Michael RitchieFilmography

Born:: November 28, 1938 in Waukesha, WI
Occupation:: Director, Producer
Biography:: An acute satirist of hallowed American institutions, filmmaker Michael Ritchie found his greatest artistic success in the more creatively adventurous 1970s Hollywood before his comic sensibility was diluted by 1980s and 1990s commercial constraints. Still, Ritchie once said, he only wanted to make...Read More

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Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie

Crew: Screen Story

Actors: David Krumholtz, Jennifer Morrison, Tory Kittles, Nicholas Turturro, Alex Rocco

Synopsis: Based on a real-life 1994 scandal involving college basketball point-shaving, Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie stars David Krumholtz as the title character. Though a mere freshman on the campus of Arizona State University, Benny Silman (Krumholtz) is in charge of accepting all bets for the Read More

2002
The Fantasticks

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Joel Grey, Barnard Hughes, Jean Louisa Kelly, Joseph McIntyre, Jonathon Morris

Synopsis: The longest-running show in the history of the American theater (it opened at an off-Broadway theater in the spring of 1960, where it remained until the production finally closed in early 2002) finally arrives onscreen. Hucklebee (Brad Sullivan) and Bellamy (Joel Grey) are a pair of small town Read More

9/22/00
Beggars and Choosers [TV Series]

Crew: Director

Actors: Brian Kerwin, Isabella Hofmann, Carol Kane, Charlotte Ross, Paul Provenza

Synopsis: To paraphrase the late, great NBC programming executive Brandon Tartikoff, the television industry is comprised of two different groups of people: The "beggars," those actors, writers, directors, and producers who tirelessly and relentlessly package and pitch ideas, concepts, and premises for new Read More

1999
A Simple Wish

Crew: Director

Actors: Martin Short, Mara Wilson, Robert Pastorelli, Amanda Plummer, Francis Capra

Synopsis: This comic children's fantasy from director Michael Ritchie stars Mara Wilson as eight-year-old New Yorker Anabel, who wishes that her father Oliver (Robert Pastorelli), a hansom cab driver in Central Park, would see his dream come true. In a thinly veiled jab at the overblown stage productions of Read More

1997
The Scout

Crew: Director

Actors: Albert Brooks, Brendan Fraser, Dianne Wiest, Lane Smith, Anne Twomey

Synopsis: After several weeks filming The Scout in the late 1970s, star Peter Falk and director Howard Zieff abandoned the project. Two decades later, writer Andrew Bergman gave his original script to Albert Brooks and Monica Johnson, who polished it as a vehicle for Brooks and director Michael Ritchie. Brooks Read More

1994
Cops and Robbersons

Crew: Director

Actors: Chevy Chase, Jack Palance, Dianne Wiest, Robert Davi, David Barry Gray, Jason James Richter

Synopsis: In this comedy, police detectives on the trail of a dangerous criminal are confronted with a new and unexpected danger: a typical suburban family. Osborn (Robert Davi) is a underworld figure with plenty of blood on his hands who, in hopes of keeping his dealings quiet, is operating out of an Read More

1994
Cool Runnings

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Leon, Doug E. Doug, Malik Yoba, Rawle D. Lewis, John Candy

Synopsis: Cool Runnings fictionalizes the true story of a bobsledding team from Jamaica making it to the Olympics. The tale begins when Derice Bannock (Leon), realizing that due to an accident his chances of qualifying for Jamaica's 1988 Olympic track team are dashed, scrounges around looking for another Read More

1993
The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom

Crew: Director

Actors: Holly Hunter, Beau Bridges, Swoosie Kurtz

Synopsis: A Texas housewife plots hire a hit man to kill the girl who beat out her daughter for a place on the cheerleading squad in this made-for-cable satire based on a true story. Holly Hunter stars as Wanda Holloway, a twice-married Baptist mother of two who becomes obsessed when her daughter, Shanna (Frankie Ingrassia Read More

1993
Innocent Blood

Actors: Anne Parillaud, Robert Loggia, Anthony LaPaglia, David Proval, Don Rickles, Don Rickels

Synopsis: An uneven but entertaining blend of graphic horror and black comedy from John Landis, very much in the mode of the director's successful An American Werewolf in London. French actress Anne Parillaud -- star of Luc Besson's acclaimed thriller La Femme Nikita -- plays Marie, a lithe and lovely Read More

