Bill Murray always seems to be living his best life, even in quarantine. If you know anything about the making of Caddyshack, you'll definitely know that Bill was living his 'best life' then too. While there are many fantastic behind-the-scenes stories from his impressive filmography, those from the making of Caddyshack are, by far, the greatest. And that's mostly because he and the rest of the cats (which included his real-life frenemy Chevy Chase) were constantly partying. It was this energy that actually found its way onto the screen and ultimately made Caddyshack one of the most beloved comedies ever... Seriously, this is a classic!
While the movie came out in 1980 and has some moments that some may be offended by in today's ever-changing standards, the film remains one of Bill Murray's most shining moments.
Funnily enough, according to a revealing oral interview by Vault, Bill actually inspired the film, to begin with. Let's take a look...
It All Started With Harold Ramis
The great-late-Harold Ramis was a frequent collaborator with Bill Murray. The multi-talented man (who acted, produced, wrote, and directed) worked with Bill on movies like Ghostbusters, Stripes, Groundhog Day, and, yes, Caddyshack. While Bill inspired much of what Caddyshack came to be, it all started with Harold after he wrote Animal House.
"I'd written Animal House with Doug Kenney and Chris Miller," Harold Ramis explained to Vault. "Doug was one of the founding editors of National Lampoon. I think the feeling in Hollywood was that we had introduced a new kind of comedy. To us, it wasn't new because that's what we'd been doing at Second City, but it was new to the movies."
Harold's sense of humor was very prevalent in the halls of Second City, one of the world's most premier comedy clubs that created the careers of some of the world's most beloved comedians. But many moviegoers (and producers, for that matter) considered Harold's sense of humor barrier-breaking.
"I was living with Barbra Streisand, and I'd just produced A Star Is Born," executive producer Jon Peters said of Animal House and Harold Ramis' general sense of humor. "I saw an early screening of Animal House and thought it was a breakthrough. So we grabbed Harold and Doug [Kenney] and brought them in to pitch ideas."
According to Mike Medavoy, the cofounder of Orion Pictures, Harold, Doug, and Jon Peters pitched a movie about the American Nazi party marking through Skokie, Illinois. Mike was NOT on board with the idea.
"Jon Peters led me to believe that Medavoy would do the Skokie idea," Harold Ramis said. "But Medavoy said, 'I've been thinking about it and if we had one bomb threat on a theater, it would shut the movie down. Come up with something else.' In the meantime, Doug and Brian Doyle-Murray [writer and Saturday Night Live and National Lampoon star] had started talking about a country club comedy because Brian and his younger brother Bill had been caddies. They invited me to join them. I was a Jewish kid with no money. No one I knew played golf."
How The Murray Brothers Inspired Caddyshack
Yes, it was Bill Murray and his brother Brian Doyle-Murray who inspired Harold Ramis to create Caddyshack.
"I started as a shag boy at Indian Hill outside Chicago when I was 10, which means a guy would hit balls and you'd run out and collect them," Bill Murray told Vault. "You were basically a human target. Eventually, you worked your way up to caddie."
Bill and Brian's experience on the golf course became the basic inspiration for the premise of Caddyshack. But other details of their life also made it into the movie.
"There were six Murray boys in the family, and we modeled the Noonans after them in Caddyshack," Harold Ramis said. "I remember the first time I met Bill. Brian and I were in Second City together and he said, 'Why don't you come up and have dinner at my mother's house?' And we stopped off at the golf course. Bill had just graduated from high school, and his job at the time was running the hot dog stand on the 9th hole.
All of this gave Harold the creative juice to pen the pitch for the screenplay with Doug Kenney and Brian Doyle Murray. And then they went in to pitch the idea to Mike Medavoy, who seemed to like it a lot better than their Nazi idea.
"What was the Caddyshack pitch like?" Mike Medavoy said in response to a question in the Vault interview. "It was funny. It was a cast of characters in a country club where you have these uppity snobbish people against the slobbish people. I said, 'O.K., let's get the script.' And they went off and did it."