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While many production companies are trying to figure out how to bring in big bucks with new ideas, an easy way to bring in money has been to re-release classics in theaters. Although they can't market these productions as new, a great way to get people to visit the theaters to re-watch something they saw years ago is to highlight the anniversary of its release. The latest classic film to get its second dose of theater time is the 1995 ghost comedy Casper. The film, which starred Christina Ricciand served as Brad Silberling's feature film directorial debut, will be available to watch once again on the big screen during the Halloween season.

According to Bleeding Cool, the month of October is known for ghosts and everything spooky, and now it'll be Casper's month too, as the movie celebrates its 30th anniversary. Although the film debuted in May 1995, there's nothing...

In Brad Silberling's 1995 ghost comedy "Casper," Kat Harvey (Christina Ricci) and her widowed father James (Bill Pullman) move into a large, spooky mansion haunted by cartoonish, playfully destructive spirits. Casper (Malachi Pearson) is a friendly ghost, but his ghostly roommates Stretch (Joe Nipote), Fatso (Brad Garett), and Stinkie (Joe Alaskey) are more sinister, able to scare, harm, or bodily possess any interlopers. 

In order to scare him out of their home, the ghostly trio attack James, chasing him around the house, using their supernatural powers to creatively terrify him. In a standout sequence, James stares into a mirror, and the ghosts transform his face into other people's. James looks up from the sink, and he suddenly looks like Clint Eastwood. Then his face morphs, and he looks like Rodney Dangerfield. Then he morphs again to look like Mel Gibson. Finally, and most terrifying, he morphs to look like the...

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Happy Gilmore 2 is a sports comedy film directed by Kyle Newacheck from a screenplay co-written by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler. The 2025 legacy sequel film picks up the story of Happy Gilmore as he has given up golf after a tragedy and taken up excessive drinking instead. Due to his alcoholism, Happy loses everything from his fortune to his house, and when his daughter wants to go to an elite ballet school, he must return to the golf course to earn the money. Happy Gilmore 2 stars Adam Sandler, Julie Bowen, Christopher McDonald, Benny Safdie, Bad Bunny, Ben Stiller, and Margaret Qualley. So, if you loved the bonkers story, hilarious comedy, and entertaining characters in Happy Gilmore 2, here are some similar movies you should check out next.

Happy Gilmore (Starz) Credit – Universal Pictures

Happy Gilmore is...

The afterlife's friendliest ghost is officially about to haunt theaters once again. To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the fantasy comedy classic, 1995's Casper is making its return, complete with a new trailer reflecting on the adorable little spirit's adventures in Friendship, Maine, with a new coat of paint. Hailing from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, it's packed with some big-time talent, including Bill Pullman as ghost therapist Dr. James Hardy, Christina Ricci at the height of her Addams Family fame as his daughter Kat, who desperately wants a friend, and Malachi Pearson as the titular Casper, who's more than willing to be that pal. The film will kick off the spooky season for the whole family on October 3 and run through Halloween on October 31.

Casper the Friendly Ghost was no stranger to theaters before Casper, but the film was the first proper feature outing for the pop-culture icon created...

Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment announced today that they will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the beloved family blockbuster, Casper, with a nationwide rerelease beginning October 3 and running through Halloween, October 31, 2025.

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Brad Silberling, the film stars Bill Pullman (Independence Day and Equalizer franchises) as Dr. Harvey, a ghost therapist, and two-time Emmy nominee Christina Ricci as his daughter Kat.

When they move into a drafty old mansion so that Dr. Harvey can exorcise the home’s otherworldly inhabitants, they meet a friendly but lonely young ghost named Casper (voiced by Malachi Pearson), who’s just looking for a friend, and his outrageous uncles Stretch (Joe Nipote), Stinkie (Joe Alasky), and Fatso.

The film stars a powerhouse comedic cast including Garrett, Academy Award nominee Cathy Moriarty (Raging Bull), Monty Python icon Eric Idle, and Ben Stein (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), as well as appearances from vintage TV...

The original Naked Gun movie was one of the biggest comedy hits of the ‘80s, but Leslie Nielsen’s follow-up spoof wasn’t quite as successful.

Released just two years after The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad, Repossessed starred Leslie Nielsen as an aging priest named Father Mayii, who’s tasked with expelling a demon from the body of a woman who had previously been possessed when she was a child. As an added novelty, she was played by Linda Blair, star of the original William Friedkin-directed classic The Exorcist.

While arguably better than some official Exorcist sequels, Repossessed was a critical and commercial dud. A review in The Toronto Star blasted the movie’s “pseudo-Zucker Brothers attempt at satire,” noting that it “delights in trotting out a bevy of naked women with pendulous breasts and happily indulges in vicious sexist remarks that seek immunity in the name of parody.

