Being Eddie (2025) Movie Script

1
[light instrumental music plays]
[Eddie] Hey, you know what's a trip?
They have so much stuff on TV
[music ends]
It's like, how could there be all
of this stuff and not one thing to watch?
You be flipping,
just flipping and flipping and flip
I be like, "It's not shit to wa..."
And it be five of my movies on.
I be like, "There ain't shit to watch!
I don't want to see none of this shit."
[laughs]
[upbeat music plays]
Hai!
[Eddie] I've done all kinds of stuff.
I can't think of another actor,
a dramatic actor,
Black, white that's done
so many different types of things.
Otay!
[traffic noises]
Hey!
[cackling]
[grunting]
[Eddie] From just me on the stage
with a microphone
[taunting] I have some ice cream
to where I'm everybody in the scene.
This so fabulous. Nothing like getting
together with family, having a good meal.
[Eddie] And everything in between.
Motherfucker, you can't have my cornbread.
That's for damn sure.
[Eddie] I've been cops.
I've been a professor. I've been a doctor
Bad guy.
I've been an old Jewish guy
He beat Joe Louis's ass.
I've been an old lady.
Whoo! Might make your head blow off.
[Eddie] I danced in the clouds
with Michael Jackson.
I've been a donkey.
I'm a donkey on the edge!
[Eddie] I was even a rocket ship.
-[thrusters whooshing]
-[triumphant music playing]
And to all the young actors,
I like to tell all of them,
don't ever play a rocket ship.
[laughing loudly]
[jazzy music plays]
What am I setting out to do?
Ultimately is to make people laugh.
I remember once,
on one of those talk shows
[laughing] they had the Klan on the show.
And the Klan was like,
"I can't stand niggers! Oh"
And he says, "Are you telling me that
you don't like any Black people at all?"
And the Klansman was like,
"I'll I'll tell you,
I like that Eddie Murphy. He's funny."
[laughing] I was like, "What the fuck?"
"So you hate all Black people?"
"Yeah, everybody except that one nigger,
Eddie Murphy. Boy, he tickles me."
[laughs]
[music ends]
[Dave Chappelle] There's something
about him that's in the past before him.
There's something about him
that informs the future beyond him.
He has great seats to life. He gets
And it's uncomfortable
having seats that good.
You see the good up close.
You see the bad up close.
You see the ugly up close.
But something about him seems
Like, the core of him
seems unscathed by it,
even though I'm sure he's got scars.
Whatever he was protecting
everyone has something they protect,
his is probably well-preserved.
[Eddie] I started so young.
Now, it's kind of like, "Wow."
I realize how young I was
'cause I've been around for, you know,
over 40 years.
That's a trip.
[early '80s rap beat playing]
I come on SNL in the 1980-81 season.
They was auditioning
all the comics at the club.
They was putting them up
for the SNL people.
And they specifically wanted a Black guy.
And my first reaction was like,
"Saturday Night Live?"
I never thought about
something like Saturday Night Live.
I was like, "I thought
I was gonna be Richard Pryor."
Police got a choke hold
they use out here, though, man.
-They choke niggas to death.
-[audience laughs]
Yeah. Two grab your legs,
one grab your head, it'll snap.
"Oh shit. He broke."
[audience laughs]
[Eddie] First time I heard Richard Pryor,
I must have been about 13.
That put me on the road to myself,
when I started hearing him.
I was like, "That's who I am."
I wanted to be Richard so bad,
I used to go out on stage when I was 15
and talk and act and walk,
and do everything like Richard Pryor.
My whole act back then
was about taking a shit
'cause that's all I had done at 15.
That was my life experience,
but it sounded like Richard Pryor jokes.
I'd be going, "You ever, like,
sometimes, right, you get on that toilet,
and when you shit,
that water splash up on your ass?"
[audience laughs]
[Eddie] I wanted to be funny as Richard.
And I wanted to be cool like Elvis.
And I wanted to be as big as the Beatles.
It's all magic people.
He likes the magic people,
who are kind of
pretty much totally out of control.
And it still is magic.
But then there's always
this giant ball of fire at the end.
But not Eddie.
The rules are just different for him.
[bright music playing]
[Eddie] The very first
show business thing I asked for was,
as a kid, I asked for
a ventriloquist dummy.
And my mother,
she got me this dummy called Willie Talk.
Willie Talk's eyes didn't move.
His mouth just moved.
[laughs]
From the very beginning,
it was a multiple-character thing.
[Letterman] What were you like
when you were nine? Did you know?
Had the notion crystallized
in your head at nine
I did a lot of voices, but I didn't know
I wanted to one day go into show business.
-I was just, you know, a strange child.
-[laughter]
My mother used to say, "Who's Eddie?
What voice is Eddie's voice?"
[laughter]
[upbeat music plays]
[Eddie] When my brothers did
something wrong, they couldn't go outside.
When I did something wrong,
I couldn't watch TV.
As a kid, I'd get a blanket,
go throw it over the dining room table
so it was hanging down like a tent,
put the TV under there,
and I'd watch all day long.
What do you say to your mother
when she brings you Jell-O?
When we was growing up,
they ain't have all these channels on TV.
You only had a couple of channels,
and my brother pointed at the television
and said, "I'm gonna be on that one day."
And when he pointed at it, I think
there was probably one Black person on it.
It was Julia, so I'm like
So it was unfathomable
that he would even become a star.
I'm the older brother.
So, when we was kids, right,
I found out that I could
whip a lot of motherfuckers' ass,
that I didn't think I could whip,
because they stepped to him.
So I was like, you know [chuckles]
I don't care if you all big butchy,
I got to do you, because you
If I go home,
and my little brother's messed up,
and my mother says,
"Well, what did you do?"
I better be messed up worse than him.
[music ends]
That's me and Charlie.
That's the picture that that ended
my mother and father's marriage.
[laughs]
Because my mother had spent some money.
Actually, I'm three years old
in this picture.
And I'm laughing because
the photographer took the picture,
and the flash was a delay...
It didn't flash
as soon as he hit the button.
And I thought that his camera didn't work.
And I busted out laughing.
I literally remember this moment.
But my father came home
and found out that my mother had
spent some money on some pictures.
"You spent our money
on some goddamn pictures?"
[laughing] You know? And that was
I mean, I'm sure they were having issues.
But that was This was the straw
that broke the camel's back.
[laughs]
This was the last straw.
"You buy some goddamn picture?" [laughs]
My mom is so pretty.
They're only 18 years old here.
Babies, little babies, 18.
This is the year before I was born.
My dad was a character. Supposedly,
my dad was the life of the party.
Party started when my dad came.
He was loud and funny, you know, and
I'm And I am not the life of the party.
Ever.
[laughing]
-I have a handful of memories.
-[light music playing]
But my very first memory of all is
of my mother and father fighting.
That's my very first memory.
And I remember my mother threw...
She had, like,
a porcelain Virgin Mary on the desk.
She threw the Virgin Mary at him.
And I remember seeing that broken.
And then I remember seeing my mother
on the floor in the hallway crying.
Then my dad came, and he picked
me and Charlie up and put us on his lap.
And he said And my pajamas was crooked.
I remember it was pulled
all the way backwards. We were crying.
He said, "You can go with me,
or you can go with your mother."
And I said, "I want my mommy."
My dad died when I was seven
or eight years old.
I know stuff, but I don't know everything.
I know that he was killed.
The woman that killed my father
-[Robin] Oh, it was a woman?
-Yeah.
[Robin] Wow.
-Why did a woman kill your father?
-Lovers' quarrel.
-[Robin] Your parents weren't together?
-No, they weren't together.
It's one of the oldest stories
in the books, you know.
I tell my kids, man,
"Hey, man if the girl is mad,
don't close your eyes."
[Howard and Robin laugh]
[relaxing music plays]
[Eddie] Then my mother met my stepdad.
And he was, you know, the solid father
figure in my life for the rest of my life.
Vernon Lynch, that's who raised me.
That's a sweet blessing, to have
a man like that come into your life
and be the type of man that he was.
The example that he set,
and I saw what he did, you know,
and I feel like I'm the man that I am
because of him.
[Vernon] When you have three young men
growing up together in one household,
my dad didn't raise no punks.
Punishment was a whoopin'.
You know?
Punishment was was a was a whoopin'.
-I used to change his diapers.
-Yeah, he did.
-I never changed his diapers.
-Yeah, you did.
-I never changed his diapers once.
-[laughing]
[Eddie laughs]
[Vernon] My dad just instilled in us,
you have to be able to protect yourself.
And this is how you do it.
[Arsenio Hall] Eddie's stepdad,
Mr. Lynch, was a boxer.
You know how legendary
the discipline of boxers can be.
He's from that kind of household.
[Eddie] To become a boxer, you have to be
a different breed of human being.
Here's a picture of me
punching Ali in the face.
See this?
Ali is my hero.
But I did punch him in the face one night.
You know, Ali could talk some shit.
Every now and then,
Ali be talking too much shit.
And you know, I punched him in his face.
[laughs]
Nobody like Muhammad Ali
in American history.
He looked like he's plugged into the wall.
He had this light.
He just stood up to the government,
stood up for what he felt was right.
And he was kicking ass,
and he was making a sacrifice.
You know, "Fuck it.
If I can't have it this way, then I"
"You can take you can strip me
of my title, all my money."
You won't even stand up for me
in America for my religious beliefs,
and you want me to go and fight,
but you won't stand up
for me here at home.
[Eddie] We're little kids watching it.
I'm a little kid watching it.
Barack Obama's watching it.
Oprah Winfrey's watching it.
Michael Jordan is watching it.
We're the first generation
of Black overachievers.
Like, we're the first fearless ones.
And I think that
that's what we got from Ali.
I am the greatest.
[Eddie] Around 12 or 13,
I started saying I was gonna be famous.
And then I started saying,
"When I'm 18, I'm gonna be famous."
That was my mantra.
And I really, really, really,
really believed it with every fiber.
It was like, the ide...
"What if you don't get famous?" was like
"What the fuck are you talking about?
I am getting I'm going to be famous."
I didn't encourage him.
If anything, I discouraged him.
I said, "Gee whiz,
this is what he really wants to do?"
"And what if he doesn't make it?
What, will I have a bum here?"
You know, I really worried 'cause
he wasn't interested in anything else.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Eddie Murphy.
[upbeat music plays]
[Charlie] I can remember when my brother
would go and he'd do a high school,
or he would go do Hofstra University
Now it's a bit ironic that
I'm on television because I hate TV.
I don't watch anything
because TV has gotten disgusting.
You ever watch the commercials
and stuff on TV?
