The 1996 scene Eddie Murphy was begged not to shoot: “Tell him to pull the whole sequence”
With the benefit of hindsight, everyone can name at least a couple of movies that Eddie Murphy should have never made, and that includes the actor and comedian himself.
There are at least two generations of audiences and filmgoers who either won’t remember or would refuse to believe that the face of Daddy Day Care, Meet Dave, A Thousand Words, and Brian Wilson’s beloved Norbit used to be the single biggest movie star in the business.
He was, though, and by quite some distance. From the mid-1980s to the end of the decade, Murphy could do absolutely no wrong. Whether it was sketch comedy, stand-up, or feature films, everything he went near was a massive and overwhelming success, but the downside of reaching the top at such a young age is that the wheels have a higher chance of falling off earlier than they normally would.
By the middle of the following decade, the Saturday Night Live alum, still remembered by the show’s creators as the single most important performer in its 50-year existence, was in danger of becoming a laughing stock after several ill-advised career moves and woeful flops severely dented his star power.
As strange as it may sound, Murphy’s bid for reinvention saw him double down on what he’d already done. He’d played multiple characters onscreen before, but never as many as eight in the same picture, which made 1996’s The Nutty Professor an arduous undertaking in more ways than one.
It was his first headlining role since freeing himself from the exclusive Paramount contract he’d signed in the ’80s, and with his critics writing him off, he had a point to prove. Of course, he proved it with a Golden Globe-nominated performance he considers the best of his career, but he faced some opposition along the way.
Initially, Jerry Lewis, the comedy legend who’d co-written, directed, and taken top billing in the original 1963 version of The Nutty Professor, fully endorsed the remake, calling Murphy “one of the five funniest men in the world.” That may not have been true in ’96, but it definitely was at one point, so let’s not split hairs.
Unfortunately, there was a deal-breaker that made Lewis distance himself from the projects, and that deal-breaker was farts, of all things. “When he had to do fart jokes, he lost me,” he shared at the time of the film’s release. “As a matter of fact, I told his editor, ‘If he wants to any more from me on a creative level, tell him to pull the whole sequence.'”
If you’ve seen The Nutty Professor, then you’ll be aware that Murphy didn’t listen, since there were farts aplenty. It was a sore point for Lewis, who sighed that his “perfect” take had been figuratively and almost literally soiled, insisting that “all you’re going to do is diminish that perfection by letting someone else do it.” His erstwhile replacement stood their ground, the flatulence remained, and the movie was so successful that it farted new wind into the sails of his stagnating career.
