now your new movie probably the darkest film you have made "The Ice Harvest". Can you tell us a little about "The Ice Harvest?"

Harold: Well it came to me as a great screenplay from a novel I best describe as scurvy. It's kind of mean spirited and dark and funny it's by Scott Phillips and then the screenwriters Richard Russo and Robert Benton took it over and brought in all this kind of wonderful philosophy. They express themselves in a very literary way. It's like watching a good novel. The dialogue is not stupid. The people are bad people but they are not stupid so they express themselves very well. There are a lot of laughs in it. The laughs don't come from people telling jokes they come very naturally from the characters and their situations. It's a dark kind of film noir thriller but without being mechanical at all. The plot almost doesn't matter. We know they stole money but it really doesn't matter how they got it. It's about the characters.

Gary: Describing this movie as a film noir I think is perfect because it really is more of a noir than a comedy or anything else. Is that what drew you to the material?

Harold: You know I never work generically it's almost like I find material I like and then I think well what style would best represent this material. There's probably a more realistic version of this film that might have come out kind of like "A Simple Plan" for instance which had a more naturalistic feel to it but there was something about the setting of this movie...it's set in bars and strip clubs and massage parlors, it's all at night. And the characters are living in this kind of tawdry world in Wichita, Kansas. I thought well, this begs to be a noir so I started calling it a retro film noir.

Gary: Is this your first time working with John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton?

Harold: Yeah, well I was invited to act a day with John in "High ". We had a really good time together. I got cut out of the movie playing John's father. It's on the DVD. But we always talked about me directing him and never connected on material until now. But we like each other. He's really smart and engaged. He's very involved and thoughtful. The producers had him in mind the first time they read the novel.

Gary: Probably had something to do with that fact that John plays a lot of dark, twisted characters that are still really likeable. He's really likeable in "The Ice Harvest" even though he's doing all these bad things.

Harold: Well he's the least bad guy, which make him the hero by default. In an odd way he's as bad at being a bad guy as he was at being a good guy. Here's a guy who had his middle class life all nailed down, he's a lawyer, has a wife, two kids, a house in the suburbs and he just couldn't handle it. His soul was eroding. So now he's trying to be a bad guy but he's not very good at it either.

Gary: Are there any favorite moments from "The Ice harvest" that you would like to share with us?

Harold: God there are so many good ones. There is this extended sequence where he and Billy Bob who's his partner in crime are being stalked by a hired gun who works for the boss they ripped off and they have him locked in a big foot locker, an old steamer trunk and he does most of his dialogue from inside that trunk, it's Mike Starr, it's very funny.

Gary: You didn't actually have Mike Starr stuffed in the trunk did you?

Harold: No. The trunk that Mike actually fit in, there's a shot of him getting out, yeah that trunk was about as big as a 1 bedroom apartment. Mike's a real big guy.

Gary: Yes he is pretty big, and I agree that's one of the best sequences in the movie.

Harold: Yeah Mike was great to work with also.

Gary: I hear you have a new project in the works with Owen Wilson. What's that about?

Harold: I'm writing one with two young writers for Owen Wilson. The writers; my partners are Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg. They are writers on "The Office" and are very funny. I was going to do it alone but I was like, geez I'm writing a broad comedy and all the broad comedies I worked on were done best with someone else. You can bounce ideas off each other. And I kind of miss my old partners. I had some old partners I worked with in my early days and some are gone, literally gone I mean Doug Kenney died and I was working with Peter Tolan on few movies and Tolan is really busy. He does the Dennis Leary show and is also trying to direct films himself so I thought well I'll work with some young guys, because Owen is younger and they are into that sensibility. So it's been very fruitful. We'll probably turn the script in before Christmas. If everyone likes it we'll be shooting in the spring.

Gary: And will you direct?

Harold: Oh yes.

Gary: Is there a title yet to sneak out there?

Harold: No not yet. It's too high concept.

Gary: Can I ask you some geek questions to satisfy the readers?

Harold: Sure.

Gary: I'll get it out of the way. What's with the "Ghostbusters 3" rumors?

Harold: You know it came out of interviews for "The Ice "" People have been asking for years will there be a "Ghostbusters 3"? And I went into some detail saying Danny had written a script and it had some promising concepts. He and I worked on revising it. I was going to direct it. This was years ago. He and I had young Ghostbusters in mind. We were going to return as the bosses. The executives of Ghostbusters Inc. And our new Ghostbusters, well we were naming names, we were thinking, Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and Chris Farley. We thought it would be really fun but again this was so long ago you could of maybe had those three guys but still somehow the rumor got out that we were doing it and Ben Stiller is going to be in it.

Gary: That's the Internet for you.

Harold: Well let's start the NO "Ghostbusters 3" rumor.

Gary: Do you still talk with all those guys, Dan or Bill?

Harold: I just saw Danny when The Rolling Stones played Soldier Field. Him and Jim Belushi opened up the evening doing a Blues Brothers routine before Los Lonely Boys, and then The Stones. I had lunch with Dan and his wife Donna. She brought a guitars from House of Blues and the Stones all signed them, and so did the Blues Brothers and they were going to auction them for charity. Danny is a great guy, really generous. Murray I never see. Never talk to him.