It makes me sick to my stomach to see
[Charlie] You know, little sets
he was doing around the area,
and the ability to go in front
of an audience and express yourself
and make them laugh,
you know what I'm saying?
That was, like, really amazing to me,
that he had that that power.
Cosby'll come out, and he's really nice,
he's really cool, he'll say,
"What do you say to your mother when
she brings you a bowl of Jell-O pudding?"
When I first started, I didn't do anything
that had anything to do with me for real.
I was 90% impressions.
Thank you. You've been beautiful.
Good night.
That's the easiest way in.
You don't have to have an act.
All you have to do is sound like somebody.
After a year or two of being up there
and doing impressions,
you start to get your own stuff
and settle into who you are.
And by the time I'm 17,
I have a you know, I have an act,
and I'm, you know, a comic.
I am from Roosevelt, Long Island.
I grew up in an all-Black neighborhood.
I did. Did you grow up
in an all-Black neighborhood?
Grew up in a predominantly
white neighborhood?
See, 'cause, like, we've pretty
much taken over New York, the Blacks.
Think about it.
The whites are going,
"Hey, that's not funny."
[audience laughs]
[Seinfeld] When you ran into Eddie
in the clubs in the '70s,
he had this great face
and this fantastic smile.
And then all this other stuff,
it was like a miracle.
Just when you thought it was safe
to move back into Queens
[Seinfeld] And to me, that he's
from Long Island, was so perfect.
Long Island is just schleppier, you know?
It's kind of an advantage when you get
into the upper realms of the industry.
Hang on to your schleppiness, you know?
[chill music plays]
[Eddie] Then when I turned 18,
the comics that were around were like,
"Thought you were gonna be famous
when you were 18." [snooty laughter]
[chuckles] I had, like, a year of that.
Then the next year,
I got Saturday Night Live.
'Cause if God would've wanted
whites to be equal to Blacks,
everybody'd have one of these.
[audience laughs]
[Tracy Morgan] Eddie's been
in my life since 1980,
when I first saw his face
on Saturday Night Live.
[Eddie] It was the season
after the original cast had left
and Lorne Michaels left.
And they got all new people in.
It was not well received, because the show
was, like, really, really popular.
The audience was like, "You know what?
I want the old people. And fuck you."
Be walking down the street,
people like, "Fuck you!"
Just screaming, "Fuck you" to you.
[Sheffield] Eddie was
right out of high school.
And he was very shy.
And he was very kept to himself.
[Sheffield] But he was just fearless.
I'm Ronald Reagan's illegitimate son.
[audience laughs]
Can you use this word in a sentence?
"Mister Robinson's Neighborhood"
and "Gumby."
I loved Gumby. That's a real Long Island
I had a Gumby bit, actually, also.
I'm Gumby, dammit.
You don't talk to me that way!
I used to love Velvet Jones.
I want to be a ho.
[Chris] Every impression, Ali
I'm the greatest fighter of all time.
Cosby
That's why I got light beer.
James Brown, "Celebrity Hot Tub."
-[soul music plays]
-Hey! Too hot in the hot tub
Burn myself
He would get into character,
like Dana Carvey or Mike Myers,
on that level, right?
Oh boy! Ooh! Aah!
Ugh! [speaks unintelligibly]
And at the same time,
he can be himself, like Bill Murray.
In 1981, a good education
is just about as important
as a warm bucket of hamster vomit.
Very few people have both moves.
When I was eight I was up late one night,
and I remember watching.
I can't remember what episode it was,
I just remember, like, it was over.
I was dying laughing.
This guy was so funny.
And it became a thing for me
and my mother,
where she would wake me up late
on Saturday night,
and be like, "That guy you like is on."
And that was our first,
like, bonding thing.
I remember the thing
that really struck me is
he almost had to say nothing.
And it was funny.
[audience laughing and clapping]
[Jamie] When he gets dressed up
in the white makeup,
and he goes out into the street,
and he commentates on what it's like
being a white man in the world
[upbeat band music playing]
[audience laughing and clapping]
I was just like, "Oh incredible."
[Eddie] I was 19 years old.
So that was my college years, I'm
Saturday Night Live
is like Harvard for comic actors.
You are truly a wonder.
Thanks a lot, Frank.
And when I first did Stevie Wonder,
they was like [gasping]
"Oh, that's mean. How can he do that?"
"It was funny, but it was very mean."
And they stopped saying that
when Stevie came on Saturday Night Live.
That's a very rare SNL,
when Stevie comes on SNL.
It's very funny.
That's the worst
Stevie Wonder impression I ever seen
What's the matter with it?
[audience laughs]
[Eddie] Maybe the first six months,
I was still in my room
at my mother's house.
I used to wear my makeup
home from the show
'cause I would think people would see me
on the train and know I was on TV.
They don't know you're on TV.
You just look like this kid
with makeup on, on the train.
Seeing Eddie on SNL, skinny
That's when comics are their most lethal,
when we're skinny.
When we ain't had no food.
He ain't even ate yet.
He's just skinny and funny as fuck.
[Katzenberg] Our first real meeting was
at a steakhouse near Saturday Night Live.
I was going to talk to him
about a movie career.
"This is great.
What you're doing is amazing."
"There's a whole other
opportunity for you."
"Not instead of, but in addition to.
That's the beauty of it."
[Eddie] Jeff Katzenberg was the president
of production at Paramount.
He was, like, the young guy.
The first two weeks of 48 Hrs.,
they wanted to fire me
'cause they were like,
"This isn't working."
And Katzenberg came to them like, "No.
Don't fire him. There's something there."
And they didn't fire me.
We've just been cool since.
When 48 Hrs. came out,
I thought it was a oner.
I wasn't thinking, you know,
I'm going to be in the movies.
Roxanne
In that first scene,
it's a Black man singing "Roxanne"
as if he were a member of the Supremes.
-Rox... Put on the red light
-Hammond.
He's wailing it
as if he's auditioning for American Idol.
It's also this moment of planting a flag
in a culture and saying
-Hammond!
-[feedback]
"I'm all these things.
I'm the next generation."
My stomach is starting to growl.
-We better go get...
-We eat when I say we eat.
Hey, now that's bullshit.
That's the last straw, all right?
I want some food now.
If you don't like it,
take me back to the penitentiary
and kiss my hungry, Black ass goodbye.
[Eddie] When 48 Hrs. came out,
it was this new thing.
The Black actor in movies
was the sidekick.
But when you start watching the movie,
it's like he can't do anything
without this guy.
"What's our next move, convict?"
"Now what do we do, convict?"
I can see this is going to be
a long fucking night, convict.
Transcendental Eddie Murphy moment
is the bar scene in 48 Hrs.
What the hell kind of cop are you?
You know what I am?
I'm your worst fucking nightmare, man.
I'm a nigga with a badge.
That mean I got permission to kick
your fucking ass whenever I feel like it.
Contextually, seeing a young Black guy
say that, it's like a hit record.
Just that just that scene.
The reason why my stuff
took off the way it took off
And I want the rest of you cowboys
to know something.
There's a new sheriff in town.
Is because they'd never seen
a young Black person
go take charge in the white world.
And his name is Reggie Hammond.
Y'all be cool.
["The Marriage of Figaro (Overture)"
[by Mozart playing]
I got in this business when the still old
Hollywood legends were still around,
and I got to meet a bunch
of those people, the real ones,
the super talented Hollywood person
that had, like, some long 50-year career,
because they were curious about me.
They'd say, "Hey, I want to have lunch
with that nigger."
[laughing loudly]
I met Brando and Charlton Heston,
Sinatra. I met all those guys.
Through them calling my agent.
That'd be like if me right now
if some 22-year-old actor did some movie,
and I was like, "Hey, I wanna have lunch
I want to have lunch with them." [laughs]
That would never happen.
[laughs loudly]
[Dave] I imagine
for these old movie stars,
he was the symbol
of the changing of the guard.
Show business was
about to become something else.
He was at the forefront of it.
If you're an old movie star,
you'll see people come and go.
"This one's famous for a minute,
cold for a minute."
But man, he looked like
he was exactly where he
He looked like he had
that appointment with destiny.
And everyone who ever rode that train
knew exactly what they were looking at.
Of course you would want
to meet somebody like that.
[Katzenberg] Being the star
that he was at 19 years old,
before 48 Hrs. came out, we made
a multiple-picture deal with Eddie.
And, you know,
at the time, was unprecedented.
You're making a ton of money.
He did an interview with Johnny Carson.
Johnny goes, "So, Eddie, tell me,
what'd you buy with your money?"
Now, you go out and really
go nuts with it,
or do you put it away, or
-How do you handle the whole thing?
-[laughing]
[audience laughs]
"Hey, Amos. Get a load of that coat!"
No, I wasn't saying
Jeffrey Katzenberg sends me a script,
and I read, essentially, Trading Places.
I didn't learn
Until like, two weeks before shooting,
that in fact,
the script had been developed
for Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder,
who had made a couple
of buddy movies that were big hits.
And Richard
Set himself on fire.
Richard Pryor, the comedian and writer,
was badly burned in an accident
at his home in California last night.
Pryor has told his doctors
that he was using ether
to purify a batch of cocaine
when the mixture exploded in his face.
And Jeff said, "I'd like you
to consider Eddie Murphy."
And I, of course, went, "Who?"
Is there a problem, officers?
From the first moments
of Eddie coming down the street
on his blind man routine
I can see!
I can see!
I have I... I can... I have legs!
It's as close to a perfect movie
as you can have, in my opinion.
And I think we all felt it and saw it.
[both shouting]
[both laughing]
I went to a movie the other night
with my friends, Trading Places.
-[Johnny] I hear it's very good.
-With Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.
And you go in the movies
and start laughing,
and then they be funnier
than you want them to be.
Right? I mean, it's funnier
than you want, and you be
You saw that. [laughs awkwardly]
-They're really funny.
-Yeah. Hey.
[audience laughing]
But it's hysterical, man.
-That's what I hear.
-Yeah. I'm going to kill him.
We're going to take a break.
Richard Pryor is the funniest stand-up
comedian in the history of the art form.
How many people ever heard of freebasing?
Have you ever heard of anybody blowing up?
Why me?
Ten million motherfuckers freebase.
I got to blow up.
[audience laughs]
Recently,
Chappelle is in that world where, like,
he's got his finger on it a certain way
and an understanding of the audience.
And he's so smart.
And he really he raised the
He raised the roof.
Comedy is an art form.
Not in everybody's hands, but,
man, the ones who treat it that way,
they literally vibrate on, I would say
I can make an argument,
one of the highest artistic frequencies.
And Eddie, any skill set you can think
that a comedian needs, he has abundantly.
You know, I kept doing stand-up,
even though I was making movies and stuff.
