The news of Harold Ramis' passing popped up on my iPhone.
I was floored.
I interviewed him yesterday; "yesterday" was 16 years ago.
He was 53, I was 46. Not much distance in age, but in terms of the film world, the distance couldn't have been wider. After making some television programs, I had finally got around to writing a screenplay. To learn something about the trade, started writing features for an industry trade magazine.
His net worth was stupendous, he was still working on major projects, but for some reason he still deigned to spend several hours with me on a project that had meaning to me, couldn't have had to him.
I recall his mentioning a bit of a falling out he had had with Bill Murray and I could see that it concerned him; it's nice now to read in the tributes to him that they made amends before his passing.
Harold Ramis left a lot of art and comedy and influence behind him, but 69 is too young to go. Writing a book last year about Obscure Composers, I came across a line in Zemlinsky's "Lyric Symphony," from Rabindranath Tagore: "let it not be death but completeness."
In terms of his kindness, generosity, and humanity to those close to him, and those he had just met, and all the deserved plaudits pouring in for him, it surely seems to be so.
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