The “horrendous” movie that got Eddie Murphy in trouble with James Brown: “It was pretty bad”
Few actors have shit all over their own filmography quite like Eddie Murphy, but he’s never said anything that isn’t true.
A common criticism of actors who trash their work in public is that they shouldn’t complain when they were paid millions of dollars for doing so. However, that’s the exact point Murphy has repeatedly made; the only reason he agreed to do them was for the paycheque, and they usually turned out to be crap.
On the plus side, he can wipe away his tears with fat stacks of cash like Woody Harrelson in Zombieland whenever he wants to reflect on his gradual slide down the Hollywood pecking order, with the comic now content to revert to formula and rack up sequels, a far cry from his days as Hollywood’s biggest star bar none.
For the first decade of his career, he was untouchable. These days, though, Murphy seems content to slum it in a string of mundane straight-to-streaming sequels and formulaic genre flicks that only show flickers of his former genius, with Dolemite Is My Name teasing a full-fledged comeback that never came.
Still, he’s got anecdotes for days. One of Murphy’s most famous stories is how James Brown told him that the best way to stop the government from taxing him into oblivion was to bury his money in the woods. The ‘Godfather of Soul’ was surprisingly receptive to the Saturday Night Live star poking fun at him on the sketch series, and when they worked together a decade and a half later, he had an idea.
Fittingly, they crossed paths on one of Murphy’s many terrible films. Not just any terrible film, though, but the one he made after turning down an offer to star opposite Jackie Chan in Rush Hour. Chris Tucker stepped in to co-lead a franchise that made almost $850 million at the box office, and he ended up with Holy Man.
A painfully unfunny comedy that flopped spectacularly, Brown made a cameo appearance as himself in the stodgy spiritual sack of cinematic shite. Reflecting on his SNL skit, Murphy told Jimmy Fallon how the singer gave him the hard sell: “I did this horrendous film once he did a cameo in a movie called Holy Man. It wasn’t that bad, but it was pretty bad,” he said.
“I saw him backstage. He said, ‘You should do my life story,'” Murphy explained. “And I was like, ‘Well, people would be laughing’. He said, ‘No, no’. He said, ‘They’ll be laughing if you were playing around, but if you’re serious, people will take it serious.'” Despite his insistence, the Beverly Hills Cop favourite wasn’t exactly sold on the prospect of headlining the biopic in the late 1990s.
To try to sweeten the deal, Brown then offered another unusual incentive. “He said, ‘I know you’re married, but my daughter’s available,” Murphy recalled. “I laughed and he said, ‘I’m serious’. So he must have liked the impression. He said, ‘Do my life story, have my daughter.'”
In the end, Murphy accepted neither the lead in a biopic nor his daughter’s hand in marriage. He did toy with the prospect for a while when Spike Lee was involved, but getting cornered and accosted on the Holy Man set and brushing Brown off was as far as negotiations got.
