judge smails yacht speech

• when blindfolded and boasting that he had the power of intuition, Ty gave advice to Danny: ("I'm going to give you a little advice. There's a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it. Stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball!"); later, Ty made other Zen-like pronouncements: ("A flute without holes is not a flute. And a donut without a hole is a Danish" or "You're rather attractive for a beautiful girl with a great body")
• the club's elitist, snobbish, wealthy and arrogant hotshot Judge Elihu Smails pulled into the club in his Rolls Royce; he was immediately upset when he viewed a gopher tunneling through the greens of the club's massive golf course

• the club's lunatic, deranged, and dim-witted greenskeeper Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) was given a misinterpreted request by an enraged Smalls and his Scottish boss Sandy McFiddish (Thomas A. Carlin), to destroy an intrusive and pesky gopher who was ruining the golf course: "I want you to kill every gopher on the course" - with Carl's reply: "Check me if I'm wrong Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers, they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key." Sandy clarified: "Gophers, ya great git! Not golfers! The little brown furry rodents!"; for the remainder of the film, Carl became fixated with his task and attempted numerous ways to destroy the pesky rodent
• Judge Elihu Smails was accompanied by his sex-loving, bra-less young blonde niece Lacy Underall (Cindy Morgan), who was judged by one ogling male as "Madonna with meatballs"
• a boorish, crude, abrasive nouveau-riche real estate developer - brash wisecracking, loudmouth named Al Czervik (stand-up comedian Rodney Dangerfield in his feature film debut) wearing colorful golf clothing drove up in his convertible with personalized plates - the disrespectful Czervik immediately began to heckle everyone by spouting many offensive one-liners in the golf shop, with some of the insults directed toward Judge Smails' hat: ("Oh, this is the worst lookin' hat I ever saw. You buy a hat like this, I betcha get a free bowl of soup, huh? (to Smails) Oh, it looks good on you though!")
• shortly later, Czervik continued to harrass and upset Smails' nearby golf group on the green by playing loud music from his golf bag, and hitting Smails in the groin with one of his drives; the aggravating Czervik suggested that the golf course was the perfect place for a condo and shopping mall development; as the Judge's golf game was ending, Czervik bet him $1,000 dollars he couldn't make his final putt; after missing the hole, the frustrated Judge threw his golf club into the air and it struck a woman and rendered her unconscious; to ingratiate himself to the Judge (to help his scholarship chances), Danny took the blame for not putting stick-um on the Judge's golf grips
• in one of the film's most memorable vignettes, the speech-impaired, wacky Carl Spackler recounted, to another incredulous caddy, how he once caddied for the Dalai Lama in Tibet: ("So we finish 18, and he's gonna stiff me. And I say: 'Hey, Lama! Hey, how about a little somethin', you know, for the effort, you know.' And he says: 'Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that goin' for me, which is nice")
• the demented Spackler also became fixated and obsessed with destroying the intrusive gophers; throughout the film, Spackler used various methods to eradicate the gopher pest, including a high-pressure water hose to flood the gopher's holes, as he threatened the 'varmint': ("Scum, slime, menace to the golfing industry! You're a disgrace. You're varmints. You're one of the lowest members of the food chain, and you'll probably be replaced by the rat"); his initial attempt caused the flooding of the entire course

• in his quarters, Spackler grabbed his shotgun (with an attached flashlight), as he explained why the Varmint Cong (gophers) had to die: ("License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy. In this case, my enemy is a varmint, and a varmint will never quit. Ever! They're like the Viet Cong. Varmint Cong! So what you gotta do, you gotta fall back on superior firepower and superior intelligence. And that's all she wrote"); dressed in camouflage that night, he attempted to shoot the gopher with his rifle - but missed
• Danny learned that the club's caddy college scholarship had become available when the recipient of the award had died from a severe anxiety attack during summer school; his desire to acquire the money meant befriending Judge Smails who was the director of the scholarship program; Danny volunteered to caddy for the Judge and expressed an interest in going to college, and added: "It looks like my folks won't have enough money to put me through college"; all of the caddies, including Danny, were immediately impressed by the Judge's sexy young blonde niece Lacy Underall, who was visiting for the summer from Manhattan
• during dinner at the club's restaurant that evening, Czervik continued to make loud and vulgar jokes; after farting, he asked: "Oh, (did) somebody step on a duck?"; he criticized the food: ("I had better food at the ballgame! I tell you, this steak still has marks where the jockey was hitting it"); he also personally insulted the Judge's older, white-haired wife: "Oh, this is your wife, huh? A lovely lady. Hey baby, you're alright. You musta been somethin' before electricity, huh?"; he also continued to harrass and insult other guests at the Judge's table, with lines such as: "The last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it"; he livened up the music on the dance floor, and then grabbed the Judge's wife to be his dance partner as he sexually grabbed her: "Hey, you wanna make $14 dollars the hard way?"
• after dinner and on an outer balcony with the tempting Lacey, Ty awkwardly and nervously delivered a pick-up line to her: ("What brings you to this nape of the woods, neck of the wape. How come you're here?"); she replied: "Daddy wanted to broaden me"; she coyly invited herself to join him that evening: "I'll bet you've got a lot of nice ties....You want to tie me up with some of your ties, Ty?"; he demonstrated his method of drinking tequilas - by snorting the salt, sucking the lemon and tossing the booze over his shoulder; later, he also attempted to seduce the Judge's promiscuous niece
• Danny competed in the Caddy Day golf tournament to obtain the caddie scholarship - and won; as a result, he was invited by the Judge to attend the Sunday christening of the Judge's sloop at the Rolling Lakes Yacht Club

• a Busby Berkeley-style, synchronized swimming water ballet was performed by the male golf caddies in the country club's pool; during a scatological moment, a floating "Baby Ruth" candy bar was thrown into the pool (a young girl reacted: "Doodie!"); it sent swimmers screaming from the water in a Jaws -inspired panic - shock and fainting was caused when Spackler (after the pool was "scrubbed, sterilized and disinfected") ate the brown object and claimed: ("There it is! It's no big deal!")
• at the Rolling Lakes Yacht Club's christening of the Judge's sloop, Lacey distracted Danny (handsomely dressed in a naval uniform), and enticingly invited him to leave and get high with her back at the Smails' house: ("Hey, Cary Grant. You want to get high?"); after they left, the Judge's boat was christened as "The Flying Wasp," but then Czervik's gigantic "Seafood" Cruiser disrupted the ceremony, collided with the Judge's small sloop, and destructively dropped anchor onto its deck - it quickly sank
• Danny and Lacey were discovered making out in his bedroom by Smails, who then chased Danny (in his underwear) out of the house with a golf club
• in the film's memorable "It's In the Hole!" Cinderella story and golf fantasies, Spackler pretended to be an announcer and player - imagining himself winning the championship Masters golf game at Augusta, while he was actually practicing teeing off by whacking down rows of planted flowers: ("The crowd is standing on its feet here at Augusta, the normally reserved Augusta crowd, going wild, for this young Cinderella. He's come outta nowhere. He's got about 350 yards left. He's gonna hit about a 5-iron, I expect, don't you think? He's got a beautiful backswing -- that's -- oh, he got all of that one! He's gotta be pleased with that. The crowd is just on its feet here. He's the Cinderella boy, uh -- tears in his eyes I guess, as he lines up this last shot, he's got about 195 yards left. And he's got about a -- it looks like he's got about an 8-iron. This crowd has gone deathly silent, the Cinderella story, outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper and now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac- it's in the hole! IT'S IN THE HOLE!")
• complications arose the next day when Maggie found Danny sleeping in the caddy shack, and confessed that she was "late" (pregnant), but also added: "I don't hold you responsible! It's my problem. I can handle it"; Danny promised to stand by her: ("I'm not going to let you go through this alone"), although she wanted to keep the baby: ("I'm going to have it! I've already decided!"); when he offered to get married, she declined his offer ("It might not be yours. Okay?...I'm not making it up"); shortly later, she was happy to report to Danny that she wasn't pregnant after all
• later in Smails' club office, Danny expected to be fired or to have his caddy scholarship revoked for romancing Lacey, but the uptight Smails only asked Danny to keep the incident quiet: ("The last thing any of us needs now is a lot of loose talk about her behavior"), after admitting that Lacey had "a certain zest for living"; the Judge ended their short meeting by asking: "Are you my pal - "Mr. Scholarship Winner'?" - and Danny agreed: "Yes, sir! I'm your pal!"
• a major showdown developed in the film's conclusion when Czervik arrogantly called the club a "dump" and a "crummy snobatorium," but offered to buy it; an 18-hole team golf tournament was organized between two pairs of golfers to settle the matter -- Judge Smails (playing with his regular golfing partner Dr. Beeper (Dan Resin)) and Czervik (playing with Ty Webb); a $20,000 bet (that was eventually increased to $40,000 and then to a double-or-nothing bet up to $160,000) was made on the outcome
• meanwhile, the crazed Spackler threatened the detestable gopher by planting plastic explosives (inside clay squirrels and rabbits) that were to be inserted into the gopher holes: ("I have to laugh, because I've often asked myself. My foe, my enemy, is an animal, and in order to conquer him, I have to think like an animal. And, whenever possible, to look like one. I've gotta get inside this dude's pelt and crawl around for a few days. Who is the gopher's ally? His friend? The harmless squirrel and the friendly rabbit. I'm gonna use you guys to do my dirty work for me")

