Great Animated Performances: Meeko as Supervised by Nik Ranieri
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The Black & White World of
Nik Ranieri: the Uncompromising Appeal Behind Meeko
Great Animated Performances:
Masters of the Second Generation
By Rhett Wickham
When you first see Nik Ranieri you swear you’ve seen him before. Then it dawns on you - you’ve caught him on a re-run of …oh…. what was it? With his dark mustache and goatee and his glasses perched just above that closed-lipped smirk you struggle to place him. Aha! He was that fussy neighbor of Rob and Laura Petrie…no, no wait, he was the over-taxed waiter that Lucille Carmichael and Vivian Bagley spill the food all over…no that’s not it, oh yeah, yeah that’s right, he’s that sarcastic sales clerk that Endora turned into a turkey that first season on Bewitched. Or was he?
Truth is, Nik Ranieri is himself the product of all of those characters and many more. Ranieri is a student of the quick wit and sarcastic asides delivered by biting characters who inhabited the black and white television sitcoms of the early 1960’s. Born and raised in Canada, Ranieri still grew up watching mostly American television. “My recollection of watching things in first run starts around 1966,�? says Ranieri. “I remember re-runs back to 1960, 1961. But In the early 60’s I was more a run around outside and play kind of kid. I wasn’t a T.V. kid until later. My T.V. references for America are pretty good, though, because that’s all I watched. I hated Canadian T.V. because let’s face it, Canadian Entertainment is an oxymoron.�? He delivers the punch with dry precision and you can almost hear the laugh track.
Nik Ranieri’s journey to master animator of Disney’s second generation was far from being a sit com. For one thing, it was fairly colorful. Nevertheless, Ranieri is basically a black and white kind of guy. That’s not to say that he lacks complications or depth, because he is very complex. But he has an exacting approach to his work that leaves very little room for any gray. Like the best of classic sit-coms he grew up with, Nik Ranieri’s nuances are something that you could take for granted. The details of his craft aren’t immediately obvious - you just know that you love what you see, it appeals to you and always makes you laugh, and it looks like so much fun that you don’t give any thought to exactly how much hard work and rehearsal went into what has the effortless feel of a classic.
We recently had lunch together at the Smoke House, a Burbank fixture that opened in 1946 across from Warner Brothers back lot, just a short jog from Ranieri’s office at Walt Disney Feature Animation. Nostalgically resplendent and oblivious to the pleas of cardiologists everywhere, the landmark restaurant serves up thick cut rare steaks and infamous cheese garlic bread at overstuffed red leather booths and wooden tables that probably haven’t changed since Perry Mason took Della Street to dinner here while re-capping his latest case.