“My characters aren’t losers. They’re rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else’s rules.” —Harold Ramis

Anyone who enjoys comedy owes a debt of gratitude to Harold Ramis.

Ramis was involved with some of the funniest movies ever made, including Animal House, Stripes, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day. It’s hard to imagine that list of comedy classics all came from the same person; that’s a hell of a track record.

Ramis began his long (but still too short) career as a joke editor for Playboy, before becoming integral to both Chicago’s Second City Improv Troupe and The National Lampoon. It was with fellow National Lampoon writer Douglas Kennedy that he wrote his first script, Animal House. To all the budding comedy writers out there, I want you to stop and try to imagine that: the first script this guy wrote was ANIMAL HOUSE. Who does that —who sets out to write a movie and ends up writing a comedy classic his first time out? Harold Ramis, apparently.

When it came to the movies he was a part of, he was able to match a perfect balance of high- and low-brow humor. He excelled at underdog stories; at stories about people who, as he said, “win by their refusal to play by everyone else’s rules.” They were stories about the down and the out triumphing over those with power; this is perfectly on display in Stripes, Animal House, Caddyshack, and even Ghostbusters (sure, the main characters of that movie are scientists, but they’re SLOB scientists who get kicked out of their own university at the start of film).

As a performer, Ramis (who made his big-screen acting debut in Stripes, which he also wrote, of course) was perfect at being dry. He played characters that weren’t outwardly funny, but the nuanced, deadpan way he delivered his lines made them hilarious. When people recall Ghostbusters, they won’t automatically point to Egon as the “best part” of the film, but just this simple exchange perfectly highlights how spot-on Ramis’ comic timing could be:

Groundhog Day, which Ramis co-wrote and directed, is one of the greatest comedies ever made, and if you don’t think so, well, you should get the fuck off the planet. It’s almost staggering to me to think that Ramis was responsible for two of the greatest comedies of all time: Groundhog Day and Ghostbusters. The man was a genius.

In his later career, he didn’t have as many classics, but every now and then he would turn out something surprising, like Analyze This, and the very underrated, pitch-black comedy The Ice Harvest, which more people should see.

There are very few comedy writers left who could match Harold Ramis, and his death at the age of 69 is a tremendous loss to funny movies in general.