'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.'
TORONTO — Eddie Murphy is very fond of his couch.
The movie is"Dolemite Is My Name," which opens in theaters Friday and arrives on Netflix 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."
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.'" 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.
"I'm nothing like any of my characters. I'm this guy. What I like to do the most is be around my family, sit on the couch, strum the guitar," Murphy says."Even when I'm doing stand-up comedy, it all comes from little snippets of stuff I've really said. But once I put it all together into a structure and go up there in a leather suit, I'm not that guy."Murphy connects with Moore in another way.
It was mounting outside pressure, Murphy says, that caused him to give up stand-up in the first place. In 1996, amid protests in San Francisco over gay slurs from his 1980s act, Murphy issued a statement apologizing for jokes about AIDS.
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