HAROLD RAMIS on 'THE ICE HARVEST' Contributed by Michael J. Lee, Executive Editor for Radio Free Entertainment
November 6, 2005
In the dark comedy The Ice Harvest, a lawyer (John Cusack) and manager (Billy Bob Thornton) involved in the business of strip clubs in Wichita try to pull off the perfect heist and skip town with $2 million. But their own incompetence and Christmas Eve malaise threaten to derail their plans.
The Ice Harvest is adapted from the novel by Scott Phillips, and is directed by Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day, Analyze This). In addition to Cusack and Thornton, the film features Connie Nielsen, Oliver Platt, and Randy Quaid.
In this interview, Harold Ramis talks about shooting the movie, scouting strip club locations, casting strippers, and working as both an actor and director in Hollywood.
The Interview
MEDIA: Did you feel a need for a smaller, darker comedy after the broad slapstick stuff of Analyze That?
HAROLD: Well, I said to my agent, "I think it's time for a dark, existential, funny film noir." [laughs] "Let's find one." No...I never know what I'm going to do until I see it. And then this one, the script was so good. I had, coincidentally, just read all of [screenwriter] Richard Russo's published prose. And the novel...I hadn't seen the novel, but I knew it was very well-received. The writing was so great, I just thought, "Yeah, I could do this." And it reminded me of films I admire...I don't know that they thought they were writing a film noir as they were writing it, but I thought it was definitely in a wonderful tradition of films.
Did John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton immediately come to mind for the lead roles?
John was the producers' first thought. When they optioned the novel, they were thinking John Cusack. Billy Bob was a great idea that came up right away. John had turned this down once before when another director was attached...and I think it had gone out to Billy Bob at the same time. Maybe for the other role. Maybe for John's role. I don't know. People had flirted with this material. It was not a very long time. It probably wasn't more than two years from the time the screenplay got written to the time the movie got made. But when I came into it, John and I had a bit of a relationship. We had never worked together, except as actors for one day. And it was offered to him again. They revisited that with his agent, and when he heard I was involved, he got right on the phone and we talked about, "Why do this movie?" And I think I satisfied him that I had a vision of it. I thought it had moral purpose and was an important film to make, and he came on board. And then Billy Bob came in without a moment's hesitation.
In what film did you previously work with John Cusack, as actors?
[laughs] I was cut from High Fidelity. I'm on the DVD as John's father. His father appears to him in a little fantasy moment, and that was me.
What attracted the screenwriters to this project?
Everybody loved the novel. It was very well-reviewed. And Russo writes beautifully about small town American life, and with a real appreciation of both moral and physical decadence. And he writes about rust-belt cities and failed towns and failed marriages, and men who've given up hope and are just stuck on barstools. That is Russo's territory. So the novel was perfect for him, and it had a lot more conventional plot than his novels have. His novels are all over the place, a little harder to pin down. But this had a strong narrative spine, like a thriller, and it just felt like it would be a good movie into which he could pour all his other big character concerns and moral themes.
What qualifies this as a "dark comedy"? Is it just the people killing each other?
[laughs] You know, all these labels seem to come after the fact. We have an artistic experience, and if it's meaningful to us, then we try to define it. We try to put a label on it. And I think this movie's hard to label, in a way. Stylistically, yes, it's a film noir. I call it a retro film noir, because I think visually, we went for that style, and it has a lot of the underlying existential philosophy of classic film noir, late '40s, early '50s. But it's also a great character story. It's a lot of things. Some people would never call it a comedy, and they might even be surprised other people are laughing. Others want to see it as a comedy and think it's got some great popcorn thriller elements along with it. Others want it to be a caper film...It's not a generic caper film. It's not a generic anything. It's just about these people and this one horrible night.
While you were scouting locations, did you have to check out a lot of strip clubs?
Unfortunately, yes. Well, I had "pre-scouted" a few strip clubs before I knew about the film. [laughs] As a formerly thin person, I once told a journalist that I had gained forty pounds for a movie role. He said, "What role?" I said, "I don't know." So that's a lot like my strip club research. No...Things I had experienced came in handy for this. The worst day was (in my marriage, not the worst day on the film) [when] we were casting extras, and they had the strippers in. And my son, who's now 15 (he was 14 then), was with me at the production office, and I said, "You go home, I've got to do this now." [laughs] My wife said, "So what's daddy doing?" He said, "Uh, he's casting strippers."
