TORONTO — After a decade of half-hearted comebacks, movies that fizzled and occasional music projects — Eddie Murphy is back. He is — and this is big news — feeling it again, decades after he last performed stand-up.
“When I’m being funny, there’s this spirit that comes up,” Murphy says. “That spirit comes up in me a lot now. Stuff’s just been coming out of me like it used to. This movie has got my spirit up. This movie got me off the couch.”
The movie is “Dolemite Is My Name,” which opens in theaters Friday (but not in the Seattle metro area) and arrives on Netflix on Oct. 25. In it, Murphy plays Rudy Ray Moore, the iconic comic performer whose pimp persona, Dolemite, spawned a long-running stage show, a series of profane comedy records and the shambling 1975 classic Blaxploitation film “Dolemite.”
Murphy’s performance as Moore has all the familiar charisma and exuberance of peak “48 Hours”-era Murphy, but mixed with a more mature and gentle side of the 58-year-old comedian. It’s the Eddie Murphy we’ve been missing, one that Murphy was ready to rejuvenate. At least under the right circumstances.
“I didn’t want to just pop up out of nowhere. I was waiting for a really funny movie. We were thinking I could tour after a ‘Coming to America’ movie but this movie came out so funny,” Murphy said in a recent interview at the Toronto International Film Festival where he was momentarily breaking from production on a “Coming to America” sequel. “This movie turning out the way it turned out made me go, ‘I’m going back to “SNL.” And I’m doing stand-up.’”
Those are the next items on Murphy’s comeback agenda. In December, he’ll host “Saturday Night Live” for the first time since 1984, shortly after he departed the sketch show. And he’s prepping a return to stand-up with a tour next year along with a Netflix special.
When it’s pointed out that people would have been plenty thrilled for those things, regardless of the big-screen lead-in, Murphy replies with a grin: “I didn’t want to show up there and the last movie you’ve seen me in is ‘Mr. Church.’”
And “Dolemite Is My Name,” thankfully, is no “Mr. Church.” Directed by Craig Brewer (“Hustle and Flow”), it’s an ode to DIY filmmaking and to Moore, who through sheer toil and pluck, carved out a place for himself and others in a movie industry that offered little room for African Americans. Murphy calls him “the godfather of making a spark into a flame.”
Murphy first tried to get the film going years ago after meeting with Moore, shortly before his death in 2008.
“There was no Netflix then. That was just a crazy thing we were trying to put together,” says Murphy before slipping into the voice of an incredulous film producer. “A Rudy Ray Moore biopic? And you’re just coming off ‘Pluto Nash?’ I don’t know if we’re going to get financing.”
To write it, Murphy sought out Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, the screenwriting team behind another affectionate portrait of a movie-making striver whose enthusiasm surpassed his filmmaking proficiency: “Ed Wood.” When they walked into the meeting, Murphy was doing lines from the 1994 biopic.
But when they couldn’t get the film off the ground and as years went by, Karaszewski says, “We sort of felt the whole thing had passed us by.” Other plans for a “Dolemite” remake or a biopic of Moore floated around Hollywood, never coming to fruition. The project was revived, the writers say, after their success creating the miniseries “The People v. O.J. Simpson.” With their new industry capital in hand, they asked if Murphy wanted to give “Dolemite Is My Name” another try.
“Eddie hadn’t made a movie in a while but we always felt that this movie doesn’t exist unless Eddie is doing Rudy Ray Moore,” says Karaszewski. “That’s what makes this exciting.”
“Dolemite Is My Name” achieved something that nothing else could: It got Murphy back on the stage. To film scenes of Moore performing in small clubs, Murphy was again in front of a microphone, telling jokes and riffing.
“When he left, I turned to the audience and said, ‘Y’all, do you realize what just happened? I don’t think he’s done that in like years! Decades!’” says Brewer, who’s also directing “Coming 2 America.” Alexander watched the extras sitting in the faux-nightclub thinking, “You’re getting paid to watch Eddie Murphy do stand-up in a 40-seat room. That’s a good job.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
