Rick Moranis opts out of cartoon take on iconic comic duo Bob and Doug
TORONTO – Canada’s iconic comic duo Bob and Doug don’t sound quite like they used to.
The beloved hosers, immortalized on “SCTV” by comedians Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis, are set to return next year in an animated series but only Thomas – who plays Doug – is lending his voice.
Moranis’s character, Bob, will be voiced by former “Full House” star Dave Coulier.
Thomas says Moranis is staying behind the scenes as executive producer and just isn’t interested in appearing on the show.
“You have to come in every two weeks or so and record and he just didn’t want to do that so I said, ‘All right, we’ll get somebody else,’ ” Thomas said Monday from Los Angeles.
“I think at a certain age you have to allow people to do what they want.”
It’s been nearly 30 years since the beer-swilling duo debuted on the beloved sketch show “SCTV” with their tuques, lumberjack jackets and liberal use of the words “eh” and “hoser.”
Thomas says the half-hour show will be updated with current cultural references to bring it into the new millennium and appeal to a new generation. But he understands that some fans might be upset that Coulier is voicing Moranis’s role.
“There’s got to be room to grow,” insists Thomas, adding that he and Coulier have been friends for years since they worked together on “America’s Funniest People.” Coulier hosted and Thomas executive-produced.
“I can understand some real diehard fans going, ‘Oh, man, that’s an outrage!’ But I think most people will look at it and judge it as it is and go, ‘Is this funny? Does it work?’ And I think it does and I think we’ll get their blessing as a result of that.”
“Bob and Doug” is set to air early next year on Global and talks are in the works for a U.S. broadcast via Fox.
Like the live version, the cartoon take will feature direct-to-camera addresses where the McKenzie brothers can wisecrack and banter in their unique lingo, but the expanded format will lift the veil on their personal lives. Upcoming storylines reveal the duo’s friends, family and the town where Bob and Doug live – a fictional place called Maple Lake, located somewhere in Ontario near the United States border.
“It’s sort of like Springfield in the Simpsons, you know,” Thomas explains.
Turns out the boys work as garbage collectors and live in a much more culturally diverse world than their live action incarnations. Other characters include their boss, Dwight, who is black and drives the garbage truck, and their good friend Henry Chow, who runs a Chinese restaurant.
“I think you have a requirement to make a lot of changes that you wouldn’t have done for the sort of purists and fans of Bob and Doug on the old two-minute shows on the Great White North set,” Thomas says of the new elements.
The last time fans got an in-depth look at the boys was in the 1983 feature film, “Strange Brew,” but Thomas says all the backstory developed for that film had to be abandoned for the cartoon because of rights issues.
“MGM will sue us,” he says simply. “So we have to create new realities. So we have a dog and instead of calling it Hosehead as we did in ‘Strange Brew,’ we called the dog Buck. And we can’t drink Elsinore beer because we don’t own that, MGM does. And all these big companies are so litigious and so proprietary that you can’t mess around with them.”
Thomas, who runs the animation company behind the show – Animax Entertainment – says he is also working on a couple of pilot scripts as a writer, but is not interested in doing much acting these days.
“It has to be something, I think, where I sit down,” says the funnyman, who turns 60 in May.
“Behind a desk…. I don’t really like jumping all over the place. I don’t have that youthful enthusiasm I used to have.”
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