The only thing Eddie Murphy does less than interviews is make good movies, so when he recently sat down with Rolling Stone to address both, it was kind of a big deal. Among his intriguing statements were that he’s through making family movies and is looking for “edgy stuff.” Let’s just hope “edgy” doesn’t mean more Brett Ratner movies, like the one he’s in next month. Doing 15 years of fatsuit movies tends to warp your perspective.
Murphy says that his days of making family movies may be over. “I don’t have any interest in that right now,” he says. “There’s really no blueprint, but I’m trying to do some edgy stuff. And I only want to do what I really want to do, otherwise I’m content to sit here and play my guitar all day. I always tell people now that I’m a semi-retired gentleman of leisure, and occasionally I’ll go do some work to break the boredom up.”
“I’ve already accomplished everything I wanted to. Right now I’m just, like, content to focus on my music or whatever.” (*blows bangs out of eyes, plays intro to “Tainted Love” on Casio*)
Murphy has decided not to make Beverly Hills Cop IV. [Which was also rumored to be a Ratner project. -Ed.] “They’re not doing it,” he says. “What I’m trying to do now is produce a TV show starring Axel Foley’s son, and Axel is the chief of police now in Detroit. I’d do the pilot, show up here and there. None of the movie scripts were right; it was trying to force the premise. If you have to force something, you shouldn’t be doing it. It was always a rehash of the old thing. It was always wrong.”
YOU MIGHT AS WELL SLAP THE FOOD RIGHT OUT OF JUDGE REINHOLD’S MOUTH, YOU COLD-HEARTED SON OF A BITCH!
Unlike other Saturday Night Live alumni, Murphy has refused to participate in retrospectives and hasn’t been on the show in years – but he’s gotten over his grudge. “They were sh*tty to me on Saturday Night Live a couple of times after I’d left the show,” he says. “They said some sh*tty things. There was that David Spade sketch [when Spade showed a picture of Murphy around the time of Vampire In Brooklyn and said, ‘Look, children, a falling star’]. I made a stink about it, it became part of the folklore. What really irritated me about it at the time was that it was a career shot. I felt shitty about it for years, but now, I don’t have none of that.”
So you’re saying you’ve seen Grown Ups…
Murphy hasn’t performed stand-up since the late 1980s, but recently, he’s given some thought to trying again. “If I ever get back onstage, I’m going to have a really great show for you all,” he says. “An hour and a half of stand-up and about 40 minutes of my sh*tty band… But I haven’t done it since I was 27, so why f*ck with it? But that’s just weighing both sides. It comes up too much for me to not do it again. It’s like, when it hits me, I’ll do it, eventually.” [RollingStone — issue hits stands tomorrow]
Well if and when Eddie Murphy finally decides whether to consider maybe doing stand-up again, I probably might think about going. I mean, I’d definitely think about buying a ticket, eventually. It’d be silly not to! But maybe that’s just me being silly. Oh no, I’ve said too much!