Rod Daniel, the pragmatic director of comedies best known for the Michael J. Fox–starrer Teen Wolf, has died, according to his family. The cause of the 73-year-old’s death was not immediately given. A Nashville native, Daniel worked behind the camera for nearly three decades, starting his career with commercials and as a TV director and producer for WKRP in Cincinnati. Daniel went on to helm episodes for scads of shows, including Magnum, P.I., Newhart, Caroline in the City, Boston Common, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Men Behaving Badly.
His feature debut came with Fox’s Teen Wolf; Like Father Like Son, Joe Pesci’s The Super, James Belushi’s K-9, Beethoven’s 2nd, and Home Alone 4 round out his movie résumé. “My movies were content movies,” Daniel told the Chicago Tribune, which described him as a “rank-and-file, bang-it-out-move-on” director, in 2011. But his most popular project was tinged with personal influence: “A whole lot of Teen Wolf is who I wish I could have been, who I wanted my father to be more like.” He’s survived by his wife, two sons, and a grandson. Daniel’s family notes they’re accepting donations, in his memory, for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
