Birthday Takeover - And Why Not: Death to Smoochy

As part of the Norton v Slater birthday takeover, a reminder of Stuart Mulrain and birthday boy Steve Taylor-Bryant's talk about purple rhino homicide in Death to Smoochy... and why not?...

It's that film that nobody's ever heard of and even fewer people have seen, and yet the world itself now seems to be copying the plotline very closely indeed...

Randolph Smiley (Robin Williams) had it all. As Rainbow Randolph, star of children's TV, there was a Manhattan penthouse, billboard on Times Square, cars, boats.... until he gets caught by the Feds in an under-the-table bribe. Busted and reviled, Randolph is a star no more.

Enter Sheldon Mopes (Edward Norton) and his alter ego Smoochy, a puffy, fuchsia rhinoceros. Kids love Smoochy's innocence and unrelenting ethics. Now Smoochy has the penthouse, billboard and smooth-talking agent (Danny DeVito).

But Sheldon quickly learns that children's television is a dangerous, backstabbing world—but his biggest problem is Rainbow Randolph, who, broke and homeless, has sworn Death to Smoochy.


Presented in association with The Nerds Who Haunted Themselves.

Follow Stuart on Twitter @TokenNerd, find Haunted Nerds on Facebook and listen to all the Haunted Nerds podcasts, including And Why Not, Why Comics and The Nerds Who Haunted Themselves on Podbean.

Title music - Storytelling Man by Ruth's Curtain

Image - Stuart Mulrain/Warner Bros