Caddyshack
Short description
Caddyshack is a 1980 American comedy set at a wealthy country club, where the members are rich and eccentric while the staff who serve them are not. Danny Noonan, a young caddie, is angling for a caddie scholarship so he can go to college rather than take a job at a lumber yard. Winning it means getting on the good side of the pompous Judge Smails, who sponsors the caddie tournament Danny needs to win. Around this contest swirls a broader gallery of characters: the laid-back golfer Ty Webb, the loud real-estate boor Al Czervik, and Carl Spackler, the groundskeeper, who is locked in his own private war with a burrowing rodent damaging the course.
Harold Ramis directed and co-wrote the film with Brian Doyle-Murray and Douglas Kenney, who produced it. It was Ramis's first feature as director; his later films include National Lampoon's Vacation, Groundhog Day and Analyze This. The cast is led by Michael O'Keefe as Danny, with Ted Knight, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray, alongside Sarah Holcomb. Made for a modest budget, it earned roughly forty million dollars worldwide.
On IMDb it holds a 7.2 rating from about 134,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.6 from a much smaller pool of 1,357. The critics' rating of 6.8 from 62 reviews places it broadly in line with its audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Initially, it was intended that Carl would be a silent character – in the spirit of Harpo Marx (1888-1964), but with Bill Murray cast in the role, director Harold Ramis (1944-2014) suggested writing lines for the actor and encouraged him to improvise.
- The sounds made by the groundhog were actually made by a dolphin.
- After filming was completed, it turned out that too much footage had been shot, and over two hours of material would have to be cut. Among the cut scenes were some key ones, so the film's plot fell apart and became completely incomprehensible. Even more money had to be spent on creating a mechanical gopher, whose presence more or less tied the plot together. In addition, the ending had to be reshot.
- Airplanes repeatedly flew over the golf club, as it was located in the area where planes were landing at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport. It is known that at the moment of the explosion, with which Carl hoped to kill the gopher, a passenger plane was landing, and the pilot reported an aviation incident to air traffic control.
- The famous scene where the ball after Tai's hit flies directly into Carl's house was not in the script. At one point, Harold Ramis suddenly realized that there wasn’t a single scene in the film featuring both of his main stars – Chevy Chase and Bill Murray – at the same time. (The actors didn’t get along with each other due to an old feud stemming from their time on the 'Saturday Night Live' show in 1975.) Ramis suggested the actors have lunch together, and the scene was conceived right at the table. It turned out, by unanimous belief, to be the funniest scene in the film and the only one where Chase and Murray played together.
- According to Cindy Morgan, the scene in which Chevy Chase's character smears her with massage oil was not in the script. The scream, "You're crazy!" was the actress's natural reaction to Chase pouring oil on her.
- Initially, the role of Danny was to be offered to Mickey Rourke, but the producers decided he wasn't "funny enough."
- During the filming of the love scene, Cindy Morgan was so uncomfortable that Harold Ramis asked everyone not involved in the scene to leave the set. Michael O'Keefe went even further and asked everyone remaining to take off their shirts and remain shirtless, like Morgan's character.
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