• once the tournament commenced, Spackler threatened the animal as he sneakily planted his explosive rabbits and squirrels in the gopher's hole, as he asked his opponent: ("Anybody home? Uh, hello, Mr. Gopher. Yeah, it's me, Mr. Squirrel. Yeah, hi. Uh, just a harmless squirrel, not a plastic explosive or anything, nothing to be worried about. I'm just here to make your last hours on earth as peaceful as possible...In the words of Jean Paul Sartre, 'Au revoir, gopher.' This is gonna be sweet")
• when Czervik faked an arm injury as an excuse for his poor playing, Danny substituted for him (even though he knew it might jeopardize his scholarship); on his final shot of the game, Danny's putt was perched on the edge of the hole; it was nudged in by a massive, plastic explosives blast set off by Spackler to kill the gopher, and Czervik's team won the game, although the golf course was destroyed in the process
• Smails (on the losing team) refused to pay off two of Czervik's enforcers Moose and Rocco who were called upon to make him pay up: ("Help the judge find his checkbook"), and he fled as Czervik delivered a curtain-closing invitation: "Hey everybody, we're all gonna get laid!"; in the midst of everything, the unharmed gopher appeared after having survived the explosions

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• Carl Spackler : What an incredible Cinderella story. This unknown comes out of nowhere to lead the pack. At Augusta, he's on his final hole. He's about 455 yards away. He's going to hit about a two iron, I think. Well, he got all of that. The crowd is standing on its feet, here at Augusta. The normally reserved Augusta crowd is going wild. For this young Cinderella who's come out of nowhere, he's got about 350 yards left. He's going to hit about a five iron, l expect. Don't you think? He's got a beautiful back swing. That's - oh! He got all of that one! He's got to be pleased with that. The crowd is just on its feet here. He's a Cinderella boy. Tears in his eyes, I guess, as he lines up this last shot. He's got about 195 yards left, and he's gonna - looks like he's got about an eight iron. This crowd has gone deadly silent. Cinderella story. Out of nowhere. A former greenskeeper now about to become the Master's champion. It looks like a miraculous - it's in the hole! It's in the hole!
• Carl Spackler : [ 10:35 ] So I jump ship in Hong Kong and I make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas.
• Angie D'Annunzio : A looper?
• Carl Spackler : A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
• Ty Webb : You take drugs, Danny?
• Danny Noonan : Everyday.
• Ty Webb : Good.
• Sandy : I want you to kill every gopher on the course!
• Carl Spackler : Check me if I'm wrong Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers, they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key...
• Sandy : Gophers, ya great git! Not golfers! The little brown furry rodents!
• Carl Spackler : We can do that... we don't even have to have a reason.
• Judge Smails : You know, you should play with Dr. Beeper and myself. I mean, he's been club champion for three years running and I'm no slouch myself.
• Ty Webb : Don't sell yourself short Judge, you're a tremendous slouch.
• Al Czervik : [ to his Asian companion ] I hear this place is restricted, Wang, so don't tell 'em you're Jewish, okay?
• Ty Webb : Don't be obsessed with your desires Danny. The Zen philosopher, Basho, once wrote, 'A flute with no holes, is not a flute. A donut with no hole, is a Danish.' He was a funny guy.
• Al Czervik : Oh, this is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. What, when you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh?
• [ looks at Judge Smails, who's wearing the same hat ]
• Al Czervik : Oh, it looks good on you though.
• [ last lines ]
• Al Czervik : Hey everybody, we're all gonna get laid!
• Al Czervik : Oh, this your wife, huh? A lovely lady. Hey baby, you must've been something before electricity.
• Richard Richards : Better come in till this blows over.
• Bishop : What do you think, fella?
• Carl Spackler : I'd keep playing. I don't think the heavy stuff's gonna come down for quite awhile.
• Bishop : You're right. Anyway, the Good Lord would never disrupt the best game of my life.
• [ THUNDER ]
• Judge Smails : I've sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn't want to do it. I felt I owed it to them.
• Al Czervik : Hey, doll. Could you scare up another round for our table over here? And tell the cook this is low grade dog food. I've had better food at the ballgame, you know? This steak still has marks from where the jockey was hitting it.
• Al Czervik : Hey, loosen up, will ya? You're a lot of woman, you know that? Yeah, wanna make 14 dollars the hard way?
• Carl Spackler : Licensed to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. A man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote.
• Judge Smails : Spaulding, get dressed you're playing golf.
• Spalding Smails : No I'm not grandpa I'm playing tennis.
• Judge Smails : You're playing golf and you're going to like it.
• Spalding Smails : What about my asthma?
• Judge Smails : I'll give you asthma.
• [ Ty has just been asked by Al to partner up against Judge Smails in a $20,000-per-person golf match ]
• Judge Smails : Can I have a word with you? ln private?
• Ty Webb : Sure thing, Judge.
• Judge Smails : Listen, your father and I prepped together, went to war together, played golf together. We built this club, he and I. And let's face it, some people simply do not *belong*. Let's not... cave in too easy. What do you say, Ty?
• [ Smails and Ty start to laugh ]
• Ty Webb : Let's make it $40,000.
• Al Czervik : Hey, great!
• Ty Webb : [ to a glaring Smails ] You know, Judge, my dad... never liked you.
• Spalding Smails : I want a hamburger... no, cheeseburger. I want a hot dog. I want a milkshake. I want potato chips. I want...
• [ gets cut off by Judge Smails, who grabs him by the arms and yanks him to their table ]
• Judge Smails : You'll get nothing, and like it!
• Ty Webb : For me, there's a subtle perfection in everything I do. I have my own standards, my own way. in everything I do. I've got my own standards, my own way.
• Lacey Underall : My uncle says you've got a screw loose.
• Ty Webb : Oh yeah? Your uncle molests collies.
• Al Czervik : [ after an airplane passes just above his head ] I almost got head from Amelia Earhart!
• Carl Spackler : This is a hybrid. This is a cross, ah, of Bluegrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, Featherbed Bent, and Northern California Sensemilia. The amazing stuff about this is, that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on this stuff.
• Ty Webb : Thank you very little.
• Judge Smails : Well? We're waiting!
• Ty Webb : You've got to win this hole.
• Danny Noonan : I kinda thought winning wasn't important
• Ty Webb : Me winning isn't. You do.
• Danny Noonan : Great grammar.
• Carl Spackler : [ preparing to dynamite the gopher tunnel ] In the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, 'Au revoir, gopher'.
• Ty Webb : You're rather attractive for a beautiful girl with a great body.
• Ty Webb : I'm going to give you a little advice. There's a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball.
• Tony D'Annunzio : [ carrying Czervik's golf bag ] What do you got in here, rocks?
• Al Czervik : Are you kiddin'? When I was your age, I would lug fifty pounds of ice up five, six flights of stairs!
• Tony D'Annunzio : [ puts down Czervik's bag, exasperated ] So what?
• Al Czervik : So what?
• [ opens compartment in golf bag, revealing radio ]
• Al Czervik : So let's dance!
• [ turns on Journey's "Any Way You Want It," high volume ]
• Bishop : [ as he misses a putt on the 18th hole during the thunderstorm ] OH, RAT FART!
• [ he holds up his club and is hit by lightning... Carl drops the golf bag and leaves him there ]