Fights where nobody's home
with plenty of brothers and sisters,
and you try to kill them.
You'd be running around the house
with a knife, going [shrieks]
If I'm shooting in Philadelphia,
when we're doing Trading Places,
I can go to the Comedy Works and work out.
And Delirious is mostly stuff
that I had built up over the years.
[up-tempo '80s music plays]
Delirious had this energy,
this manic energy around it.
And it really had a rock show quality.
That's why I had
leather suits and shit on,
trying to roll around like Elvis.
[announcer] Eddie Murphy!
He changed the way we view comedy.
Comedians aren't generally attractive.
Especially, traditionally speaking,
up to that point.
They're very misfitty.
They're very kind of beastly sometimes.
[Ruth Carter] The ladies love him.
And, you know,
I feel like I had a crush on him
all the way through,
you know, this whole time.
And maybe it started there,
with that red leather suit.
It was amazing.
Obviously, he was, like, the sexiest thing
in the world in that red leather.
But like, why?
That red leather was awful.
But that's what made it so great.
And no matter what was going on,
the ice cream man came, it stopped.
You'd be hitting some marbles
and shit, and you'd hear
[imitates ice-cream truck jingle]
Ice cream!
Ice cream! The ice-cream man is coming!
[Eddie] My dad worked at Breyers Ice Cream
my whole time growing up, we had a
We had so much ice cream,
we would not even eat the shit.
Like, you had to throw ice cream out,
it'd get freezer burn.
But the beginning I didn't start
thinking about show business
or being a comedian till I was like 13.
Up until then, I was I wanted to own
a Mister Softee's ice cream truck.
Want a lick? Psych.
You want some ice cream
You want some ice cream
[Kevin Hart] He took the idea of character
performance on stage to ultimate levels.
You can't...
[audience laughing]
Eddie Murphy telling a story
made you feel like you were there.
My mother was
like Clint Eastwood with a shoe.
[audience laughs]
If you fuck up, my mother
walk in the room and was like
[whistling theme from
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly]
[audience laughing and clapping]
By the time you see me in Delirious,
talking about my family and stuff,
that's after years and years of doing it.
[raspy] Why'd you eat
the ice cream off the floor?
I didn't eat no ice cream
[gunshot sound]
[Eddie] Stand-up,
as you know, is it's intimate.
My father would stand up in the middle
of the cookout and say, "It's my house."
"You know what it is."
"And if you don't like it,
you get the fuck out."
[Eddie] I could be
at Madison Square Garden,
but when I started doing my dad drunk,
you could hear my mother laughing
in fr 20,000 people.
"And, hey" [smooches]
"Kiss my ass if you don't like it."
[audience laughs]
And the stuff I would do about my dad
made my dad stop drinking.
He was like, "That's how I look?"
I was like, "Yeah, that's how you look."
He stop... He stopped drinking.
I was a huge Eddie Murphy fan 'cause of,
you know, Shrek, Dolittle,
and all this stuff when I was like 8.
And my dad died on 9/11.
My mom took me to this store in the mall
that had DVDs and CDs,
and Eddie Murphy, Delirious, was there.
I was like, "What's this?
He looks cool, and this could be fun."
We had, like, those
It was like an old Suburban
that had those flip-down DVD players.
And, uh, immediately, you know,
"Fuck this, suck this"
you know, "Fuck you."
And my Mom's like, "Whoa, what'd you get?"
And I was dying laughing.
And she was like,
"You can't watch this or any of that."
And I was like, "Please." I'm laughing.
And I think she saw I was enjoying myself.
And at a time where I really wasn't.
And she was like,
"You can watch this stuff
as long as you don't repeat it
or tell anybody."
And it was kind of a little pact we made.
And that opened me to everything.
[Dave] If I'm LeBron James, he was
the Michael Jordan poster on my wall.
You know, what Richard Pryor
would have been for him
And I knew Richard Pryor's work,
but Richard
I didn't appreciate his work
till I was older.
Eddie was plug and play for me.
The spirit of the way he performed,
the impressions, the silliness of it.
How old's the other dude right there?
Oh, y'all fucked up now.
Y'all thought I would be going like this,
"Otay," and all that shit, right?
You didn't know I'd be saying,
"Our dicks is this big!"
[audience laughing]
That kid's gonna be waking up like this,
"The negroes' dicks
are coming to get me, Mom!"
Richard, how do you feel when you read,
"Eddie Murphy's going
to be another Richard Pryor"?
Or, "Watch out, Richard Pryor,
here comes Eddie Murphy"?
Pissed off.
[chuckles] Yeah.
You know, no, I don't like it.
I don't like it at all.
"People are saying
he's the new Richard Pryor."
The fuck are you talking about?
Richard's here, and there will never be
a new Richard Pryor.
There will be another man.
That syndrome,
that desire to pit
Black people against each other
and make it seem
like there's one opportunity
And if one of you want it,
you have to go into the Colosseum
and destroy the other. You know?
No two white comics, I mean
Let me put it like this.
Jeff Ross and Howie Mandel
have never thought about
if it's either me or him.
Where you get that from? "It's everywhere.
It's either me or him. I know it."
And that's just how it was.
For years, it was, you know
[inhales sharply] one at a time
that would get, you know,
mass appeal and be in big movies.
In the '60s, it was Sidney Poitier.
Then Richard was the one person
that became the man.
And he was the one Black guy
in most of the movies for a minute.
Then after me, the floodgates opened.
["Axel F." by Harold Faltermeyer plays]
[Bruckheimer] Eddie Murphy
was considered a star on the rise.
But in those days,
an African American actor
had never grossed
more than $20 million or $25 million.
And that was Richard Pryor, by himself.
So this was a big risk to put
Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop.
We're not gonna fall
for a banana in the tailpipe.
[nasally] You're not gonna fall
for the banana in the tailpipe?
[Bruckheimer] The conventional wisdom is,
it wasn't gonna work
-Get the fuck out of here.
-No, I cannot.
and then look what happened to the movie.
It was number one for 14 weeks,
which is unheard of.
[Chris] I saw Beverly Hills Cop
three times on the day it came out.
Like, we wouldn't leave the theater.
"Hey, let's see it again."
"No, let's see it again."
I saw it three times in one day.
[laughing]
Eddie Murphy in that movie was smarter
than everybody. He was Detroit slick
And he literally ran laps
around those guys,
not just in the funny moments,
but in the moment when he's
in the strip club with the guys, right?
["Nasty Girl (Mixed)"
[by Vanity 6 playing on speakers]
[Jamie] And he's like, "Yeah."
"See the guy over there with the jacket?"
"Kind of hot to be wearing that, right?"
"Watch my six."
-You changed, man.
-I'm telling you to get back.
If you don't get back,
I'm gonna blow your fucking brains out.
[grunting, groans]
Police. Move and I'll kill you.
If you watch that scene, that's better
than any action star you've ever seen.
And the way he handles it and just
before that, he had you cracking up.
Everything's under control.
[crowd cheering]
Here's Eddie Murphy,
sort of in a heartbeat.
There's a scene in Beverly Hills Cop
where he's walking down Rodeo.
He walks past the guys
in the leather outfits.
He starts laughing at them.
You're thinking, "You're laughing
at guys wearing leather outfits?"
And it didn't seem hypocritical,
because he's in that moment.
It's a real performance
in terms of who that character is.
But it's also basically Eddie Murphy
kind of making fun of himself.
I mean, there's so much going on
in that moment.
It's such a complex beat in pop culture.
[music stops]
What a life I've had.
[laughs loudly]
Oh, man.
Derrick Lawrence. That's the dude that
In Beverly Hills Cop, there's a scene
where I'm walking down the street
And I've heard reporters
and other people talk
"Oh, yeah, that's an interesting moment
because Eddie Murphy
is laughing at Eddie Murphy."
That's not what's happening at all.
I'm not laughing at me.
Derrick was one of those guys,
and he walked past.
And as he walked past,
he made, like, a weird face.
And I was laughing at the face he made.
I wasn't laughing at me.
I was laughing at Derrick.
And there he is.
What I wound up doing
changed the perception of Black actors.
They saw me,
and they saw the worldwide success.
And they was like,
"Hey so, Black can be worldwide?"
[laughing] Like, "Yeah."
And that's where you get
Morgan and Denzel and all those people.
They come after my stuff.
Sam, Spike Lee, all of that.
[shouting]
I was the psychological soil
that was that was required
for everything that happened after me.
[mid-tempo '80s music plays]
[Elvis] I think Eddie
is part of this wave of
A hunger in the culture
for a kind of Black experience
that related to a group of young people
that wasn't being espoused yet.
With the exception of Michael Jackson,
Prince, Whitney Houston, and Eddie all
kind of popped onto the scene like that.
And these four young Black people
changed the world.
Not just American culture,
they changed the world.
Currently starring in a film called
Beverly Hills Cop, please welcome
-[crowd cheering]
-Eddie Murphy.
Eddie, the kind of success you've had
in a very short period of time
is the kind of thing that I don't...
I never remember this happening
to anybody before.
[Jamie] He dominated,
and we all wanted that.
We all wanted the big, funny movie,
and we all wanted the lifestyle.
[Dave] Hip-hop was not even a thing yet.
Athletes weren't making the money
that they make now.
Eddie, at that time,
was breathing very rare air.
[reporter] Eddie Murphy has been
in Buffalo for almost a week.
Most of that time has been spent
inside Rick James's recording studio.
[Eddie] I was supposed to go
just for the weekend to do the song.
Got snowed in at Rick's house
and stayed for like two weeks. [chuckles]
My girl wants to party all the time
Party all the time, party all the time
Tell me about your music career.
What happens is, after a while, you start
I guess your ego goes nuts,
and you say, like, "I can do anything."
[laughter]
And you have people that work for you,
and they're on the payroll, so they
start to say, "You can do anything."
[Eddie] Nobody had as much fun
as we had in the '80s.
Nobody.
My 21st birthday party,
I had at Studio 54.
Yul Brynner from The Ten Commandments,
he was with his wife, and he was like,
"How would you like
to go back to my apartment
with my wife and I and party?"
And I was like, "Nah, I'm cool. I'm"
And I realized when I got older,
I was like, "Party? He wanted to"
His wife was smiling. I was like,
"Did he want me to go fuck his wife?"
[song ends]
I was like, "What the?"
When I got older,
I thought back on it and was like
And now I wish I would've went.
The story would end better if, you know,
"Yeah, I went back to Yul Brynner's spot
and fucked his wife."
"He was watching me fucking
He was going, 'Et cetera, et cetera'"
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[laughing loudly]
Man, that shit is extreme.
Being Eddie Murphy in the '80s.
That's extreme.
Wearing a red leather suit, like, before...
