Caddyshack (1980) Revisit ft. Joe Boukhari

Original Episode: #59 Caddyshack (1980) (released April 7, 2021)

New Episode: #258 Caddyshack (1980) Revisit ft. Joe Boukhari (released April 23, 2025)

Guest:

• Joe Boukhari

  • Instagram - I'll Get to It When I Get to It

  • Letterboxd Film Commentator - @bagodonuts

Cast:

• Harold Ramis, Writer/Director

• Brian Doyle-Murray, Writer

• Douglas Kenney, Writer

• Johnny Mandel, Music

• Stevan Larner, Cinematography

• Chevy Chase as Ty Webb

• Rodney Dangerfield as Al Czervik

• Ted Knight as Elihu Smails

• Michael O'Keefe as Danny Noonan

• Bill Murray as Carl Spackler

• Sarah Holcomb as Maggie O'Hooligan

• Cindy Morgan as Lacey Underall

• Scott Colomby as Tony D'Annunzio

Background:

• Caddyshack was released on July 25, 1980.

• On a budget of roughly $5 million, the film would gross nearly $40 million in 1980 and $60 million during its entire run making it the #17 film of 1980.

• The film was unheralded by critics at the time with a few notable exceptions, but, due to its popularity among the general audience grew on critics over time.

• The film is recognized by American Film Institute on these lists:

  • 2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #71

  • 2005: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:

    • Carl Spackler: "Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac... It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!" – #92

  • 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10:

    • #7 Sports Film

• There was a sequel called Caddyshack II (1988) which performed poorly at the box office and is considered one of the worst sequels of all time. Only Chevy Chase reprised his role.

• Many of the film's quotes are part of popular culture, with many fans able to recite the movie line for line and merchandise is still licensed and sold by several companies as of 2024. FunkoPop produced several figures in 2019, as well as a set exclusive to Target.

• Tiger Woods has said that he likes the film, and played Carl Spackler in an American Express commercial based on the film.

• The University of Minnesota uses part of the film as a dance sport ritual for athletics, encouraging fans at collegiate sports games to "Do the Gopher" and imitate the dancing gopher, referenced because of mascot Goldy Gopher.

• In 2016, Bret Baier in a Fox News interview asked the Dalai Lama whether he had seen the movie. The Dalai Lama responded he had not seen the movie, and while he had played badminton, he had never played golf.

• A 2023 Super Bowl commercial for Michelob beer also featured modern athletes recreating scenes from the film.

• Caddyshack currently holds a 73% among critics on RT, a 48 score on Metacritic, and 3.4/5 on Letterboxd.

Plot Summary: Bushwood Country Club: an opulent haven for the wealthy, where life revolves around pristine greens, exclusivity, and egos so inflated they could double as golf carts. But underneath the facade of luxury lies a clash of worlds—working-class caddies and eccentric groundskeepers versus snobby elites—and it’s about to get hilariously out of control.

Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe), a young caddy striving to secure his future, finds himself entangled in the club's tangled hierarchy, navigating manipulative judges, raucous millionaires, and life lessons from Ty Webb (Chevy Chase), a laid-back golfer with pearls of wisdom that sound like they came from a Zen koan written by Groucho Marx. Meanwhile, Carl Spackler (Bill Murray), the quirky groundskeeper, engages in an escalating war with a gopher so cunning it could win a philosophy debate.

Add in Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield), whose outlandish behavior becomes a catalyst for chaos, and Bushwood transforms into the backdrop for a wild satire of class division, absurd ambition, and the universal search for meaning—through golf, naturally. The result? A comedy that skewers pretense and celebrates the unpredictability of life, all while leaving the audience wondering how a gopher became the most unstoppable force in the universe.

Did You Know?:

• The movie was inspired by writer and co-star Brian Doyle-Murray's memories working as a caddy at a golf club. His brother Bill Murray and Harold Ramis also worked as caddies when they were teenagers.

• A big hill was built from scratch for the climactic 18th-hole scene, because the country club did not want its course blown up. The pyrotechnic people used too many explosives, which completely destroyed the hill and caused planes flying by to report the explosion, as if a plane had crashed there.

• According to the original script and specials on the making of the movie, the character Maggie is an exchange student from Ireland. This explains her thick accent, which goes unexplained in the final movie.

• The reason the scenes of Mr. Gopher's underground world look better than the rest of the film is because they were filmed on a sound-stage with better quality film stock and cameras rather than on-location, like the majority of the film.

• After Cindy Morgan's dispute with Jon Peters over her nude scene, he invited a photographer to the film's set for a photo spread that was to appear in "Playboy" as a promotion for the film. Morgan refused. Harold Ramis sided with her and canceled the shoot.

• In the lovemaking scene, Cindy Morgan was so uncomfortable that Harold Ramis ordered a closed set for it. Michael O'Keefe asked all the cast and crew to take off their shirts for the scene to make her feel more comfortable, though shirtless guys surrounding a nervous naked girl only made it worse.

• To the end of his life, even though the film became better appreciated over time, Harold Ramis was dissatisfied with his directorial debut. "All I see are compromises and things we could have done better," he told "GQ" magazine in the late 2000s. His greatest complaint was that no one in the film, other than Michael O'Keefe, was able to swing his or her golf clubs properly.

The Stanley Rubric:

Original Legacy Score: 9.5

New Legacy Score: 7.5

Original Impact/Significance Score: 6

New Impact/Significance Score: 8

Original Novelty Score: 9

New Novelty Score: 6

Original Classicness Score: 5

New Classicness Score: 5

Original Rewatchability Score: 8

New Rewatchability Score: 6.83

Original Audience Score: 8.75 (88% Google, 87% RT)

New Audience Score: 8.55 (84% Google, 87% RT)

Original Total Score: 46.25 (#118 currently)

New Total Score: 42.33 (#181)

In Memorium:

• N/A

Remaining Questions:

• Why is Maggie Irish?

• Is Ty Webb = Mitch Cumstein?

• Why would Judge Smails be so easy to snooker into larger and larger bets?

• How does the scoring work in the final match?