• Carl Spackler : Your place got a pool?
• Ty Webb : We have a pond in the back. We have a pool and a pond... Pond'd be good for you.
• Al Czervik : Look at that one. The last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it.
• Danny Noonan : I haven't even told my father about the scholarship I didn't get. I'm gonna end up working in a lumberyard the rest of my life.
• Ty Webb : What's wrong with lumber? I own two lumberyards.
• Danny Noonan : I notice you don't spend too much time there.
• Ty Webb : I'm not quite sure where they are.
• Ty Webb : This your place, Carl?
• Carl Spackler : Yeah, whatta ya think?
• Ty Webb : It's really... awful.
• Carl Spackler : Well, I got a lot of stuff on order. You know... credit trouble.
• Groundskeeper Sandy : Carl. Damn your eyes. I told you, today is the day we change the holes. Now, do it, and no more slacking off.
• Carl Spackler : I'll slack you off, you fuzzy little foreigner.
• [ Caddy Danny arrives among the rich in his yachting outfit ]
• Spalding Smails : Ahoy polloi... where did you come from, a scotch ad?
• Danny Noonan : I planned to go to law school after I graduated, but it looks like my folks won't have enough money to put me through college.
• Judge Smails : Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.
• Lacey Underall : [ to Danny ] Nice try.
• Ty Webb : So, what brings you to this nape of the woods, neck of the wape; How come you're here?
• Lacey Underall : Daddy wanted to broaden me.
• Judge Smails : You - you will never be a member of Bushwood!
• Al Czervik : A member? You think I actually want to join this scumatorium? The only reason I'm here is because I might buy it!
• Al Czervik : [ 31:01 ] Whoa, did somebody step on a duck?
• Al Czervik : He called me a baboon, he thinks I'm his wife.
• Bishop : I really enjoy working with young people such as yourself down at our new Lutheran Center... Why don't you drop by sometime, eh?
• Danny Noonan : I've often thought of entering the Priesthood.
• Bishop : Oh, are you a Roman Catholic?
• [ Danny nods ]
• Bishop : Oh, then I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you can't come.
• Tony D'Annunzio : Another Rob Roy, Bishop?
• Bishop : You never ask a Navy man if he'll have another drink, because it's nobody's goddamned business how many drinks he's had already, right?
• Judge Smails : Wrong! You're drinking too much, Your Excellency.
• Bishop : Excellency, fiddlesticks! My name's Fred and I'm a man, same as you.
• Judge Smails : You're not a man, you're a bishop, for God's sakes.
• Bishop : There is no God...
• Ty Webb : Just be the ball, be the ball, be the ball. You're not being the ball Danny.
• Danny Noonan : It's hard when you're talking like that.
• Carl Spackler : Bark like a dog.
• [ Judge Smails is preparing to hit the ball on the first tee while Al Czervick watches ]
• Al Czervik : Hey 'Whitey,' where's your hat?
• [ Smails looks over at Czervick, who is watching anxiously ]
• Al Czervik : ...let's go while we're young!
• Judge Smails : Mind Sir? Trying to tee off.
• Al Czervik : ...I bet ya slice into the woods! A hundred bucks!
• Judge Smails : Gambling is illegal at Bushwood sir, and I never slice.
• [ the judge hits the ball, and it goes flying into some trees, in response, he shouts in frustration ]
• Al Czervik : Okay, you can owe me!
• Judge Smails : [ mad ] I owe you nothing!
• Tony D'Annunzio : [ caddying for the elderly Havercamps... to Mrs. Havercamp ] Your ball's right over there, go straight. You can't miss it. Mrs. Havercamp... Mrs. Haver... Mrs. Havercamp... you'll need this.
• [ hands her her club ]
• Mrs. Havercamp : Oh I might, at that!
• Tony D'Annunzio : Mr. Havercamp, your ball's right over there, sir.
• Tony D'Annunzio : [ Havercamp puts hand out for club, Tony hands it to him as he attempts to shoot away from the green ] No... Mr. Havercamp. The green's right over there, sir.
• Mrs. Havercamp : [ knocking ball into the pond ] Whee!
• Mr. Havercamp : That's a peach, hon! Oh, by golly... I'm hot today!
• [ he slices it and it barely misses Tony's head ]
• Judge Smails : Danny, I'm having a party this weekend.
• [ pauses a beat ]
• Judge Smails : How would you like to come over and mow my lawn?
• Carl Spackler : Wait up, girls; I got a salami I gotta hide still.
• Ty Webb : Let me tell you a little story? I once knew a guy who could have been a great golfer, could have gone pro, all he needed was a little time and practice. Decided to go to college instead. Went for four years, did pretty well. At the end of his four years, his last semester he was kicked out... You know what for? He was night putting, just putting at night with the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Dean... You know who that guy was Danny?
• Danny Noonan : No.
• Ty Webb : Take one good guess.
• Danny Noonan : Bob Hope?
• Ty Webb : Ha ha... No, that guy was Mitch Comstein, my roommate. He was a good guy.
• Al Czervik : [ drops his bow anchor on Judge Smails' sailboat, sinking it ] Hey, you scratched my anchor!

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15 Fun Facts About Caddyshack

You may already know your favorite moments from Caddyshack , which turns 40 years old today, by heart. But after reading this list, you’ll be a lock for membership at Bushwood Country Club.

1. Caddyshack got made because of Animal House .

Caddyshack director and co-writer Harold Ramis was also a co-writer of the 1978 National Lampoon comedy classic Animal House, along with eventual Caddyshack co-writer and producer Douglas Kenney. Held to only a $3 million budget, their film of frat-house shenanigans went on to gross $141 million at the box office.

You would think that box office success would afford the filmmakers carte-blanche privileges for any follow-up project, but that wasn't the case. Ramis pitched two ideas to Orion Pictures (the now-defunct production company that would go on to make Caddyshack ): One was a dark satirical comedy about the American Nazi Party in Skokie, Illinois, and the other was what Ramis dubbed a “revisionist Marxist western.” Both ideas were swiftly rejected, but another idea—a comedy about caddies at a country club, pitched by Kenney and co-writer Brian Doyle-Murray as “ Animal House on a golf course”—was given an immediate green light.

2. The screenwriting process for Caddyshack was (almost) entirely autobiographical.

To write their screenplay, Ramis, Kenney, and Doyle-Murray locked themselves in a room and tried to recall everything they knew about or experienced at golf courses and country clubs growing up—most of which came from Doyle-Murray, who caddied at Indian Hill Country Club in the suburbs of Chicago as a kid.

Doyle-Murray's sizeable Irish Catholic family even served as the inspiration for scenes and characters in the film. His brother Bill played head greensman Carl Spackler. Memories of living with their eight other siblings (including three sisters) inspired the opening scenes with main character Danny Noonan’s overcrowded house of siblings. Danny, who sets out to win the caddy tournament scholarship, was based on Doyle-Murray’s older brother Ed, who won a similar prize when he was young. The lumberyard that employs Danny is borrowed from the real life of Doyle-Murray’s father, who was an executive at J.J. Barney Lumber Company. The infamous "Baby Ruth in the pool" scene was culled from the Murray kids' real-life high school exploits.

Ramis drew from real-life experience while writing as well. He admittedly had only played golf twice in his life before directing the film, and recalled that he nailed someone in the nether regions with one of his first practice shots taken to prepare for the film. Naturally, he made use of this tale by contributing the scene where Judge Smails (played by Ted Knight) gets hit in the crotch with an errant golf ball.