[laughing] That's some extreme shit.
The pages are all brown.
It's like, "How old are you?"
It's like oh my God, look at those teeth.
"From stand-up comic
to big-screen sex symbol."
That's what they said.
I didn't say it. That's what they said.
See right there, "Big-screen sex symbol."
When Eddie made it,
everybody's life, it changed.
Charlie was in the service.
He came home,
started working security for Eddie.
[Charlie] I started working,
you know, with my brother.
-[man] You were security?
-I was head of security.
[man] Did you know
anything about security?
[Charlie] No, I knew you better not fuck
with my brother, that's all I knew.
That's all that's all I knew.
When we did this sketch
on Chappelle's Show
"Charlie Murphy, True Hollywood Stories,"
the genesis of it was Charlie
just telling crazy stories at lunch.
[Charlie] We're walking up
into the VIP section, you know.
I'm looking around and see who's there,
and looking at the girls and everything,
and all of a sudden,
I heard someone go, "Charlie Murphy!"
-Cocaine's a hell of a drug.
-[audience laughing]
[Eddie] That Rick James sketch
on the Chappelle Show,
had a surreal thing for me
when I had watched them
'cause I thought they were super funny.
But then I was like
But this is, like,
just some night in my life.
You know, this
And every night was like that.
[mellow music playing]
It's funny, when I hung out with,
like, Rick James and them in the '80s,
when I would start seeing
certain people come in the room,
and you know what's
getting ready to go down,
they get ready to be in the other room
I just bounced.
I was never curious about it.
I never wanted to go in there,
check it out or nothing.
I just wasn't with it.
If you ever see Eddie out,
he's not the guy dominating the room.
He's very introverted. He'll sit
in the back of the room with a Coca-Cola.
When I was 19,
it's my first year of Saturday Night Live,
I went to a blues bar
with John Belushi and Robin Williams.
They put some blow on a table,
and I'm standing there with,
you know, two heroes.
I wasn't even curious.
I was just not with it.
I've never even tried cocaine
or touched cocaine or some shit like that.
I don't drink. I don't smoke cigarettes.
I never smoked a joint till I was
30 years old when I first smoked a joint.
[Chris] First time I met Eddie Murphy
was at The Comic Strip.
Think he had, like, a leather suit on,
had the whole entourage.
They used to let me get on stage if I'd
stack chairs when the show was over.
The owner of the club
introduces me to Eddie,
and Eddie says, "When are you going on?"
And I go, "I'm not on tonight."
And then Eddie says,
"Well, you're going up next."
And I had a really good set,
and he laughed really loud
[imitates Eddie's old laugh]
The fact that Rock could talk to Eddie,
we would just be like,
"And then what did he say?"
"And then what did you say? And then"
You know, just Just too exciting
Too exciting to be...
Yeah, he was definitely Elvis to us.
[heavy, driving beat plays]
[Chris] I was literally with him
Going from theater to theater,
watching the audience laugh at Raw.
I mean, Raw was a fuckin'
Was a I mean, Raw Whew!
[hip-hop beat playing]
I got a lot of people from other countries
that see my films and come over
to the United States
'cause New York is like a tourist place.
And they get HBO, they catch Delirious,
and they can't speak English,
and try to do my act,
and all they got is the curses.
I got foreigners from all over the world
walking up and going, "Eddie Murphy!"
"Fuck you!"
[audience laughing]
[Kevin] First time I heard him
was in my living room.
"Fuck you, Eddie!"
And my dad was watching Raw on VHS tape.
And don't touch his tape.
"Don't nobody touch my tape."
And then it was about me
sneaking and watching it.
I mean, fucking and making love,
let's be real, I mean, the physical act,
I like to fuck somebody I'm in love with,
but I ain't making love to nobody.
I get in the bed
I get in the bed
[laughing]
I get in the bed Well, think about it.
You get in bed, would you rather have
somebody say, "Make love to me"?
Or grab the back of your head and say,
"Fuck the shit out of me"?
[audience laughing and clapping]
In a weird way, he kind of
served the same function
in a young kid's mind that
hip-hop did, in the sense that,
that shit you listen to in the car
before you walk into that meeting,
that gives you that edge
or that confidence.
Eddie's like that.
He made me feel cool or want to be cool.
Or nothing ever hurts the comedic hero.
He was that.
I ran in the house
all excited to talk to Bill,
and picked up the telephone,
and Bill got raw on me.
I was like, "Hello, Mr. Cosby?"
And you hear,
[emphatically] "I would like
to talk to you"
[audience laughing and cheering]
"about some of the things
that you do in your show."
[Dave] I remember I went
to a movie theater with my brother
every day after school and watched Raw.
It was ironic, 'cause that was the year,
ultimately, that I started doing stand-up,
and that's when he stopped.
[Eddie] I never had a moment where I said,
"I'm not gonna do stand-up right now."
It just kind of gradually stopped.
I do know that it stopped
being as much fun,
and that's why I stopped going
to the clubs like I used to, and
Yeah, I remember it had gotten to a point
to where, like, you couldn't write stuff.
Like, if you would
if I would go up at a club,
the next day it'd be, like,
in the paper that I was at a club
and what I was talking about,
and they'd be critiquing it already,
and it'd be, like, something you just
a little piece of an idea.
And I remember I didn't like that feeling,
so I stopped working out as much.
And then it just got bigger and bigger
And before we knew it,
you know, decades had gone by.
They got dudes at doctors' offices
with symptoms like, "Excuse me, Doc",
what does it mean when
you go to the bathroom and, um
"Fire shoot out your dick?"
Every now and then, I'm flipping through
channels, and I'll see something of mine.
It's like it's not me
when I look at Raw or Delirious.
It's like well, I know that's me
'cause I'm looking at it.
But it feels like a different person.
Everybody's, you know, constantly
I heard somebody describe it
like a like a flame on a candle.
It's constantly changing.
And so are we.
I said if I ever did stand-up again,
I was gonna get a Bill Cosby puppet
and a Richard Pryor puppet,
and sit, and have them on the side,
and have, like, a conversation
between the two, and be in the middle.
[chuckles]
I'd get at least ten good minutes
of jokes out of it.
[chuckles]
[Arsenio] Eddie never stops creating.
I walk through his house,
and I see stuff written on pads.
So I'm like, he's thinking about it.
Whenever I got an idea, I would take
the phone and go, "Oh, yeah rah, rah"
And over the years I got, you know,
so much stuff, so many things, it's like,
all I have to do is go through my phone
and go, "Yeah, that would be a good bit."
So it wouldn't be hard to do.
You're a comedian. You're not normal.
You're not seeing the world
at all in the same way.
You're here, but you're either
looking through things
or your perspective is
above the terrestrial world,
and you're looking down at it.
Sense of humor is ultimately
just an acute sense of proportion.
Uh, the the funny person
notices stuff first.
You walk in a room,
the funny person will know,
"Hey, it's cold in here."
Or "What's that smell?"
You pull a car in front of me,
a brand-new car from the showroom,
and if it has a little scratch on it,
you pull it in front of me,
my eye will go right to the scratch,
"Hey, you got a little scratch here."
I used to have that OCD when I was a kid.
I didn't know what it was.
I would go and check the stove
in the kitchen
and make sure all the gas was off
in the kitchen. Right?
And I'd lay down for about, you know,
five minutes and I would get back up
and go back in the kitchen and look
at the stove again and check all the gas.
Then I'd go back into bed
and lay there for about five, ten,
and then get back up and go look at it
and look at the stove
and make sure all the gas was off.
Then I'd go back to bed,
lay for another ten minutes and get back
And this went on for maybe, like, an hour.
And I did that every night.
[laughs]
Every night. And I'd just say,
"That's just some weird shit that I do."
My mother, nobody knew this was going on.
And I used to make a goofy sound.
I used to go uh-mm-mm,
and do that all the time.
That's stupid. [chuckles]
Uh-mm, uh-mm.
You're sitting there watching TV,
going uh-mm, uh-mm.
Then one day I was watching the news,
and they did something on OCD,
and it was like, "Oh, that's what I...
I be doing shit like that."
I said, "Oh."
I was like, "Oh, mental illness?"
It was like, "What? I"
And when I saw that it was,
like, some mental illness shit,
I made myself stop doing it.
It was like, "I'm not...
I'm not doing it no more."
"I thought I was weird. I ain't know
I had some mental illness. Fuck that."
"I ain't have no mental illness.
Mental illness, my ass."
And I forced myself to stop doing it.
I check the gas every night still.
But every now and then,
I'll check it twice,
and say, "No, motherfucker,
you ain't starting that shit again."
"Take your ass to bed."
[laughs]
I guess I'm, uh
a little more paranoid than I used to be.
On every, I'm... social,
I'm a little more paranoid,
emotionally, I'm a little
more paranoid and, uh
Those things, you have a lot.
But success and power
kind of, like, isolates you,
and you get confused
'cause you start thinking, you know,
"If I have this and that,
and I can do this and that,
how come I'm not happy all the time?"
Then you realize
nobody's happy all the time.
What are you missing?
I don't know. I'd like to have a family.
I'd like to be married.
And I'd like to have some stability
in my life emotionally.
I'm on the tour bus,
and I just broke up with this chick,
and the conversation
on the bus was, you know,
"It would be nice to meet a girl that
didn't know I was one of the faces."
And yah, yah, yah.
And that's how that, uh,
Coming to America idea started.
I want a woman that's going to arouse
my intellect as well as my loins.
Where will you find such a woman?
In America.
Good morning, my neighbors!
[man] Hey, fuck you!
Yes! Yes!
Fuck you too!
[Arsenio] The idea was his life,
and the complications
of finding true love on an honest plane.
Hey, boy. Why you so worried
about how you look anyway?
Well, I'm trying to gain the interest
of a certain young lady.
Ah
[John Landis] I worked
with Rick Baker for many years.
So when I wanted Eddie to play an old Jew,
I knew Rick could do it.
Who's the star of that picture?
It's this young guy named Eddie Murphy,
I think it is.
Oh, Christ. I hate him.
-[laughing]
-The kid with the filthy mouth?
-Yeah, he's the one.
-Oh, he's the worst.
-[laughs]
-He's the worst.
He can't act.
He has a filthy mouth.
And he's ugly.
[Eddie] When I get a voice or a character,
the way my voice sounds,
I can lose it completely.
There's no sign of my voice.
You damn right!
[Eddie] Characters are like real people.
It feels so lovely to be here tonight.
What a beautiful
Give yourselves a round of applause.
You're so lovely.
[Eddie] I've always been
a fan of makeup movies.
There's some makeup,
they turn into another person.
I always gravitated to stuff like that.
