[IMG:L]Hollywood is full of family dynasties, from the Barrymores to the Judds. Usually the children or siblings are thrust into the spotlight by sheer virtue of their last names, but Eddie Murphy‘s brother Charlie only recently took the spotlight, thanks to his writing and acting gig on the short-lived but insanely popular Chappelle’s Show.
His trademark bit, Charlie Murphy‘s True Hollywood Stories – narrated by Murphy and re-enacted by Dave Chappelle – had Murphy recall tales of traveling Tinseltowwn as part of his brother’s posse, playing basketball with Prince or listening to Rick James’ trash talk. (If you haven’t heard or uttered the phrase “I’m Rick James, bitch!” in the past few years, you may have been living in the Kalahari).
In the post-Chappelle era, Charlie Murphy‘s latest project, Norbit comes to DVD June 5 – Charlie co-wrote the script with Eddie, their first such collaboration since 1995’s Vampire in Brooklyn. We got our own Charlie Murphy True Hollywood Story when he started dishing about little brother during a phone interview.
Hollywood.com: What’s your process of writing with Eddie?
Charlie Murphy: The process was “Tape the windows up and don’t come out the room until you finish.” That was the process.
HW: Just grind it out?
CM: Grind it out, that’s the only way to do it. If you walk away from a story while you’re doing it, it’s really hard to re-engage. Once you start, you’ve got to go all the way to the end.
[IMG:R]HW: When you start the script, do you know how many characters Eddie will play?
CM: I think Norbit was the last time he’s going to do that. He made the statement he’s tired of going through the process. He’s got nothing else to prove as far as his ability to do that. I think he’s displayed that he’s very good at doing it and he did it. Now he’s just doing funny stuff, but it’s not going to involve a lot of makeup for a while.
HW: But when you did Norbit, did you know he was playing three characters or did that come later?
CM: In the beginning, Norbit was actually more than three. Norbit was an entire family. He realized that that’s too much. He was supposed to play every role: Norbit, Rasputia and the entire family. I was saying, “Come on, man. You’re going to kill yourself with that. It’s too much.”
HW: The humor is so visual, how do you convey that in the script?
CM: That’s the talent of Eddie Murphy, bro. We’ll sit down and we write things, it’s something that we wrote and we knew as we were writing what we wanted it to look like and how he wanted the scene to flow. It wasn’t like he was he was interpreting somebody else’s work which is an actor’s job. It’s much easier when you’re interpreting with cameras in your own brain.
HW: And he still improvises, right?
CM: Oh, he can’t help that. Whatever you think is happening today, tomorrow he’s going to add on to it. Every movie that Eddie Murphy has ever been in, if you look at the finished project and what was on paper, he always lifted the scene to make it higher, put the joke to the next level from what it was on the page…Nobody writes jokes for Eddie Murphy. He writes his own jokes.
HW: Was it hard to stay within the PG-13 constraints?
CM: Oh trust me, it was way over the PG-13 realm in its original state. That’s what the process was, to go from lightening it up and lightening it up and lightening it up and lightening it up until finally it was to that level where you could call it PG-13. In the beginning, Norbit was very “Rated R” because it was much more violent. The violence was more everywhere. Rasputia was really going hard. In the one you got to see, Rasputia roughed him up a little bit but nothing like we had it in the beginning. She was really mowing him down. She’d mow him down, her brothers were mowing him down, the police department was mowing him down. Everybody was beating Norbit up. We lightened it up to where the only person that was really abusing Norbit kind of was Rasputia.
HW: Has Chappelle’s Show made you as well known as Eddie?
CM: I don’t think so. It’s made me very well known but I would not say that I’m as well known as Eddie. The proof of that is I’ve been in other countries and people come up to me and say, “You look like Eddie Murphy. We love him.” They’re not coming up and saying, “You’re Eddie‘s brother” or nothing. They just say you look like him. He’s much more of a famous person than I am. He’s a global phenom. Charlie Murphy‘s a guy from Chappelle’s Show that did all right and I hope I can keep doing all right…Chappelle’s Show is a TV show. Eddie Murphy‘s a movie star. Chappelle’s Show was a TV show. It’s a very well known TV show and very popular, but I think movie stars are a little bit more known than TV stars. That’s why they call it the big screen. He’s on the big screen.
[IMG:L]HW: How big a change has it been for you to be known at all?
CM: It’s not easy, man. You may think you’re just getting ready to go to the store to get a cold drink or whatever, and that turns into now you’re standing in front of the store talking to somebody that you weren’t expecting to be talking to. You don’t even know the person. You were just talking to them because they knew you. They’ve seen you before. They’re excited to see you. You can’t just walk away from them and not engage them. Today I went to the newsstand around the corner from my house. It was at 7:30 in the morning. That’s very early. I go to the newsstand, get me a cup of coffee, I won’t add any more to the picture as far as how I look but I still looked enough like myself for the guy to go, “It’s Charlie Murphy!” I’m going, “Oh, not now.” And he goes, “Hey, I just moved here from Nashville this morning.” How are you going to walk away from him? So now I’m standing there talking to this guy like I’ve known him for 20 years and I just came up to get a cup of coffee, now. So things are a whole lot different.
HW: Would you have had more True Hollywood Stories if the show had continued?
CM: I doubt it. In terms of Rick James ones, I don’t think we would have kept pumping those out because we got the whole Hollywood Story thing and looked at it as, “Charlie Murphy telling us all these funny stories about people that he hung out with in Hollywood.” So I have stories about everybody who I hung out with in Hollywood. All of them are not funny. Some of them are tragic. Some of them are things that you would never tell about another person and still call yourself their friend. So as far as the things that were funny, those things came up on the fly when we got talking. “Oh, that came up. I’m glad everybody enjoyed it.” But to put it all together, what I’m trying to say is I don’t think I would have had to come up with another or continue putting up Charlie Murphy‘s True Hollywood Stories because there’s other things that Charlie Murphy can do to make people laugh, which is obvious. Now I’m doing standup comedy and have been for the last four years. It’s all good.
HW: Do you feel protective of Eddie going through rough stuff like the Tracy Edmonds and Mel C. situation?
CM: Look, look, look, man. I have children. Eddie is a grown man. He’s very well capable of taking care of himself. If I’m standing right next to him and somebody jumped on him, yeah, I’d be right there with him. But my man, I have more respect for him than to be like I think he needs protecting from me. Eddie Murphy‘s street.
HW: How is he doing right now?
CM: He’s doing great. He’s happy. Think about this. Eddie just came off a three piece combination. He had Dreamgirls, blockbuster, Norbit, blockbuster and then Shrek, blockbuster. He’s doing good. It’s not time to be unhappy. It’s time to laugh and have fun.
HW: Does funny run in the family?
CM: In our case, I would have to say yes. My whole family, uncles, everybody, man.
