Conversation of the Day (2006 Version)

THE BELIEVER: Rumor has it that you turned down the chance to direct Disney’s remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner because you felt they weren’t interested in really exploring racism.

HAROLD RAMIS: The way they wanted to do it didn’t have a lot to do with the colossal amount of pain and violence that swirls around racial injustice. It would’ve been like an episode of The Jeffersons. What’s the point? But who knows, maybe that’s as much as most people want. I can’t tell you how many people have told me, “When I go to the movies, I don’t want to think.”

THE BELIEVER: Does that offend you as a filmmaker?

HAROLD RAMIS: It offends me as a human being. Why wouldn’t you want to think? What does that mean? Why not just shoot yourself in the fucking head?

--Conversation between actor-writer-director-surgeon Harold Ramis and Eric Spitznagel, from the March 2006 issue of The Believer

No tagsPosted at 04:54 PM on Tue. Jun 28, 2011 in category Quote of the Day

COMMENTS

Mister B wrote:

I tend to agree that a good number of people go to the movies because they want to escape reality for a little while and, therefore, not think about their own reality, but I wonder if something might not be lost in translation here.

How many people went to go see “The Hurt Locker” because they wanted to see something blown up? :)

Personally, and maybe this next comment is only somewhat relevant here, the main reason why continuity errors bug me so much is that (unless it's intentional like a few scenes in “Ferris Bueller's Day Off”, etc.), when I'm in a movie theatre, I don't like to be reminded I'm just watching a movie. :)