What is Rick Moranis?

Rick Moranis
Rick Moranis in 2006.
Birth name	Frederick Alan Moranis
Born	March 18 1953 (1953--) (age 54) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died
Awards

Frederick Alan "Rick" Moranis (born April 18, 1953) is a Canadian actor, comedian and musician best known for his comedy work on SCTV and featured in several Hollywood films including Ghostbusters, Little Shop of Horrors, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Spaceballs, and My Blue Heaven. He is known in the movie business as "Slick Rick," due to his ability to play the lovable dork to perfection in every movie.

Biography

Early life and SCTV career

Moranis was born Frederick Alan Moranis in Toronto, Ontario. In the 1970s, he worked (using the stage name Rick Allen) as a disc jockey at various radio stations in Toronto, including CFTR, CKFH, and CHUM-FM. Together with Ken Finkleman, he tried his hand at stand-up and did some comedy for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He followed that with his work at SCTV, enjoying particular success portraying "Bob" of Bob and Doug McKenzie. Doug was played by Canadian actor Dave Thomas.

His other memorable SCTV characterizations include motor-mouthed film producer Larry Siegel, terminally-ill rock star Clay Collins, smooth-voiced video deejay Gerry Todd, cool Leutonian pop star Linsk Minyk, kid-brother amateur comic Skip Bittman, head cheese butcher Carl Scutz, and morning homily intellect Rabbi Karlov.

SCTV Impressions Done by Moranis

David Brinkley, Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, Woody Allen, Richard Dreyfuss, Al Waxman, George Carlin, Neil Young, Ringo Starr,

Anson Williams, Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, Jim Bakker, Brent Musburger, Henry Moore, Phil Silvers, John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot Voice.

Film career

After his SCTV work, Moranis had a busy film career which lasted over a decade. In an August 2004 interview with Sound & Vision magazine, 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.

The films he worked on include:

Recent activities

As of 2004, Moranis was on the Advisory Committee for the at Humber College, the only such diploma program in the world.

In an October 2005 interview in USA Today, Moranis talked about backing away from the movie business:

"I pulled out of making movies in about '96 or '97. I'm a single parent (Moranis' wife died in 1991 of liver cancer), 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."

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 and Jim Stafford. The album was produced by Tony Scherr, and is distributed through ArtistShare, as well as Moranis' official Web site. In the Sound & Vision interview done before he decided to release the album, he commented on the origins of some of the songs:

About a year ago (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 demo’ed 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.

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.

External links

• Official website
• Rick Moranis at the Internet Movie Database
• Rick Moranis at Northern Stars
• His ArtistShare projects
• Rick Moranis, Singing 'Cowboy', a December 2005 story from Weekend Edition
• Rock Radio Scrapbook 1973, with a RealAudio clip of Rick Allen from June 1973
• Review of The Agoraphobic Cowboy from the Country Music Television website
• An Hour with SCTV's Rick Moranis, an August 2004 interview with Sound & Vision magazine
• October 2005 Interview with Moranis from the USA Today website
• OpEd Piece by Moranis from the NY Times website
• Rick Moranis Radio Interview with Chris Comer & Rob Ervin April 18, 2006