3. The studio wouldn’t make Caddyshack unless they got a star.

The finished Caddyshack script was a whopping 250 pages in length, more than double the average screenplay. Studio bosses immediately demanded that it be cut down, and added a second stipulation: No star, no movie. First-time director Ramis offered them three, though the first two were untested as far as the studio was concerned.

The filmmakers originally envisioned actor Don Rickles as the slobbish condo magnate Al Czervik, but they settled on comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who'd garnered success in comedy circles and on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson . Caddyshack would be his first big feature film. Bill Murray was fresh off of three years at Saturday Night Live and had appeared in Meatballs (co-written by Ramis) and Where the Buffalo Roam . The studio finally went ahead when Ramis and company secured Chevy Chase to portray the film's pompous-but-well-meaning playboy Ty Webb (whom they had written the part for anyway, unbeknownst to the studio).

Chase was the biggest catch of the three, having received a Best Actor Golden Globe nomination for the 1979 box-office hit Foul Play . Ramis had Mickey Rourke in mind for the leading role of Danny Noonan, but felt that he couldn't convincingly portray the "goofy kid-next-door." Filmmakers ultimately settled on actor Michael O’Keefe.

4. Caddyshack director Harold Ramis didn’t know what he was doing.

By 1980, Harold Ramis was already a comedy heavyweight, having garnered success live (with the Second City comedy troupe), on the radio (the National Lampoon Radio Hour ), and on television ( SCTV ). He'd also co-written Meatballs and Animal House, but Caddyshack marked his first attempt at directing. Conflicting accounts from cast and crew say that Ramis looked through the camera lens instead of the viewfinder on the first day, and also mistakenly called out “Cut!” instead of “Action!” on early takes. The veracity of these jokes is uncertain, but it is true that the studio was so skeptical of Ramis's abilities that they asked associate producer Don MacDonald to submit a list of directors who could be quickly brought in as on-the-fly replacements, if needed. Luckily, Ramis figured things out, later directing such comedy classics as National Lampoon’s Vacation and Groundhog Day .

5. Caddyshack 's filmmakers got out of L.A. to avoid problems, but found new ones.

Orion Pictures wanted the production to be filmed in Los Angeles, but Ramis knew things would be better out from under the thumb of studio execs. He convinced the studio to look elsewhere, since the Illinois setting of the fictional Bushwood Country Club wouldn't include Southern California's palm trees. But the chosen site was Rolling Hills Country Club (now Grande Oaks ) in Davie, Florida—which had palm trees! Rolling Hills was one of the few golf courses away from L.A. that would allow the production of a movie on its grounds.

Production was held up both completely (by Hurricane David) and sporadically (by the noise from flights leaving and entering nearby Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport). The cast and crew took advantage of the hurricane delay by holding a huge indoor party at their hotel next to the country club.

6. Rodney Dangerfield’s audition for Caddyshack was unorthodox, and on set, he felt that he got no respect.

Prior to Caddyshack , Dangerfield was known primarily as a comic from his appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, and The Tonight Show (he appeared a total of 36 times). Caddyshack marked Dangerfield's first big-time appearance on the silver screen. For his audition, the comic allegedly arrived at executive producer Jon Peters's office in a black stretch limosine, wearing a long black trench coat with a cheap leisure suit underneath. When it was time for him to audition, he walked into the room, removed his pants, and said, “Let’s eat!” He won the role of nouveau-riche bigmouth Al Czervik, but became nervous whenever he turned on his personality in front of the camera. When actor Scott Colomby (slick caddy antagonist Tony D’Annunzio) asked Dangerfield about his struggles, Rodney allegedly said that he was bombing because nobody was laughing at his jokes. Colomby reassured the rookie actor that if they laughed they’d ruin the take.

7. Bill Murray showed up for six days of filming on Caddyshack and made comedy history.

As a youngster, Bill Murray was a groundskeeper, a caddy, and even ran a hot dog stand at the Indian Hill Country Club, the location that inspired the Illinois setting of the film. At first, Murray's appearance as oafish groundskeeper Carl Spackler was planned as a quick cameo, but his characterization was so funny that Ramis requested he stick with the production a bit longer. Murray filmed for a total of six days, and all of his lines—including his Dalai Lama speech —were improvised on-the-spot. In fact, the only script direction for what became his "Cinderella speech" read: “Carl cuts off the tops of flowers with a grass whip.” Murray took it from there and ad-libbed lines that would, in 2005, be named to the AFI's list of greatest movie quotes of all time.

8. Harold Ramis cast an actor from the Golden Age of Hollywood in Caddyshack , and poked fun at his career in a clever way.

Actor Henry Wilcoxon plays the unassuming but hilarious role of Bishop Pickering—and it was the last film he made before he passed away in 1984. The actor had been involved in some of Hollywood's biggest epics: His stage and screen career reached back all the way to a role in 1931’s The Perfect Lady, and included roles in 1941's That Hamilton Woman and 1942's Mrs. Miniver, which won an Oscar for Best Picture.

Historically, Wilcoxon is best known for his collaborations with legendary director Cecil B. DeMille. Wilcoxon played Marc Antony in DeMille’s Cleopatra in 1934, Richard the Lion-Hearted in 1935’s The Crusades, and was in The Greatest Show on Earth —another Best Picture winner—in 1952. In his Caddyshack scene, Wilcoxon is struck by lightning after shouting "Rat farts!" when he missed a putt to end what would have been the best golf game of his life. Ramis knowingly added in a music cue from DeMille’s film The Ten Commandments. Wilcoxon appears in that film as well, playing Pentaur.

9. Caddyshack 's Zen golf techniques came from co-writer-producer Douglas Kenney.

The idea for Ty Webb quoting 17 th -century Japanese poet Bashō and using Zen philosophy to better his golf score came from Kenney’s personal experimentation with Buddhist meditation and enlightenment. According to Doyle-Murray, Kenney “had an idea for a putter with electromagnetic sensors that would signal you to putt when you'd reach alpha state." Later, when the filmmakers wanted Ty Webb to make some sort of Zen sound, and Kenney wasn’t around to advise them, Ramis just gave Chevy Chase one direction: “Make a spiritual sounding sound.” Chase improvised Webb’s hilarious “Na-na-na-na-na” putting sound on the spot.

Caddyshack wasn't the only time the writer infused his projects with Zen; he tried to make a few movies about the topic. One rejected pitch was a comedy about Zen Buddhists in the Himalayas fighting the Red Chinese. He also tried to produce a film adaptation of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance before his accidental death in 1980, just a month after Caddyshack hit theaters.

10. Caddyshack evolved into something other than “ Animal House on a golf course,” and employed a classic comedy trio for inspiration.

Ramis filmed scripted scenes of Danny and the caddies running wild at the country club, believing that his scenes with Tony D’Annunzio and Maggie O'Hooligan would form the main core of the story. But viewing the dailies after a few days of shooting, Ramis realized that the scenes featuring the golfers were too essential to let go. This forced Ramis and his co-screenwriters to reconfigure the narrative focus of the coming-of-age story about Danny into a broader comedic view of the country club itself, based around the hilarious vignettes involving Murray, Dangerfield, and Chase. Ramis would now conduct Caddyshack as if it were a Marx Brothers film. According to Ramis, he thought of Dangerfield as Groucho, Murray as Harpo, and Chase as Chico.

11. Caddyshack 's introduction scene between Bill Murray and Chevy Chase was based on the contents of a studio note.

The original script for Caddyshack did not include a scene where Carl Spackler and Ty Webb meet, so the studio sent Ramis a note requesting that he take advantage of the talent and come up with a funny scene for Murray and Chase. Some on the set were skeptical of the outcome, thanks to some bad blood between the two after Murray replaced Chase on SNL .

Ramis, Murray, and Chase met to discuss things when production broke for lunch, and they worked together to come up with an outline of a scene where Ty stumbles into Carl’s shed, and the two talk about Carl's rather unique strain of grass, which can be used both on golf courses and to smoke like marijuana. Like much of the comedic bits from the film, the scene was ultimately improvised by the SNL alums and was shot without incident. Murray would later talk about a fight that broke out between the two when Chase returned to co-host SNL while Murray was still on the cast, saying "It was kind of a non-event. It was just the significance of it. It was an Oedipal thing, a rupture.”

