Eddie Murphy, a car park confrontation, and the joke that almost cost him his life: “If I had a gun…”
Stealing jokes from other comedians has always been one of the stand-up circuit’s scourges, but those weren’t accusations Eddie Murphy faced too often during his stage career.
He did adapt one of Richard Pryor’s routines about The Exorcist and update it to make the spiel about Poltergeist instead, but that was more of a tribute than a rip-off, and it was the closest the comic prodigy came to being branded an outright thief, something that can’t be said about Robin Williams.
However, during a performance at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, things got awfully heated when a veteran comedian took umbrage with the brash young upstart, leading to a car park confrontation that could have gotten out of hand, if the would-be assailant had been carrying the right tools for the job.
You don’t become Saturday Night Live‘s breakout star at 19 and the most bankable star in Hollywood by 25 without possessing a confidence that can easily be construed as arrogance, with Murphy’s big mouth almost getting him into more trouble than he bargained for when he pissed off Paul Mooney.
It was the soon-to-be movie star’s first performance at The Comedy Store, and he got a little carried away with himself, basking in the spotlight for too long, turning a ten-minute slot into an hour-long set. John Witherspoon was also there, and he had some sage words for Murphy that he refused to heed.
“He said, ‘Next time they tell you to get off that stage, you better get your ass off that stage,'” he recalled. “I said, ‘Man, fuck you.'” In response, Witherspoon told Murphy, “Fuck you and your mama, too!” before Mooney approached Murphy and made it perfectly clear that he was looking for any reason to fight.
Mooney wanted to hear Murphy’s routine about The Amityville Horror because he had one that was very similar. “I’m not doing my fucking routine in the parking lot,” he was told, which led to the former issuing a threat to the latter and filmmaker John Landis, who’d accompanied his Trading Places star to the gig.
“He said, ‘Fuck you too, white man. If I had a knife, if I had a gun… I’d shoot the both of you,'” Murphy reminisced. That was the first time he’d ever met Mooney in person, and it was nothing if not a moment to remember, since he’d been threatened with grievous bodily harm at the very least, if not murder.
Murphy did befriend them both eventually, but the initial tension was only diffused when his mentor and idol, Richard Pryor, stepped in and forced both Mooney and Witherspoon to apologise. He didn’t get off to the best start with either of them, and it’s fortunate that nobody was carrying a firearm at the time.