9/25/92
Diggstown

Crew: Director

Actors: James Woods, Louis Gossett, Jr., Bruce Dern, Oliver Platt, Heather Graham

Synopsis: In this comedy, a charming con man teams up with a boxer fallen on hard times in hopes of making some quick money. After doing time for selling art that turned out to be forged, Gabriel Caine (James Woods) and his partner Fitz (Oliver Platt) set their sights on a village called Diggstown; Fitz Read More

8/14/92
Fletch Lives

Crew: Director

Actors: Chevy Chase, Hal Holbrook, Julianne Phillips, Cleavon Little, R. Lee Ermey

Synopsis: Though the original Fletch was drubbed by critics, it proved a major success for star Chevy Chase. It was inevitable, then, that a sequel would make an appearance. Surprisingly, Fletch Lives didn't come out until 1989--a full five years after the original. Once more, Chase stars as Irwin Maurice Read More

3/17/89
The Couch Trip

Crew: Director

Actors: Dan Aykroyd, Walter Matthau, Charles Grodin, David Clennon, Donna Dixon

Synopsis: Michael Ritchie's The Couch Trip follows a long line of Hollywood films (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Disorderly Orderly) in which the psychos are seen as saner than the psychiatrists. Charles Grodin plays Dr. George Maitlin, a pompous radio self-help guru, who is having his own personal Read More

1/15/88
The Golden Child

Crew: Director

Actors: Eddie Murphy, Charles Dance, Charlotte Lewis, Victor Wong, J.L. Reate

Synopsis: Eddie Murphy followed up his Beverly Hills Cop success with this fantasy adventure that plops him right into the land of Ray Harryhausen and Indiana Jones. The plot revolves around a God-like youngster (J.L. Reate) known as a "golden child," who has been sent to Tibet to bring the gift of Read More

12/12/86
Wildcats

Crew: Director

Actors: Goldie Hawn, James Keach, Swoosie Kurtz, Robyn Lively, Brandy Gold, Nipsey Russell, Bruce McGill

Synopsis: Blonde-haired, blue-eyed women's libber Molly McGrath (Goldie Hawn) quits her teaching job at a comfortable middle-class school to take a new position as varsity football coach at a predominantly black inner-city school. Culture and gender clashes abound; she must win over the hard-boiled youths Read More

2/14/86
Fletch

Crew: Director

Actors: Chevy Chase, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Tim Matheson, Joe Don Baker, Richard Libertini

Synopsis: Chevy Chase added a classic comic hero to the film landscape with Fletch, one of his few truly popular star vehicles in a famously misguided post-Saturday Night Live career. Chase plays Irwin M. Fletcher, known to everyone as Fletch, a Los Angeles Lakers-loving investigative reporter with a Read More

1985
The Survivors

Crew: Director

Actors: John Goodman, Walter Matthau, Robin Williams, Jerry Reed, James Wainwright, Kristen Vigard

Synopsis: Director Michael Ritchie spoofs survivalists in this rambling black comedy. Donald Quinelle (Robin Williams) is a successful young executive who is called to his boss' office one morning and is fired by a parrot sitting in the CEO's chair -- a method the company uses to axe high-powered execs. Read More

1983
Student Bodies

Crew: Producer

Actors: Kristen Riter, Matthew Goldsby, Richard Brando, Joe Flood, Joe Talarowski

Synopsis: In this slasher film parody, a psychotic serial killer called "The Breather" is killing off sexually active high school students when not making threatening phone calls (with a rubber chicken disguising his voice). Among The Breather's weapons of choice are paper clips, eggplants, and wooden Read More

1981
The Island

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael Caine, David Warner, Angela Punch McGregor, Frank Middlemass, Don Henderson

Synopsis: The Island, a turgid action drama directed by Michael Ritchie, revolves around the adventures of Maynard (Michael Caine), a newspaper reporter who tries to solve the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. Maynard, and his son crash-land on a remote island ruled by a gang of pirates who kill anyone who Read More

1980
Divine Madness!

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Bette Midler, Irving Sudrow

Synopsis: Bette Midler's wildly funny and theatrical stage show is preserved on the big screen in this concert film shot in California in 1980. Along with her usual raunchy comedy material and over-the-top staging, Midler performs some of her best known songs (including "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and "Chapel Read More