12. The Gopher wasn’t originally a big part of Caddyshack .

When shooting concluded in September 1979, Ramis and editor William Carruth had a lot of footage to work with. With so much plot and so many jokes, their first rough cut of the film ran 4.5 hours long. They had already decided to abandon Danny as the main focal point in favor of the comedic heavyweights in Murray, Dangerfield, Chase, and Knight. Still, the filmmakers felt that they needed something to package the film and make the story more coherent. Executive producer Jon Peters suggested, on a whim, that they increase the role of the gopher, turning it into the narrative through-line that tied the film's bits together. The only problem? They didn’t really have a gopher.

During filming, Murray acted his scenes “hunting” the gopher by himself, and the only scene they shot with him trying to catch it involved a hand puppet made out of mink fur. (This cheap puppet can also be seen in the scene where Dangerfield yells “Hey, that kangaroo stole my ball!”)

Ramis looked into bringing in a live, trained gopher to act out the scenes, but Peters weasled some extra money out of the studio and tasked special effects supervisor John Dykstra (an Oscar-winning FX master who had worked on on Star Wars ) to create a believable gopher puppet. This explains why Murray and the dancing rodent never appear together onscreen—the scenes in the gopher holes were shot by Dykstra after principal photography had concluded, and were cleverly stitched in to make the scenes appear seamless. The sound effects used for the gopher were the same sounds used for the dolphin in the 1960s TV series Flipper .

13. The owners of the country club where Caddyshack was shot were not happy about the explosions on the golf course.

The climactic scene of Murray’s gopher-killing plastic explosives knocking in Danny’s putt to win the unfriendly wager between Al Czervik (Dangerfield) and Judge Smails (Knight) were real pyrotechnics set aflame at Rolling Hills. To pull off the effect, an artificial green was rigged with several incendiary packs and put into place between two fairways.

This was news to the owners of the country club, who had made it clear to filmmakers that the outrageous climax couldn't be shot anywhere near their golf course. To get them to “comply,” producer Jon Peters invited them out for a swanky lunch away from the country club to “thank them for letting the film use the location.” Ramis then had the special effects crew blow up the fake green while they were away. The fireball from the explosion was so large that a pilot landing a plane at nearby Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport radioed in to air traffic control that he thought he might have witnessed a crash.

14. Harold Ramis made some unusual choices for the songs in Caddyshack .

As the 1980s began, it seemed like every movie was accompanied by a custom theme song or a catchy pop single, and Caddyshack was no different. But Harold Ramis’ first choice for the artist behind that song was a little unorthodox for the type of silly comedy he was making. The director first approached Pink Floyd—who had just released their sprawling concept double-album The Wall —to come up with a song to play over the film's opening and closing credits. The band politely declined, and soft rock icon Kenny Loggins stepped in to provide the song “I’m Alright” for the film. Loggins would go on to find additional soundtrack fame with 1986’s “ Danger Zone ” from the film Top Gun .

15. You can experience Caddyshack yourself at the Murray Bros. Caddyshack Restaurant.

On June 7, 2001, all six Murray brothers (Ed, Brian, Bill, Andy, John, and Joel) opened a Caddyshack-themed restaurant at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Florida. Designed to “look and feel like a country club gone awry,” the restaurant's menu includes a Double Bogey Cheeseburger, Pulled Pork Sandwedge, and the CaddyShake. Wall displays provide pictures and quotes from the film, and hidden gophers litter the décor. It's said that Bill Murray even stops in from time to time to sing a little karaoke.

Additional Source: Caddyshack DVD commentary

The Hunt for the Missing 'Caddyshack' Yacht

Never mind that the boat helmed by Rodney Dangerfield makes what might politely be called a cameo appearance in the movie. It’s still got a story all its own.

Joshua David Stein

Moviestore collection Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

Currently bobbing lazily at a dock in Pasadena, Maryland, the boat captained, briefly, by Rodney Dangerfield in the 1980 film Caddyshack is now on sale for $129,000. The boat, a 60-foot Striker yacht christened Big Dog , appears for all of 90 seconds in the film in what is known among Caddyshack fans as “the boat scene.” The scene, in which Dangerfield’s character, a gauche arriviste named Al Czervik, caroms through the genteel waters and by extension the comfortable lives of the members of Bushwood Country Club, at the helm of the ship— Seafood in the movie—can be summoned simply by uttering its catchphrase, “Hey, you scratched my anchor.” So iconic are these 90 seconds that they have saved this damaged ship from the scrap heap where it almost certainly would have ended up.

This is not the first boat to have claimed to be Seafood but, according to the Wall Street Journal , it is certainly the boat most likely to have been Seafood . [The other contenders were built after Caddyshack was shot.] It is owned by Richard “Dick” Philips, the son of Herbert Phillips, the World War II vet who founded Striker Yachts in 1951. Phillips pere was an enterprising sort, who near the end of his life sold the other boat—confusingly dubbed Caddyshack —claiming it was Seafood to a guy named Jim Shatz, who seems rather good natured about the whole thing. (Dick, who decried the Journal article as “full of lies" says, “My dad was probably trying to make him feel good.“)

Herbert Phillips’s other son—Mark Steven Phillips—should be finishing up a five year sentence for marijuana and cocaine trafficking about this time . He ran a sizeable operation in the ’70s called Black Tuna before going on the lam for the last 30 years. (He was caught in 2011 in a retirement home in West Palm Beach, living out of his suitcase.)

Anyway, back to this boat, which is pretty much the only thing left of Caddyshack . Dangerfield is dead. Ted Knight, who played Judge Smails, whose boat Seafood destroyed, is dead. And so is writer/director Harold Ramis . Chevy Chase is an asshole, and Bill Murray is bartending in Brooklyn. The guy who played Gatsby, who also co-founded Sha Na Na weirdly, is an orthopedic surgeon in Burbank . This boat—“It is not a piece of junk!” according to Phillips—is the only meaningful vessel of that past.

So, at $129,000 is it worth it? Generally, it seems the value added by a thing having been a prop is inversely proportional to the overall value of the object. So an ashtray that bears the name of a golf course in Caddyshack sells for $95 on PropMaster but a house that belonged to Robert Redford, for instance, in Westport, Connecticut, is on sale for $1.3 million, not too much higher than median asking prices in the area. This is, perhaps, because in the former case, you can hold what Rodney once held but in the latter, you can simply be where Redford once was.

When it comes to the yacht, it may be that the history is immaterial. As Dick says, “ Caddyshack really has no bearing on the price of the Big Dog . For 129 grand, it's a lot of boat.” As for whether the yacht will move now that its authenticity has been established, that depends whether there are enough Caddyshack fans with deep pockets and lots of nostalgia. According to Dick Phillips, “I’ve had some offers but they've all been low-balls.” In other words, Seafood just don't get no respect.

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Culture Caddyshack Codes

Judge Smails

Thick Description by Josh Glenn , Posted November 13, 2020

Judge Smails takes a golf ball to the crotch

This is the sixth installment in a series of posts offering a semiotic analysis of the 1980 golfing comedy Caddyshack . (Why select this particular, not very successful, deeply flawed movie? See the series introduction .)

In this series’ second installment , I introduced SEMIOVOX’s G-Schema, a purpose-built tool that I’ve developed (over the past 20+ years) in order to productively and insightfully map any product category’s, cultural territory’s, or cultural production’s network of meaningfulness. In constructing each new G-Schema, I proceed in a tried-and-true fashion — the idiosyncratic methodology of which this series aims to demonstrate.

By the end of this series’ fifth installment , we’d arrived at the mapping stage illustrated in Fig. 5 (above). As you can see, we’ve now completed our analysis of two of this map’s four codes: Golf Club vs. Caddy Shack and Dr. Beeper vs. Danny Noonan. (As explained in our second installment , a semiotic code is alway a binary opposition of a symbolic expression with its direct inversion, hence the “vs.” aspect of the codes described here.) In this post, we’ll begin the process of completing our second semiotic square — rendered in blue, in the G-Schema — by looking at the first term, Judge Smails, in this semiosphere’s third code: Judge Smails vs. Carl Spackler .

