Stand-up After his first divorce, Belzer relocated to New York City, moved in with singer
Shelley Ackerman, and began working as a stand-up comic at Pips,
The Improv, and
Catch a Rising Star. He participated in the Channel One comedy group that satirized television and became the basis for the cult
sketch comedy movie
The Groove Tube, in which Belzer played multiple roles. Belzer was the audience warm-up comedian for
Saturday Night Live and made three guest appearances on the show between 1975 and 1980. He also opened for musician
Warren Zevon during his tour supporting the release of his album
Excitable Boy.
Film In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Belzer became an occasional film actor. A short skit of a younger Belzer can be found on
Sesame Street in a season 9 episode in 1978 when two young men attempt a picnic and boat ride, only to be thwarted by a dog who eats their food. He is noted for minor roles in
Fame,
Café Flesh,
Night Shift,
Scarface,
Girl 6, and
Fletch Lives. He appeared in the
music videos for the
Mike + The Mechanics song "
Taken In", the
Pat Benatar song "Le Bel Age", and the
Kansas song "Can't Cry Anymore" all of which were made by Flattery Yukich Inc (Producer Paul Flattery and Director Jim Yukich). He appeared in
A Very Brady Sequel as an
LAPD detective.
Radio In addition to his film career, Belzer was a featured player on the
National Lampoon Radio Hour with co-stars
John Belushi,
Chevy Chase,
Bill Murray,
Gilda Radner, and
Harold Ramis, a half-hour comedy program aired on 600 plus American radio stations from 1973 to 1975. Several of his sketches were released on National Lampoon albums, drawn from the
Radio Hour, including several bits in which he portrayed a pithy call-in talk show host named "Dick Ballantine". In the late 1970s, he co-hosted
Brink & Belzer on
WNBC radio (660 AM) in New York City. He was a frequent guest on
The Howard Stern Show. Following the departure of
Randi Rhodes from
Air America Radio, Belzer guest-hosted the afternoon program on the network. Belzer was a regular guest on the right-wing radio show of
Alex Jones and appeared on the episode covering the
Boston Marathon bombing, in which he referred to the bombing as a
false flag event.
Television In the 1980s, Belzer was a regular on
Alan Thicke's short-lived show
Thicke of the Night. He also briefly hosted his own comedy show, titular and popular
The Richard Belzer Show on
Cinemax, and hosted the
Lifetime cable TV talk show,
Hot Properties. Levinson asked Belzer to take time to reread and practice the material, then read it again. At his second reading, Levinson said Belzer was "still terrible", but that the actor eventually found confidence in his performance. In addition, Belzer played Munch in episodes on seven other series and in a sketch on one talk show, making Munch the only fictional character to appear on 11 different television shows played by a single actor. These shows were on six different networks: •
Homicide: Life on the Street (
NBC) •
Law & Order (NBC) •
The X-Files (
Fox) •
The Beat (
UPN) •
Law & Order: Trial by Jury (NBC) • Belzer's appearance on
Trial by Jury, which aired April 15, 2005, made him the third actor ever to play the same character in six different prime-time TV series. The other two actors are
John Ratzenberger and
George Wendt, who played
Cliff Clavin and
Norm Peterson, respectively, in
Cheers (1982–93),
St. Elsewhere (1985),
The Tortellis (1987),
Wings (1990),
The Simpsons (1994), and
Frasier (2002). •
Arrested Development (Fox) •
The Wire (
HBO) •
30 Rock Belzer portrayed Det. Munch for 22 consecutive seasons on
Homicide (7 seasons) and
Law & Order: SVU (15 seasons), which exceeded the previous primetime live-action record of twenty consecutive seasons held by
James Arness (who portrayed
Marshal Matt Dillon on
Gunsmoke from 1955 to 1975) and
Kelsey Grammer (as Dr.
Frasier Crane on
Cheers and
Frasier from 1984 to 2004). This record has since been passed by Belzer's
SVU co-stars Mariska Hargitay and
Ice-T. Belzer appeared in several of
Comedy Central's televised broadcasts of
Friars' Club roasts. On June 9, 2001, Belzer himself was honored by the New York Friars Club and the Toyota Comedy Festival as the honoree of the first-ever roast open to the public. Comedians and friends on the dais included Roastmaster
Paul Shaffer;
Christopher Walken;
Danny Aiello;
Barry Levinson;
Robert Klein;
Bill Maher;
SVU co-stars
Mariska Hargitay,
Christopher Meloni,
Ice-T, and
Dann Florek; and
Law & Order Jerry Orbach. At the December 1, 2002, roast of
Chevy Chase, Belzer said, "The only time Chevy Chase has a funny bone in his body is when I fuck him in the ass." Belzer voiced the character of Loogie for most of the
South Park episode titled "
The Tooth Fairy's Tats 2000". He and
Brian Doyle-Murray were featured in the tenth-season premiere of
Sesame Street.
Author Belzer believed there was a
conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy and wrote five books discussing
conspiracy theories: • ''UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Believe'' (2000) • ''Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups'' •
Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination •
Corporate Conspiracies: How Wall Street Took Over Washington •
Someone Is Hiding Something: What Happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370? Dead Wrong and
Hit List were written with journalist David Wayne and reached
The New York Times Best Seller list. Belzer's long-time character, John Munch, was also a believer in conspiracy theories, including the JFK assassination. In 2008, Belzer published a novel,
I Am Not a Cop!, about a fictional version of himself investigating a murder. ==Personal life==