Rick Moranis has played mostly nebbishes with great success in his still- young entertainment career. Early on he was at his funniest doing an impression of Woody Allen on the classic comedy sketch show ”SCTV.” More recently he played nerds in two hit movies, ”Ghostbusters,” and ”Little Shop of Horrors.”
A writer as well as a performer, Moranis, 34, has turned himself into a sort of youth-market Woody Allen.
But in his latest movie role, the wimp gets tough, playing the evil Dark Helmet, a Darth Vader parody in Mel Brooks` ”Star Wars” sendup,
”Spaceballs.”
In the film Moranis, who is short, parades about in very big helmets. He`s a funny sight, even if his every line isn`t a howl.
”It has some very funny moments and some flat moments,” Moranis said of ”Spaceballs”–not exactly the sort of ringing endorsement one typically encounters from an actor pushing a new movie.
”It`s uneven,” he added, ” but if you like Mel Brooks, you`ll probably like it.”
As you can tell, Moranis the nebbish has guts. ”I shouldn`t be saying anything like what I`m saying to you,” Moranis said. ”I`m working on a deal right now with (a major studio executive), and guys like him don`t like to hear people in his pictures criticize them as they are opening.”
That`s true, but Moranis has a loyal following, and his fans expect candor.
After all it was ”SCTV,” a TV show that ridiculed show business, that put Moranis on the map. If he now acted like a standard show biz liar pumping his movie on a TV talk show, he would have become what he had ridiculed.
Fortunately, there was no need to worry about that.
”I did grow to like Mel Brooks a lot. He held up production and shot around me until I was free to work on the film. He let me write some of my own scenes. I like the one where we look back at the movie itself on videotape. I like the opening shot of the gigantic space ship that never ends; that was Mel`s idea, and it`s probably the funniest thing in the movie. It`s very bold to try to sustain a joke that long.
”But I think there could have been some tightening.”
Well, ”Spaceballs” is a mixed bag of successful and unsuccessful jokes which some people like more than Moranis seems to. But because Moranis also starred in the disastrous ”Strange Brew,” ”Head Office” and ”Club Paradise,” he was asked what he thought prevented the movies he appeared in from being as daring and as funny as his old TV program.
”On a comedic level,” Moranis said, ”I think films can be as funny as the `SCTV` show. `Ghostbusters` was.
”On a technical quality level, I think films can be as good as `SCTV`
too. `Little Shop` was.
”But on a satirical level,” he said, ”I don`t think movies today can be as good, and I think I know the reason.
”The reason is that `SCTV` was written by the people who appeared in the show. It was only after the show became successful through its exposure to a large audience on NBC that the corporate executives decided that we needed them to help us with the show.
”And that,” Moranis said, ”was the beginning of the end. The running order of sketches was changed. The `more popular characters` were instructed to appear more frequently and heavily, and various cast members became aware that other cast members had higher TV-Q ratings (which purport to measure a performer`s audience appeal).
”Now it was (the German philosopher-physicist Werner) Heisenberg who said that the act of measuring alters that which is being measured. In our case, that meant that the group was being torn apart by the comparisons.
”So,” Moranis said, ”instead of asking if the cast members of `SCTV`
could make a successful $22-million movie, I think you should really ask the question, `Would anyone give us $22 million (the average cost of making and distributing and advertising a movie today) to function as the group we once were?
”And the answer to that,” Moranis said, ”is no. That`s too much money to not have the corporate executives in there nosing around to make sure it`s not misspent.”
Moranis was quick to throw in the caveat that not all Hollywood executives are boors, but at the same time he wasn`t finished condemning Hollywood`s economics.
He was speaking from his New York City office, and clearly this was a subject he cared to talk about at length. Obviously he did want to see his old TV gang together again on the big screen.
”So you might ask,” he continued, ”if not $22 million, why not $5 million or $4 million, or less. Why not do what the Monty Python group did in England? Why not scale everything back? We don`t have to make `Ghostbusters`
with all of its special effects.
”But the answer to that is: It isn`t 10 years ago, when we were all starving for opportunities just to work. Today there would be not just seven cast members. Today there are seven agents, seven accountants, seven business managers and seven lawyers as well.
”And even that`s not the whole story,” he said. He was on a roll.
” `SCTV was an anti-establishment program that made fun of show business.
”Now over the last 20 years a lot of successful TV shows have been related to show business.
”But for some reason, the people who make movies don`t believe that the audience wants to see movies about show business, the success of `Network` and `Tootsie` notwithstanding.
”I hear that line all the time. I heard it as I was trying to sell a script I co-wrote two years ago called `Killer Charlie 5,` about an old actor whose career is dying. Just to make a few bucks he appears in a slasher movie called `Killer Charlie,` and it turns out to be a big hit, as are its sequels. Suddenly he`s trapped into making `Killer Charlie 5,` and it`s killing him.
”It`s as close to anything I ever wrote for `SCTV,` ” Moranis said,
”and all the young agents and all the young script readers said it was great, at least that`s what they said to me.
”But the studio heads, if they read it at all, said it was `too inside show business.`
”Now I could see the part being played by someone like Alan King. But the only positive thing I heard was, `It could work if you got Rodney Dangerfield.` That`s because he`s been in some big hits lately. But Rodney is great at doing Rodney; he doesn`t do anybody else.
”So,” Moranis said, ”our cast has changed; they won`t give us big money without interfering; and they don`t like our favorite subject matter. So you don`t see anything like `SCTV` in the movies.
”Sure, I`d like to do what we did on TV in the movies and work out some kind of low-budget deal where we all deferred our salaries. But it`s not 10 years ago. We`ve gone in different directions. I don`t know if anyone could get all of us together again.”
And where are those Magnificent Seven now? Moranis provided a rundown as best he could.
”I`m married to a former makeup designer and we have a seven-month-old baby girl. Today I`m in my office writing a script about the only Jewish son in a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant family. But basically what I`d like to do is slow down and choose my projects more carefully. Luckily, I can now afford to. `John Candy is currently shooting a picture co-starring Steve Martin and directed by John Hughes. I hear it`s very funny.
”Dave Thomas wrote a pilot that was just picked up (for production) by CBS-TV, and I think he may get the chance to direct a feature film for Paramount.
”Joe Flaherty? I`ve lost track of Joe.” (Don`t worry, Flaherty was just spotted in a bit part in the soon-to-be-released comedy ”Innerspace.”)
”Eugene Levy is happily living in Tucson, renovating his house, enjoying his two kids, and writing a feature film for Martin Short, Paul Shaffer, for himself, and for me.
”Andrea Martin is living in California, and I don`t know what she`s doing next. Her series on CBS was just canceled. (Martin appears in the same funny scene with Joe Flaherty in ”Innerspace.”)
”Catherine O`Hara is still living in Toronto. She`s just finished filming the movie `Beetle Juice,` directed by Tim Burton, who made `Pee-Wee`s Big Adventure.` ”
Hearing those names makes one think that and those disparate projects and places suggested that maybe the quick answer to all this nostalgic wishing is the old saw about how you can`t go home again–even in the world of entertainment.
Maybe we should just play our old `SCTV` videotapes and shut up.
But that`s giving in. The movies should have a place for humor at the level of ”SCTV.” Satire in the movies, if you will, at least deserves to get a chance to close on Saturday night. Right now, it doesn`t even open on Friday.
”Well,” said Rick Moranis, preparing to return to his typewriter in his Park Avenue office, ”I`ll see what I can do.”