And I watched that stuff
over and over and over and over again.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a movie
I watched all the time as a kid.
"I'm not a man."
"I'm not a beast."
"I'm about as shapeless
as the man in the moon."
[laughs dramatically]
[laughing]
This is beautiful. What is that, velvet?
[Eddie] When we did
the original Coming to America,
at the after-party,
Jesse Jackson came up to me,
and he was like,
"Hey, I want to say thank you
for putting looking out for
some of the older Black actors,
putting them in the film
and giving them a shot
because those guys
are gonna become stars."
I was like, "What you talking about?"
He said, "Those guys in the barbershop,
they're funny, and those guys
are gonna get famous because of this."
I was like, "Motherfucker, that was me."
He was like, "What, that was you?"
"Now I got to go see the movie again."
If a man wants to be called Muhammad Ali,
God damn it, this is a free country,
you should respect his wishes,
and call the man Muhammad Ali.
[Blaustein] I remember him
walking around the Paramount lot,
and him as the old man,
and no one was bothering him
or coming up to him,
and he could be free.
[Landis] It's very difficult
to survive the kind of fame
that Eddie had and has.
I've experienced it now
three or four times with people,
um where they're guys,
and then boom, they're superstars.
That superstardom,
you're just worth so much money,
and people are coming at you
from so many directions.
Who do you trust, you know?
"Murphy has solid middle-class values,
"but in another way, he's too vain
to destroy himself." John Landis.
That's true.
That's a lot to no way I could just
have a hand in my destruction.
[laughs]
[tense music playing]
-[clamoring outside]
-[camera shutters snapping]
[Katzenberg] I think the celebrity
He had a love-hate relationship with it.
He loved the energy of fans,
but you also become vulnerable.
[overlapping chatter and shouts]
[Kevin] Fame is bigger than any drug.
Hearing nothing but how much you love me
and how great I am,
that can rock most, and it has.
[Eddie] Michael and Prince and Whitney,
there was have a self-destructive nature.
My biggest blessing
My biggest blessing
is not my comedic talent.
My biggest blessing is, uh
That I love myself,
and I knew what I wanted to do
really, really early.
And that's why I didn't fall
into any traps or anything
'cause at the at the root
At the root of it all, I love myself.
You know, the best rappers like Biggie,
Tupac, those guys died in their twenties.
No telling what they could have been.
You know, the
The biggest success in show business,
first and foremost, is surviving the shit.
No matter what,
you got to you got to survive it.
You can't kill yourself,
you can't let nobody kill you.
-[man] How you doing?
-Good. How are you?
[Eddie] Being able to navigate
this minefield that you have to navigate,
just being on the physical plane,
you know, and then you add to it,
you're one of the faces,
there's a higher power that's at hand.
There's some other shit going on.
And when shit is all fucked up,
well, you get centered, pray.
It's like a tuning fork.
You hit it and it's vibrating,
and you can take it
and run your fingers down
and make it, you know, stop vibrating.
That's what, like, prayer is like.
Hey, man. I don't want to sound,
you know, all guru-ish and shit.
[laughing]
People sitting out there going,
"This motherfucker is a guru."
[Arsenio] There are many times when I've
been around Eddie in a work situation,
and it's like he's stepped out of his body
into the white light,
and he's looking back at us humans
and helping us understand.
I've done a movie, Harlem Nights,
where he directed, where you realize,
he knows what works and doesn't work.
Only way you going home
is shot, motherfucker!
I was doing a scene
where I have to die.
And he said, "I want you to die."
"And then, I want you to just come
back to life for one second and say"
Asshole.
"and then die."
I did it, and it's still funny.
There were days when I wasn't working,
and I would just go over and hang
and watch him direct Redd Foxx
and fucking Della Reese, man.
I'd tell you to kiss my ass too,
but you probably can't find it,
you blind motherfucker.
Fuck you, bitch.
[Arsenio] But directing Richard,
easily a dream come true,
because you know how much
he respects and loves Richard Pryor.
-Who is that?
-That's the cop I was telling you about.
[Eddie] To work with somebody you idolize
on the outside, I'm unflappable.
On the inside, I was like Ahh!
Now, when we were doing Harlem Nights,
I wanted to do a movie
with some of my old heroes.
You put your head back and go,
"I don't feel no different."
[Eddie] Redd was just funny effortlessly.
You look good.
I don't feel no different.
[Eddie] I love Redd.
Then he was a cautionary tale, too,
because we've got drugs,
that shit going on,
sniffing blow and all that.
Then his paper was all fucked up,
'cause when Redd kicked out,
I had to bury Redd.
I had to bury Redd. I had to bury Rick.
I brought Buckwheat a tombstone.
Buckwheat didn't have no tombstone.
I'm always burying burying these people.
I mean, it tripped me out,
these people you
Show business and all that,
then when they pass away,
there's not even the money
to bury these people?
Where are their families?
Where are these people?
It's a lot of people like that.
One of the quiet agendas that Eddie has
is "Hey, Black people
haven't had a movie like that."
There hadn't been
a Black romantic comedy before.
Love should've brought your ass
home last night.
"We need to do that
so other people can do that."
"And if I can use my clout
to open that door, that's a good thing."
Don't you think it's about time
we talked promotion?
[laughs]
Because we showed Black life in a way
that had never been put on screen before,
there were these really extreme reactions.
This is from the LA Times.
This review, it says
It says, "The most intriguing aspect
of Boomerang, turns out,
not its story but its racial composition."
It says, "This takes pains
to create a reverse world
from which white people are invisible."
Oh, yeah, this cat
and the LA Times was tripping
because there was there were no
well, there are white people in the movie,
but there were no, like,
you know, like, white leads in it.
And you take a picture
like Boyz n the Hood,
no one tripped about that
because it was a movie
that dealt with, like, a violent thing.
But regular thing, and it was business,
"Where are the white people?"
"Who's running that office?"
You know, that kind of thing.
It's the type of thing where people say
they're not used to seeing Black artists
in these roles, so it seems odd to them.
But I was seeing...
Well, you better get used to it
'cause I ain't going no place.
-Yeah.
-[audience cheers]
[echoing] I ain't going no place.
[Hudlin] Hollywood back then,
and to this day,
there's a lot of negative forces.
Black movie stars always had to break
through all these obstacles,
but those obstacles were the default.
[applause]
Hi, I'm Eddie Murphy.
[Eddie] Every now and then,
somebody will see it and be like, "Wow."
"Eddie was talking shit
at the Oscars way back then?"
I even said right before, I said,
"I'll probably never get an Oscar
for saying this."
And I'll probably never win an Oscar
for saying this,
but, hey, what the hey, I got to say it.
And I went I went and did it.
I just want you to know,
I'mma give this award,
but Black people will not ride
the caboose of society,
and we will not bring up the rear anymore,
and I want you to recognize us.
He said, "Fine, it's done."
I said, "When do I have to be there?"
He said, "You don't have to
get there till about 9 or 10
'cause it's the last award
of the evening, so"
[laughter]
[Eddie] The next day,
it was like I didn't say anything.
There were no pictures of me
at the Oscars.
There was no coverage of me.
There was no mention that I said that.
It was like I wasn't at the Oscars.
And I haven't gotten an Oscar.
[laughs loudly]
I haven't got an Oscar,
and I've done everything.
I've played everything
and done everything.
And I haven't got an Oscar.
But I don't think it's because of that.
[laughs]
I think I'm in a transitional period
as a comedian.
I feel like there are
other things that I want to do,
and I don't want to do things
that I've done before,
and I want to do
different types of movies,
and exploring where I am
at this part of my life
because so much has happened to me
in the last couple of years,
between marriage and kids
and personal life.
[strumming notes]
Yeah.
Again.
I need my baby
I need my baby
[Eddie] My kids are
the center of everything.
[song continues in background]
[Eddie] Before kids, it's just about you.
Then once you have kids,
it's all about them.
I used to stay up maybe two days sometime
before I would go to bed.
When I met Paige,
I got more on her schedule.
Now, we watch two episodes of Seinfeld,
and then right after that, go to bed.
Paige and I have been together 14 years.
[producer] No dogs?
[Eddie] We had dogs.
-And now we have cats.
-Now we have cats.
We'd never have thought
we'd have had cats.
Never, ever, ever thought
in a million years.
The cat don't give a fuck.
He'll just be sitting there.
I have I have more in common
with the cat than the dog.
Sometimes you walk in a room, the cat
just be sitting there looking at the wall.
I'm like, "I do shit like that."
[chuckling] Hey, that's that's what I do.
[woman] Wow.
'80s trunks.
'80s everything.
[group laughing]
[Eddie] Somebody asked me once,
you know, about movies.
You know, about my legacy.
Real food.
-Good. How are you?
-Good, Dad.
[Eddie] I said, "My legacy?
My legacy is my children."
"It's not what I did at work."
I really feel like that.
[teasing Val] "If you could feel
all the flavor of love in each morsel."
-You can taste the love.
-You can taste the love.
-[Val] See what you
-I bet nobody gets sick tonight.
[Val laughs]
Nobody ever gets sick.
This This time.
I bet you nobody gets sick this time.
[chuckling]
[indistinct overlapping chatter]
I heard somebody say it in a song
-I think I've heard...
-and it was, like, a fashionable dude.
I'm saying, I heard it on their Instagram.
[Eddie] If you put your kids first
You'll never ever make a bad decision.
played it with his teeth
while it was on fire.
Flaming guitar on his face.
Hey, Joe
[group laughing]
[Eddie] Twenty-seven.
Gone at 27.
And the world's still buzzing.
Watch this, how he does this.
It makes it feedback. Listen.
[feedback reverberating]
[feedback whine rises and falls]
That. Crazy.
[vocalizing feedback range]
That's feedback. He used the feedback
like a note on the guitar.
Yeah, that's crazy.
[Eddie mimics feedback tone]
Come on, man.
[Charlie] I was real proud of
what my brother had accomplished.
I remember the old days
before any of this happened.
To go from the apartment
to the house in Long Island
to, you know, having this brother
that became a star.
But because he was so good at it,
and I was so proud of him, I was, like...
If you didn't laugh, I was real emotional.
I probably would fuck you up
for not laughing.
That's how That's how I felt.
[solemn music plays]
[Eddie] There's nobody like Charlie.
Nobody was funnier there.
And some of my biggest laughs
in my life are Charlie.
Yeah.
I miss my brother.
I have this thing with death,
and when people would pass away.
Like, I'll just touch it for a sec...
Every now and then, a memory will pop up.
And I touch it.
And then I'll feel it
this stuff bubbling up.
And then I'll go, "Oh, okay."
So it's a lot of...
I just touch little memories.
I don't be going and and wallowing in it.
