When former cast member Chevy Chase returned to “Saturday Night Live” as host for a 1978 show, he got into a brutal punch-up with his replacement, Bill Murray, just minutes before going on the air. At one point Murray screamed at him, “Why don’t you f - - - your wife once in a while!”
So when both men were cast in “Caddyshack” the following year, people wondered if they’d get through it in one piece. The saving grace: Murray and Chase had no scenes together. Until they did.
“Caddyshack” was based on the early golf course experiences of Murray and his brothers, including Brian Doyle-Murray, one of the film’s writers, who also played the manager of the caddyshack. The focus of the story was supposed to be the outrageous lives of the young caddies, according to bonus material included on Tuesday’s 30th anniversary Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film.
But the casting of four older stars — Murray, Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight — shifted the focus and turned the coming-of-age tale into a comedy classic.
Murray’s Carl Spackler, a slovenly groundskeeper who ogles old lady golfers, was originally a minor role with no lines in the script. Director Harold Ramis knew Murray would be able to improvise a few funny lines — he just didn’t expect them to be so good that Spackler would become a key character.
In one classic monologue, Spackler tells of how he once caddied for the Dalai Lama, who stiffs him on the tip but promises that he will receive “total consciousness” on his deathbed, prompting the immortal line, “So I got that going for me. Which is nice.”
His most famous scene in the film evolved from a script direction that merely had him “absently lopping the heads off bedded tulips” with a grass whip. Murray, swinging at the flowers as if they were golf balls, made the scene a soaring play-by-play of a “Cinderella boy” who comes out of nowhere at Augusta to win the Masters.
Murray, who was only on set for six days, created Spackler by giving him a sense of nobility.
“He had a vision of himself as holding a place of real importance in life,” Murray tells The Post. “It was just plugging into that desire to fall asleep to your own dream, as if you were slowly fading into the sunset at the top of the mountain. It was a beautiful thing.”
Chase, who played wealthy playboy Ty Webb, wound up shooting at least two scenes with Murray. The producers thought it a waste to not have two of the biggest stars in comedy share the screen, but the tension between the two was palpable.
In a scene that didn’t make the final film, Murray drives up to Chase in a tractor with long-bladed mowers sticking out of the sides. Chase had to jump onto the tractor with him, wearing metal golf spikes.
“I said, ‘Billy, when I jump on, I’ve got these spikes on and can’t get a grip, so don’t make any sudden moves,’” Chase recalls in a DVD feature. “We do the scene, I jump up and Billy makes the widest right he can make. I had to jump 15 feet off the tractor to miss getting mowed over.”
But the scene that did appear in the film, in which Webb sends a golf ball flying into Spackler’s dilapidated garage and then plays through, went off without a hitch. In the end, the animosity made for inspired comedy.
“That’s why he’s so great as a humorist,” Chase says of Murray. “He’s dangerous, but he’s literally dangerous. You never know what he’s gonna do. There’s a little bit of bully in Billy.”
So when both men were cast in “Caddyshack” the following year, people wondered if they’d get through it in one piece. The saving grace: Murray and Chase had no scenes together. Until they did.
“Caddyshack” was based on the early golf course experiences of Murray and his brothers, including Brian Doyle-Murray, one of the film’s writers, who also played the manager of the caddyshack. The focus of the story was supposed to be the outrageous lives of the young caddies, according to bonus material included on Tuesday’s 30th anniversary Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film.
But the casting of four older stars — Murray, Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight — shifted the focus and turned the coming-of-age tale into a comedy classic.
Murray’s Carl Spackler, a slovenly groundskeeper who ogles old lady golfers, was originally a minor role with no lines in the script. Director Harold Ramis knew Murray would be able to improvise a few funny lines — he just didn’t expect them to be so good that Spackler would become a key character.
In one classic monologue, Spackler tells of how he once caddied for the Dalai Lama, who stiffs him on the tip but promises that he will receive “total consciousness” on his deathbed, prompting the immortal line, “So I got that going for me. Which is nice.”
His most famous scene in the film evolved from a script direction that merely had him “absently lopping the heads off bedded tulips” with a grass whip. Murray, swinging at the flowers as if they were golf balls, made the scene a soaring play-by-play of a “Cinderella boy” who comes out of nowhere at Augusta to win the Masters.
Murray, who was only on set for six days, created Spackler by giving him a sense of nobility.
“He had a vision of himself as holding a place of real importance in life,” Murray tells The Post. “It was just plugging into that desire to fall asleep to your own dream, as if you were slowly fading into the sunset at the top of the mountain. It was a beautiful thing.”
Chase, who played wealthy playboy Ty Webb, wound up shooting at least two scenes with Murray. The producers thought it a waste to not have two of the biggest stars in comedy share the screen, but the tension between the two was palpable.
In a scene that didn’t make the final film, Murray drives up to Chase in a tractor with long-bladed mowers sticking out of the sides. Chase had to jump onto the tractor with him, wearing metal golf spikes.
“I said, ‘Billy, when I jump on, I’ve got these spikes on and can’t get a grip, so don’t make any sudden moves,’” Chase recalls in a DVD feature. “We do the scene, I jump up and Billy makes the widest right he can make. I had to jump 15 feet off the tractor to miss getting mowed over.”
But the scene that did appear in the film, in which Webb sends a golf ball flying into Spackler’s dilapidated garage and then plays through, went off without a hitch. In the end, the animosity made for inspired comedy.
“That’s why he’s so great as a humorist,” Chase says of Murray. “He’s dangerous, but he’s literally dangerous. You never know what he’s gonna do. There’s a little bit of bully in Billy.”
