Eddie Murphy Out of His Family-Film Rut

Eddie Murphy seems to be on a journey of career reinvention, one that began with his recent, numerous appearances on various talk shows, continues this weekend with his turn in Brett Ratner’s “Tower Heist” (a film in which Post film critic Ann Hornaday says he returns to “signature form”) and will culminate — if all goes according to plan — with his hosting performance at this year’s Academy Awards.


The rise of Murphy 2.0 has prompted some fond remembrances of his career. When Murphy recently appeared on “The Late Show,” for example, David Letterman devoted an inordinate amount of time to reading his filmography. (For reasons that remain a mystery, Letterman emphasized “Beverly Hills Cop III,” rather than the first or second, superior Axel Foley flicks.)


By now, the highlights of Murphy’s career are well-known — “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood,” Buckwheat and Gumby on “Saturday Night Live”; “Trading Places,” the aforementioned “Beverly Hills Cop”; “Coming to America.” But there are some truly amazing accomplishments on Murphy’s resume that some may have forgotten or neglected. Here are five of them. And no, none of them involves “Beverly Hills Cop III.”


Tyrone Greene doing “Kill My Landlord”


For those with vague memories of early ‘80s “SNL,” it may be tough to grasp this. But here’s the truth: when he was on the show Eddie Murphy WAS SNL. Sure, there were other talented people in the cast (Joe Piscopo and Julia Louis-Drefuss among them) but Murphy was the chief reason we all watched. And the number of amazing, memorable sketches he did — including the Velvet Jones School of Technology, James Brown’s Celebrity Hot Tub Party, as Stevie Wonder, dueting with Frank Sinatra (Piscopo) on “Ebony and Ivory” — during two and a half seasons was pretty astonishing. But here’s one that, while totally un-P.C. by today’s standards, doesn’t get the credit that the Gumby and Buckwheat sketches did — Tyrone Green reciting his epic poem, “Kill My Landord.”


Market Value: In his eighties heyday, Murphy could bring in $200 million at the box office (Beverly Hills Cop). Even Raw, his second stand-up film, earned $50 million in theaters. But with his reinvention as a zany family star, Murphy’s individual draw is a fraction of what it used to be, and he’s remained stubborn about his $20 million asking price. A giant franchise like Shrek could afford to overpay him (he’s understood to have made more than $60 million from those movies), but his most recent kid-friendly vehicles, 2008’s friendly alien adventure Meet Dave, grossed only $11 million domestically, and Imagine That just $16 million. Not promising is that after Tower Heist, he’s slated for A Thousand Words, another project with the creative minds that brought you Norbit and Meet Dave.


What Hollywood Thinks: “For years, he wouldn’t meet writers, wouldn’t meet directors,” says one talent agent. “You just had to bring him the offer. The problem was that he made a number of bad choices.” It would be more accurate to say that Murphy made one choice, over and over and over again: money. While other top stars would routinely cut their prices to do projects they loved or coveted, Murphy said yes to whatever could pay, and, after the failure of his directorial debut Harlem Nights, which he also wrote, stopped expressing interest in passion projects.


“He’s gotta re-create himself and become about being an actor,” says another agent. "Otherwise, I think he’s pretty much done.” Done, because even Murphy now knows that the movie business has changed, seismically, in the last few years. DVD sales dived, and with them, the town's ability to overpay him. “He was notorious for not doing the press. But the business has changed quite a bit; you can’t do that anymore. You have to do the press. You have to play the game.” Adds our producer, “It’s the dawn of a new day — even in Eddie Murphy’s world. No one, except maybe Will Smith and Adam Sandler, is getting their quotes met anymore.”


In a recent Rolling Stone interview to promote Tower Heist, the actor promised to make some of the necessary career adjustments. (Indeed, the sheer fact that Murphy was talking to the press to promote a film — something he’d stopped doing around the time of his 1997 arrest — suggested he was already making significant changes.) And agents say a different Murphy appears to be making the rounds in Hollywood’s agencies. “Now he’s opening to meeting with emerging writers, finding that new director,” says a third agent, “It’s about finding the two-hander, where it’s about him and another guy.”


Part of the change that’s come over Murphy is that his longtime agent was forced out as head of the William Morris Agency after its merger with Endeavor. “When it was Jim Wiatt representing him, there wasn’t an openness to creative deal-making, perhaps because he’d been in his life for so long,” says one agent. “Now he has [Adam Sandler’s agent] Adam Venit in his life, so Adam has the ability to come at him with new angles.”


Then again, this agent continues, Murphy has little choice. “With the exception of Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, no one in Hollywood seems to be able to pull off a comedy by themselves anymore. The industry changed seismically in the last few years. If you’re not consistently having monster openings, then you’re not going to be able to get that deal you once got.” Our second agent dishes, “For Tower Heist, I know he certainly didn’t get anywhere near his payday, and he didn’t get all of his perks. His longtime makeup artist? They wouldn’t pay for her to come to New York and pay to have her put up. He had to use whomever they hired for the movie.”


The Analysis: Murphy’s phoned-in family film career has alienated his original fan base and failed to earn a new one (beyond Shrek fans, who now think of him as an animated donkey). “He needs to start taking his career seriously again,” offers one publicist we talked to. “Because if he doesn’t, why should America?” This publicist adds that his scandals and resultant low profile have taken their toll. “Murphy has been irrelevant for so long. The question is not what people think of him, but if they think of him at all.”


With Tower Heist, Murphy has returned to his rough-and-tumble form, agents say, and even as they admit the film’s tracking is mediocre, they think “there could be a resurgence for Eddie. People want to see the edgier Eddie Murphy.” Murphy will be well served if he truly has stopped insisting on massive paydays that leave room for no one else. If Tower Heist marks an actual shift in Murphy’s strategy, rather than another Dreamgirls-like blip in his autopilot career, then our experts think he could find his audience again. (Whatever his post–Thousand Days project is will serve as a better indicator of his intent.) But more than even Tower Heist, what will influence the town’s perception of Murphy is how he handles the Oscars next year. “If he pulls that off, it will matter,” says one agent, “ People notice if people do really badly, or really well.”


All about: Academy Award,  Best Supporting Actor,  Cinema of the United States, Hollywood,  AMPAS,  Eddie Murphy