Harold Ramis, Laurel Winner

Earlier today the WGAW mentioned it will honor the late Harold Ramis with its 2015 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement at the WGA awards this February. We've always been huge fans of Harold's work here at the Writers Guild Foundation, where many of us grew up watching GHOSTBUSTERS and STRIPES over and over and over, and who fell in love with GROUNDHOG DAY in our adulthood. We were all shocked to hear of his passing; we weren't prepared for a world without any new Harold Ramis movies in it. But we do have a big stack of his scripts, including those I just mentioned, as well as comedy classics like STRIPES and BACK TO SCHOOL. (I watched BACK TO SCHOOL so many times in my teenage years that I saw this FAMILY GUY joke coming a million miles away. But hey, that's true of most FAMILY GUY jokes, am I right?! Just kidding. We love Seth MacFarlane. Please don't use your vast wealth to destroy us, Seth.)

We can't bestow an honor on Harold nearly as prestigious as the Screen Laurel Award, but we can share his incredible writing with all of you as a testament to his talent. Here are three contiguous pages from a late-but-not-final draft of GHOSTBUSTERS (the draft is dated September 30, 1983; the movie was released in June 1984. Note the little differences: Peter Venkman's "military authority," for instance, or "cross the beams" instead of the final "cross the streams."

Enjoy, folks. And congratulations, Harold.