Stephen Colbert is out of the late-night comedy game, and Piers Morgan couldn’t be more delighted.

Morgan shared a hyperbolic New York Post page on his social feed this weekend, doubling down on the paper’s opinion that the partisan Colbert got what he deserved. “This is so damning,” Morgan posted. “Most of America’s biggest late-night hosts have become nothing more than hyper-partisan activist hacks for the Democrats — a party that’s rarely been more unpopular. No wonder Colbert got canned. More will follow.”

Then Morgan gathered a different group of hyper-partisan activist hacks on his YouTube show, Uncensored, to pile on. “All sorts of distraught liberals (are) crying around about all this,” he said, hanging a Colbert piñata for his friends to whack with a stick. You can guess what followed — a steady diet of “that’s not some act of fascism or creeping censorship (as) described by panicked,...

Jay Leno, who previously helmed The Tonight Show, criticized late-night hosts whose political jokes only appeal to “half their audience.”

During a recent interview with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, Leno said it’s important to use humor that gets the “whole audience.” He added that hosts risk losing viewers if they are seen “cozying up to one side or the other.”

“To me, I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from things, you know, the pressures of life, whatever it might be,...

It was only a matter of time until Jay Leno had something to say — although, whether he said anything actually in response to the dust up at “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” is a little less clear. In an interview posted last week by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, taped two weeks ago, Leno took the current slate of late night hosts to task.

“I got hate letters [when hosting ‘The Tonight Show’] saying, ‘You and your Republican friends,’ and another saying, ‘I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy’ — over the same joke,” Leno related (via THR). “That’s how you get a whole audience. Now you have to be content with half the audience, because you have to give your opinion.”

Leno continued to explain how, in his day, friends didn’t talk about their political positions — even those in the comedic realm. “Rodney Dangerfield and I were friends.

While many in the late-night community are standing by Stephen Colbert, one veteran host has a different perspective.

Jay Leno recently commented on the political comedy of today’s late-night hosts after The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was unceremoniously canceled at CBS, amid the network’s dealings with Donald Trump.

“I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from the things, you know, the pressures of life, whatever it might be,” he told David Trulio, president and CEO of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. “I love political humor, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just what happens when people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.”

Noting that he “never discussed” politics with close friend and frequent guest Rodney Dangerfield, Leno said, “I don’t think anybody wants to hear a lecture. When I was with Rodney,...

Image Source: Warner Bros On July 25, 1980, Caddyshack teed off in theaters with modest expectations and mixed reviews. Now, as we celebrate the Caddyshack 45th anniversary, it remains one of the most beloved sports comedies ever made Why Caddyshack Still Swings Comedic Dream Team:

Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, and Ted Knight delivered performances that were equal parts absurd and iconic. Murray’s Carl Spackler was almost entirely improvised — including that legendary “Cinderella Story” monologue. As it turns out, much of Bill Murray’s on-screen golf wisdom came from real life — he actually spent time working in a caddyshack. (Click on the media bar below to hear Bill Murray share how his real-life experiences shaped his iconic role in Caddyshack .) https://www.hollywoodoutbreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Bill_Murray_Caddyshack_.mp3 Slobs vs. Snobs:

Pitched as “Animal House on a golf course,” the movie took aim at country club elitism with...

Happy Gilmore introduced audiences to Julie Bowen and brought us a legendary Bob Barker brawl, but Adam Sandler wasn’t always sure that releasing the 1996 golf flick was a good idea.

Days ahead of Happy Gilmore 2’s Netflix release, Sandler got candid about the lead-up to the original 1996 film, revealing that he and co-writer Tim Herlihy once had some serious qualms about letting their now-iconic sports movie hit theaters.

“We were so tense because Caddyshack was our favorite movie of all time,” Sandler confessed to Jimmy Fallon during a recent appearance on The Tonight Show. Concerned their work would pale in comparison to the iconic 1980 comedy starring Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray, the pair found themselves facing some serious second thoughts.

“‘We were just like, ‘Oh no, we can’t release this movie, man,’” Sandler said of his and Herlihy’s conversations ahead of Happy Gilmore’s theatrical debut.

Vince Calandra Sr., who as a longtime booker for CBS juggernaut The Ed Sullivan Show helped introduce The Beatles to America’s TV audience, has died. He was 91. According to a local mortuary’s obit, he died Saturday at his home in Woodland Hills, CA.

Calandra was just 23 when he landed a job on Sullivan’s talent showcase, which already had been a Sunday night staple for nearly a decade. Starting in the mailroom, he graduated to holding the cue cards and eventually to talent booker. At the dawn of the British Invasion of U.S. radio airwaves and record players, he was instrumental to bringing Liverpudlian upstarts John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to the Ed Sullivan Show stage, creating a landmark moment in TV and music history.