[up-tempo elegant melody playing]
I don't believe that it ever stops.
I don't believe, like, that,
like like, death is like this
like, you die and then
you come back from the dead.
I don't think you ever die.
I think, you know, it just keeps going.
And everybody is it.
Whatever the the force is that's,
you know, at the center of everything,
everybody's that, you know.
So this physical body will die,
but at the center of it, you know,
that whatever's at the center of you
and him and her and everybody,
that goes on and on,
that just keeps going and going.
You know, most people think of the world
as being out here,
and it's really happening on the inside.
[music fades out]
[Eddie] Did you tell them
you're running for mayor?
The first thing I would change
if I was mayor,
certain people would be in certain places.
That'd be your first law?
"And now certain people
would be in certain places."
I met Val when we got
snowed in at Rick's house.
Rick had a bunch of artists
that he was developing,
and Val was one of the backup singers.
And then she just
became part of the circle.
Most of the people that became part of
the circle over the years are characters,
and Val is a character.
I'm drawn to people that are characters.
But Val is kind of
the last of the characters.
Over the years, the characters have
either passed away or been banished.
[laughs]
Banished from the circle.
Hey, look at "Party all the Time."
It's up to 123.
What?
-123 million?
-[Eddie] That's crazy.
"Red Light."
It's gonna be 80 million next month.
Now here your karma come
With a knock, knock, knock
On your door, oh
Red light, stop right
On set, he'd be like, "You have YouTube?"
I'm like, "Yeah, I have YouTube."
He's like, "I love YouTube."
He goes, "I've seen
all the videos on YouTube."
Anytime I would come to set,
he's just blasting music
and vibing, and everyone gets
really, really excited.
Welcome back to Ridiculousness.
Three, two, one!
[Eddie] Ridiculousness, guilty pleasure
show I watch all the time.
I think it's actually
the best show on television.
You know what that show reminds me of?
It's like you know
the director, Jodorowsky?
His movies are, like, shocking images,
like, back-to-back-to-back.
It be like, "What the fuck?"
You don't even get a chance to go
He's on to the next thing.
Ridiculousness is like a kid TV version
of a Jodorowsky movie.
I love it. I love that he's sitting
around watching Ridiculousness.
That's fucking hilarious.
[laughing] That's so funny.
He just has a sieve of a brain.
Like, is that the right word? Sieve?
-Like, it just takes everything in?
-[producer] Yeah, sponge.
Sponge. He's like a sponge brain.
That's the way I would describe Eddie.
He's a sponge brain.
[reggae-style riff playing]
[Eddie] I'm not a stand-up comedian.
Like, I'm
You know, I'm funny, and I can do that.
But I don't see...
I don't go, "I'm a comedian."
Like, I don't go,
"I'm an actor," or "I'm a musician."
I'm an artist that can express hisself
a bunch of different ways.
Sensitivity is the gauge,
not how much talent you have.
The most sensitive one
will be the artist that's most in tune.
I don't want to get too artsy.
[laughs loudly]
[calm bass line playing]
I could get really artsy if you let me.
I don't force anything.
I'm not rowing a boat.
It's not a rowboat. It's a sailboat.
I'm not
[panting] "I got to go over there."
[chuckles] I'm like
I'm on a sailboat, and this...
Let me catch this breeze and go this way.
I'm not trying to be or trying to get to.
I just am.
[eerie music plays]
Interesting.
[Eddie] If you could be
in this business for 40 years,
you're gonna make something
that's not gonna work. [laughs]
That's when you know you've gone
really far away from stand-up.
You got fangs,
and you biting Angela Bassett.
I'm like, "Okay now,
I think we got a little off-track here."
Because the
[laughs loudly]
[announcer] Spade in America
with David Spade.
[cheers and clapping]
[Eddie] David Spade did a sketch on
Saturday Night Live at the News Desk.
I had just had, uh
Vampire in Brooklyn had come out.
Look, children.
It's a falling star. Make a wish.
[crowd exclaims loudly]
Yeah. Yes. That's right.
The audience there said "woo"
and hissed him for saying it, right?
So I was, like, hurt,
my feelings was hurt.
It was like, "Yo, I'm from the same..."
It was like your Alma mater
taking a shot at you.
At my career, not how funny I was
Called me a falling star.
Like, if there was
a joke like that right now,
and it was about some
other SNL cast member,
and it was about how fucked up
their career was, it would get shot down.
The producers would look at it,
"You're not saying that joke."
So it the joke had went through all of
those channels a joke has to go through,
and then he was on the air saying,
you know, "Catch a falling star."
So I wasn't like, "Fuck David Spade."
I was like, "Oh, fuck SNL, fuck y'all.
How y'all gonna do this shit?"
"Y'all... That's what y'all think of me?
Oh, you dirty motherf" I was like that.
And that's why I didn't go back for years.
With show business,
you receive the greatest flattery
and the greatest venom,
and they're both lies.
They're both lies.
And so you're left
kind of with nothing, you know.
You're left with,
"Well, I think I gave that my best."
And that should be it.
Right? What...? That should be it.
Consciously, I'm going, I want to do
something where I show them that
That I'm not like anybody in this town,
and I want to do something nobody else
that only I will be able to do it.
["Never Too Much"
by Luther Vandross playing]
Nutty Professor shows
pretty much everything.
It's up there,
all those different characters, and
The movie is funny,
but it has this sweet thing in it.
All the elements are there.
I would like to volunteer
to take this old bird out of her misery.
Cletus! Don't you dare say
something like that about Mama.
No, hold on.
You ain't got to protect me from Cletus.
Come on, Cletus. Come on.
What Eddie's doing,
all those other characters,
he's hearing them in his head.
He's also getting their timing right.
I mean, 'cause they all have different
vocal rhythms and different volume.
He's a little Hercules.
Show me your muscles again.
Oh, Hercules! Hercules!
We ain't passing out Oscars.
We not... Hold on, goddammit.
We not passing out Oscars.
He... Every character
should have got nominated.
[Eddie] Those characters
start out in the makeup chair.
There was no prep.
When Rick had the makeup,
like, halfway through,
he would just start asking me questions.
He'd just start
a conversation with me, asking,
"How many kids you have?
Where'd you grow up?"
And I'm trying different voices
to see what voices come out of it.
Like, while he's doing it,
you start figuring out
what looks best coming out of that makeup.
And by the end, you'll have, like,
the right voice and the right everything.
[upbeat music playing]
There was a lot of hoops to jump through.
The studio said, "Look, we love Eddie."
"We think he's really talented,
but I don't know if he could
play all those characters."
"How would he define these characters
so they're different from one another?"
He had to work to get the role.
Well, he had to audition.
Then I was thrilled.
He just said, "Yeah, I'll do it."
[Pete] It is at least
four hours plus in makeup
each time you gotta put that character on.
[shrieking scream]
There's a reason why
no one else does them.
Like, no comic wants to do that shit.
He wants to do that shit.
Excuse me, I'm going to use the restroom.
[Reggie] I'm hot tonight!
Sorry about that, ma'am.
Let me pick that up for you.
[Reggie] Whoo-ooh!
[Dave] That was the first time
I ever met him.
On the set of Nutty Professor.
In fact, he walked by me,
and I didn't recognize him
because he was dressed as Sherman Klump.
He walked, then he stopped and goes,
"Hey, man, you're real funny."
And I heard his voice... "Oh!" And then I
"Oh my God, it's Eddie Murphy."
Boy so fat, every time he turn around,
it's his birthday!
[audience laughing]
[Dave] Then we go through take after take.
The first takes were him as Sherman.
By the next few days, by the time
we were doing the Buddy Love scenes
-[dramatic music rises]
-[screaming]
Man, like, literally the crowd was
you could feel it in the room.
You mind waiting
for the punchline first, brother?
I'm sorry, man.
It's just that you so funny!
[Dave] They would erupt in applause.
When they said, "Cut,"
they'd erupt into applause.
Like, everyone knew,
like, man, this is special.
Look at Reggie's gums and teeth.
Look like his mother
had an affair with Mr. Ed.
Nobody knew I was
gonna be a comedy legend.
Everybody knew he was a comedy legend.
But that shit was really special.
[Grazer] He is very easy to work with
-[Reggie] Oh damn!
-[audience gasps]
if you're sharp and prepared.
If you come on there,
and you're bobbling around,
that's when he goes to the trailer.
Go to the office and make some calls.
Go call Arnold and Sly,
and Van Damme, and Jackie Chan,
and tell them the spearchucker said hello.
[cymbals clanging]
[Arsenio] Bowfinger,
he plays a couple people,
and there's no latex on his face.
There's no costume to hide behind.
He finds the essence
of the other character,
and he plays it.
Would you be willing to show
your naked rear end in a movie?
[stifling chuckle]
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah.
[snickering]
[Eddie] Steve Martin, when he came
to talk to me about Bowfinger,
we were in San Francisco.
He was like, "Let's go get some lunch."
And I was like, "Oh"
I almost said,
"I don't have any security here. Well, I"
I almost said that.
And I didn't say anything.
I was like, "Oh, okay."
And then we walked to some restaurant,
like, you know, ten blocks from the hotel.
You know, and people was like, "Hey."
You know, every now and then say,
"Hey Eddie, hey Steve." And that was it.
It was like,
"Hey, you don't need bodyguards."
You could just walk, and,
you know, no one's gonna chase you
and tear you apart or none of that shit.
Anytime you see somebody
getting chased down the street
and the screaming and all that,
it's just almost, almost always
some young person in their twenties,
and a teenybopper or a kid is screaming.
When you get...
Very rarely do the 30-year-old fans
chase anyone down the street
and scream and do all of that shit.
But you be in your 30s thinking,
"They're gonna still come chase me."
No, they're not chasing you now.
Now they're moms,
and they're not chasing you at all.
[chuckles]
When he came back
and was doing, like,
family-friendly movies,
it also was a cue that we can grow up.
[dramatic music rises]
[squeaking]
[screams]
He's really, really, really, really smart
about knowing how to connect
to a whole brand-new audience
every ten years.
[Tracee] Him being a father
is part of what shifted his
Choice of material.
He went from being the Raw guy
to the family guy,
but this the magic remains.
You know what else
everybody like? Parfait.
Have you ever met a person,
you say, "Hey, let's get parfait,"
they say, "Hell, no, I don't like
no parfait"? Parfaits are delicious.
No!
[Pete] Eddie Murphy, Donkey
It's one of the greatest
performances of all time.
Like him going, "I'm making waffles."
Like, all that shit is hilarious.
Sorry, the position of annoying,
talking animal has already been taken!
Let's go, Shrek!
Shrek?
