THE 'ICE' MAN SPEAKETH `ICE HARVEST' DIRECTOR HAROLD RAMIS JUST CAN'T HELP BEING FUNNY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Harold Ramis has made such beloved comedies as ``Caddyshack,'' ``Groundhog Day'' and ``Analyze This.''

So what's he doing directing ``The Ice Harvest,'' a cynical, bloody film noir, set in large part in sleazy strip clubs, with humor that makes co-star Billy Bob Thornton's ``Bad Santa'' look as benign as Ramis' script for ``Meatballs''?

Why, he's exploring deep religious issues, of course.

``I made a commitment to myself a long time ago that I wanted my work to mean something,'' says the filmmaker and sometimes actor, who turned 61 on Monday and, in a previous incarnation, also worked on ``SCTV'' and helped write ``National Lampoon's Animal House'' and ``Ghostbusters.'' ``I didn't want to separate my work from my values. I've made a couple of little slips, did things for money, but I know they were mistakes and I tried to avoid them.''

While it's certainly not a celebration of any belief system, ``Ice Harvest'' is informed by Ramis' recent contemplations of such diverse philosophies as Buddhism, existential psychology and his own Jewish faith.

Adapted from Scott Phillips' novel by Oscar-winning writer-director Robert Benton (``Kramer vs. Kramer'') and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo (``Empire Falls''), the movie follows mob lawyer Charlie Arglist (John Cusack) and gentlemen's club entrepreneur Vic Cavanaugh (Thornton) through one particularly nasty Christmas Eve night in Wichita, Kan. They've just embezzled millions of dollars from one of Charlie's clients, and their plans to split town with the dough keep running into absurd, increasingly life-threatening roadblocks.

To Ramis, it's a darkly comic character study about men whose lives have lost all meaning, leaving them liable to do the craziest things just to try to feel something.

``For men, I think, their transition from work to home is a stop at a bar,'' Ramis says of the film's spiritual arena, which looks for all the world like a vice den that's seen better days. < ``And, increasingly, that bar has strippers. They're not happy at work, they're not happy at home, they start stretching the time in the bar. They drink more and more just to numb the pain, they fantasize about the women to create a little stimulation in their lives.

``And John's character is a guy who just, finally, stopped going home. Might as well work for the vice industry; that's where he is every night, anyway.''

Indeed, Charlie spends much of the movie musing out loud about the meaning of life, kind of like in a Quentin Tarantino film. Only sincere, and fueled by a huge case of midlife disappointment.

``I thought Charlie had this great, comic, quiet desperation to him, and there were other themes that were so interesting,'' Cusack says. ``There are no outward polemics to this movie, it doesn't talk about left and right, and I'm sure neither one of these guys cares who's president.

``But there are these subtle jabs at consumerism. And these guys went into some version of the American Dream: Get the house, get the money, get the trophy wife, get the girl on the side, get the material possessions, get the great car, get more women, get more drink ... and none of it's making them happy.

``I remember Arthur Miller said that an era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted,'' the actor adds. ``I thought, yeah, these guys are just exhausted, none of it's working. So they trade in that dream for the outlaw dream, where they make the big last score and hit the open road. And that's pathetic and funny, too.''

``John really likes to talk about the big values and themes in this movie,`` Ramis jokes, as if to remind us that he is, indeed, still the guy who made his career out of giving Bill Murray irreverent things to say (``Stripes'' is also on his writing resume). But although ``Ice Harvest'' is by far the most dramatic film he has ever directed, Ramis downplays the big-stretch aspects of the project.

``I said to my agent, 'I think it's time for a dark, existential,funny film noir. Let's find one!' No,'' the filmmaker cracks.

``When you're doing pure comedy, things have to happen that would not happen in real life,'' Ramis acknowledges. ``In this movie, we find ourselves laughing at how horrible real life can be, or at the kinds of things people say under stress, which may strike us as funny but they're certainly not telling jokes to each other.

``I've been there before, in a way. Even in a broad comedy, some characters are more naturalistic than others. That's sometimes how you make the joke, one person being very real and someone else being completely off the wall, and it's the tension between them. Maybe 'Analyze This' was good training, because the challenge of that movie was to reconcile Billy Crystal's comedy and Robert De Niro's reality.''

It was while researching that 1999 film - a pre-``Sopranos'' comedy about a Mafia don who seeks psychiatric help - that Ramis became interested in existential therapy. But the shift from anti-establishment wise-guy humor had begun half a decade earlier, when Murray's semi-purgatorial dilemma of reliving ``Groundhog Day'' over and over until he got it right brought fundamental questions of existence into the multiplex. With jokes.

``The embrace of that film was so strong and so diverse - letters from rabbis and Jesuits and yogis and Buddhists and therapists,'' Ramis recalls. ``Everybody just loved that film for what it was saying about the world.''

Despite his later triumphs, though, Ramis' most enduringly beloved work seems to be his first directing effort, the 1980 country-club comedy ``Caddyshack.'' He acknowledges that the slobs-vs.-snobs piece was hardly his best effort, but Ramis has some idea why the golf film resonates, now, with multiple generations of young men.

``It understood country-club life from the point of view of the suburban have-nots, the working-class kids who weren't like the members of the club and were not gonna be members of the club,'' Ramis observes. ``I looked at it from the point of view of a Jewish outsider; not only would I not be in the club, they don't want you in the club from the get-go. The first poster slogan we had for the film was 'Some People Do Not Belong.' That's what was driving it.''

Ramis cautions that his own renewed interest in his cultural roots does not ``mean Kabbalah and I'm not turning Orthodox or anything; it's just a real investigation of what answers or questions Judaism poses as an explanation to why we live, how we live and what's the point of all of it.''

And once again, we'll point out that his spiritual inquiry hasn't affected his sense of humor. Asked if a lot of research went into the strip-club aspect of ``Ice Harvest,'' Ramis deadpanned, ``Unfortunately, yes.''

``Well, I had pre-scouted a few strip clubs. Before I knew about the film.

``As a formerly thin person, I once told a journalist I gained 40 pounds for a movie role. He said, 'What role?' I said, 'I don't know.' That's a lot like my strip-club research.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

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(1) no caption (Harold Ramis)

(2 -- 3) Harold Ramis directed the comedies ``Groundhog Day,'' above, and ``Caddyshack, both starring Bill Murray, but takes on more topical subject matter in ``The Ice Harvest,'' which opened Wednesday.