Chapter LIX (Who Ya Gonna Call?) 2/20/23 (59)

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1391519_10152262591074307_1940714010_nCami was living in Tampa
while going
to USF

She was majoring
in psychology and signing
to the deaf 

A couple of years ago, while driving my daughter Cami back to Tampa for her sophomore year at USF, I started thinking about flying to New York when her sister Candis was a sophomore at NYU.
I had to go there for business, so I invited Candis to have dinner with me and my old friend, Rick Moranis.

Rick and I worked together at CFTR in Toronto, and he hadn’t seen Candis since she was a little girl, so he was curious to see how she turned out.
Candis was thrilled, but as she told me, her boyfriend Luigi’s favorite actor was Rick, so she begged me to let him come along.

When I said that, I thought that would be ok, and she told Luigi he didn’t believe her.
When she said that Rick was a good friend of mine, he sarcastically said, “Right, your Dad knows everybody doesn’t he?”

What a beautiful evening, so when Rick and I hooked up at my hotel, we decided to walk to the restaurant.
As we strolled along chatting about stuff, Rick was so unpretentious that when people passed by, you could see them do a double-take and then decide that it couldn’t be him and keep on walking..

Upon our arrival at the restaurant, we discovered that Candis and Luigi were already seated, and when Rick gave Candis a big hug, Luigi’s jaw dropped to the floor.
Candis told me later that Luigi, while they were waiting, still thought that it was just some kind of a prank until Rick and I walked through the door. What an unforgettable night; Rick entertained us with all the inside stories about the making of Ghost Busters, Little Shop Of Horrors, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Space Balls, My Blue Heaven, and countless others.
He claimed that the magic of Ghost Busters came from the nervous energy on the set because, like him, most of the actors were writers, so you never knew what words would come at you when the cameras were rolling.

He also explained that during the filming of Little Shop Of Horrors that it took several people pulling on ropes to make the plant move so that it appeared alive.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t pull the lines fast enough, so they’d have to double the playback speed, so Rick would have had to move his mouth at half speed and then dub his words in later.

When I asked him how the hell he managed to do that and act at the same time, he claimed that it was easy.
They just put a guy behind the camera. “What did he do,” I asked. “He held up my paycheck.” Rick responded.
We talked a lot about the movies, but Rick and I did get to reminisce a little about working together at CFTR in Toronto. (Rick shown above at CFTR)

Rick then graciously told Candis that I was responsible for his being in show business.
When your Dad put me on the radio for a weekend overnighter, “I knew instantly that I had to be in show biz.

When I asked Rick how come he lived in New York instead of Hollywood, he said because I’m a writer, so I have to live where I’m inspired to write.
“In fact,” he told Candis, “I’m writing a script right now about how strange the times were when your Dad and I worked at CFTR.”

He then explained to her that he wanted to show the folks what the world looked like through the eyes of all the crazy characters we worked with, like Sandy Hoyt, Roger Klein, Keith Elshaw, Doc Harris, Sharon Henwood, Earl Mann, Stirling Faux, and The Magic Christian.”

As the night came to a close and Luigi hadn’t touched his food nor spoken a word, Rick leaned over to Candis and said, “It’s obvious that your boyfriend can’t speak but can he sign?”

 

 

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