Rick Moranis | |
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 Moranis and his wife Ann in 1990 | |
| Born | Frederick Allan Moranis (1953-04-18)April 18, 1953 (age 71) |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1976–present[1] |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
Frederick Allan Moranis (/məˈrænɪs/; born April 18, 1953) is a Canadian actor, comedian, musician, producer, songwriter and writer.
Moranis appeared in the sketch comedy seriesSecond City Television (SCTV) in the 1980s and starred afterward in severalHollywood films, includingStrange Brew (1983),Streets of Fire (1984),Ghostbusters (1984) and its sequelGhostbusters II (1989),Little Shop of Horrors (1986),Spaceballs (1987),Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989, and its1992 and1997 sequels),Parenthood (1989),My Blue Heaven (1990), andThe Flintstones (1994).
In 1997, Moranis began a long break from acting to dedicate his time to his two children as a widower.[2] He has not appeared in a live-action film for over 25 years, although he provided voice-over work for a few animated films, includingDisney'sBrother Bear (2003). He also released comedy albums and made appearances at fan conventions.
In 2020, after a hiatus of nearly 23 years from live-action films, Moranis signed to reprise his role of Wayne Szalinski in a new sequel toHoney, I Shrunk the Kids, calledShrunk before the project was put on hold.
Moranis was born on April 18, 1953, inToronto,Ontario, to aJewish family.[3] He attendedelementary school withGeddy Lee, frontman of therock bandRush.[4][5]
His career as an entertainer began as a radiodisc jockey in the mid-1970s, using the on-air name "Rick Allan" at Toronto radio stationsCFTR,CKFH,1050 CHUM andCHUM-FM.[4][6][7]
In the mid-1970s, Moranis and comedy partner Rob Cowan, also a budding young radio announcer, performed on CBC-TV. Their spoof ofHockey Night in Canada was popular, and they periodically performed it on the road, including a charity sports dinner inSarnia, Ontario.[citation needed]
In 1977, he teamed up with Winnipeg-born writer/director and performerKen Finkleman on a series of live performances onCBC's90 Minutes Live; comedy radio specials; and television comedy pilots, including one calledMidweek and another called1980 (produced atCBC Toronto in 1979). Both pilots starred Finkleman and Moranis in a series of irreverent sketches, including an early mockumentary sketch featuring Moranis as a Canadian movie producer, and another featuring the dubbed-in voiceovers of Nazi war criminals as they appear to be discussing their Hollywood agents and the money one can earn being interviewed on major documentary series likeThe World at War.[citation needed]
In 1980, Moranis was persuaded to join the third-season cast ofSecond City Television (SCTV) by friend andSCTV writer/performerDave Thomas.[8] At the time, Moranis was the only cast member not to have come from aSecond City stage troupe.[citation needed] He became especially noted for his impressions of celebrities ranging from pop culture icons likeWoody Allen,Merv Griffin, andDavid Brinkley[9] to somewhat lower-level stars such as comedianGeorge Carlin[10] and musicianMichael McDonald,[11] and even to the marginally notableTeri Shields (mother ofBrooke).[9]
WithSCTV moving to CBC in 1980 (and syndicated in the United States), Moranis and Thomas were challenged to fill two additional minutes with "identifiableCanadian content", and created a sketch calledThe Great White North featuring the charactersBob and Doug McKenzie, a couple of Canadian buffoons. By the time NBC ordered 90-minute programs for the U.S. in 1981 (the fourth season ofSCTV overall), there had been such favourable feedback from affiliates on the McKenzies that the network requested the duo have a sketch in every show.[12][verification needed]
Bob and Doug became a pop-culture phenomenon, which led to a top-selling and Grammy-nominated album,Great White North,[13] and the 1983 movieStrange Brew, Moranis's first major film role. He followed that up with the 1984 movieStreets of Fire.
Another notable Moranis character onSCTV was Gerry Todd, a disc jockey who presented music clips on television. The sketch aired before the debut ofMTV in the United States, leading bothSound & Vision andMartin Short to dub Moranis as the creator of thevideo jockey. "There had been no such thing" up until that point, recalled Short, so "the joke was that there would be such a thing."[14][15]
After hisSCTV work, and theStrange Brew andStreets of Fire movies, Moranis had a busy career in feature films that lasted over a decade, most notablyGhostbusters (1984) and its sequel,Ghostbusters II (1989);Brewster's Millions (1985);Little Shop of Horrors (1986);Spaceballs (1987);Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) and its1992 and1997 sequels;Parenthood (1989);My Blue Heaven (1990); andBarney Rubble inThe Flintstones (1994). He also did the voice-over for a short-livedcartoonseries onNBC calledGravedale High (1990).
