88Stripes (1981)

Len Blum and Dan Goldberg had already teamed up with Harold Ramis to write the summer camp romp Meatballs when they created a second straight vehicle for Bill Murray, this time making him a hard-luck schnook who enlists in the Army and proceeds to wreak hilarious havoc – with his buddy Ramis – on basic training. Much of the film’s pedigree had its roots in Canada, specifically the Toronto area. Blum and Goldberg had been high school classmates in Hamilton, Ontario, and at McMaster University they met Ivan Reitman, who would direct both Meatballs and Stripes. Ramis, a product of Chicago’s Second City, was coming out of the Canadian sketch series SCTV, where he worked alongside Stripes’ scene-stealing co-star John Candy.