Caddyshack II (1988)

Interesting facts

• Awards: 2 · Nominations: 4. Including: Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor - Razzie Award; Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song

Caddyshack II is a 1988 American sports comedy film and a sequel to the 1980 film Caddyshack. Directed by Allan Arkush and written by Harold Ramis and PJ Torokvei, it stars Jackie Mason, Robert Stack, Dyan Cannon, Dina Merrill, Jonathan Silverman, Brian McNamara, Marsha Warfield, Paul Bartel and Randy Quaid with special appearances by Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd. It tells the story of wealthy and widowed real estate developer Jack Hartounian who goes up against Bushwood Country Club's snobbish president Chandler Young in a golfing tournament.

Production

The original Caddyshack was a box-office success, making $60 million worldwide on a budget of $4.8 million. Warner Bros. therefore set about to make a sequel. As originally planned, Caddyshack II would have reunited Rodney Dangerfield (one of the stars of the original Caddyshack) with the director Alan Metter, who had worked with Dangerfield in the comedy film Back to School (1986).

Jon Peters, executive producer of Caddyshack, would produce the sequel with Peter Guber and Neil Canton. The studio invited Caddyshack director Harold Ramis, who co-wrote that film with Brian Doyle-Murray and Douglas Kenney, to write the sequel. (Neither Doyle-Murray nor Kenney were involved in the sequel; Caddyshack producer/co-writer Kenney died in August 1980, a month after that film's release.)

Ramis later described Caddyshack II, which he co-wrote with his Second City Television colleague PJ Torokvei, as "terrible." In an interview with The A.V. Club in 1999, Ramis said that:

...with Caddyshack II, the studio begged me. They said, "Hey, we've got a great idea: 'The Shack is Back!'" And I said "No, I don't think so." But they said that Rodney really wanted to do it, and we could build it around Rodney. Rodney said, "Come on, do it." Then the classic argument came up which says that if you don't do it, someone will, and it will be really bad.

Ramis was later quoted as saying that Dangerfield was the only one who expressed an interest in doing a sequel in the first place. Ted Knight had died two years earlier, Bill Murray was not interested in reprising his role as Carl Spackler the greenskeeper, and he said Chase had "already moved on", although Chase did eventually agree to appear.

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