It was February 9, 1964, when The Beatles made the first of three appearances on the show within two weeks.

Adam Sandler has appeared in a wide variety of comedy movies, but he has only done very few sequels. One of those, Happy Gilmore 2, is hitting Netflix this month. If the movie is well-received, it could lead to another Sandler classic getting a new sequel.

To promote the sequel, which comes out on July 25, director Kyle Newacheck spoke about Happy Gilmore 2 in a new interview with ComicBook.com. The filmmaker shared his opinion that there are several other Sandler films that could benefit from having a sequel made after Happy Gilmore 2. Newacheck cited Little Nicky as one in particular that is ripe for a sequel, given how much Sandler continues to do the character's unique voice.

As Newacheck said, “Here’s one that I think would be interesting now. Because [Sandler] was always doing the Little Nicky voice on set like so just hearing it, I was like, I...

Before landing his signature role as Bobby Bacala on The Sopranos, Steve Schirripa got his first taste of showbiz as the entertainment director of The Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. That’s where he started rubbing elbows with comics like Drew Carey and Kevin Pollack, as well as other famous comedians who passed through his venue.

On a recent episode of the We Might Be Drunk podcast, Schirripa told Sam Morril and Mark Normand about some of his brushes with comedy greats. He ran through a list of his favorite comics from the Vegas days, names like Damon Wayans, Nick Di Paolo and Dave Attell. But one comedian in particular rubbed Schirripa the wrong way. “I don’t like Ellen DeGeneres,” he explained. “She was an asshole then. She got proven to be an asshole, but she was an asshole way back when.”

Once known as “the Queen of Nice,...

After Kevin Smith’s Dogma returned to Cannes last month and received a seven-minute ovation, per Deadline, the portrayal of God on screen is back in the public consciousness. While Dogma is definitely a comedy — serious religious films don’t feature Jay and Silent Bob as foretold prophets — Smith didn’t hire a comedian for his Almighty, choosing Alanis Morissette instead “because I always thought God would be Canadian.” But other films and TV shows have tapped comic actors for their Gods, correctly imagining that He has an epic sense of humor.

Here are five comedians who’ve taken their turn at playing God…

1 Groucho Marx

What happens when a bunch of comedians in their 50s and 60s try to make a movie about 1960s counterculture? You get a mess like Skidoo, featuring Groucho as a mob boss (and maybe more?) named God. Groucho says his performance as God was “God-awful,...

Unless you’re an SNL completist or a 55-plus fan who stayed up late in 1980 to catch Rodney Dangerfield, you likely haven’t seen one of the most offensive SNL sketches in the show’s history.

The sketch aired on the show’s fifth season, that weird year in which a watered-down version of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players still performed, but without crucial talents like John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase. They were replaced by Spinal Tap’s Harry Shearer, future Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer and famous brothers Peter Aykroyd and Brian Doyle-Murray. You didn’t see much of those guys during the SNL50 retrospectives.

Dangerfield was the host, and after his monologue, Lorne Michaels and company decided that the first sketch should feature Harry Shearer as a South African spokesperson for a gold coin that commemorates the labor of those who made it possible: the N*ggerrand.

When you first see Tim Robinson, he may remind you of a lot of other rubber-faced, madcap-furious walking-id comedians. With his grim leer, turtle-like demeanor, and eyes that pop with oddball intensity, he could almost be the son of Rodney Dangerfield. He specializes in slow-burn meltdowns, working his way up to a kitsch fury that’s a hair’s breadth from the real thing. In that way, he’s a cousin to blowing-their-stack jokers like Will Ferrell or the young Jim Carrey.

But Robinson, who started out on “Saturday Night Live” before moving onto the maniacally inventive Netflix comedy series “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson,” may also be the first sketch comedian who seems inhabited by the ghost of Jean-Paul Sartre (or maybe Willy Loman). When he plays a passive-aggressive corporate geek who keeps saying testy and inappropriate things, he’s not just acting out the standard...

If there’s one thing people know about Rodney Dangerfield, it’s that he never received any admiration, regard or esteem. Dangerfield’s signature catchphrase about getting “no respect” from anyone was, of course, a foundational part of his stand-up act, his public persona and his mercifully brief hip-hop career.

But where did the line actually come from? Well, Dangerfield offered up a few different stories about the joke’s origin over the years. During a 1973 appearance on the game show What’s My Line? he claimed that it began with an encounter in an elevator. “How I first happened to start with ‘no respect’ was I actually felt I wasn’t getting any, as a lot of people do in life, and I said what I felt,” Dangerfield explained. “One day I was going in an elevator, and I was going to the third floor, and the elevator operator looked at me,...

