But cooling your heels for 12 hours while visiting strip clubs and romancing a certain gorgeous strip club owner (played by Connie Nielsen) isn't easy for Charlie, who also finds himself doubting how much he can trust his partner in crime.
Director Harold Ramis on Casting "The Ice Harvest:" “John was the producers' first thought. When they optioned the novel, they were thinking John Cusack. Billy Bob was a great idea that came up right away.
John had turned this down once before when another director was attached. I think it had gone out to Billy Bob at the same time, maybe for the other role. Maybe for John's role. I don't know. People have flirted with this material. It wasn't out a very long time. It probably wasn't more than two years from when the screenplay got written to when the movie got made.
When I came into it, John and I had a bit of a relationship. We'd never worked together, except as actors for one day. It was offered to him again. They revisited that with his agent and when he heard I was involved, he got on the phone and we talked about why do this movie, what's it about. I think I satisfied him that I had a vision of it. I thought it had moral purpose. It was an important film to make, and he came onboard. And then Billy Bob came in without a moment's hesitation.”
Harold Ramis on Switching Things Up: “I said to my agent, ‘I think it's time for a dark, existential, funny film noir. Let's find one.’ I never know what I'm going to do until I see it. With this one, the script was so good. I had just coincidentally read all of Richard Russo's published prose. I’d had seen the novel and I knew it was very well received. The writing was so great I thought, ‘I can do this.’”
Harold Ramis’ Take on “The Ice Harvest’s” Genre: “You know, labels seem to be…they come after the fact. We have an artistic experience and if it's meaningful to us, then we try to define it and sort of put a label on it. I think this movie's hard to label in a way. I mean stylistically, yes, it's a film noir. I call it a retro film noir because I think we visually went for that style. It has a lot of the underlying existential philosophy of classic film noir from the late 40s, early 50s. But it's also a great character story. It's a lot of things.
Some people watch it not knowing it's — they would never call it a comedy - and they might be surprised other people are laughing. Others want to see it as a comedy. They think it's got some great popcorn thriller elements along with it. Others want it to be a caper film. ‘Tell us more! How did they get the money? What happens…,’ thinking there's going to be some big reveal at the end when we find out what the conspiracy was. We never know. That's not what the film is. It's not a generic caper film; it's not a generic anything. It's just about these people and this one horrible night.”
Harold Ramis on Scouting Strip Clubs and Casting Strippers: Ramis joked that he pre-scouted a few strip clubs before he knew about the film. “As a formerly thin person, I once told a journalist that I'd 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.
Things I'd experienced came in handy for this. The worst day in my marriage — not the worst day in the film — we were casting extras and we had the strippers in. My son, he's now 15 but was 14 then, was with me at the production office. I said, ‘You go home. I gotta do this now.’ And my wife said, ‘What's daddy doing?’ He said, ‘He's casting strippers.’
Unfortunately I'm so shy in a way with women that I've never been able to exploit my power to do me any good with women. Even with the strippers. I couldn't look at their bodies. It embarrassed me to see them doing this in a little office. I was like three feet [away]. All I could do was make eye contact with them — lots of eye contact. I could see the clothes flying in front of me, but I was looking right in their eyes.
Rusty, who has the shiner [in the movie], she's an actress and was comfortable working naked — topless at least. But then the strippers who take the stage after that at the Sweet Cage are both professionals, exotic dancers. And back at the other club, there are real exotic dancers and another actress who was comfortable working topless.”
