And it’s not to say that Murphy hasn’t had his share of flops, because he has.
There was the $1 million for a week of shooting the instantly forgettable “Best Defense” in 1984. Murphy signed on to “Beverly Hills Cop III” knowing the script wasn’t working. “Meet Dave.” “Holy Man.” “A Thousand Words.” Murphy has confessed to doing them all.
“It’s very hard when you grow up in the projects to turn down the money they’ve been offering you,” Murphy says in a Washington Post interview. Even though he also wishes he could’ve been more selective.
But don’t count Eddie out yet. In a 2016 podcast interview, Eddie states:
“I had stopped doing standup because it had stopped being fun, and the reason it stopped being fun was it was harder to write — and this is before the internet — it was harder to write new stuff. It had gotten so crazy. Like if I went to the club and tried out a bit, the next day it could be like ‘Oh I saw Eddie was onstage at the so-and-so and he said yada yada’ and I’d be like ‘Man, I ain’t even finished that bit yet!’ And it’d be people talking about it: ‘What’d you think of that new joke?’ And it was like ‘What the fuck?’ And this was years ago it started, so it was like ‘Ehh, maybe I’ll take a little break from standup.’”
“And then the break just got longer, then the whole Def Jam thing started with those comedians, and the whole comedy scene just turned into this big other thing. For years I’d been procrastinating about it going “Oh I’ll do standup again,” and it just got to, all of a sudden, I’m this far away from it. But honestly, now I really am curious about doing it again because it’s been so long and so much has changed and I’m such a different person. I’m curious as to what it would be like if I got onstage. But, if I do that, whoever comes to see it has to sit through a bunch of my shitty songs.”
We’d sit through them. And be right there in the front row. 😉