'Caddyshack' turns 45! The comedy classic's last line is one of its funniest, but 'made absolutely no sense'

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2 days ago

How a 58-year-old movie-making novice clinched the big finish.
Writers often agonize in search of the perfect words — and the last line of a comedy is a moment where they really have to stick the landing.
Many cite the final zing from Some Like It Hot, "Nobody's perfect," as the ne plus ultra of screenwriting excellence. According to lore, writer-director Billy Wilder and his scripting partner I.A.L. Diamond slipped Joe E. Brown's final retort to Jack Lemmon as a placeholder until they could come up with something better. (Wilder later said they didn't trust the line at first, because it came too easily, but when they finally screened the movie, it got "one of the biggest laughs I ever heard in the theater.")
Not questioning good creative fortune also served Harold Ramis, director of the madcap country club romp Caddyshack — a film that celebrates its 45th birthday today. (That's 15 years older than Bill Murray was when the movie came out, if you were curious.)
The original screenplay for Caddyshack, written by Ramis, National Lampoon cofounder Douglas Kenney, and Brian Doyle-Murray (who based the story somewhat on his own memories working as a caddy), had a different ending than we now know.
As Ramis explained, after Michael O'Keefe shames Ted Knight by making the game-winning putt (thanks to Bill Murray setting off explosives in pursuit of a pesky gopher), there was going to be two little wrap-up moments. Chevy Chase and Cindy Morgan were going to have a "walk off into the sunset" moment and we'd also see O'Keefe at the airport, about to leave for college, but instead following a foxy gal on a trip to Jamaica.
This all got nixed because of the mad genius from Queens-born Jacob Cohen, better known to the world as Rodney Dangerfield.
In 1980, Dangerfield was not really known much outside of comedy clubs. (Indeed, his own spot, Dangerfield's, opened in Manhattan in 1969.) He'd done appearances on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson and put out an album or two, but mainstream success eluded him. (Perhaps this was to his benefit, as he used these hard workin' years to hone his "I don't get no respect" everyman schtick.)
When Ramis and producer Kenney cast the 58-year-old Dangerfield, he'd never really done any acting. Yet his natural instincts took over when he inhabited the role of Al Czervik, the gauche nouveau riche real estate developer that disgusted the blue blood snobs at the stuck-up Bushwood Country Club.
Dangerfield sank his teeth into the role, which was initially much smaller but expanded due to his sensational improv skills. For example, there was the ad lib that was so out of the blue that Ramis decided to make it the last line of the entire picture.
As the director explained it, the celebratory sequitur "Hey, everybody, we're all gonna get laid!" was agreed upon as the closer because of the film's ethos of "why not?"
"It was a totally improvised line that I can't even believe I left in the movie," he said. "It makes absolutely no sense, which at that point was pretty much par for the course."
And in some social circles, there are still guys who shout this out whenever anything good or unexpected happens.
Caddyshack was an international box office sensation and made Dangerfield a star. Cable specials and top-selling (and Grammy-winning) albums followed, as did leading roles in '80s classics like Easy Money and Back to School.
After Dangerfield died in 2004, the neighborhood where he grew up in Queens, Kew Gardens, decided to honor him with a mural. (It's right near the spot where Kitty Genovese was murdered.) In classic form, Dangerfield's widow thought the rendering of her late husband was terrible, and complained about it. Even from the grave he gets no respect!
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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