"Caddyshack": The Graduate Seminar Quiz

Answer: His wife has recently died.

The lines themselves read: "So I tell ya, now, when Mona died last winter, I said to myself: Al, if you keep busting your hump 16, 20 hours a day you'll end up with a $60 million funeral, y'know!" It appears that he really is still in mourning in his own way; though he cracks jokes incessantly, he never seriously approaches or remarks on the looks of any woman, only teasing the obviously unavailable Mrs. Smails, whom he assumes, wrongly, can take a joke. (Moments later, he makes a mildly racist comment to one of the bartenders, who retorts with a witticism of his own; having established rapport, Czervik says "you're all right" and tips well. THAT is how one takes a joke.)

This underscores how shallow and lacking in humanity characters like Judge Smails, Dr. Beeper, and Bishop Fred (all ostensibly in helping professions) really are. Rather than seek out an opportunity to help Czervik fit in at Bushwood and perhaps enjoy some of his good time, they are consumed by pettiness and ego, never seeing a man in pain.

The quiztaker may suspect that I am taking this too seriously, and it is entirely possible that I am. However, according to Director Harold Ramis, he and producer Doug Kinney had originally wanted to much more serious projects about either Tibet or the Neo-Nazis marching on Skokie, IL. Though most of this ambition was discarded in favor of more earthy comic improvisation, this line - Dangerfield was meticulous about rehearsing a prearranged script, NOT improvising - is perhaps a scant survival of an overarching structure for the Czervik character.

Answer: Iceman

As he remarks to Tony: "When I was your age, I used to lug 50 pounds of ice up five, six flights of stairs!" It's interesting to note that, in addition to their physical strength, icemen of yesteryear were also known in folklore as neighborhood Casanovas, being the only young men that most housewives saw while their husbands were at work; this role would be assumed by milkmen a generation later. Thus, Rodney may be boasting of more than just a strong back in this scene (wink wink, nudge nudge).

Answer: Fecal remnant

Speaking of great pool and aquatic scenes in film history, the second unit director of "Caddyshack" (and putative director of the pool scene itself) was Ricou Browning, Sr., best known for playing the title role in "Creature from the Black Lagoon". His son, Ricou, Jr., has done aquatic stunt work for films such as "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl".

Answer: The Navy

In the bishop's own words: "You never ask a Navy man if he'll have ANOTHER drink, because it's nobody's...business how many drinks he's had!" Smails protests the Bishop's behavior, exclaiming: "You're a bishop, for God's sake!" To this, the man who now refers to himself only as Fred replies gravely: "There...is...no...God."

Recalling that he is a Lutheran clergyman (he mentions to Danny that he is opening a new Lutheran Center, and that Danny cannot attend because the caddy is Roman Catholic), Bishop Fred's fall from grace can be read as an inversion of Martin Luther's decision to take up religious life. According to tradition, Luther was walking to Erfurt, Germany in 1505 after a visit to his parents. Caught in a horrible thunderstorm, a bolt of lightning struck so close by that he was thrown to the ground. Raising his walking stick in the air and calling to his patron saint, Luther cried: "I will become a monk!" Conversely, Bishop Fred, dressed monklike in his rain poncho, misses a difficult putt that puts him off pace for the course record. Raising his putter in fury, he cries out something decidedly less profound. Lightning strikes, he is thrown supine to the turf, and when we see him next he has lost his faith in the almighty and found a new faith in the rusty nail (his drink of choice).

More temporally, the scene also resembles "The Ten Commandments" (1956) in which Henry Wilcoxon, who plays Bishop Fred in "Caddyshack", portrayed Pentaur.

Answer: He didn't go - he was homosexual (or so he says).

Ty remarks that he got most of his home furnishings in Vietnam. Lacy incredulously replies: "YOU were in the WAR?" Ty grasps his upper thigh, takes a couple of limping steps, and replies: "Nah...homo. Much better now, though."

This scene actually does parallel Chase's own avoidance of conscription in the Vietnam conflict. In a June 1988 "Playboy" interview (which I only read for the articles), Chase recounted being asked by his draft interviewer if he'd had homosexual experiences. Recalling an activity later portrayed in "National Lampoon's Vacation" (which most men would not "count" as homosexual, but Chevy was clutching at straws), he answered yes. This led to further, guarded questions, marked by the lack of candor common to the age. Chase was asked if he liked men. Well, of course he liked men - he was a man, after all, and had no unhealthy self-loathing - so he said yes. He was then asked if he liked women. Chase didn't lie - he said yes. He was then asked - and this is where it got tricky - if he liked men better or women better. He reasoned to himself that he spent most of his time with men and that most of his close friends were men, so he replied that he liked men better.

Chevy Chase was discreetly classified 4F.

Answer: Nebraska

The first allusion to this setting comes when Danny consults Ty Webb on going to college. Webb asks: "Do you want to go to college?" "In Nebraska?", Danny replies incredulously. (I will admit as a native Nebraskan that my home state does have something of a "brain drain" of students going out of state for higher education, but the honest truth is that Nebraska does have one of the highest percentages of high school graduates attending college of any state in the union, and is consistently among the top ten states in the nation for standardized test scores. Just thought I'd throw that in.) Danny is apparently bucking for a placement at the fictional "St. Copious of Northern Nebraska". Must be close to Carhenge - but that's another quiz.

