Michael Rooney choreographed, among many other things that we’ll be getting to shortly, the elaborate dance numbers of The Muppets. You know the ones—in particular, “Life’s a Happy Song.” While he was working, he kept calling one of the actors, a celebrity doing a cameo, Dad. The director apparently pulled him aside and told him that it was rude, that just because the actor was old (about ninety), he couldn’t just keep calling him Dad. Michael Rooney responded the only way he could. Namely, “But he is my dad.” Michael and his father may not have had much connection growing up, but it’s certainly true that Mickey Rooney was his father.
His father told him that, while he could open doors for him, it was up for Michael to walk through them. And Lord he did. He did some on-screen work as a dancer, and not just in his brief Muppets cameo. He was, among other things, in a movie called Voyage of the Rock Aliens, one I fully expect to see with puppets in the corner (or the spiritual equivalent thereof) at some point. To quote its IMDb summary, “Aliens land in the town of ‘Speelburgh’ searching for the source of rock & roll. They find trouble with Dee Dee, Frankie and the pack.” It stars Pia Zadora. He was also in Staying Alive and 51 episodes of Fame.
But it’s behind the camera that he has done solid, amazing work. He has five MTV Music Video Awards for Best Choreography. Two of those are for Fatboy Slim videos; he choreographed both “Praise You” and “Weapon of Choice.” Christopher Walken dancing on air? That’s Michael Rooney’s work. He did “Straight Up” for Paula Abdul, “It’s Oh So Quiet” (another award winner) for Bjork. He’s choreographed videos for Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, George Michael, and Miley Cyrus. Frankly, in another era, he would’ve been choreographing the kinds of movies his dad did.
Given the era we’re in, his movie work is a little more erratic. I’m curious as to the story behind his Shrek Forever After work, but not curious enough to watch the movie (unless you pay me on my Patreon or Ko-fi, of course). It’s a bit hard to picture Agnes de Mille (who never worked with Rooney’s father but could have) working on Clerks II or Dora and the Lost City of Gold. But it seems that Rooney maintains an awareness of that sort of sensibility, which is probably what he’s doing working on (500) Days of Summer and I Heart Huckabees.
There is also a layer of tragedy in Rooney’s life, alas. His mother, Barbara Ann Thomason, was an actress so obscure she has neither a Wikipedia page nor an IMDb page. His parents divorced because Thomason had taken up with a Serbian actor we will not name here, who had a small part in The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (He was also the incubus in Incubus, noteworthy for being in Esperanto and starring William Shatner.) The actor killed Thomason and then himself; despite rumours that the elder Rooney had done it, he was in the hospital at the time. The younger Rooney and his full siblings went to live with their maternal grandparents, and he didn’t learn the story until he was a teenager. Rooney survived and survives to this day.
