Originally published at: Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman dead at 75 | Boing Boing
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Despite (or perhaps because of) his helping to establish an entire comedy genre, Reitman was known for putting his artistic collaborators front and centre while he tried to stay in the background. We all saw him anyhow.
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Aw, damn.
Rest in Peace.
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Rob, John Landis directed Animal House.
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His family were refugees from a communist country.
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Correct, he did not direct. Ivan Reitman was the producer on Animal House.
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And survived the Nazis before that. Good thing for Ivan, since authoritarian regimes of any stripe hate people with a healthy sense of humour only slightly less than they hate Jewish people.
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Sad to hear. He also made Kindergarten Cop, which I found fun.
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Also has IMDB credits for various roles as Director, Editor, Writer, Cinematographer, Music Supervisor, and Producer. Always behind the camera making stuff happen.
Very much seemed like the kind of person with a gift for helping bring the best out of other artists’ performances.
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Well opinions will differ but I kinda thought the whole premise for that film was deeply flawed. Putting an armed cop with no experience as an educator in charge of a bunch of kindergartners because you’ve got a vague idea that one criminal parent will eventually show up (specifically at the school) to kidnap a kid is just wrong on several levels. And there was an odd dichotomy combining the silly comedic situations and then having a bloody (and 100% predictable) gun battle on an elementary school campus. Even before some of the high-profile school shootings like Columbine and Sandy Hook it just didn’t work for me, and I really don’t feel like it stands the test of time. But YMMV.
While I’m ranting about Reitman/Schwarzenegger projects from that era I remember enjoying Twins at the time but really wished it didn’t have the whole eugenics aspect. The parents of the Danny and Arnold characters were the absolute worst for agreeing to participate in that eugenics experiment, yet the mom was portrayed as a kind, sympathetic character. The brothers should have avoided her like the plague.
What was the new comedy genre?
Basically the genre of films that emerged out of the “National Lampoon” sensibility during the late 1970s and 1980s, which also refined the comedic styles of the original SNL cast members. Compared to previous comedy films, the class-focused social commentary was a lot edgier in those movies and there was a greater willingness to incorporate sex and drug, gross-out and tasteless humour, and at least one big-budget setpiece gag sequence.
Mel Brooks could be considered something of a pre-cursor/influence, but he’s a genre unto himself. Landis and Reitman and Ramis and Doug Kenney and that group really established a broad tonal style for popular comedy movies that was the standard until the late 1990s (when movies with more of a basis in improv and stand-up routines started taking over).
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