What’s that? You’ve never heard of Poochinski, the show starring a murdered cop who is resurrected as a crime-solving bulldog voiced by the great Peter Boyle? Well, perhaps that’s because they only made one episode before some executive thought this brilliant TV series just might not find an audience.

Honestly, when stacked against some of the other bizarre pilots that were never picked up, Poochinski starts to look like a pretty good idea. Who wouldn’t love a police procedural starring a detective dog that’s been resurrected from the dead, anyway? Here’s a look at some of the other pilots that, for better or worse, were just too weird to make into a full series…

1 ‘Stick Around’ (1977)

Before he became the lovable foreign mechanic Latka Gravas on Taxi, Andy Kaufman loaned the “Foreign Man” character from his stand-up act to another potential sitcom. Set in...

Jerry Seinfeld has gotten to meet and work with a number of iconic comedians over the years. He appeared on Rodney Dangerfield’s HBO special, went for a ride with Eddie Murphy on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and once hung out with the ghosts of Abbott and Costello for some reason.

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But one legendary comic that Seinfeld never got the chance to interact with on his over-caffeinated Crackle/Netflix series was Joan Rivers.

Following her death in 2014, Seinfeld revealed that he had actually asked Rivers to be his “lead guest” on the new season of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. He even shared an old text message documenting that she said she would “Love” to be on the show.

Unfortunately, according to Seinfeld, Rivers had to postpone the taping because she was “going in for a medical procedure.” This was in late August; Rivers died on September 4th...

Since 1975 nearly a thousand hosts have graced the stage at Studio 8H at Rockefeller Center for “Saturday Night Live.”

Actors, comedians, musicians and even politicians have taken the stage to make America laugh on Saturday night for 50 seasons. Twenty five of these hosts have been inducted into the “Five Timers Club.” The club was first introduced during Tom Hanks’ 1990 monologue, featuring Steve Martin, Elliott Gould and Paul Simon.

During Martin Short’s December 2024 appearance, several Five Timers Club members popped up on the show to welcome him into the club, including Emma Stone, Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Kristen Wiig and more, to give him the ceremonial robe.

Alec Baldwin has hosted the show 17 times, the most in the series’ history, with Martin, Hanks, Buck Henry and John Goodman following close behind.

As the show celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, we have rounded up every person who has hosted the sketch show.

To paraphrase the famous comedian, Rodney Dangerfield, some people just get no respect. When it comes to Star Trek, there are a few shows and films at the bottom of the pile that deserve to be there. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Short Treks, Star Trek: The Animated Series, and of course, Star Trek: Section 31.

Yet, anyone who claims Star Trek: Enterprise is bad is simply not telling you the truth. Enterprise is fantastic. It's a constantly engaging and consistent series that should've been the perfect swansong to the Brannon Braga era of Star Trek on the Upn (later CW) network. It was the prequel series of the franchise. The story that should've started it all. A series that was anchored by a sci-fi legend and, at the time, the biggest name Star Trek had ever pulled to lead a brand-new franchise.

After all,...

If you know famed comic Rodney Dangerfield, then you know his punchline, “I get no respect!” But whether he was performing at a nightclub or chatting with Johnny Carson on the couch of The Tonight Show, some of Dangerfield’s most fertile comedic ground was joking about his wife. Their terrible sex life, her being a lousy cook, how much she loathed him — all were fair game.

Arguably, it was his wife Joan Dangerfield, who “got no respect” in his stand-up sets. Thankfully, she enjoyed her late-husband’s “my wife” jokes as much as anyone else. And so, just in time for Valentine’s Day, we asked Joan to share some of her favorite Rodney Dangerfield “my wife” jokes — and to let us in on which had the most truth to them.

7 ‘My wife is a cold person. Her side of the waterbed is frozen’

“When my dad traveled to...

Rodney Dangerfield’s whole act is predicated on the idea that he gets no respect, which obviously wasn’t true. Dangerfield was a beloved comedian, a successful film actor and a one-time board game star.

But Dangerfield’s comedy catchphrase became depressingly accurate during his dealings with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 1994, the Back to School star applied to become a member of the Academy, after his name was submitted by actor and friend Leonard Gaines. When others expressed surprise at the idea of making Dangerfield a member of the Academy, Gaines believed that he was “doing the Academy a favor” by inviting a huge star like Dangerfield.

As the L.A. Times pointed out at the time, Dangerfield met the criteria to join, with “major parts in at least three theatrical releases to his credit.” He also presented an award at the 1987 Oscars and killed.

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On top of all that,...

Plenty of professional athletes have tried to parlay their fame into a career in comedy — O.J. Simpson, Peyton Manning and Shaquille O’Neal to name just a few. But no one was as successful at turning athletic mediocrity into comedy stardom as Bob Uecker, who passed away today at the age of 90.

