Bombshell Revelation

I had no idea it existed, until one day a stack of papers landed in my mailbox. I had asked one of the co-writers of Caddyshack, Brian Doyle-Murray, if I could have a look at the original script, and he was kind enough to send along a copy. That’s when I saw it: They really did pen an alternate closing to their seminal work of golf cinema. When it came down to filming the conclusion, however, nothing could top his brother blowing up a golf course. And giving the last lines to Rodney Dangerfield just made sense, with the movie’s final words becoming Al Czervik’s triumphant revelation that everybody was going to get lucky that evening.

Still, I find myself trying to envision that other conclusion, where we briefly follow Danny Noonan’s adventure, bringing the story back to where it began: with his family.

“Rodney just took it to another level,” Doyle-Murray told me as an explanation for why Czervik ultimately gets the last laugh. “But I always liked the original ending, because it went with the anarchic, go-your-own-way feel of the movie. It also harkens back to simpler days, when you could bring golf clubs on an airplane. If those days ever existed. Did they? I’m not sure. But we wrote it that way.”

If you, like me, didn’t know that Caddyshack had a different ending in its original screenplay, you aren’t alone. But now you can see what I’ve seen: We’ve been given access to an original script that shows where Danny went after winning the big match, and how, to paraphrase Kenny Loggins, he was indeed alright. —Tom Coyne