As Fig. 6 (below) indicates, according to my analysis the paradigm Judge Smails governs the Caddyshack meaning-map’s ORDER quadrant. According to Greimasians, the “meta-term” that emerges a posteriori from the opposition between a semiosphere’s unmarked term (i.e., the dominant discourse, according to our analysis; in this case, the Golf Club) and its marked term (the top right of our diagram; to be explicated later) is a “complex” one. Judge Smails is indeed a complex figure. Dogmatism and self-sufficient presumption are often associated with the complex meta-term; these grow out of deep-seated insecurity, a desperate effort to mediate between the semiosphere’s unmarked and marked terms. Note that Greimas suggested that this meta-term could be thought of as a utopian one, transcending the semiosphere’s main opposition; I disagree, though it’s certainly the case that within this semiosphere, Judge Smails “has it all.”

In psychological terms, following Gregory Bateson we can say that a semiosphere’s complex figure (at top center of a G-schema) is caught in a “double bind.” This figure can’t win. If intensified and prolonged, Bateson would have us understand (in a 1956 essay collected in 1969’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind ), a double-bind situation can lead to a person becoming “a clown, a poet, a schizophrenic, or some combination of these.” Which brings us back to Judge Smails — played by Ted Knight, whose turn as the vain, bombastic, yet deeply insecure news anchor Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977) won him two well-deserved Emmy Awards — is this semiosphere’s “complex” figure, a clown, and an avatar of what Lacan calls the socio-symbolic order.

Before we get into Lacan’s theory, let me just reiterate a sentiment that I’ve expressed before: Ted Knight’s performance makes Caddyshack , despite its obvious flaws, one of the all-time greatest comedy movies. In Chris Nashawaty’s book on the making of Caddyshack , we read that “beneath his confident gas-bag veneer, Knight’s Baxter was nothing more than a grown-up child — desperate for approval, easily wounded, and unwilling to come clean when he was wrong.” That goes for Smails, too. (And for the sitting US president, as I write this post.) It takes tremendous skill, on the part of an actor, to make such a character less villainous than pathetic, even slightly lovable; Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott is the only other example that comes to mind.

In order for a child to join society, according to Lacan, whose adaptation of Saussurean semiotics revolutionized Freudian psychoanalysis, he or she must first internalize the “big Other”: society’s rules and dictates. These are absorbed almost by osmosis, as part of accepting language’s rules. The symbolic order that helps shape our perceptions and control our desires is a social world of linguistic communication, intersubjective relations, knowledge of ideological conventions, and the acceptance of the law. This order is closely bound up, Lacan persuasively suggests, with the father, whose internalized voice is the superego, as well as with the “phallus.”

Judge Smails, as we’ll see, is a wannabe version of the father-superego-phallus construct; Knight’s performance helps us find this failure funny.

In my experience, the top-most vertex in a G-Schema represents not a semiosphere’s superego (that would be the top-left vertex, i.e., the primary term of the semiosphere’s master code; here, the paradigm Golf Club) but its ego . Which is not to suggest, of course, that a semiosphere is a human being with a psychic apparatus of its own. However, as Lacan helped us understand, in his own not entirely comprehensible way, a structuralist approach to psychology has a great deal to learn from structuralist anthropology… and vice versa.

The least understood aspect of the psyche is the ego — which is deformed , according to Freudian theory, warped by its inability to reconcile the id’s relentless instinctual drives with the superego’s nagging and preaching. The ego is an enabler, of sorts, trapped in a self-destructive pattern of trying to appease these two masters. The paradigms that turn up in a G-Schema’s top-vertex position, I’ve found, may appear confident and reasonable (the ego is all about projecting confidence and reasonableness) but in fact they’re faking it. So casting Ted Knight in this role was a stroke of genius. His ability to toggle back and forth between authoritarian bombast and cringing insecurity allows him to illustrate for his audience the ego’s deformity.

Adapting and building upon the terminology of C.S. Peirce’s existential graphs — a c. 1903 diagrammatic system to represent “the fundamental operations of reasoning” — we’d describe the Judge Smails categorical proposition like so: “It must not be the case that Caddy Shack is not Golf Club.” The proposition Golf Club simply takes it for granted that Caddy Shack shares its values, ideas, and so forth. It is left to the propositions flanking Golf Club (and therefore “infected” by uncertainty) on our diagram to do the dirty work of preserving this illusion. We’ve talked about Dr. Beeper in another installment; here we’ll look at how a Judge Smails figure works, within a semiosphere, to prevent the dominant paradigm (here: Golf Club) of becoming aware of and subverted by the antiheroic proposition (represented here by Ty Webb).

A Fig. 6 (above) indicates, my analysis of the paradigm Judge Smails suggests that the two thematic complexes governed by this paradigm are Purifying Elitist and Anxious Snob . In this post, I’ll bring these complexes to life via a close analysis of the source codes (“signs”) native to each.

Purifying Elitist

In this series’ second installment , we analyzed the paradigm Golf Club’s thematic complex Virtuous Insider — which, as Fig. 6 (above) indicates, is adjacent to the paradigm Judge Smails’s thematic complex Purifying Elitist. According to the self-serving  weltanschauung  of the Golf Club’s members, their Bushwood membership offers evidence of their own WASPy virtue. Eager for us to understand that WASPdom’s self-congratulatory culture is flaccid, hypocritical, and corrupt, the creators of Caddyshack offer us the example of Judge Smails — whose self-defeating antics demonstrate that at some level he isn’t entirely persuaded that he truly deserves his privilege.

His deep-rooted lack of faith in his own bullshit helps explain that aspect of Smails’s character and behavior that we’ll analyze here — i.e., his obsession with border-patrolling Bushwood’s boundaries and, by extension, preserving his own elite status. Or vice versa.

In Smails’s very first scene, he spies a gopher tunneling on the golf course. The exaggerated expression of horror on Knight’s countenance (8:10) could serve as an illustration next to a definition of Purifying Elitist. For Smails, Bushwood is emblematic of the socio-symbolic order that he must defend; and any incursion into this sanctified space made by impure outside forces — whether gophers, ethnics, vulgarians, etc. — must be summarily dealt with. In this mission, he has appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner.

The gopher, according to Bushwood’s groundskeeper, has been driven into the golf course by the disruptive, nearby construction of a condominium complex; a glimpse of the construction project (8:27) reveals a sign advertising the Czervik Construction Co. Almost subliminally, we’re afforded some insight into the true source of Judge Smails’s outrage: The borders of his elite world of privilege are being threatened from outside, tunneled under even, by an ethnic upstart.

Are we reading too much into a brief glimpse of a business’s sign? Is Smails really racist, xenophobic, anti-Catholic, and so forth? Yes, he is. In a locker-room scene that follows not long after this one (17:25), Smails begins to tell a joke about “a Catholic, a Jew, and a colored boy” to one of his Bushwood cronies… who, laughing uproariously, turns out to be a (Protestant) bishop. If we didn’t already understand that the Bishop is a bigot, it’s made very clear (at 25:15) when he invites Danny Noonan to the church’s new youth center… then disinvites him once he learns that Noonan is a Catholic.

A moment later, Czervik shows up in the Bushwood Pro Shop, wearing tasteless clothes and spending money freely on his Asian business partner. Czervik makes an ethnic joke of his own, when he enters, warning the obviously un-Jewish Mr. Wang that the club doesn’t admit Jews — har har. (At least Czervik’s joshing is at the expense of the segregated Bushwood.) Smails, whose own outfit is supposedly more tasteful, looks on grimly. Not only does Czervik turn the tables on Smails, here — as we’ll see when we dig into the Anxious Snob thematic complex — but in a few minutes’ time he’ll accidentally fire a golf ball into the Judge’s groin. What’s with that?