Uecker had an undistinguished Major League Baseball career, lasting six years as a backup catcher with a batting average of .200. He never was a household name as a player, making him an unlikely candidate to become the facetiously named Mr. Baseball on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. But Carson couldn’t get enough — Uecker made more than 100 appearances on the show, killing with self-deprecating punchlines like, “Sporting goods companies would pay me not to endorse their products.”

Miller Lite saw gold in Uecker’s sad-sack persona, employing him as a pitchman in several funny commercials in the 1980s. American Family Field,...

Norm Macdonald’s first encounter with one of his comedy idols, Rodney Dangerfield, couldn’t have gone worse, Macdonald told Howard Stern in 2011. In fact, he said, “I made the worst mistake ever.”

Macdonald was working at a casino and entered an elevator when he spotted the icon. “I’m like, Oh my God, it’s Rodney! I got to say something to him.” Macdonald remembered that he’d worked on a project with a director who’d also worked with Rodney, so he used that common ground to introduce himself.

“Hey Rodney, we have a common friend.”

“Who’s that?”

“Paul Johnson.”

Wrong answer. “He goes, ‘That cocksucker! That fucker’s no friend of mine!’” Mind you, this was on an elevator full of people, Macdonald told Stern. “You tell him he can suck my dick!”

“I’m not his friend! I’m not his friend!” Macdonald insisted.

Macdonald...

How Did Jim Carrey React When He Was Told He Had 10 Minutes To Live? (Photo Credit – Amazon)

January 2018 was supposed to be just another day for Jim Carrey in Hawaii. But when his assistant FaceTimed him with an urgent message—”There are missiles coming, and they’re going to land in 10 minutes”—the actor had no idea his life would soon blend with the absurd.

With panic spreading across the island and people scrambling for safety, Carrey was suddenly forced to confront mortality. Yet, his reaction was strangely calm. “It was more a wave of calm coming over me,” he said. “A sense of ‘Oh, that’s strange. Huh, what a funny way for this all to end.'” His FaceTime call, where he sat in the face of imminent doom, became the iconic cover of his semi-autobiographical book Memoirs and Misinformation.

At that moment, Jim Carrey didn’t dive into survival mode,...

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Clint Eastwood was one of the biggest movie stars in the world in 1995, but, up until that point, he was not known for appearing in family-friendly films. CBS' "Rawhide," the television series that launched him in the 1960s, and 1982's "Firefox," with its video game tie-in, are probably his two most kid-appropriate works. "Bronco Billy" and "Honkytonk Man" are also family films in a way, though, really, Eastwood only hit the bullseye with kids when he plopped Clyde the orangutan into the bare-knuckle-brawling adventures of Philo Beddoe in "Every Which Way But Loose" and "Any Which Way You Can" (both of which have no shortage of gleefully raunchy moments).

Eastwood also wasn't known for his romantic dramas, so the summer of 1995 promised to be an outlier for him with his adaptation of Robert James Waller's runaway bestseller "The Bridges of Madison County.

The Los Angeles City College Foundation has zeroed in on a comedy star to take home an award named for icon Rodney Dangerfield. At the foundation’s upcoming gala — set to take place at L.A.’s Skirball Cultural Center on Oct. 23 — actor, writer and producer Ken Jeong will be feted with he Rodney Respect Award.

The gala, which will carry at theme of Celebrating the Caregivers as a nod to Lacc’s Radiologic Technology, Nursing and Public Health Science programs, will also see Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ executive director of external affairs Ellen Zaman honored with a humanitarian award and Wesley Health Centers and Jwch Institute CEO Al Ballesteros with a distinguished alumnus prize. The program will feature a musical performance by Lacc’s renowned student artists.

Lacc’s Rodney Dangerfield Institute was founded in his honor in cooperation with widow Joan Dangerfield, the honorary chair of the Rdi advisory board.

Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies dives into the mystery of season 14's "73 Yards", addressing its uncanny and unstoppable monster, and what he feels audiences miss most about the story. Davies' first full season since returning to showrunning, the season is led by Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor, who adventures in the Time Vortex alongside Millie Gibson's companion Ruby Sunday. In "73 Yards", Ruby finds herself abandoned by the Doctor on Earth, and pursued by a mysterious woman who can seemingly make all who love her abandon her with a mere sentence.

While Doctor Who season 14 left many unanswered questions that the showrunner had set in place since returning during the show's 60th anniversary, Davies sat down with Doctor Who Magazine (later reported via Bleeding Cool) about lingering audience questions surrounding the most recent eight adventures. Stating he may never disclose all the answers about the episode's mystery, he instead...