1980
An Almost Perfect Affair

Crew: Director

Actors: Keith Carradine, Monica Vitti, Raf Vallone, Christian de Sica, Dick Anthony Williams

Synopsis: Inside jokes about the film industry dominate this slight tale of ambition and romance at the Cannes Film Festival. Keith Carradine plays a first-time director who has sunk two years and all his money into a movie about the execution of murderer Gary Gilmore. With his last bit of cash, he flies Read More

1979
The Bad News Bears Go to Japan

Crew: Producer

Actors: Tony Curtis, Jackie Earle Haley, Tomisaburo Wakayama, Hatsune Ishihara, George Wyner

Synopsis: Filling the shoes occupied by Walter Matthau in the Bad News Bears and William Devane in The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, Tony Curtis takes on the role of the teams newest coach in this, the third installment in the series. Jackie Earle Haley returns as Kelly Leak, the Bears' star player Read More

1978
Semi-Tough

Crew: Director

Actors: Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, Jill Clayburgh, Robert Preston, Bert Convy

Synopsis: Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson star as two pro-football pals who both fall for the team-owner's very rich daughter. Kind of goofy, kind of funny, and somewhat endearing--those are the qualities that surface in this light-hearted comedy built upon an extremely predictable scenario. ~ All Read More

1977
The Bad News Bears

Crew: Director

Actors: Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, Vic Morrow, Joyce Van Patten, Ben Piazza, Jackie Earle Haley

Synopsis: The success this underdog comedy from director Michael Ritchie almost single-handedly spawned the kids' sports film boom of the 1980s and '90s. When beer-breathed ex-minor-league ball player and professional pool cleaner Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) agrees to coach a little league team in Read More

1976
Smile

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Producer

Actors: Bruce Dern, Barbara Feldon, Michael Kidd, Geoffrey Lewis, Nicholas Pryor

Synopsis: The American beauty-contest ritual is skewered by screenwriter Jerry Belson and director Michael Ritchie in Smile. The film takes place during an annual pageant in Santa Rosa, CA. The event is supervised by local mover and shaker Brenda DiCarlo (Barbara Feldon), to whom the contest is the most Read More

1975
The Candidate

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, Don Porter, Allen Garfield, Karen Carlson

Synopsis: "What do we do now?" Director Michael Ritchie and executive producer/star Robert Redford satirically explore the machinations and manipulations of media-age political campaigns in this cynical political drama. Rumpled left-wing California lawyer Bill McKay (Redford), the son of a former governor (Melvyn Douglas Read More

1972
Prime Cut

Crew: Director

Actors: Clint Ellison, Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman, Angel Tompkins, Gregory Walcott, Sissy Spacek

Synopsis: Michael Ritchie, better known for his gentle satires of American social institutions, enters Don Siegel territory in the unusual crime thriller Prime Cut. Lee Marvin is surly collection agent Nick Devlin, who is hired by Chicago racketeer Jake (Eddie Egan) to collect an overdue payment from Kansas Read More

1972
Downhill Racer

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Camilla Sparv, Karl Michael Vogler, Jim McMullan

Synopsis: Director Michael Ritchie's ongoing satirical spin on the American Dream is dressed up in quasi-documentary fashion in Downhill Racer. Robert Redford stars as an Olympic-grade skier, whose talent is matched only by his aloof self-involvement. As the cocksure Redford rises to the top of his class Read More

1969
The Sound of Anger

Crew: Director

Actors: Burl Ives

Synopsis: The direction of Michael Ritchie, who later piloted such films as Downhill Racer, Smile and The Bad News Bears, is disappointingly commonplace in the made-for-TV Sound of Anger. Burl Ives is an expensive lawyer hired to pursue the defense on a murder case. The victim was a wealthy man; the accused Read More

1968
The Outsider

Crew: Director

Synopsis: The Outsider is a refreshingly cynical TV detective drama, starring master cynic Darren McGavin. McGavin plays David Ross, a John MacDonaldesque private eye who virtually lives in his beat-up car and who spends most of his time eluding creditors. An ex-convict, Ross is prohibited from carrying a Read More

1967
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Nowhere Affair

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Sent to Nevada in search of a secret map and kidnapped cybernetics expert Aram Tertunian (Lou Jacobi), UNCLE agent Solo takes an amnesia pill when he is captured by THRUSH operative Longolius (David Sheiner). Hoping to restore Solo's memory so he can be pumped for information, Longolius relies Read More

1966