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Harold Ramis — the man who fought 'The Man' with 'Caddyshack' and 'Animal House' — has seen his films mature alongside him

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Ramis will indeed show up to take the trophy during the seven-day festival, which includes the celebrity-stuffed conference today through Sunday. Ramis will present his new crime comedy, "The Ice Harvest," on Friday at the Paramount Theatre and, with co-star Ernie Hudson, "Ghostbusters" on Saturday at the Paramount.

Ramis' comedy generation — a smart and smart-alecky fraternity including Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Martin Short and the late John Candy and John Belushi — extended a style of contemporary comedy that took hold in the late 1950s and '60s, with brainy satirists like Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Buck Henry, Sid Caesar, Steve Allen and others. With his sketch troupe Second City and the players at "Saturday Night Live" in the late '70s, Ramis fronted a comic revolt that began on stages and television and led to films such as "Animal House," "Stripes" and "Caddyshack."

Now that Ramis and his cohorts have moved on to more adult material — Ramis with "Groundhog Day," for instance, and Murray with "Broken Flowers" — the mantle of anti-establishment, hormone-addled comedy has been picked up by younger writer-performers such as Owen and Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller, and writers Judd Apatow ("The 40 Year-Old Virgin") and Steve Faber and Bob Fisher ("The Wedding Crashers").

Apatow, Faber and Fisher will appear on comedy panels at the Screenwriters Conference this weekend. Three generations of contemporary comedy will be represented during the panel "Comedy Writing" with Apatow, Ramis, Henry and Jessica Bendinger on Saturday at the Driskill Hotel.

Speaking in his familiar nasal baritone, Ramis discussed his films and the state of comedy by phone last week. Though the festival has selected "Ghostbusters" for its retrospective screening, Ramis says that of all his movies he would like to be remembered for 1993's existential comedy "Groundhog Day," starring his friend and longtime collaborator Murray.

Explain the staying power of "Groundhog Day." Its reputation has only snowballed, and its cultural influence has pushed it to classic status. Why is that?

As cynical as I like to pretend I am, I have a deep philosophical and spiritual side. I think everyone harbors a craving for meaning in life, and the movie, without being cloying or embarrassing, asserts the possibility of redemption through meaning. Every single religion and psychological discipline has claimed the movie as what they believe. I love that. It makes it an ecumenical movie.

What about "Ghostbusters." Does it hold up to you?

My favorite quote about "Ghostbusters" from a critic is, "It's like a well-told joke." I took that to mean that there's nothing extra in it, every detail is important, it moves forward and has just the right timing. Dan Aykroyd and I wrote the film, but of course Bill Murray adds an incalculable number of great lines and attitude. When you're writing for Bill, you have to know you're only writing a series of guidelines. Aykroyd had written the original script for him and John Belushi. It was too otherworldly. The success of the premise is the juxtaposition of the supernatural against the mundane. That's the comic edge of the movie, not in pure fantasy, but the fact that we act like janitors.

A HAROLD RAMIS FILMOGRAPHY Chuck Hodes FOCUS FEATURES Harold Ramis, known by most as the brainy Egon from 'Ghostbusters,' also has an extensive behind-the-scenes career as a director of films, including 'Groundhog Day' with Bill Murray and the upcoming 'The Ice Harvest' with John Cusack, above.

Here are some film-career highlights from the recipient of this year's Distinguished Screenwriter Award at the Austin Film Festival. 'The Ice Harvest' (2005, director) 'Analyze This' (1999, writer-director) 'Groundhog Day' (1993, writer-director) 'Back to School' (1986, writer) 'Ghostbusters' (1984, writer-actor) 'Stripes' (1981, writer-actor) 'Caddyshack' (1980, writer-director) 'Meatballs' (1979, writer) 'Animal House' (1978, writer) 'SCTV' (television, 1976-1978, writer-actor)

It has all the elements of a style piece. It is a faithful film noir. Connie Nielsen plays a classic femme fatale. She might as well be Lauren Bacall or Jessica Rabbit or Veronica Lake. Everyone else in it plays with this great Midwestern reality. So you have this classic film noir with these rich, literary characters, and that's where the movie really takes off. Richard Russo and Robert Benton's dialogue is wonderful, mature and smart and funny. And there are big laughs that come out of the awful realities of the situation that John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton have gotten themselves into.

As part of the post-Vietnam, post-Nixon era, explain where your generation's comedy sprang from.

Starting with "Animal House" we took the political energy of the late '60s and turned it into social comedy, this anti-establishment, institutional comedy. "Stripes" was that, "Caddyshack" was that, "Meatballs" was that. It was about young people dealing with authority. It was shaped by the all-American styles we all grew up with, including Disney. "Caddyshack," if it hadn't been so outrageous in certain moral aspects, could have looked and felt like a Disney film.

What do you think of the latest comedy rat-pack of the Wilson brothers, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller and so on? They've been hugely influenced by your work, even bringing back the hard-R comedy that you guys made popular.

If I had a criticism of the current group it's that I wish they were more ambitious in terms of the missing element. They're still young enough to be embarrassed by real commitment, by believing in anything. It's almost a developmental thing: First you work off your adolescent rebellion against the institution, your parents. It's the first thing you do, the exuberance of youth. So in all those early comedies you're working off that relationship to authority. And then you get into relationships and you get the romantic comedy or the sex comedy. "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" is about working that out. But where do you go from there? You become an adult, and it seems immature to keep banging your head against authority figures. You realize it's a little more complicated than that.

You're a good example of that, evolving from "Animal House" to "Groundhog Day."

You can keep doing what you're doing and be profitable. But at some point, if you can do it, you can actually go inside, look at your life and what is important and try to make movies that actually connect with what's most meaningful to you.

With much of the new generation of comic filmmakers I get the impression they didn't go to college, they aren't well-read and they derive all their information and material from pop culture. It seems so facile and limited.

I'm developing a film for Owen Wilson right now. But I'm not trying to showcase him in another broad youth comedy. I want to show his fans something slightly revelatory.

How is what you were doing back then different than what the current crop is doing, which relies on gross- out material and the like?

I've used the word "lazy" to apply to these people. It's how the Zucker brothers started; it's how I started. People get stoned and sit around and watch TV and they see a commercial and say wouldn't it be funny if we did that. If all you do is watch TV, you think that's the world. There's something that has become really uninteresting about cultural references. I've seen enough parody, I've done enough sketch comedy. I don't need to see another parody of a talk show or sitcom. It's formulaic and it's easy. But it won't go away because it's like all of TV. You can keep reprocessing the same American cheese.