Gary: Got it. How did growing up in Chicago influence your writing, your direction of characters, and your overall storytelling?

Harold: Well if you're paying attention life is full of characters and also irony. Maybe the irony is more available in Chicago. When you are growing up everyone tells you a lot of good things they want you to be positive and paint a better picture of life than reality. Living in Chicago, the melting pot, well Chicago is the most ethnically diverse city in the country and you are exposed to a lot more here. Especially trouble, I mean it hardly seemed like a melting pot, more like a battle zone growing up. So you go, wait a second police aren't always honest, sometimes they rob you and steal the drugs for themselves. So there is so much irony here. And of course all the radical and labor history of Chicago always seemed very interesting to me. And coming of age here, I went to the "Old Town School of Folk Music" and I kind of developed a radical view of the world. Which maybe you wouldn't get living in another place.

Gary: You spoke at my college graduation from Columbia in 2001. It was great. After I received my film degree I shook your hand and asked you for a job. You laughed.

Harold: (laughing) Yeah, I guess we didn't hire you.

Gary: (laughing) No I guess not. What kind of advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers?

Harold: Someone asked me that at the IFP screening and I said, dump's no good for you, and then I was like oh you mean about actual filmmaking. At any age you are, go to where people are doing what you want to do. Go to where it's happening - acting class, film school whatever. Identify the most talented person in the room and if it's not you then go stand next to them.

Gary: (laughing) That's good advice. What's your approach with your art, whether it's to write or direct...how do things come to Harold?

Harold: Well they come through all the standard sources, studios, executives; they have things they have optioned or own, agents, both my own and other agents. And a lot of writers that are not well connected send me stuff directly which is not a good way to do it. But I am always just looking for something I haven't done before or seen before. I don't want to do anything that is familiar to me or something that someone can say oh well that's just like this movie. Of course there's nothing new so there will always be elements, but I am always looking for stuff that's very entertaining and that doesn't exclude any genre, and by entertaining I mean engaging. I want to feel the experience. I want something to happen in the theatre and I want it to mean something. Then it's important to me. I mean, even with "Analyze That" I had a good time working with Robert De Niro on the first one but really it was Robert that pushed to do the sequel. It wasn't something I intended while filming the first one. But it was a chance to work with De Niro again.

Gary: So many great films, a lot in the comedy genre. What draws you to comedy?

Harold: I like to laugh. And to get the jolt I'm talking about out of drama it has to be really exciting, really moving. If I see a drama I want to be so wiped out by the end that I can't get up until the credits are over. I need the dark of the theatre to wipe the tears from my eyes. There are plenty of movies that do that. You know if it's shocking I want to be really shocked. Action and violence don't do it for me. Do I care if Vin Diesel kills 12 or 1200 guys it doesn't matter because they are all faceless and have no story. Nobody bleeds nobody is really hurt. I want violence to hurt. I want to feel it. So comedy maybe it's easier for me to deliver. To get big laughs in a theatre is great. If you can get 4 or 5 big laughs out of an audience then they have usually had a good time. It produces endorphins in their brains and they come out really jazzed, I mean that's great.

Gary: In your 25-plus year career which film do you feel came out closest to your intended vision?

Harold: That's a really good question...you know "The Ice Harvest" is very well realized in that sense. It was what I was going for. "Groundhog Day" was very successful on many levels but anything I did with Bill Murray always had that intangible thing that Bill brings to a movie. He's like a brilliant writer that never picks up a pen or types at a computer. The writing happens when he speaks and in that sense I'm like a co-writer when I work with him. We would try different things and build on it. And you know he won't do it until you're shooting. No matter how many times we read the script he's not going to give it all until the day of. So with him I never knew how good he was going to be directing him, it was that way with both "Caddyshack" and "Groundhog Day" the two I directed with him. And even "Ghostbusters" and "Stripes," the films I acted in with him, I never knew how it would turn out but he always delivered.

Gary: You've worked with so many great actors; for starters I think Michael Keaton is overlooked a lot.

Harold: Michael is great. He did something in Multiplicity that I've never seen done. He played four versions of himself. He's cloned in the movie and we had a unique state of the art approach to cloning him. We were able to composite him on the monitor so he could act with himself and I could see what it would look like. And we had a specially trained group of stand-ins. We would shoot his first take then put it on the monitor where his head was and he could see himself and act along with it on playback, adjust his timing, facial expressions. We had a booth on set that could get the composite down to like 3 minutes and show me what it would look like. It was really great.

Gary: Sounds like a big challenge both technically and artistically.

Harold: Being able to straighten his head or adjust an eye line, dealing with the mechanics of it was very daunting. I would always tell him; you're the best composite actor working in America today.

Gary: Do you still talk with Chevy Chase?

Harold: I ran into Chevy last Christmas break. We both take our families to the same ski resort. We talked and had a very pleasant time. Chevy was great to work with. You know I'm lucky I had him early in his career and arguably two of his best comedic roles, "Caddyshack" and "National Lampoon's Vacation." Which actually wasn't great for him in a way because it got him started on that franchise and he kept going back to the well. It just might not have helped his growth.

Gary: Well Harold it's been great speaking with you. Happy birthday and good luck at the premiere of "The Ice Harvest" tonight.

Harold: Thank you.