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Zach Galifianakis has signed on to star in an adaptation of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces. This is very exciting news that should be taken with at least six grains of salt, as an adaptation of Confederacy has been the white whale to many a comedian. Since 1982, when Harold Ramis tried to adapt it for John Belushi to star, the film has been notoriously doomed. Belushi died right before the film was in pre-production, and same goes for John Candy in 1994 and Chris Farley in 1997. Most recently, Will Ferrell was in talks to star in Steven Soderbergh's version, which obviously didn't get made, though thankfully Ferrell is still completely alive.

I guess Bill Murray finally found the time to give that Ghostbusters 3 script a read. Extremely reliable news source The National Enquirer has reported that Murray hated it so much he physically shredded the script and sent it back to Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd, along with a note saying, “No one wants to pay money to see fat, old men chasing ghosts!” Now, it is tempting to decide that this story is simply too AMAZING to be true, like unicorns or fairies, but, as with unicorns and fairies, we must still believe. We must always believe.

In The Finally Screenings, Alden Ford is watching comedy classics that, because he grew up in a cave in Alaska, he’s never seen before. These are his takes on movies everyone else has seen before.

I just don’t get it, Ramis. I really don’t.

Another pre-Ghostbusters Harold Ramis movie, Stripes feels like another in a line of films that slowly improve until the stars align and inspiration strikes with Venkman, Stantz and Spengler. Believe me, it pains me to write these words. I didn’t want to dislike Stripes any more than I wanted to like Beverly Hills Cop. But we can’t always get what we want.

And Here's The Kicker by Mike Sacks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHTK won the popular comment vote, narrowly beating Chris Gethard's A Bad Idea I'm About to Do (which will definitely be the second book we'll do). In a way, it's the perfect book to start the series, as it offers so many different points of view. The book features 21 interviews with some of the most revered comedy writers ever from George Meyer to David Sedaris to Jack Handey to Bob Odenkirk to Harold Ramis – seriously, I kind of just want to list all the amazing names – each offering their unique perspective on comedy.

So, what's next? [...]

It is Groundhog Day! So of course, everyone is talking more about the classic Harold Ramis/Bill Murray film than that stupid real groundhog (Early spring my ass. Have you fucking looked outside lately, Phil?). Including BuzzFeed, who has a list of 12 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Groundhog Day.

It's definitely got some interesting stuff in there, although I'm pretty sure Ramis and Murray have spoken since the shooting of the movie. I mean, that would make shooting Ghostbusters 3 pretty awkward, right? But Murray getting bit twice by a groundhog during filming? That I buy.

In The Finally Screenings, Alden Ford is watching comedy classics that, because he grew up in a cave in Alaska, he’s never seen before. These are his takes on movies everyone else has seen before.

Caddyshack was okay. Let’s talk about Harold Ramis for a second.

In the last month I’ve seen three classic comedies he’s written, and I’m starting to notice a pattern.

I'm aware that he's usually listed as one of many writers on these films, but Harold Ramis is a common thread and for the sake of simplicity I'm going to pin most of my analysis of writing on him – if it's bothering you, [...]

While Harold Ramis isn’t quite a household name, he absolutely should be. As a writer/director, the man shaped the big screen personas of Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, John Candy, and Rodney Dangerfield, amongst others, defined the comedic tastes of a generation, and had more of an effect on American film humor than just about anybody in the past few decades. Before conquering Hollywood, Ramis performed at Second City Chicago, on The National Lampoon Radio Hour, and on SCTV (where he also served as head writer). Ramis then went on to write, direct, and/or star in a string of hit comedies that includes Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, National Lampoon's Vacation, [...]

Here's a section of an interview Making Of did with Harold Ramis last year but just released now for some reason. In it, he discusses their approach to Ghostbusters 3, where the project was at the time, an earlier script that Dan Aykroyd wrote that sent the Ghostbusters to hell, and the special effects in the original movies.