[Eddie] It's fun being in a good movie
'cause nobody ever set off
to do a bad movie.
So when you do one,
and it works and it's good,
nothing's more rewarding.
[Eddie whistling operatic tune]
Okay, you don't have to worry
about anything.
Your identity is completely concealed.
Just want to ask you one question.
Who gave you the cocaine?
Shrek.
Shrek!
[laughing loudly]
I would have a massive headache
after all those Shrek sessions.
Doing all that screaming and being at 100.
[exclaiming indistinctly]
All that shit, doing that was exhausting.
Yeah, I never look forward to working
'cause I'd rather not
I'd rather just be home doing nothing.
[chuckles]
Hey, it's getting cold in here.
I'm closing this roof.
When I built this house,
I was tired of renting houses.
I would come out and make movies
and you'd have to rent a house.
I started needing bigger places,
and the rent was crazy in these houses.
So I was like, I should
just build a house out there.
This is a great house to haunt.
Like, 100 years from now,
people be like, "I heard him in here."
I'm gonna be around
this motherfucker like
"I heard him. I heard him
doing that laugh upstairs." [laughs]
When I first got divorced,
and I'd be in here by myself,
and it was like, you know,
these big ceilings, and I was all sad,
and I was like,
"This is like Dracula's house."
I was like, "I... I am I am Dracula."
[laughs loudly]
[upbeat music plays]
That was a funny, little three-year period
after I got divorced,
and you don't know what to do.
I was probably, like, 45 Forty...
And you be like, "Okay," and you'd say,
"I'm gonna go back out to the clubs."
And you call all the old crew,
the old guys together.
And we all were all middle-aged
and tried to go out to the clubs
like we used to. [laughs]
I was at a club in Vegas.
I walked through the crowd,
and some girl felt my ass.
So I turned around,
and it was, like,
this young girl, like 21, 22.
And I was like, "Hey."
[laughs] "Hey, young lady
Watch Hey, young lady."
[laughs] I went there.
She was, like, younger than my daughters.
It was like, "Hey, don't be fresh now."
I said, "Okay, maybe it's time
to not go to the clubs anymore."
[laughing]
[sternly] "Hey, there'll be none of that.
Which one of you did that?"
[laughing]
I never would have thought,
ever, that I would live in California
because I was I'm just such
an East Coast guy. I was so East Coast.
But I love it here.
Maybe I seem like a California person.
You know, all the talks
about the spiritual plane.
"The spiritual plane is internal."
I said, "You can't talk shit like that
on the New York streets."
[laughing]
"They say the spiritual plane is intern..."
"You better get the fuck out my face
with that shit."
[laughs]
[Jamie] He had that piped-in scent
that they have at the Bellagio.
I said, "This is too nice."
Comedians work from
when things aren't perfect.
At my house, I call it Black Mansion
because shit is just terrible.
Like, I got a faucet in the bathroom.
I just let it...
It sprays out. I just leave it that way.
'Cause it keeps me funny. I see
people come out the bathroom,
"What the fuck is Foxx..."
And the game room...
His game room was fucked up.
I know he don't know what I'm talking
about either, because all the games work.
All your games can't work
in your game room.
Ms. Pac-Man gotta have a knob knocked off
or something in order for you to be funny.
When we did Dreamgirls,
I would come in hot.
I think sometimes I'd be too excited.
Hey, man. Who is this guy?
I just wanted that knowledge.
And when you watch Dreamgirls,
it was a flawless performance.
And you could see some of the
Pain, you know
wherever he was getting it from.
[Eddie] I was doing the movie
right after I got divorced.
So I was going through
this emotional shit.
On the screen,
I think a lot of stuff was real,
and it was it was, like, right there.
So I was
I really experienced some real pain.
So some of that comes off in the movie.
[reporter] Eddie Murphy walks away
with his first Golden Globe,
for Best Supporting Actor,
after four previous nominations.
[lo-fi chill hop music plays]
I mean, I thought that there
we saw the real Eddie Murphy.
-The real me?
-Yeah, you can act, you can sing.
You're getting it done, my friend.
That was a fun movie.
I got to do a lot of different stuff.
But that wasn't me.
-That's not the real me.
-Not the real you?
I've never been the real me
ever on screen.
Well, what is the real you,
for God's sakes?
-Uh [chuckles]
-[audience laughs]
-[music fades]
-He came to me, and he said
"Um, I wrote this crazy script."
-"It's called Norbit."
-[upbeat music plays]
And he was gonna play multiple characters.
He was the male lead.
He was the female lead.
Dammit, Norbit!
How many times I gotta tell you,
when you drive my car,
don't adjust my seat!
I haven't touched your seat.
[Eddie] Because it's comedy and makeup,
people don't look at the technical side
of how much work really goes into it.
But they laugh, and that's what
we're trying to get them to do.
It came out right at the time when
you would be campaigning for your Oscar.
[chuckles]
It just, you know, shit tied up the water.
[Rachel Weisz] And the Oscar goes to
Not winning the Oscar or not winning
anything is not the mindfuck for me.
The mindfuck for me is that
I get dressed and come to the thing
'cause I would usually
not go to award shows.
That's Whenever I lose, I'm like,
"These motherfuckers
made me come all the way down."
"I could have fucking lost at home.
I'm all in the fucking tuxedo."
"What a a waste of time."
I'm never like, "Oh, I didn't win."
I'm like, "Hey make me
come down here for nothing."
It's always wonderful to win stuff.
But if I don't win, I don't give a fuck.
I still come home and it's...
I'm still Eddie in the morning.
[atmospheric music playing]
I had stopped making movies in 2011.
I was like, "Let me
take a break from movies."
I was making these shitty movies.
[shouting]
I want my goo-gaa!
I mean, it was like, this shit ain't fun.
They giving me Razzies.
I think the motherfuckers gave me
a Worst Actor Ever Razzie or some shit.
I was like, "Hey, maybe it's time...
Maybe it's time to take a break."
I realized it was like, "Hey"
"People don't realize
that I've taken a break."
So I was like, "Let me get off this couch
to remind them that I'm funny
and that I have not fallen off."
I'm on the couch by choice.
And then I was like, "Hey, you know what?
Fuck this. SNL is part of my history."
"I need to reconnect with that show
'cause that's where I come from."
["Golden Swagger" by Dominic Glover,
Gary Crockett & Jay Glover playing]
That little friction that I had with SNL
was 35 years ago.
I don't have no smoke with no David Spade.
I don't have any heat
or any of that with nobody.
And it was like, "Hey, let me go to SNL
and smooth that all out."
And I did.
This is Eddie Murphy.
[cheering and whooping]
Back at you.
[group laughing]
It was surreal 'cause I had been
at that meeting so many times.
I'm in that meeting.
I was meeting everybody.
I was thinking, you know,
"Wow, this office feels smaller."
He knew when he was coming back to SNL
what that meant to the world.
He just knows what he means to all of us.
[Che] We were talking
about monologue at first.
And I think Lorne wanted him to do
something that was a bit more personal,
because people just wanted
to hear him talk.
[playing up-tempo beat]
I think he was a little, not worried,
but cautious of doing a monologue.
Incidentally, I just had a baby.
I just have a new son.
I have ten kids now.
[man whoops]
-[woman laughs]
-I don't want to say that
Eleven, if you count Kevin Hart.
What the fuck?
[group laughing]
[Eddie chuckles]
I'm teasing. I love Kev.
I love Kev. I do love Kev.
I love it. It was comedy. It's great.
It's a it's a great bit. Great joke.
I remember Lorne calling me, "Come down."
I thought he was
about to tell me Eddie had...
Eddie had canceled,
and they wanted me to host.
-Hey, man.
-It's Chris Rock, ladies and gentlemen.
-Hey, come on.
-What are you doing here?
[clapping]
You thought I was gonna miss this show?
Come on, man. My daughters love Lizzo.
[scattered laughter]
It's even written by hand.
How about that, Alice?
I didn't know you knew anyone
who could write.
[Chris] See, a white woman?
[Eddie] He was doing Jackie Gleason, man.
He was doing Archie Bunker or something.
[man] And believe me, that's plenty,
you big baboon.
[studio audience laughs on TV]
Did you hear that, Alice?
Remember when "baboon" was a punchline?
Rich Little's gonna come in,
and he's gonna go do something,
and says, "You're a baboon, aren't you?"
He's gonna call him a baboon.
[up-tempo synth music plays]
What's up? How you doing?
[Eddie] I had a huge burst of nostalgia.
That "good old days" feeling.
Every now and then, you sit around
with your friends or relatives,
be reminiscing about something
and you'd be talking,
and then you'd get that little feeling,
that, oh that good, that
"Those were the good old days,"
kind of burst-of-nostalgia feeling.
I had that for a solid week.
[light keys playing]
[Eddie] Because the show is done
the exact same way it's always been done.
I hadn't been back there in 36 years.
So it was literally, like, you know,
somebody saying, "Okay,
you're gonna go back to 12th grade,
and here's your schedule for that day."
"You're you have gym at eight."
"Here's your old locker."
"That's my old locker.
The combination is still the same."
[laughs] 15, 26, 34.
That was my locker
in high school. [laughs]
[Kenan] Eddie doesn't seem to age at all.
It seemed like maybe
he left the show five years ago,
or ten years ago or something.
It didn't seem like a long departure,
just because he jumped
right back in with both feet.
And he just took his shoes off
and respected the house, if you will,
kind of thing, and just jumped in.
"Y'all think I stole it 'cause I'm Black"
is opened up too?
-Slightly.
-I don't even mind. Look at camera...
"Y'all think I stole it 'cause I'm Black?"
-Then straight to camera again. Exactly.
-Yeah.
One, two, three, four.
Oh, ting a lady
Oh, ting a lady
Oh, ting a lady, oh, ting a lady
Whoa-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh, oh
Otay!
[group laughing]
And he did promos. Like
Eddie Murphy did the promos on Tuesday.
He's going through it like it's nothing.
Hi, I'm Eddie Murphy.
And I'm hosting Saturday Night Live
with musical guest Lizzo tonight.
-Strong.
-Can I do one that is not as crazy?
[group laughing]
-[gruffly] Tonight!
-Tonight.
[laughter]
And Lizzo was making him laugh.
And then I heard him do his new laugh.
And it was, like, a real hard laugh.
He must be relaxed enough
to be enjoying himself.
Hercules.
[both laughing loudly]
But I did notice at that moment,
I was like, "Oh wow."
Like, he put that laugh away
and has a new one.
He was like, "Yeah, my laugh
was becoming a gimmick."
"And I didn't want people
to put me in a box."
He's a very, you know,
leveled kind of a person.
So whenever something
is overshadowing that,
he'll pivot, it seems like.