Moranis was also slated to appear (as the janitor) in the 1985John Hughes filmThe Breakfast Club. After a week or so of filming,[16] Moranis was released by producerNed Tanen because he felt Moranis's interpretation of the role as an over-the-top Russian caricature was not appropriate for the serious nature of the film.[17] Moranis presented the departure as a mutual decision and hoped to work with Hughes in the future.[18]
Moranis was originally cast as Phil Berquist in the 1991 filmCity Slickers, but later dropped out due to his wife's illness.[19]
Moranis's last film roles were the box-office flopsLittle Giants (1994) andBig Bully (1996). By the mid-1990s, his only appearance in the genre was a 1993 music video,"Tomorrow's Girls" byDonald Fagen, in which he played a man married to an extraterrestrial woman. Disney's final film in theHoney, I Shrunk the Kids franchise is 1997's direct-to-video filmHoney, We Shrunk Ourselves, in which Moranis is the final remaining original cast member. The seriesHoney, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show also launched in 1997 but without Moranis; it concluded in 2000. He worked for Disney twice more (with his fellowSCTV alumnusDave Thomas), voicing Rutt the moose in the 2003 animated filmBrother Bear and its2006 direct-to-video sequel.
In a 2004 interview, Moranis talked about his favourite kinds of films:
On the last couple of movies I made—big-budget Hollywood movies—I really missed being able to create my own material. In the early movies I did, I was brought in to basically rewrite my stuff, whether it wasGhostbusters orSpaceballs. By the time I got to the point where I was "starring" in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn't for me. I'm really not an actor. I'm a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody's precious words work.[14]
In 1997, Moranis took a hiatus from working in the film industry. He later explained, "I'm a single parent and I just found that it was too difficult to manage to raise my kids and to do the traveling involved in making movies. So I took a little bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn't miss it."[20]
After having declined an invitation to make a cameo appearance in 2016'sGhostbusters, Moranis clarified in an interview withThe Hollywood Reporter that despite his hiatus he had not, in fact, retired from acting in films, but instead had become selective about future roles.[1]
In 2001, Moranis received his first film credit since 1997 when he provided voice work in the animated filmRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys.
As of 2004[update], Moranis was on the Advisory Committee for thecomedy program atHumber College.[21]
In 2005, Moranis released analbum titledThe Agoraphobic Cowboy, featuringcountry songs withlyrics that Moranis says follow in the comictradition ofsongwriters/singers such asRoger Miller,Kinky Friedman, andJim Stafford. The album was produced byTony Scherr and is distributed throughArtistShare, as well as Moranis's official website. Commenting on the origins of the songs, he said that in 2003, "Out of the blue, I just wrote a bunch of songs. For lack of a better explanation, they're more country than anything. And I actually demoed four or five of them, and I'm not sure at this point what I'm going to do with them—whether I'm going to fold them into a full-length video or a movie. But, boy, I had a good time doing that."[14]
On December 8, 2005,The Agoraphobic Cowboy was nominated for the 2006 Grammy for Best Comedy Album. On February 3, 2006, Moranis performed "Press Pound" onLate Night with Conan O'Brien and discussed the development of his music career.
In November 2007, Moranis reunited withDave Thomas for a 24th anniversary special of Bob and Doug McKenzie, titledBob and Doug McKenzie's 2–4 Anniversary. The duo shot new footage for this special. Thomas subsequently created a new animated Bob and Doug McKenzie series,Bob & Doug, for his companyAnimax Entertainment. Moranis declined to voice the role of Bob, which was taken over byDave Coulier, but remained involved in the series as an executive producer.[22]
On June 18, 2013, Moranis released the comedy album titledMy Mother's Brisket & Other Love Songs, his first album in eight years.[23] Moranis said of the release, "When I first began writing jokes and sketches with various Jewish partners one of us would inevitably stop at some point and announce, 'Too Jewish!' Too Jewish for the star, the show, the network, or the audience. The songs on this album are all in that category. I grew up hearing theAllan Sherman and theYou Don't Have to Be Jewish albums in the '60s. Now I am in my 60s."[24]
In a June 2013 interview, Moranis talked about reprising his role as Louis Tully in a thirdGhostbusters film and his disappointment with the sequel. Moranis said, "I haven't talked toDan Aykroyd about it. Somebody he's associated with called me and I said, 'I wouldn't not do it, but it's got to be good.' You know, I'm not interested in doing anything I've already done, and I thought the second one was a disappointment. But I guess I'm interested in where that guy is now. I sort of see him as beingBernie Madoff's cellmate in jail. Both of them being so orderly that they race to get up and make their beds."[25] In 2015, regarding an offer for a brief appearance in the 2016 film, he concluded, "Ghostbusters didn't appeal to me. I wish them well, but it just makes no sense to me."[2]
