HR: In my quest for themes and ideas that are worth spending three years on, Chris Miller, my writing partner from Animal House, sent me a short story he'd written called "Multiplicity" it's pretty much the set-up of the movie we made. As Chris wrote it, the guy was an advertising executive with a couple of kids, lovely wife, likes his work. But the work is very demanding, so he doesn't get to spend as much time as he'd like with his wife and kids. And he certainly doesn't have enough time for himself. Then he sees an ad in the L.A. Weekly for a cloning service.
He finds out lots of famous people have been cloned. He gets cloned once and it's not enough, so he gets cloned twice. The clones live in the attic. But then, when he starts feeling estranged from his own life, the clones won't let him back in and, in fact, abduct him. He ends up shut out of his own life.
I thought that was such a promising start. It seemed to be about something. But the [short story's] ending didn't make sense to me. What does that mean? What does it say about the human condition?
PT: But the basic idea . . .
HR: I thought it was a wonderful setup because it is common to everybody We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families probably feel guilty all the time--if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough.
I wondered what I could do that would make this more resonant for me. Then I realized it wasn't just about being busy, it was really about the divided self and that we are all several different people. There are different aspects of our nature that are competing. I realized that what the story really was about was how this guy fragments into his different component selves and finally gets reintegrated. That's the happy ending.
The message then becomes, you gotta own it all, recognize all these different aspects of your nature and own them. If it doesn't work in your life, find a way to make your life work.
A very good psychologist once said to me, there are only two important questions you have to ask yourself. What do you really feel? And, what do you really want? If you can answer those two, you probably can leave your neuroses behind you. That became the heart of what the movie is about.
PT Does this mean you're growing up?
HR: I've been working at it. I've done four years now in a ritual men's group. It has had some impact on me. The whole mythopoetic men's movement does a lot of processing of the mythical component, the archetypes that we all embody--the warrior, the king, the lover, the fool, the magician, whatever. That dovetailed nicely into this movie. In this group we've all been examining who we are in terms of these different selves, these different archetypes.
For Michael Keaton's clones, I reached back to Robert Johnson, who wrote three little books about the de-masculine self, the inner feminine, and the bonding thereof. When I threw this stuff into the intellectual, spiritual, psychological mix, it wasn't just a born the contemporary social phenomenon of being too busy, which is what got Chris going in the first place. That's an accurate assessment of modem life, but it's not the whole story.
PT: You don't want to be trivial, but you still have your fart jokes.
HR: If we weren't still laughing at them m my house, I probably wouldn't still be doing them. But these very human things continue to be funny I'd like to think I'd never do a gratuitous fart joke
PT: You've had the pleasure of being able to work with people you respect and like--Chevy Chase, Bill Murray . . .
HR: Beyond my affection for those people, they are stars because they are charismatic. Whether they were stars or not, they would draw people to them. If Chevy Chase had not been an actor, he might have been a very popular guy in advertising or whatever field he would have gone into, because of his charisma. But we all have our faults, and their bad qualities are as extraordinary as their good ones. They embody lots of extremes. I've always been more interested in these big personalities. When I got to work with them in the theater, I thought, Wow, this is exciting. Nothing reinforces a professional relationship more than enjoying success with someone.
PT: What does success do for you at this age? Do you get the same rush?
HR: It's different.
PT: Has it improved your character?
HR: I don't think it's success that's improved my character. To the extent that my work represents certain aspirations, it validates those aspirations. If you just want to be funny and you get laughs, okay, then you've fulfilled that goal. That was almost enough at the beginning; although part of me was always seeking more. Bernie Sahlins, one of the founding fathers of [the comedy troupe] Second City, would always say, "Work from the top of your intelligence."
PT: That's a very interesting expression.
HR: For me it evolved into other aphorisms, like "Broad comedy is not necessarily dumb comedy" You can be very funny without being stupid.
PT: You enjoyed success early One thing you might deduce from the death of two of your early cohorts--Doug Kenney [a founder of National Lampoon magazine], and John Belushi--is that they couldn't handle early success.
Tags:
Chevy Chase,
country clubs,
film,
Harold Ramis,
Jews,
John Belushi,
movie,
multiplicity,
outsider,
outsiders,
summer camp,
those guys,
young men