This book is called,
Ass for Cash.
[Tracy] They all wanna know. Who are you?
[group chanting] Take it off! Take it off!
Take it off!
Hi, I'm Buckwheat. Uhmember me?
[chill hop music playing]
[Dave] Seeing Eddie Murphy in Studio 8H,
it's like, I can't explain.
It's like being on safari
and seeing a lion in the wild.
Thank you very much.
Wow, it is so great to be back here
hosting Saturday Night Live for Christmas.
[Tracy] Yo, Ed Murph.
Oh, Tracy Morgan.
-Welcome home, brother.
-Yeah, man. Yeah. What's up, man?
[Che] Lorne actually had the idea
to bring in Chappelle and Chris and
Tracy, and have that sort of moment.
And I thought it was really cool.
[crowd laughing]
When we start to rehearse the monologue,
when I look down the line,
I see Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy,
Chris Rock, and then Kenan.
[Kenan] All four of them,
the four horsemen,
kind of up there together,
it was just an iconic thing to witness.
Even being in the sketch,
it was just like,
"I can't believe"
Like, "I can't believe this is happening."
If you're watching this right now,
you're looking at half of Netflix' budget.
[crowd laughing]
Thanks, Netflix.
Not me. I made all
my millions on the road.
-[Eddie] You mean touring?
-No, I got hit by a truck.
[Che] There was a moment,
like, in the rehearsal,
my dressing room
had Chappelle and Chris Rock.
They were calling their moms to tell them
that they was doing the Eddie Murphy show.
Like, in my dressing room,
watching them kind of geek out.
[Eddie] See that? This is why I love
coming back to Saturday Night Live.
Having moments like this.
When was the last time
we were all together?
Last Thursday, at Sinbad's house.
[crowd laughing]
Now, which is funnier,
Sinbad, Arsenio, or my house?
Your house seems like the most plausible
place for that to actually happen.
Your house is the most plausible place.
There's something funny
about the word "Sinbad."
Now, when's the last time
we were all together like this?
Last Thursday, at Arsenio's house.
[crowd laughing]
Y'know, I've never been
to Arsenio's house to this day.
-What kind of friend are you?
-No, what kind of friend is he?
-What kind of friend is he?
-Oh, you [laughs]
[crowd laughing]
[Tracy] Shut it down.
This is one of the most exciting things
I think I've ever done.
-Yeah. Yeah. I agree.
-Yeah, honestly.
I agree.
I told Obama, in order to stop crime,
we need to get that
government cheese program up and running.
Slow niggas down. I'm telling you,
I told him at the correspondents' dinner.
-I never had government cheese.
-Eddie, you had government cheese.
-You from Brooklyn.
-But we never had government cheese.
Yes, you did. I'm not gonna buy that.
I did take a picture.
You had Combos.
That's made of government cheese.
I remember as a child eating Swiss cheese.
I remember having a ham and Swiss...
I ain't discover Swiss cheese
until I was at least 20.
I had a ham and Swiss cheese
You ever tell them the James Brown story?
-[Eddie] Which one?
-Where no one's got a million dollars?
[Eddie] Oh, and he told me
to bury my money.
[chuckling quietly]
He told me, "Bury your money in the yard."
He said, "If you don't bury your money,
government gonna come take your money."
He said, "You think
you got a million dollars?"
-I said, "Yeah." He said
-[both laugh softly]
And his wife walked through. He said,
"Hey, he think he got a million dollars."
And she did like this.
He said, "Ain't no Black man
in America got a million dollars."
"Only person in show business got
a million dollars is Sylvester Stallone."
Then he said, "If you do have a million,
whatever money you got,
you need to go down to the bank."
"And you call the bank, you get that money
out the bank, and you bury it."
I said, "Why would I bury it?" He said,
"The government gonna take your money."
I said, "Where do I bury the money?"
He said, "Get you a good piece of land
and bury the money under there."
I said, "Can't the government
take your land?"
He said, "They won't know
about the money though."
"They won't know where the money's at."
Then years later, I realized he was on
angel dust when we had that conversation.
[upbeat music builds]
The Eddie Murphy show was the most tense
start to a show I've ever been a part of.
And it was like, scary almost,
like, this had to go well.
And we would be letting down
Eddie Murphy if it was bad.
It's 11:27 right now.
[indistinct chattering]
[music fades out]
[SNL band opening number picks up]
[Eddie] The best thing to pray for,
instead of money and everything
Pray for peace of mind.
[producer] Ten seconds
[Eddie] Pursue peace of mind.
If you get that, then you got it all.
[in-studio announcer]
Ladies and gentlemen, Eddie Murphy!
-[band continues]
-[audience cheering]
-[music ends]
-[cheers rising]
It was one of the greatest SNLs ever.
And I walked over to Lorne Michaels
when it was over,
and I said, "You should quit right now."
"It's not gonna get any better than this."
-[upbeat music playing]
-[cheering and whooping]
[Tracy] I said, "Eddie."
He looked at me and said, "What's up?"
I said, "Your life just came 360."
-Yeah, man. Killed that shit.
-[Eddie] Thanks, bro.
This is where it all started.
This is where it all started.
[cheers and clapping rise]
[Eddie] Going back to Saturday Night Live
-That was awesome.
-Amazing.
It was a great experience.
My creative energy,
everything had been turned back up to ten.
It was like, "Hey, I wanted to work."
I think a lot of times we expect comedians
to just walk around telling jokes,
being funny all the time.
And when they don't, you are, like,
reminded that this is their profession.
He's so quiet with his preparation.
Hatch, match, smatch and scratch.
Whack, jack, smack. Crack... Hoo...
[laughing]
I'm sorry. Can we go again?
All of a sudden he just comes back,
and he just gears up and bang, bang, bang.
[funky music playing]
[Pete] I was really blown away
by the Dolemite movie.
It made me just so happy.
Like, that's right, dude.
You can do it anytime you want.
[Hudlin] He still looks like
this awesome leading man.
But I also feel that he's going to have
a Sean Connery period,
like late Sean Connery,
where he's gonna do stuff
in his seventies and eighties
that's gonna be incredible.
[Eddie] I'm doing George Clinton next.
This is going to be a hard one.
I'm Inspector Clouseau
in the next Pink Panther.
Wait, what?
It's a lot of stuff,
and I got to get lost in it.
[music fades]
[Kevin] The question of the century is,
will Eddie ever touch the stage again?
Will he ever do stand-up again?
[Seinfeld] The level at which he did it,
when he did it, was branded onto people.
And the comedians that were young,
that were teenagers,
or maybe a little younger
when he was really hot
Um he's it for them.
He is it.
If it struck me one day,
I would do it again.
I think the reason people be tripping
about it, 'cause it's kinda like,
you know, if you, like,
was a Jimi Hendrix fan,
you know, Jimi Hendrix didn't die,
but he just puts his guitar down
and stops playing one day.
And then he goes off, and he starts
making, you know, movies,
Dr. Dolittle and all of this shit.
And you'd be like, "Hey, Jimi,
you going to play your guitar again?"
He said, "Oh, yeah, eventually."
And then he just never picks it up.
It's like, so you know he can play.
"I know he can play. Why won't he play?"
[laughing]
Especially if you out there trying to play
all the time, going out there playing.
He be like, "Why don't you come play too?
Come jam with us."
[laughing] It's like, "I'm good."
[laughs]
The guy's been famous for longer
than I've been alive, you know?
It'd be really interesting
to hear what he has to say.
What the world looks like to him.
What do we look like to him, you know?
[propulsive music builds slowly]
[Eddie] Oh, I know what this is.
Those are ventriloquist dummies.
Wow!
There's a long history of comedians
that we thought were funny
when they were young.
And then we found out later
they're much funnier when they got older.
Did you put that pill in the chocolate?
Now, see, how you gonna ask me
did I put the pill in the chocolate,
when you know that
I put the pills in the chocolate?!
[laughing loudly]
Hey, man, y'all went all out.
You know, it would be different for Eddie
than any other comedian in history.
He's one of, you know
Two, three guys one guy,
that was given that big a bag of gold
to start out with, you know?
Goddamn, this your place?
Well, I'll be damned.
I put the pill in my motherfucking mouth.
Motherfuck the chocolate.
[Eddie] Yeah.
And it's Paul Mooney, homie.
We've got Paul Mooney,
Richard Pryor, and Bill Cosby.
"This nigga has lost his mind."
That's what Mooney would say.
"In the documentary, he broke out
three nigger puppets, homie."
"Nigger, I spun around
in my grave, homie."
[laughing loudly]
I want to put them in here.
To have them all three together.
[Val] That's Richard eyes.
[Eddie] Yeah, he really made
a good Richard.
-Look.
-You're upstairs in the drawer.
Now why am I in the drawer,
and they are out?
-Here I am.
-[Val] Here she is.
You got me in the drawer.
And look, ooh, who's that?
-[Val] Look at Val.
-Ooh, look at Val.
Ooh, what's this?
Who are these motherfuckers?
Ooh, y'all see Richard Pryor over here?
They don't even know who Richard Pryor
and Bill Cosby, Paul Mooney is.
[Val] Oh, they should.
From this angle, it looks like, uh
Like what? Like who?
Like, Bill Cosby is shooting game at you.
[Val] Like, trying to talk to me?
-[Eddie] Uh-huh.
-[Val laughs] What are you saying, Bill?
[Eddie] "Don't go by what you've heard."
[group laughing]
[emphatically] I'm capable of tenderness
and kindness to you
[Val chuckles]
[Eddie chuckles]
I'm going to show you
my Jell-O pudding pop.
[group laughing]
[Val] Look at him.
[emphatically] I'm going to show you
my Jell-O pudding pop.
I know a lot of people that survived
a lot of weird shit in their lives.
But surviving being Eddie Murphy
is a hell of an accomplishment.
[funky music playing]
What do you say to your mother
when she gives you
a bowl of Jell-O pudding?
I don't give a fuck.
No, because, you see, I didn't put a pill
in the people's chocolate.
Nigga, you know you put that pill
in the chocolate, nigga.
[music fades out]
-[foot tapping]
-[strumming blues riff]
Lord, have mercy
Hear me, Lord
Hear me, Jesus
Hear me, Lord, well
Hear me, Jesus
Hear me, Lord
Hear me, Lord, well
Hear me, Lord, well
Lord, have mercy
Hear me, Lord
Lord, have mercy
Hear me, Lord
Hear me, Jesus
Hear me, Lord
Hear me, Lord, well
Yeah, that's all I got so far.
I'm gonna work on it.
Come up with a second verse.
And a bridge.
And a breakdown section.
For the kids to have
something to dance to.
What you think?
[funky music continues]
[music ends]