In July 2017, Moranis andDave Thomas reprised their Bob and Doug characters at a benefit concert in Toronto. Proceeds from the benefit went toward caring for Jake Thomas, Dave's nephew, who suffered a spinal cord injury that has left him paralyzed from the waist down.[26]
On May 9, 2018, Moranis returned as the characterPannakin Crybaby / Lord Dark Helmet fromSpaceballs in an episode ofThe Goldbergs, albeit as a voice.[27] He also appeared in an episode ofProp Culture discussing the film.[28]
Moranis appears in theMartin Scorsese–directedSecond City TV reunion documentary, titledAn Afternoon with SCTV, set to premiere onNetflix.[29]
In 2020, Moranis signed on to reprise his role as Wayne Szalinski inShrunk, a new sequel in theHoney, I Shrunk the Kids series. When completed, it will mark a return to live-action films for Moranis after a hiatus of over two decades.[30] Later that same year, he appeared in a commercial forMint Mobile alongsideRyan Reynolds.[31][32]
Moranis married make-up designer Ann Belsky in 1986 and together they had two children: a son and a daughter.[33] Belsky died of cancer in February 1991.[33][34] Moranis then slowly left public life to become a full-time single father.[33][1]
On October 1, 2020, Moranis was assaulted inNew York City in the vicinity of West 70th Street,Manhattan. He suffered minor injuries to his head, back and hip. He reported the incident to theNew York Police Department, who posted security footage of the attack.[35] On November 14, 2020, the alleged perpetrator was arrested in New York City.[36]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 | Strange Brew | Bob McKenzie | Also co-writer and co-director |
| 1984 | Streets of Fire | Billy Fish | |
| Ghostbusters | Louis Tully | ||
| The Wild Life | Harry | ||
| 1985 | Brewster's Millions | Morty King | |
| Head Office | Howard Gross | ||
| 1986 | Club Paradise | Barry Nye | |
| Little Shop of Horrors | Seymour Krelborn | ||
| 1987 | Spaceballs | Dark Helmet | |
| 1989 | Ghostbusters II | Louis Tully | |
| Honey, I Shrunk the Kids | Wayne Szalinski | ||
| Parenthood | Nathan Huffner | ||
| 1990 | My Blue Heaven | Barney Coopersmith | |
| 1991 | L.A. Story | Gravedigger | Uncredited cameo |
| 1992 | Honey, I Blew Up the Kid | Wayne Szalinski | |
| 1993 | Splitting Heirs | Henry Bullock | |
| 1994 | The Flintstones | Barney Rubble | |
| Little Giants | Danny O'Shea | ||
| 1996 | Big Bully | David Leary | |
| 1997 | Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves | Wayne Szalinski | |
| 2001 | Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys | The Toy Taker / Mr. Cuddles (voices) | Direct-to-video |
| 2003 | Brother Bear | Rutt (voice) | |
| 2006 | Brother Bear 2 | Direct-to-video |
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | 1980 (TV pilot) | Various roles | Television pilot[37] |
| 1980–1981 | SCTV | 25 episodes | |
| 1981–1982 | SCTV Network | 26 episodes | |
| 1982 | Twilight Theater | Television film | |
| 1983, 1989 | Saturday Night Live | Himself | 2 episodes |
| 1984 | Hockey Night | Coach | Television film |
| 1985 | The Last Polka | Linsk Minyk | |
| 1988 | The Best of SCTV | Various roles | Television special; also writer |
| 1989 | The Rocket Boy | Automatic Safety System | Television film |
| 1990 | Gravedale High | Max Schneider (voice) | 13 episodes |
| The Earth Day Special | Vic's Buddy | Television special | |
| 1992 | Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories | Narrator | Episode: "Little Toot & the Loch Ness Monster/ Choo Choo" |
| 1997 | Muppets Tonight | Himself | Guest; 1 Episode |
| 2003 | Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Kids | Holley (voice) | Television special |
| 2007 | Bob & Doug McKenzie's Two-Four Anniversary | Bob McKenzie | |
| 2009 | Bob & Doug | Co-creator and executive producer | |
| 2018 | The Goldbergs | Pannakin Crybaby / Lord Dark Helmet (voice) | Episode: "Spaceballs" |
| 2020 | Prop Culture | Himself | Episode: "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" |
| TBA | An Afternoon with SCTV | Television special |
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | The Flintstones | Barney Rubble | Arcade game |
| 2003 | Brother Bear | Rutt | Platform game |
Bob and Doug McKenzie
Other soundtrack appearances
| Year | Film | Songs | Artist(s)/Writer(s) | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | Little Shop of Horrors | "Skid Row Downtown"; "Da-Doo"; "Grow For Me"; "Feed Me (Git It!)"; "Suddenly, Seymour"; "The Meek Shall Inherit" | Howard Ashman,Alan Menken | Seymour Krelborn |
| 1997 | Muppets Tonight | "High Hopes" "Salute to the late fifties crooners, obscure British bands and Bill Withers" | Various artists | Himself |
| Year | Association | Category | Work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program | SCTV(shared with other writers) | Won |
| 1990 | American Comedy Awards | Funniest Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture | Parenthood | Won |
| 1995 | Gemini Awards | Earle Grey Award for Best Cast | SCTV | Won |
| 2006 | Grammy Awards | Best Comedy Album[39] | The Agoraphobic Cowboy | Nominated |
He's a good sport, too, about jokes at his expense, like the peerless Canadian TV skit of Rick Moranis playing MM as the most put-upon backing singer in town.
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