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In
Remembrance: Charles Rocket
Charles Rocket, the comic actor who appeared in such films as
Dumb And Dumber (1994) and Dances With Wolves (1990) and
who was fired from television’s Saturday Night Live in 1981
for inadvertently swearing on air, has passed away in Canterbury,
Connecticut on October 7, 2005. He was 56.
Born Charles Calervie on August 24, 1949 on Bangor, Maine, Rocket
graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1973. He was
influential in the Providence, RI art and performance scene, where
he made several short films and fronted the local band the Fabulous
Motels. Following a part-time job as a news reporter in Providence,
he worked as a local news anchor Colorado Springs, Colorado and
Nashville, Tennessee.
Rocket joined Saturday Night Live at the start of its 1980-81
season - the show’s first year without any of its original cast –
after he had unsuccessfully pitched a comedy series to NBC network
executives. Rocket’s profanity incident happened at the end of
February 1981 episode which was parodying the popular night time
soap Dallas’s popular storyline “Who Shot JR?” with “Who Shot
Charles Rocket?”. As the show was running undertime, Rocket and that
week’s guest host, Dallas star Charlene Tilton, were forced
to improvise a discussion about what it was like to get shot, at
which point Rocket made his infamous slip. He was fired from the
show a few weeks later, following numerous viewer complaints.
Rocket made his first film appear in the 1985 comedy Fraternity
Vacation. Rocket appeared in many comedies through the 80s and
90s, often as the nominal antagonist in such films as How I Got
Into College (1989) and Dumb And Dumber. Other comedies
he appeared in include Earth Girls Are Easy, Honeymoon
Academy (1990), Hocus Pocus (1993), Wagons East
(1994) and Father’s Day (1997). Rocket would also land the
occasional dramatic role in such films as Dances With Wolves,
director Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993) and Murder At
1600 (1997). He also contributed voice work to the animated
science-fiction adventure Titan A.E. (2000).
Despite his Saturday Night Live slipup, Rocket still made
several television appearances. He starred in the short-lived series
Murphy’s Law, Tequila And Bonetti and Flying Blind
as well as the 1993 mini-series Wild Palms. He had a
reoccurring role on romantic detective comedy Moonlighting as
Bruce Willis’ con-man brother and appeared several times as a
villainous television network executive on the science-fiction
satire Max Headroom. He also had a recurring role on
Touched By An Angel. Rocket also guest-starred on such shows as
thirtysomething, Doctor, Doctor (which starred former
Max Headroom colleague Matt Frewer), Quantum Leap and
The X-Files. He reunited with Moonlighting co-star
Cybil Shepard on two episodes of her sitcom Cybil. He also
contributed voices to such cartoons as Men In Black: The Series,
Batman Beyond and Static Shock as well as a few video
games.
Rocket’s last film was the 2003 crime drama Shade with
Sylvester Stallone. |
