Hopefully this will save us from what would have been an eventual let down of Ghostbuster 3. Very shitty news.
Egon was my favourite Ghostbuster. Ramis tailor-made the part for himself and it paid off in spades. He also directed Groundhog Day and Analyze This, and I loved his cameo in Knocked Up: "Ben , I've been divorced three times why in the hell would you take my advice?" ...also he was the brutality-loving Officer Friendly on SCTV.
From Stripes: Army recruiter: "Are either of you homosexual?" Ramis: "No, but we are willing to learn!"
This is the worst celebrity death of the year, as far as I'm concerned. By the by, Bill Murray's statement to Time has confused some, but considering the two had an apparently huge falling out over the making of Groundhog Day -a damn shame- I suppose it's respectful and courteous:
At the risk of showing my age, I was in the Tonight Show audience for three of his guest hosting outings. He was a decent comic at the time.
Why, Lord? Why? Why couldn't Pat Robertson and Ted Haggard croak along with him? I don't give a shit about whether hell exists or not. It probably doesn't. But the important thing here is that dead is dead, and now worms are eating him. I say have some fun. Steal his corpse, dress it in a silk shirt and chinos and tour gay bars with it Weekend At Bernie's style.
Are there worse people than Fred Phelps? Definitely. However, he was the poster boy for one of the few primary ills still left in America. So any and all scorn heaped upon such a malignant force is well deserved; especially when he perverted a message of righteousness and hope to further ignorant causes. To rob a person or group of their national identity, may it be gays or servicemen,, strip them of their inalienable rights, to marginalize them in a country like ours is unforgivable. Thought like his is poison. Infectious to kids, praised by the equally stupid. But nor should it be illegal. We need fools like this to balance the scale, also to reflect just how ridiculous certain modes of foundation-less thought, hate, and blowhard arguments can be. His was a fringe group, albeit an incredibly loud, well publicized one. I think the best thing to do would be to completely ignore the man's funeral. As much as he deserves to be cloaked in the finest rainbow thong and paraded around Key West propped up on a buttplug on a parade float, retaliation only makes him look like a martyr. He's a champion of nothing. Retaliation might even make those who are ambivalent sympathetic. Let the man rot into nothing, his church with him. Move on and allow the universe to swallow the dust of his rotten bones and the memory of his useless opinions. That being said, I'll pop a beer later to celebrate.
We are not going to turn this into his thread and there's too much religion surrounding it to have it's own thread. I thought about it already and decided against it.
So, between him and Philip Seymour Hoffman, two actors from The Talented Mr. Ripley, one of my favourite movies, have died recently. Shame it couldn't have been Gwyneth Paltrow and Matt Damon.