As mentioned earlier, Lacan’s work elaborates language as a symbolic order that precedes and makes possible human subjectivity. (“Symbolic” is Lacan’s term for the way in which reality becomes intelligible and takes on meaning and significance, through words.) Importing Saussurean semiotics, as well as the semiotics-driven anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss, into the domain of psychoanalysis, Lacan argues that the “order” of language is instituted through a symbolic articulation in precisely the same way that, in primitive (and modern) societies, paternal prohibition provides the conditions for human sociality — i.e., by repressively dictating desire and its limits. In order to assume his or her place in society, a child must submit both to the nom du père  (authority) and the non du père  (repression of desires); in thus submitting, a child is symbolically castrated. The subject’s “phallus,” which for Lacan represents primordial being in all its fecund possibility, is cut off; to be a subject in society, therefore, is to be fractured.

Do we have to bring Lacan and Kristeva into our discussion of Caddyshack ? you ask. We don’t. However… Lacan and Kristeva’s theories, particularly when it comes to the Judge Smails character, is undeniably pertinent in grokking the tensegrity — that is, the dynamic tension — of the relation between our Caddyshack meaning map’s ORDER and DISORDER quadrants. Plus, the movie’s otherwise juvenile castration gags become highly relevant and meaningful when viewed through the lens I’ve just tried to explain.

In this series’ earlier installment on the paradigm Caddy Shack , I brought up Julia Kristeva’s post-Lacanian theory of “abjection.” In abjection, the Lacanian fractured subject confronts (unconsciously) what he or she must exclude or expel in order to maintain their inherently unstable identity. Women, homosexuals, immigrants, members of ethnic and religious minorities, and others who are perceived as socially marginal, or refusing cultural assimilation, become troubling figures to the symbolically castrated Lacanian subject. Which brings us back to Judge Smails.

I seriously doubt that Harold Ramis was familiar with French theory — as mentioned, Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection appeared in 1980, the same year as Caddyshack — but it’s fascinating to see how often Judge Smails is figuratively castrated during this movie. And not always figuratively: At 22:02, Czervik’s wayward golf ball literally hits Smails’s nuts.

Smails, who perceives himself as Bushwood’s bearer of the nom du père and non du père , is a fervent no-sayer. No to the gopher, no to Czervik, no to the caddies’ antics, no to Danny Noonan’s game efforts to hustle his way into the Establishment, and no in particular to his nose-picking, weed-smoking grandson Spaulding’s bad habits. Symbolic order-wise, Spaulding is un-castrated, i.e., following his own desires willy-nilly; Smails takes it upon himself to fracture his grandson’s phallus. In this series’ second installment , we reviewed Smails’s rebuke to the greedy Spaulding, which could have been ventriloquized by Lacan, “You’ll get nothing — and like it!” Here, we should also mention Smails’s rebuke when Spaulding, at the Fourth of July gala, ravenously enquires whether Dr. Beeper’s companion is planning to eat her fat (29:59). Also, at the yacht club, in the midst of christening his new sloop, Smails barks, “Spaulding, get your foot off the boat!” (55:28). He’s got the non du père down pat — yet Smails is a failed authority figure.

Judge Smails and his wife, Pookie, struggle to police Bushwood’s socio-symbolic order — which, by extension, is America’s socio-symbolic order. Theirs is a Sisyphean task; in every single Caddyshack scene involving this husband-and-wife duo, borders are transgressed, the unsullied is sullied. At the Fourth of July gala, their dinner party is interrupted by Czervik’s antics; when they hit the dance floor (36:07) and discuss the interloper, they literally stick their noses into the air in disgust. Czervik then disrupts the dance by bribing the band to play a disco song, and cuts in on Mrs. Smails — making outrageous jokes, which we’ll discuss later on. “You’re no gentleman!” fumes Smails (36:41). “I never want to see that man here again!” Czervik is Bushwood’s abject; Smails is obsessed with expelling him.

The caddy’s tournament is, oddly, a big deal for Smails. As we’ve seen, Bushwood conflates skill at golf with personal virtue — i.e., like a Protestant’s worldly success, according to Weber’s analysis, an impressive golf handicap somehow demonstrates that one deserves one’s privilege. The tournament’s trophy is displayed to us with a medieval joust-like trumpet blast (39:36), and Smails follows Noonan’s progress every step of the way… even swatting D’Annunzio’s pesky brother for shouting “NNNOONAN” in a (since then, much-imitated) effort to throw Danny off his game (41:07). The caddies, too, are Bushwood’s abject; an abject that sabotages from within. No one is more overjoyed when Danny wins the trophy than Smails. It’s almost sweet… except that we mistrust Smails’s motives.

The swimming pool scene is a particularly abject moment, as we’ve seen in this series’ third installment . The horrified “O” of Mrs. Smails’s mouth gets larger and larger, from the first moment that she sees the caddies frolicking in the pool (47:13) to the moment at which she spots the “turd” in the water… at which point Pookie actually resembles Munch’s The Scream . Cut to Judge Smails overseeing white-suited figures: “I want the entire pool scrubbed, sterilized, and disinfected!” (48:14) He is at his most bombastic, at moments like this, striking a pose as abjection’s most implacable foe.

The free-floating candy bar in the pool could be likened to a castrated phallus, I suppose, but that’s a stretch. No need to make an effort to locate castration jokes in Caddyshack . Recall the sloop-christening scene at the yacht club, for example. After Elihu delivers himself of a Kipling-lite, supposedly wry poem about how a (WASPy) fellow ought to handle himself (stoically) in moments of adversity, Pookie strikes the phallic bowsprit of the Flying WASP with a champagne bottle… snapping the bowsprit off (56:00). Shortly thereafter, Czervik’s (large, tasteless) motor-powered yacht anchor plunges through Smails’s (small, tasteful) vessel, sinking it (58:26). Suffice it to say that Smails does not handle his adversity with stoicism.

Try as he might, Smails cannot prevent his socio-symbolic order from being sabotaged. Even once he returns to his own home, he finds Noonan in his bedroom with Lacey. Outraged — and perhaps jealous, since we infer that the WSPy Elihu and Pookie rarely couple — Smails snatches up yet another phallic symbol, a golf club, and pursues Danny (1:00:00). In his priapic rage, Smails smashes up his bedroom and batters a hole in the bathroom door; the message — that Smails’s obsession with order is more disruptive to the status quo he seeks to defend than anything else — is crystal-clear. And what does poor Smails see when he peeks into the bathroom (at 1:00:37)? His naked wife and a nearly naked Noonan exchanging admiring glances.

PS: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining , in which another toxic male hacks a hole in a door and peers through it menacingly — was also released in 1980. It might prove interesting to trace unexpected parallels between these two movies… but we’ll have to put that off for another time.

When next we see Judge Smails, he’s in what appears to be his office — striking a Faustian bargain with Noonan. Alternately bullying and flattering Noonan, he says things like, “I think you can still become a gentleman some day… if you understand and abide by the rules of decent society” (1:07:45). His non du père tactics aren’t working with Noonan, so here Smails is in full-blown nom du père mode. He pontificates, preaches, and bloviates: “I’ve sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn’t want to do it. But I… owed it to them.” (1:08:01) Only Ted Knight could pull this off. Finally, he offers Noonan the college scholarship in exchange for Noonan’s loyalty. He has, or so he believes, converted a saboteur into a gentleman.

There are two or three additional moments where Smails’s obsessive need to preserve the elitist purity of his world runs up against various saboteurs. At 1:10:05, Smails tells Czervik, “You have worn out your welcome at Bushwood, sir!” And also: “I guarantee you’ll never be a member here.” Unperturbed, Czervik both insults Bushwood and threatens to purchase it — which precipitates their scuffle, and following that, the money match. On the day of the money match, Czervik and Ty Webb violate the sanctity of the golf course — an above-ground version of what the gopher is doing below — by driving Czervik’s gaudy ’64 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III convertible directly to the first tee (1:19:58). A flustered Smails demands that Ty drive it away, to no avail; Ty is the passenger, not the driver. And as we know, Carl Spackler will in the movie’s final scene blow up the entire golf course.

