The Bill Murray movie that was a “permanent cocaine party”
“Cocaine’s a hell of a drug,” someone once said, and ain’t that the truth. But it’s fair to say that nowhere is cocaine more prevalent than in the entertainment industry, and there have been countless movies made under the influence of the infamous white powder, particularly in the infamous glory days of the 1970s and 1980s.
Many actors working in Hollywood during this period couldn’t help but be caught up in the snowstorm as their eyes got dilated just moments before the cameras rolled. And few actors, by the sounds of it, were snowed in on set of the 1980 Harold Ramis sports comedy, Caddyshack.
The film saw Murray star alongside Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight and Michael O’Keefe, telling the story of a prospective caddie who gets wrapped up in a feud between a country club owner and one of its wealthy members. Meanwhile, a greenskeeper is tasked with getting rid of a troublesome gopher.
Peter Berkrot, who played the caddie Angie D’Annunzio, was just 19 years old when he arrived on the Caddyshack set and admitted that he’d never actually seen cocaine before his arrival. However, as the shoot went on, it became clear that the film was allegedly moving along because of the white stuff.
Another caddie actor, Hamilton Mitchell, claimed that the coke on Caddyshack was not for the amateurs. He told Golf: “I would never recommend drugs to anyone. But this was really good cocaine. Pure, like they had just beaten it out of a leaf in Colombia, and somebody had carried the leaf to us and turned it into powder in front of us just so we knew how pure it was.”
Michael O’Keefe, one of the more prominent names in Ramis’ film, actually called the Florida set a “permanent party”. He said: “Cocaine was everywhere,” he said. “It was driving everyone. People would come into your dressing room with salt shakers, and it would be lunch, and someone would say, ‘Do you want to do a line?’ ‘Yeah, sure’.”
While most producers would be somewhat worried about members of the cast and crew getting sniffed up during filming, O’Keefe claimed that there wasn’t really any concern. After all, it was the 1970s. “No one thought anything was wrong about it,” he said. “Those of us that did it got sucked into the whole bacchanalian rave of it.”
The fact of the matter was that cocaine was simply part of the culture of making movies at the time, and it’s fair to say that Caddyshack was perhaps all the better for it. The alleged cocaine was of good quality, and the actors were all in excellent form, particularly Bill Murray, who was noted for his impressive improvisation moments.
Check out the trailer for the coke-induced Caddyshack below.
