Rick Moranis
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Rick Moranis | |
|---|---|
 Moranis at the 62nd Academy Awards, 1990 | |
| Born | Frederick Alan Moranis April 18, 1953 |
| Occupation(s) | Actor, comedian, musician |
| Years active | 1976–1999, 2001–2006 |
| Spouse | Anne Moranis (? - February 1991; her death) 2 children |
Frederick Allan "Rick" Moranis (born April 18, 1953) is a retired Canadian comedian, actor and musician. Coming to prominence in the 1980s on Second City Television, before moving on to appearances in several Hollywood films, including Ghostbusters; Spaceballs; Little Shop of Horrors; Honey, I Shrunk the Kids; Little Giants; Parenthood; The Flintstones, and My Blue Heaven.
In 1996-1997, Moranis announced that because he had other obstacles in his life, he would retire from acting, though he occasionally does voice-over work.
Early life
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Moranis was born in Toronto, Ontario, and went to high school at the Sir Sandford Fleming Secondary School. He went to elementary school with Geddy Lee, frontman of the rock band Rush.[1]
His career as an entertainer began as a radio disc jockey in the mid-1970s, using the on-air name of "Rick Allen" at three Toronto radio stations.[1]
SCTV
He followed that with his work at SCTV, joining the television sketch comedy in the 1980-81 season. Moranis enjoyed particular success portraying "Bob" of the fictional Great White North hosts Bob and Doug McKenzie. "Doug" was played by fellow Canadian actor Dave Thomas, a friend and writing partner of Moranis who was instrumental in bringing him to SCTV. (At the time, Moranis was the only cast member not to have come from either the Toronto or Chicago Second City stage troupe.)
His other SCTV characterizations include motor-mouthed film producer Larry Siegel, terminally ill rock star Clay Collins, smooth-voiced VJ Gerry Todd, pop star Linsk Minyk from the fictional country Leutonia, amateur comic Skip Bittman (kid brother of Eugene Levy's Bobby Bittman), head cheese butcher Carl Scutz, and morning homily intellect Rabbi Karlov.
Feature films
After his SCTV work, Moranis had a busy film career that lasted over a decade. In a 2004 interview, Moranis talked about the kinds of films he enjoyed the most:
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 was Ghostbusters or Spaceballs. 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.[2]
Retirement
He left the film industry in 1997, a few years after the 1991 loss of his wife, Anne, to breast cancer. He later explained that he "pulled out of making movies in about '96 or '97. "I'm a single parent and I just found that it was too difficult to manage raising my kids and doing 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".[3]
As of 2004[update], Moranis was on the Advisory Committee for the comedy program at Humber College.[citation needed]
In 2005, Moranis released an album entitled The Agoraphobic Cowboy, featuring country songs with lyrics which Moranis says follow in the comic tradition of songwriters/singers such as Roger Miller, Kinky Friedman, and Jim Stafford. The album was produced by Tony Scherr, and is distributed through ArtistShare, as well as Moranis' official web site. 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".[2]
On December 8, 2005, The Agoraphobic Cowboy was announced as a nominee for the 2006 Grammy for Best Comedy Album. (A previous album by Moranis was entitled You, Me, The Music, and Me (1989)). On February 3, 2006, Moranis performed Press Pound on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and discussed the development of his music career.
In November 2007, Moranis reunited with Dave Thomas for a 24th anniversary special of Bob and Doug McKenzie, titled Bob 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 company Animax Entertainment. Moranis declined to voice the role of Bob, which was taken over by Dave Coulier, but remains involved in the series as an executive producer.[4]
On June 24, 2008, Moranis declined to come out of retirement to join the other cast members of Ghostbusters in the production of a new video game based on the films.[5] The following year, Ghostbusters' Harold Ramis told Entertainment Weekly of a proposed Ghostbusters 3 that, "Everybody said they'd do it".[6] Ramis later stated to Student Life "Rick won’t do it. Rick has retired from show business. But everyone else says they’ll do it." [7] However, Cinematical recently reported that Moranis may come out of retirement to reprise his role as Louis Tully.[8]
Discography
Albums
- The Great White North (1981)
- You, Me, the Music and Me (1989)
- The Agoraphobic Cowboy (2005)
Filmography
Audio/Video
- Rock Radio Scrapbook 1973, with a RealAudio clip of Rick Allen from June 1973
References
- ^ a b Rick Moranis bio at Yuddy.com
- ^ a b Mettler, Mike. "An Hour with SCTV's Rick Moranis - Web Exclusive, eh: The popular Canadian comedian welcomes SCTV to DVD", Sound & Vision, August 2004
- ^ "Rick Moranis: From 'Spaceballs' to country 'Cowboy'", USA Today, October 13, 2005, no byline
- ^ Rob Salem, "Bob & Doug taking off again". Toronto Star, April 19, 2009.
- ^ Kohler, Chris. "Retired Rick Moranis Won't Do Ghostbusters Game". Wired.com., June 24, 2008
- ^ Schwartz, Missy. "Ghostbusters III: Harold Ramis offers details, says original cast will be back", Entertainment Weekly online, April 3, 2009
- ^ Q&A with Harold Ramis
- ^ Ivan Reitman to Direct 'Ghostbusters 3'!
- ^ "L.A. Story (1991) - Full cast and crew". IMDb. 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
External links
- Please use a more specific IMDb template. See the documentation for available templates.
- Moranis ArtistShare projects
- Rick Moranis, Singing 'Cowboy', a December 2005 story from Weekend Edition
- OpEd Piece by Moranis from the NY Times website
- Rick Moranis Interview Proton Charging May 27, 2006