There have been many Penguins over the years—the quacking, clownish rogue played by Burgess Meredith in the 1960s TV series I watched as a kid, Danny DeVito’s mutant schemer from Batman Returns, Robin Lord Taylor’s twisted mobster from Fox’s Gotham—but never has this iconic villain been portrayed with the icy, blustery ferocity of Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb in HBO’s The Penguin. First seen in Matt Reeves’ 2022 film The Batman, Oz is the Rodney Dangerfield of gangsters: swollen and deformed, belittled by his supposed betters, labeled “Penguin” by those who refuse to take him seriously or show him respect. Their mistake. (Oz would hardly be surprised to learn that while the Joker commands the big screen and even earned his portrayer an Oscar—the second time that character has been so honored—his own waddling act has been consigned to a much smaller screen.

Lydia Deetz, her stepmother Delia Deetz, and her daughter Astrid stand over a casket, the burial services in progress. We can barely make out who the funeral is for but there he is on the headstone: Charles Deetz. While Charles was once part of the Beetlejuice sequel when the ghost with the most was to “go Hawaiian”, he was written entirely out of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice…for reasons that will soon be obvious.

Despite the original’s and sequel’s dalliances with the afterlife, Jeffrey Jones will not be in the Beetlejuice sequel– or pretty much any other legitimate movie – following his disgraceful tumble from his small but reliable spotlight. Perfectly fitting into prestigious period pieces and goofball funny flicks. Jones is a Golden Globe nominee with consistent work – a mix of villain, comedic and at times patriarchal roles, Jeffrey Jones went from Ferris Bueller baddie to Who’s Your Caddy?...

This article contains mention of sexual assault, racism, and homophobia.

Cult classics come in many forms, and many great movies of the 1980s went overlooked, only to be hailed as influential and important today. There are plenty of 1980s comedy movies that no one remembers, and the same can be said for most genres, no matter the decade. However, several films have gained cult status but have been reevaluated through a contemporary lens because of their dated elements. Most movies have problems, no matter when they were filmed, and this doesn't mean they're not worth watching, but context might change the meaning of some scenes.

Controversial and intense subjects have a place in cinema, but characterizing them well and not perpetuating stereotypes is an important aspect of filmmaking.

Every decade has its pitfalls, as plenty of cult classic movies from the 1990s have aged poorly as well. Some problems with...

Oliver Stone speaks on Robert Downey Jr.'s acting choices on the set of Natural Born Killers. Natural Born Killers is a 1994 film about two people who become serial killers after having had traumatic childhoods. The film is directed by Stone and features a leading cast including Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, O-Lan Jones, Ed White, Richard Lineback, Lanny Flaherty, and Rodney Dangerfield.

Speaking with Esquire, Stone recalls getting frustrated with Downey Jr. on the set of Natural Born Killers. According to the director, they were on the final day of filming in 1993. After spending a lot of days on set high or drunk, Downey Jr. decided to dip the end section of his shirt into fake blood and pull it through the unzipped area of his pants to resemble a blood-soaked penis. Stone was not a fan of the actor's vision here, saying he was "going too far" and reminded Downey Jr.

Oliver Stone once blasted Robert Downey Jr. for ruining Natural Born Killers with his juvenile humor. As a director who has never been shy in voicing his opinion, Stone has made some controversial decisions over the years, but he has also been happy to admit his error of judgment when the need arises. One such moment is recounted in Esquires oral history of Stones classic Natural Born Killers in honor of its 30th anniversary, relaying how a then-27-year-old Downey Jr. attempted to add a little something extra to the movie to Stones annoyance.

Natural Born Killers, based on a story by Quentin Tarantino, stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as a couple who set off on a violent killing spree together across the country, with the media hot in pursuit of the headline-grabbing story. The film was written as a satirical look at the way the world approaches violence in the media,...

Robert Downey Jr. has the power to steal any scene he wants. Just take one look at his surprise Sdcc appearance this summer and you get an idea of what we mean. But this is nothing new, and one of the best examples of this is 1994’s Natural Born Killers, in which he played Wayne Gale, the personification of exploiting criminals to the point of cult status. It’s undoubtedly one of the standout performances in Natural Born Killers (although I would pick Rodney Dangerfield’s as the most memorable), but according to Oliver Stone, he almost ruined the entire film.

By most accounts, Downey Jr. was rarely sober on the set of Natural Born Killers, but on one particular day, he happened to be completely straight. But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t get out of control to the point of pissing off his director. In one instance,...

Stand-up comedians don’t typically get cast in iconic horror franchises, hence why Rodney Dangerfield never faced off against Freddy Krueger, and Joan Rivers never ridiculed Michael Myers’ uninspired coverall ensemble.

But in 2019, the world was blindsided by the news that Chris Rock would be executive producing and starring in a new Saw movie, presumably in which a Jigsaw-like psycho tortures people using only a DVD copy of Grown Ups 2.