Casting strippers can't be the worst thing in the world to do.
Unfortunately, I am so shy, in a way, with women that I have never been able to exploit my power to do me any good with women. And even with the strippers, I couldn't look at their bodies. It embarrassed me so much. They were doing this in a little office. I was like three feet away. So all I could do was make eye contact with them. Lots of eye contact. I could see the clothes flying in front of me, but I was just looking right in their eyes.
The story takes place in Wichita, Kansas, but you filmed it in Illinois. Did you ever consider shooting in Wichita?
Not for a moment. [laughs] They tried to make us go to Canada with the movie.
Where in Canada?
Toronto. I didn't want to go. I've always resisted working out of the country--just for selfish reasons, but I get credit for supporting our unions here.
Have you ever been to Wichita?
Nope. [laughs] I've driven across Kansas. Wichita is so nondescript...To make sure I didn't miss anything, I thought I'd gather images of Wichita. So I went on the internet, and I looked for pictures of Wichita. There were like two. [laughs] And it looked like every other small American [town]...about 350,000 people, a 12-story building, and that was it. And I thought, "That could be anywhere." I live in the Chicago area. I thought, "It could be Wheeling, Illinois. It could be Waukegan, Illinois. Why go [to Wichita]? I live here. I've been dying to make a movie at home, and come home and sleep in my own bed."
When you do a sequel (such as Analyze That) that doesn't live up to the original, do you think it reflects the public's changing taste?
You could never predict people's tastes. All you can do is your best work. People are always constantly taking the public's temperature...And what they want is something new, it seems to me. Although they'll settle for the same thing over and over again, what really excites them is seeing something very entertaining that they haven't seen before. So I don't know. Analyze That did half as well as Analyze This. Ghostbusters 2 did half as well as Ghostbusters 1. I was reluctant to make Ghostbusters 2, but people wanted it. Everybody wanted it. I was reluctant to make Analyze That, but Robert De Niro really wanted it--just would not let go of it. And I thought, "All right, we had a great experience the first time." I had a good idea of what I thought was a really worthy idea for the second movie, as an extension of the first one. If I didn't think I had anything to say with the second one, I wouldn't have made it. It may be flawed, it's arguable, but it's based on something very real that I thought was worth seeing.
What's it like when Robert De Niro wants to do something and "won't let go"?
[laughs] Billy Crystal told me that Bob called and said, "I think Harold's luke. He's luke." You know, "lukewarm." [laughs] And I told them the same thing I said on Ghostbusters 2...If I can find a reason for myself to do it creatively, then I'll do it. And with Analyze That, I found an article in the New York Times criticizing the psychotherapy of The Sopranos. It posed the question, why is she treating him? What does she expect? He's a sociopath, sociopaths don't get better. So I thought, "Wow, that's a good question. What do you do after you've been the head of a crime family and you're not going to do that anymore? What would it be like for the godfather to go straight?" And that, to me, was a great comic springboard for the rest of the film.
Between acting and directing, which do you enjoy more?
You know, I've always liked doing all of it. And I've always done it all. From 1968, I was already a professional writer, as a journalist, and then Second City hired me and I was writing comedy material. I did both for a while. And then I got to direct right away, so I thought, "Well, why not do everything that's fun, as long as people will let me?"
Why have you put less of an emphasis on the acting part of your career in recent years?
Actors have very little control over their careers. Unless you're in the absolute top tier of actors, you don't get to decide what you're going to do. You hope you'll get offered something really good and it won't go to someone else first. Often, you make your living doing things you don't really want to do.
Have you ever regretted turning down a particular project?
I've turned down some very successful projects, but I never kick myself over not having made a movie. I don't dwell there. I believe so much in karma. And I don't mean retributive karma (justice, "what goes around comes around"). I mean just cause and effect. You know, if you change one thing, everything else would change. If I didn't do everything that I did, I wouldn't be sitting here today. I wouldn't have my wife and my children. Everything would be different.
