Below, there's an interesting excerpt from a recent interview, which Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day, Caddyshack, Analyze this, Ghostbusters, this year's Year One) gave to Cinematical.
I've read in interviews that you have a screenplay kicking around about your work in a psych ward, and I'm really interested to hear about some of your darker ideas for movies.
Ramis: Yeah, that's one of them. That one is... No one likes existential comedy. People like a nice happy ending, and I didn't have any happy endings for my psych ward experience. The movie was really about suffering on three levels. I was doing that job while the Vietnam War was raging, and I had gotten involved with my first wife at that time who was really -- she suffered deeply, both personally and for the world. She had a great kind of, I heard the phrase once, "altruistic panic." People who are so distressed with the human condition that it puts them in a frenzy or makes them terribly sad. So there was the global suffering represented by the war, and then the suffering of these patients that I had to deal with eight hours a day or more, sometimes two shifts. And I was put on suicide prevention one on one with people who had made sincere attempts, and spending eight hours a day protecting someone's life, you know, you can't not talk to them. And I'm not a therapist; I was 21 years old, 22, trying to tell them why they should live from my point of view, from the perspective of a 22-year-old. It's ridiculous. I had nothing but platitudes and false hope and no real help.
And it sounds like a movie, but the woman I spent the most time with was beautiful and in her later 20's, had a child, and seemingly everything to live for, but she kept making attempts and then wanted me to get more personally involved in her life. And that's where the screenplay went.
For the full interview:
Interview: 'Year One' Director Harold Ramis