In 2021, we got Spiral: From the Book of Saw, which indeed found Rock playing a Chris Rock-like detective named Zeke Banks, who’s hot on the trail of a brutal serial killer.

While society has seemingly memory-holed Spiral, a lot of people brought it up in response to a recent social media post asking for examples of modern movies in which stand-up comedians perform their acts in character, à la Rodney Dangerfield. A lot of people pointed to Spiral...

Inquiring minds like Joe Rogan’s want to know: How does Adam Sandler come up with the ideas for all of his movies? On this week’s Joe Rogan Experience podcast, he asked if Sandler started with a character? A premise? What was the silly secret behind all those blockbusters?

The Sandman didn’t have a definitive answer, but sometimes he just knew he had a winner on his hands. “Billy Madison, I remember I thought, ‘Oh, this could be great. A grown-up who does elementary school again. And that's a great idea — I get to be goofy, get to bully these little kids, then all of a sudden connect with these kids and have fun growing up again.”

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There was only one problem in Sandler’s mind. “Part of my head was like, well, Rodney (Dangerfield) did Back to School already. So everyone’s gonna say, I just ripped off Back to School.

Quentin Tarantino's early '90s life was full of drama, from video store clerk to legendary director. Tarantino wrote the Natural Born Killers script before his screenwriting work hit big screens. The clash of egos between Tarantino and Oliver Stone led to script revisions and resentment.

Quentin Tarantino's life in the early '90s could one day be the subject of a film, so dramatic were the events that brought him from video store clerk obscurity to a legendary film career. From around 1990, Tarantino was drafting scripts for Reservoir Dogs, under the tutelage of producer Lawrence Bender, True Romance, which would eventually be directed by Tony Scott, and Natural Born Killers. This was all while working at the Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California, where Tarantino became a local pillar for his movie recommendations.

Tarantino had actually been an early admirer of Oliver Stone even obscure films like The Hand with Michael Caine.

Quick Links Micheal Keaton's Short-Lived Career in Stand-Up Comedy Why and When did Micheal Keaton Stop doing Stand-Up Comedy Keaton's Love of Stand-Up Shines in Many of His Performances

With Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice on the horizon, many fans are thrilled to see Micheal Keaton return to the role. While the creepy, charismatic Betelgeuse exists as one of Keaton's most well-known and universally appreciated comedic roles, the actor has had a long history as a comedic actor. Yet, Keaton's transition onto the screen is grounded in a little-known aspect of the actor's career: Micheal Keaton started as a stand-up comedian.

While short-lived, Micheal Keaton's stand-up career is integral to his trajectory as an actor, with many of his early roles leaning heavily into his natural comedic charm. We will look at what we know about his stand-up through the few videos that exist, as well as why Keaton...

The 25th anniversary of Deep Blue Sea is generally not seen as a significant cultural event. In the grand context of a world spinning wildly off its axis, finding time to remember that movie where scientists use shark brains to cure Alzheimer’s can be difficult.

Yet Deep Blue Sea deserves to be remembered. Not for the events of the film itself—though it is, remarkably, still one of the best shark movies ever made—but rather for the incredible original rap song that plays over its end credits, “Deepest Bluest (Shark’s Fin).” In that rousing ballad, rapper and Deep Blue Sea co-star LL Cool J delivers what could best be described as a shark’s diss track to the rest of the world sung from the shark’s perspective. Best remembered for the lyric, “Deepest, bluest, my hat is like a shark’s fin,” it occasionally makes the...

Daisy Ridley, the actor who shot to stardom after giving life to Rey in the latest Star Wars trilogy, has shared the truth about her health condition. She has been diagnosed with Graves' disease, an autoimmune disease that affects the thyroid and often leads to hyperthyroidism. While she was diagnosed last year in September, Ridley is currently promoting her newest feature, Young Woman and the Sea, and she used the opportunity to provide an exclusive to Women's Health magazine.

In the article, Ridley confirms that last year, she was moved to see an endocrinologist because of constant "racing heart rate, weight loss, fatigue, and hand tremors." The actor has always been open about dealing with endometriosis and polycystic ovaries, but now she's got another battle to fight. Her symptoms became hard to deal with during recent productions, and looking back, she's amazed at her own resilience: "I didn't realize how bad I felt before.

In the "Simpsons" episode "Homer Simpson, This is Your Wife", Homer (Dan Castellaneta) becomes obsessed with the crisp images on an HDTV and decides he has to purchase one. To get the money, he enlists his family into a reality TV series called "Mother Flippers," wherein the matriarchs of two families swap places. Marge (Julie Kavner) is sent to live with the dandyish Charles Heathbar (Ricky Gervais), while Homer welcomes Charles' stern wife Verity (Tress MacNeille). Over the course of the episode, Charles develops a crush on Marge, while Verity will begin developing a romance with Marge's sister, Patty (Kavner).

