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I'm Stephen McHaff, and this is the Slate Culture Gap Fest. There is no Dana. There is

only Zool edition. It's Wednesday, February 26, 2014. On today's show, Harold Ramos has died.

We'll discuss the remarkable legacy of this comedic giant. And then Disney's Frozen. We weren't going to talk about it. And

then it went on and took over the whole world, so we will now. And then finally, why do writers

put it off and put it off and put it off until virtually the whiff of death hits their nostrils?

We'll discuss a provocative

theory about procrastination. Joining me today is Slate's deputy editor Julia Turner. Hello, Julia.

Hi, Steve. And of course, Slate's film critic Dana Stevens. Hey, Dana. Hey, Steve. But she's not

Dana. She is only Zool today. All right. Well, the great Harold Ramos has died from complications due to something

called vasculitis. He was 69 years old. He was a veteran of Second City Improv Troop, and he had a big

hand in creating what were once called Slob comedies, the classic ones, Animal House, Stripes,

Caddyshack. In the 70s and early 80s, he acted in and co-wrote Ghostbusters, and then, of course, produced his masterpiece. He was the director and co-writer of Groundhog Day, one of the best, if not the best, American comedy since the heyday of Billy Wilder. We'll listen to a clip in one second. But with that exaggeration, he really was a giant and a humble giant at that of American and comedy. What was your reaction when you heard this news? Well, in addition to just seeming too soon to lose, this director, he was only 69 and he was still making comedies. He just, his last one, I think, was two, three years ago. It just made me think of how much he and his school of comedy writing sort of changed American comedy that essentially, you might think think of him as the Judd Apato of his time, just in the sense that he formed this sort of school of comedians around him.

So, as you said, even though he may not have directed many of those films, he's very, very strongly associated with meatballs, stripes, the Animal House movies, the National and Boon Vacation movies, this whole sort of school of sketch comedy

that grew up in the early days of Saturday Night Live and SCTV.

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