The Nebraska connection comes up later when Al Czervik ends one of his exchanges with Tony: "When are you due back in Boys Town?" Boys Town is an incorporated village in suburban Omaha, Nebraska dedicated to at risk youth. Founded in 1921 by Catholic clergyman Edward J. Flanagan, the community, now known as Girls and Boys Town, was the basis of a 1938 movie starring Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy, with Tracy winning an Oscar for his role as Father Flanagan. Rodney Dangerfield, unfortunately, was denied this honor for "Caddyshack".

Answer: False

In fact, the sequence that Murray recounts in this oratory is very odd from a golf standpoint. He hits a two-iron from 455 yards out, where almost any golfer would have taken a wood in that situation (though, to be fair, Tiger Woods has been known to take a driving iron from a great distance in a tight fairway.) Based on his remaining distance of 350 yards, he certainly didn't hit the ball well - most good golfers would call that a duff.

All this speaks to the off-the-cuff nature of the filming, since Murray was - and is - very familiar with the game. The actor was running a golf concession in Wilmette, Illinois when he and Ramis first met. In 1999, he published a memoir - "Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf" - detailing his love of the game. And, yes, he was a caddy in his younger days - as were his brother, "Caddyshack" writer and actor Brian Doyle-Murray and director/writer Harold Ramis.

Many of the instances in the original script are based on Doyle-Murray's own experiences as a caddy. For example, the Havercamps (senior golfers who can "barely hit the ball out of their own shadows") are almost verbatim copies of a couple Doyle-Murray was repeatedly stuck with. Likewise, the film's infamous Baby Ruth incident really did occur at the writer's Chicago High School. Ah, the brilliance of youth.

Answer: Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky's work commemorates the Battle of Borodino, the turning point of the Napoleonic Wars. Following a pitted fight with Czarist forces, which ended in a virtual stalemate, Napoleon and his army managed to move into Moscow unopposed, seemingly claiming a great victory on the eve of the brutal Russian winter. Instead, they found the city utterly razed and abandoned, with no shelter or supplies for the troops. They were forced to retreat to Poland, decimated by conditions and abandoned by their commander. Napoleon was finished.

This is paralleled by the golf match in the film, which sees Judge Smails and Dr. Beeper wage a brutal fight against Ty and Czervik, then Ty and Danny Noonan. Just when they appear to have won the match - and at least a moral victory for high ground at the club - Carl unleashes the inferno. Smails has lost his "snobatorium", Danny has his money to go to college, Czervik has won his redemption ("cemeteries and golf courses are the worst wastes of prime real estate" and the club dinner is "the dance of the living dead" - in conquering golf, Al has conquered the grave, and he makes it VERY clear that his mourning is over), and the gopher soldiers on.

Answer: Doug Kenney

Kenney took advantage of "National Lampoon's" $7.5 million buyout in 1975 and went on to pursue other exploits, including co-writing the movie "Animal House" in 1978. Unfortunately, his exploits also included an extreme use of cocaine and other drugs. By the time of his work on "Caddyshack", Kenney was rapidly disintegrating, though his contributions as a "social director" did come in handy on occasion - the stars of the film were not exactly Latter Day Saints.

By the end of the shoot, Kenney was largely shunted aside as Harold Ramis and Brian Doyle-Murray did most of the editing. On release, the early reviews ranged from tepid to dismissive, and Kenney showed up drunk to a high-profile press conference shouting expletives. His good friend Chevy Chase convinced him to take a trip to dry out, first to a resort in California and then to Hawaii. After a few weeks together, however, Chase returned to the mainland, and Kenny's body was found on August 31, 1980 at the bottom of a cliff in Kauai, his jeep parked on the lookout above. It is unknown whether his death was an accident or intentional; as Ramis once gravely joked: "He probably slipped and fell looking for a place to kill himself." He was 32.

Answer: consciousness

The location shots for "Caddyshack" were done at Rolling Hills Golf and Tennis Club in Davie, Florida. The production crew's local contacts had a native actor, whom they swore would give a brilliant, deranged performance of this surreal recitation, given to a hapless caddy at the end of a pitchfork. Unfortunately, the fellow turned out to be a bit too much of a "method actor" - he was utterly uncontrollable and unreliable, blowing his lines incessantly, and finally had to be escorted from the set. Rather than scrap the piece, director Ramis (who identifies himself as the source of Ty Webb's "Zen golf" philosophy) called on Bill Murray, who aced it in one take as Carl Spackler.

Incidentally, total consciousness, as defined by a practitioner like the Dalai Lama, is almost entirely a product of life practice, and cannot be given as a gift. Further, the Dalai Lama, at the time of the film (and through the span of Carl Spackler's life), was the fifth child of sixteen, not the twelfth. Conversely, however, the Dalai Lama is a well-known advocate of Dzogchen, a natural, utterly primordial state that may well be in accordance with Carl Spackler's goal in the film: "In order to conquer the animal, I have to learn to think like an animal. And, whenever possible, to look like one." Perhaps, in a way, Carl's "Dalai Lama" recitation foreshadows the gopher-driven visionquest that will drive him for he rest of the film. Or not.

As always, I'd love to hear any comments you might have, especially those that will make this a better quiz. Thanks for playing.