Kill Your Idols: Eddie Murphy Delirious

I'd assume.

 

It's unrealistic to expect Murphy to have the same edge he had in 48 Hours, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Delirious, etc... 30+ years later. In Hollywood, even being able to find work 30+ years after your peak is an accomplishment.

He's made a ton of awful movies. So has DeNiro. So has Jim Carrey. So has Pacino.

 

Has Robert De Niro apologized for Taxi Driver? Has Jim Carrey condescended toward Ace Ventura?

 

Is Eddie Murphy not wealthy? And does that matter?

 

Yeah, but Rock is nowhere close to being as wealthy as Sandler and Seinfeld.

I'm sure he's loaded, but Jerry has made hundreds of millions off Seinfeld and Sandler produces most of his own movies, which is why he's one of the richest guys in Hollywood.

 

I doubt Rock has ever had a crazy payday on the level of Murphy getting $20 million plus points for the Shrek sequels.

His biggest paydays are probably for Madagascar. Does that make him a sell out? One of the edgiest comics of all-time voicing a zebra in a kid's movie?

 

It doesn't. That's my point. You can get ridiculously wealthy without selling out, particularly when you were one of the biggest movie stars in the world before selling out.

No. Murphy literally has apologized for his past work. Making Shrek isn't selling out.

 

Murphy has some pretty serious paranoia going on, well beyond the normal media-hating actor or celebrity type. And a very sketchy personal background too.

He might not be selling out. He might just be weird.

But Delirious, yes, is a touchstone for our generation. It stands up well to anything Pryor did.

 

All of this is true... Chappelle may not be a sell out, but he's batshit insane. So is Murphy. A friend used to work for the Starz Channel and she interviewed him shortly after Dreamgirls came out and said he was the strangest celebrity she ever interviewed. She was with him for 20 minutes and they barely were able to get 90 seconds of usable footage. She said he wasn't an asshole, but just wouldn't give direct answers and would look away from the camera all the time.

For the record, she swears Mike Myers is the biggest asshole she's ever interviewed and she's been doing this for a couple different places since 1995.

 

Good point, though Carey did say he can no longer support Kick-Ass 2 before it even came out, which was a little odd.

 

Let's be fair, I seriously doubt Murphy was apologizing for 48 Hours, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America etc...

 

It's worse. He was apologizing for the only material from his career that he's written.