‘Caddyshack’ a hole-in-one read
“The book was better.” We’ve all uttered some variation on this theme, driven by disappointment that the story on the screen doesn’t match up with the mental images conjured up by a favorite tome.
Well, here’s another variation: The book about the movie is better than the movie.
Chris Nashawaty’s “Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story” (Flatiron Books, $26.99) is an astute and lively study of ’70s comedy that zeroes in on a film considered a failure upon its 1980 release. The intervening years have turned it into a cult classic, thanks to massive exposure on home video and cable. If you’re of a certain age and temperament, chances are you or someone you know can recite long swaths of “Caddyshack’s” slapdash dialogue. (My favorite remains Bill Murray’s Dalai Lama monologue. Gunga galunga).
Nashawaty, the movie critic for Entertainment Weekly, was an early convert.
“When people hear you’re a movie critic, they expect you to love Fellini and Kurosawa and Orson Welles and Hitchcock,” Nashawaty said by phone. “I do love all that stuff, but I grew up on a pretty steady diet of ‘Caddyshack’ and ‘Animal House’ and ‘Stripes.’ Those were the movies that sort of formed me.”
I’m about Nashawaty’s age, and I love “Animal House.” I really like “Stripes.” But despite the riffing of Murray, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight, “Caddyshack” has always struck me as a comedy sand trap. It plays like a series of patched-together bits, which, as the book reveals, is how it was made.
The book, however, is a sterling example of how to construct the story behind the story. As Nashawaty explains, three comedic tributaries led directly to “Caddyshack.” There was National Lampoon magazine (which grew out of the Harvard Lampoon), led by its troubled boy genius Doug Kenney. There was the Chicago-based Second City improv troupe, whose alumni include Murray, John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd. And there was “Saturday Night Live” (initially called “Saturday Night”), where so many of those alumni burst into the public consciousness.
Between them they crafted an anarchic, anti-establishment brand of comedy that seeped deep into the ’70s zeitgeist. Once “Animal House” became the most successful comedy of all time in 1978, the pressure was on for a repeat success. Kenney co-wrote “Animal House” and played the frat brother Stork. He got together with Lampoon and SCTV veteran Harold Ramis, and Murray’s brother Brian Doyle Murray, to hatch a snobs versus slobs comedy set on the links of an exclusive country club. Ramis directed. Kenney produced.
None of them really had any idea what they were doing, other than massive amounts of cocaine.
“You go back and watch it now and you can see Rodney’s knee twitching, and you’re like, ‘OK, that explains a lot,’ ” Nashawaty said.
Scripts were written, gutted and reconstructed. If “Caddyshack” feels like it was made up as it went along, it largely was. Just about none of Murray’s lines, as the demented, gopher-hunting groundskeeper Carl Spackler, were written. Large chunks of story, mostly involving the caddies, were excised entirely.
Even Nashawaty’s enthusiasm for the movie comes couched in reservation.
“It’s actually a pretty sloppy movie, and I can only make a very personal, subjective sort of case for its greatness,” the author said. “I have to overlook a lot of flaws. It’s definitely a funny movie, but it’s not what you’d call a well-made movie by any stretch.”
Fair enough. “Caddyshack” fans will delight in the book’s on-set details, including the technical challenges posed by that animatronic gopher. For the rest of us, this is a groundlevel look at the birth of a scene. The book is about half over before it gets to the movie’s production, and that’s just fine. Once again, the book is better.