That which we repudiate, as Kristeva warned, always threatens to return. There’s a timely lesson here for America’s Republicans, of course. But there’s also a lesson for complacent liberals who can only vaguely comprehend the fact that (to quote Slate’s Lili Loofbourow), “Joe Biden still may win the presidency, sure. But a bigger proportion of the country than we thought is fine with things as they are. And they want more of it.” Each of us struggles in vain to fortify our porous borders against abjection.

Let’s move on, now, to the Judge Smails thematic complex Anxious Snob.

Anxious Snob

Judge Smails isn’t merely a purifying elitist; he is also an anxious snob. His need for others to demonstrate the proper respect for Bushwood’s customs, and for his own (inherited) social status, is unrelenting, all-consuming.

Smails’s fanatical devotion to keeping up appearances is evident from the beginning. He rolls into Bushwood in a 1972 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow I — a vehicle that communicates wealth and status without being vulgar. As he changes into his golfing togs, he complains to the attendant Porterhouse about the wax build-up on his cleats, and gives him explicit instructions on how to remedy the situation (16:37). At the Fourth of July gala dinner, he is inordinately proud of his ceremonial jacket, the meaning and function of which he bores Lacey with (30:14). At the yacht club, he and Pookie demand that everyone gather around as they portentously christen their new sailboat. In his own home, a jacketed butler bears a massive silver tea set. His outfits — at the office, in the club, on the course — are impeccable.

All of this preppie peacockery masks a deep-seated insecurity, however. There’s an awkward moment in the Bushwood pro shop when Czervik, who is himself dressed eccentrically, clownishly — mocks what passes for preppie chic. “You buy a hat like this,” he says, pointing to a rainbow-striped, lightweight fedora, “I bet you get a free cup of soup!” (18:34) Humiliated, Smails flings off his own striped fedora and flees the scene. PS: Smails’s fedora has since become a fetish object, highly prized by golfers.

PS: A 2016 Medium essay by “Miles Gloriosus” uses Judge Smails as a prime example of the alazon , an ancient comedic archetype. The alazon is a braggart, an authority figure who acts like he knows everything. In the Trump era, according to “Miles Gloriosus,” this figure is no longer funny.

Smails’s status anxiety is also very much tied up with his own (middling) prowess at golf. As mentioned a few times in this series, for Smails — and Bushwood generally — one’s low golf score is proof of one’s elect status. Which is why Smails and his golfing buddies — Dr. Beeper and the Bishop — invariably lie about their scores to one another, and to themselves too. This also explains why it’s so troubling, to Smails, that Ty Webb won’t reveal his own score — and, in fact, dismisses the importance of keeping score. So Smails and Beeper are eager for the opportunity to compete against the elusive Webb. Although Smails often cheats when his fellow golfers aren’t looking — “Winter Rules,” “I was interfered with,” etc. — you can’t fake the first drive from the tee. Which is why he’s so persnickety about his swing, fiddling with his approach — to the exasperation of those behind him.

In Greimasian theory, the opposition between a semiotic square’s unmarked and marked terms is itself an unmarked opposition; the dominant discourse moves in mysterious ways, that is to say — controlling without seeming to do so. So we’ll rarely see the tension that drives Judge Smails to such extremes… but we can catch glimpses of it, for example when he’s golfing. It’s in these scenes where we sense how surprisingly, oddly insecure he is.

The scene (1:29:29 – 1:29:46) near the end of the money match, in which Smails ceremoniously calls for his special putter — “the old Billy Baroo” — which he caresses, and whispers to “(“Oh, Billy, Billy, Billy”), is a joy. Smails has made such a fetish of his own golf prowess that he literally possesses a fetish object — a kind of Excalibur, an implement that is somehow magical. Billy Baroo is one of the great movie objects ; it’s a metaphor for Smails’s own character flaws — his hubris, his misplaced faith in golf’s significance.

Preserving Bushwood as a bulwark of elitism in a too-democratic world is supremely important to Smails. In fact, we learn that he and Webb’s father helped found the country club after WWII. “Ty — your father and I prepped together. We went to war together, we played golf together,” he murmurs to Webb, trying to dissuade the ace golfer from accepting Czervik’s offer to partner up in the proposed high-stakes money match (1:12:54). “We built this club, he and I. Let’s face it, son — some people simply do not belong.” He’s speaking in preppie code to Webb, invoking their families’ equally exalted social status; he assume that Ty is as much of a snob as he is. Of course, he’s wrong — but we’ll return to Ty Webb in a later installment.

Fun fact: Ted Knight dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Army in World War II. He was a member of A Company, 296th Combat Engineer Battalion, earning five battle stars while serving in the European Theatre.

During the money match, Smails has every intention of cheating. He selects Danny Noonan as his caddy — knowing that Noonan, to whom he has just promised the caddy scholarship, will be forced to look the other way. Which Noonan does, reluctantly. Later, when Czervik drops out of the game and Ty suggests that Danny should take his place, Smails reverts to his bullying ways — first suggesting that Noonan wouldn’t want to get involved “in something as illegal as this” (1:26:39), then coming right out and asking Noonan, rhetorically, “You don’t want that scholarship, do you?” (1:26:56) When Noonan stands up to to the bullying, Smails reverts to childish snark.

Smails, who’d bitterly resented being hurried (by Czervik) during his own golf game, and who’d defended Noonan against the younger D’Annunzio’s heckling during the caddy tournament, now heckles and hurries Noonan. Knight’s hilariously grotesque delivery (at 1:31:42) of the otherwise unremarkable line “Well? We’re waiting!” has deservedly become a meme. We glimpse D’Annunzio’s brother, whom Smails had swatted for this sort of poor sportsmanship during the caddy tournament, smirking behind him.

I’ll just add one final note, to this analysis of Judge Smails’s Anxious Snob thematic complex. As Fig. 6 indicates, this complex is adjacent to one of the meaning-map’s top-right paradigm’s two complexes — and it therefore offers us a clue as to the nature of that paradigm. As we moved clockwise through the ORDER quadrant, from Virtuous Insider to Purifying Elitist to Anxious Snob, we find a decrease in confidence and faith regarding the Golf Club’s status as exemplar of this semiosphere’s dominant discourse. Ideology works, as we’ve discussed previously, by persuading us to accept the way things are as natural, normal, and inevitable. To this end, it tends to “speak” calmly, with perhaps a hint of asperity or superciliousness when challenged; ideology is “cool.” Smails’s “hot” behavior lays bare the artifice.

So we can predict that our meaning-map’s top-right paradigm is going to be — at least in part — highly skeptical towards the claims of the Golf Club paradigm, which is to say the claims of this semiosphere’s “master code.” This figure will be one who — although not a rebellious hero figure like Noonan, nor a countercultural force like the caddy shack, nor an avatar of disorder like (as we’ll see, in this series’ next installment) Carl Spackler — embodies a cynical rejection of this semiosphere’s work-and-order ideologies. I noted, earlier, that the ego is an enabler — deformed by its inability to satisfy the competing demands of the superego and the id; if the Golf Club paradigm is this semiosphere’s supergo, then the top-right paradigm is its id. Knight’s tour de force performance, his contorted facial expressions and over-compensatory line deliveries, helps us understand the ego — which contorts and over-compensates, without ever finding relief.

There you have it: the first half of Judge Smails vs. Carl Spackler, our Caddyshack meaning map’s third code. I’ve identified the paradigm Judge Smails’s contrasting yet complementary thematic complexes, and brought these to life via a selection of source codes (“signs”) drawn from the movie. I’ve established not only what Judge Smails means — that is, what sense we Caddyshack viewers are encouraged to make of the character — but how this paradigm means what it means. To that end, I’ve surfaced many of the visual and verbal cues, from speech acts to facial expressions, clothing, mannerisms, etc., via which we are encouraged to construe what Judge Smails signifies not only within the movie, but also as an emblem of, you know, American Culture and Western Civilization c. 1980.

This series’ next installment will explore the second half of the Judge Smails vs. Carl Spackler code: i.e., the paradigm Carl Spackler and its complexes.

Click here for the Carl Spackler post.

Tags: Caddyshack , Movies