"This is Your Wife" aired during the 17th season of "The Simpsons," so the series was already enormous and influential. Indeed, "This is Your Wife" only came into being because the makers of "The Simpsons" were fans of the British TV series "The Office" and wanted to meet its creator and star,...

June Walker Rogers, a singer, dancer and comedian who performed on Broadway and television and wrote several musicals and a book about how to survive in show business, has died. She was 97.

She died July 8 at her home in Westport, Connecticut, her family announced.

Born in Steubenville, Ohio, and raised in Queens, June L. Walker started dancing at age 5 and soon had a nightclub act, appearing on bills with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Louis Prima, Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield and, when he was known as the singer “Calypso Gene,” Louis Farrakhan.

After being placed in an accelerated pilot program for gifted children in the New York school system, she graduated from high school at 15. She accepted a scholarship to Columbia University but left college to make her Broadway debut in 1944 in the comedy revue Laffing Room Only, starring Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson.

The platinum blond returned...

Is Futurama the Rodney Dangerfield of adult animation?

John Dimaggio, the actor who voices Bender, believes the show gets no respect. From shuffling time slots to actual cancellations, Matt Groening’s other creation has “been getting the short end of the stick for a while,” Dimaggio told Newsweek.

Let’s count the ways in which Futurama has received the Dangerfield treatment:

Groening conceived the show as a companion to The Simpsons, a self-created superblock of cartoon comedy. Fox had other ideas, using Futurama as a utility player and plugging it into various holes in its primetime lineup so that audiences were never sure where to find it. “When we were on Fox, I was working on King of the Hill and Futurama at the time,” said David Herman, another one of the show’s voice actors. “We were on at 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. — and Fox’s slogan...

Rodney Dangerfield was the king of telling dumb jokes about his wife, a practice he got away with because his own ineptitude as a romantic partner usually made him the butt of the joke. But in the name of spreading the wealth, here are plenty of classic and contemporary comics joining Dangerfield in delivering spousal punchlines. Before you head to marriage counseling, take these dumb wife jokes — please…

1 Hasan Minhaj

“I recently got married. It was like a reverse Lord of the Rings situation where I got a ring and then I lost half of my power.”

2 Rodney Dangerfield

“My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met.”

3 Nate Bargatze

“She put Life360 on my phone. That’s so they can track you even when they’re not near you. You might not even know you have it on your phone. It’s worse than what the government’s doing.

Caddyshack is among the most beloved of comedies. It’s endlessly quoted, referenced and parodied, its array of colorful goofballs embedded in our collective consciousness. But who’s the film’s main character? It’s not Bill Murray’s Carl Spackler, Ted Knight’s Elihu Smails, Rodney Dangerfield’s Al Czervik or Chevy Chase’s Ty Webb. No, the man who drives the action is actually Danny.

You remember Danny Noonan, the young caddie trying to make some money and maybe get laid. Amidst Caddyshack’s crazy, vain or smug weirdos, Danny comes closest to resembling ordinary human behavior. He’s not trying to murder gophers. He’s not making inappropriate comments loudly in public. Danny is just a poor local kid navigating a comic minefield of rich idiots. The actor who played Danny did such a good job that you tend to forget him. But as the film celebrates its 44th anniversary,...

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F unsurprisingly reunited Eddie Murphy’s Detective Axel Foley with several of his old buddies from the first three movies. But he also briefly bumped into… the villain from a completely unrelated Adam Sandler movie?

One of the oddest moments in Axel F (which was actually a lot of fun) comes when Foley and his daughter’s ex Bobby crash a helicopter onto a golf course. The conclusion of the movie’s biggest action sequence finds the two cops being confronted by an angry golfer played by none other than Christopher McDonald. While McDonald is credited simply as “Golfer,” some fans naturally assumed that he was supposed to be Happy Gilmore’s nemesis Shooter McGavin.

Sure, he could have just been playing a brand new character. Or, for that matter, Marty from Hacks, who has been known to play golf occasionally. But it seems pretty...

Sam Morril is pumped about his new special, You’ve Changed, which debuts on Prime Video today. There’s only one problem: Scaling the top of the comedy mountain with a streaming special just means the wry Morril has to prepare more tour material “again and again, til I die.”

Morril, one of the only comics alive to warm up an audience for Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, recently talked to Cracked about his childhood comedy heroes, the importance of trust in stand-up and the art of telling an edgy joke.

“As a really young kid, probably like in kindergarten, I realized I could do armpit farts. Oh my God, I was crushing. No one else could do them. And I was doing slow ones and fast ones. It was definitely an intro to comedy.”

“Remember that song, “I Saw the Sign,” by Ace of Base? There was another version I did,...