- I am Krista Smith and I am the host of "The Corner Booth"
and I am sitting here with Eddie Murphy,
legend in the house.
Director Craig Brewer and we're gonna talk about their film,
"Dolemite Is My Name."
- Dolemite is my name and fucking up
motherfuckers is my game.
(trumpet riff)
- Well so much of it is the chemistry
and you handpicked this cast.
Did you know specifically you wanted Wesley?
- D'Urville Martin, I'm offering you a role
in my new motion picture theme.
- You think you can just walk up here and hire me?
No.
- I'm a big Wesley Snipes fan,
although he's famous mostly for action movies
and stuff like that, that I remember in the beginning
of this career that Wesley did "White Men Can't Jump."
He did all kinds of stuff so I knew the talent
that the actor had.
- Yeah I remember when we were trying to think
of who could be D'Urville Martin, you know we had
the pick of Hollywood like everyone wanted to be
in the movie, everybody wanted to work with Eddie.
Eddie just went
"It's gotta be Wesley"
and then I just, I just froze, just with excitement
thinking about wow what would it be like to see
Eddie Murphy and Wesley Snipes in the frame
up on the screen together it's never been done before.
- And you didn't get Wesley to do any Karate which
I thought was funny too.
- I thought it was funny to see Wesley fight, awful.
(all laugh)
- [Krista] The guys got like a room full of trophies,
right as a black belt.
- I think he enjoyed doing that,
I think he, it was, fun for him to not be Blade.
- Seeing where he's shooting Rudy do fight scenes
and he's looking around kind of like,
I think those get big, giant laughs cause it's Wesley.
(all laugh)
- It's amazing, I'll tell you it was great.
But also the discovery of Da'Vine.
She is incredible in the film as Lady Reed.
- Hey bartender how about a drink for the pretty girl?
- Come on now I know what the hell I am.
I ain't pretty and I sure as hell ain't no goddamn girl.
- And she had said that you know in working with you,
Eddie, she was prepared for what she thought it was
going to be and it was something do different than that.
You were so generous with her and that-
- She thought I wasn't gonna be generous?
(mocking Da'Vine) All right Imma go on in with this
selfish motherfucker.
(all laugh)
- (Eddie continues mocking Da'Vine) I've seen him play
eight people in a movie, he's got to be selfish.
(all laugh)
- Da'Vine's a very talented actress,
I don't know if you remember this but I said
if you want this role then you need to do like
a good minute or two minutes of Lady Reed's act.
I got a call from Eddie just like oh she's perfect.
- Yeah, she brought all this other stuff to it
that we wasn't even thinking about the stuff that she
brought to it till we saw her do it.
It was like whoa she took it from here to here.
- What made you think that Rudy
would be a good story to tell?
- I was a fan of his movies for years and years
and then when I got older and got in the movie
business started looking at his movies in a different way.
When I was a kid I didn't know that he put the whole
thing together and financed it and did all of it.
And I got this respect for him.
- I'm paying for this whole goddamn thing and I
ain't got no fucking ego about it.
If a box need to get moved, I will move the box.
And if the crew get hungry I'll go downstairs
and start making sandwiches.
- What made you think this guy would be the
right director for it?
- Well when I met with him he loved the, he knew
who Rudy Ray Moore was.
Whoever does this has to know who Rudy Ray Moore is
and they have to get it.
- Now how did you discover Rudy Ray Moore?
- I collect a lot of vinyl but uh, when I was
making independent movies, we'd be on set and
we'd quote lines from "Dolemite."
It's this weird piece of cinema that for whatever
reason works even though nothing really works in the movie.
Microphones coming into the frame and karate kicks
where there's like three feet between the foot
and the person reacting to it. It's hilarious.
- How was it getting your visions to mesh?
- I found that the really really good stuff
falls in the place.
Scott and Larry were the perfect writers.
And then we got the perfect director and then
we had the perfect cast and it just, you know,
it just came together.
- Like there was this one scene where
Rudy Ray Moore is doing his act for the first time.
He's pulled out the wig out of the box,
he's got the outfit and you know, when you have music
that's gonna be in the scene there's all these kind
of technical things you gotta do like have a ear wig
and hear the music so it doesn't turn up on the microphones.
All this technical stuff and what we found was what was
better to do was just to have it be real
and so we had a band behind Eddie,
we would just roll three cameras on the experience of him
being Rudy in that moment it always just felt better
to just be real with it.
- That's a great environment to go into.
So I was having fun everyday.
♪ He said your daddy's a freak and your mama's a whore ♪
(crowd howls)
♪ Said he spotted you in the jungle ♪
♪ Selling your black ass from door to door ♪
(crowd cheers)
- Was it hard to keep a straight face all the time?
- Yeah cause those shoes was hurting.
It was hard not to grimace in the platform shoes.
- [Krista] And you guys got to shoot your walk and talk
on the hottest day in California apparently.
- [Craig] Do you remember that?
- Do I remember that?
Platforms on and it was like okay now we're gonna go
really wide in 110 degrees with platform heels.
- [Craig] And a wig.
- What do you hope audience take from this film.
Those that might not know who Rudy Ray Moore is
and those that knew who he was.
- I think he needs to be given his due as one
of the pioneers in independent guerrilla filmmaking.
Uh, that's how I started up in my career,
I didn't go to film school or anything like that.
I just grabbed a camera and showed up at locations
and tried to talk people into it
and that's how Rudy did you know,
you don't have any power in the building and you steal it
from next door and it's that kind of spirit that I think
that he embodied in his self and in his work and
I hope that's what people take from him.
- And it's so inspirational like look what this guy did.
- I think it's surprising to people.
So I think that when they hear that it's about this crude
uh, you know Blaxploitation star and filmmaker
that I had one vision of what this would be but they
come out and they're much more inspired.
- This movie went so well that uh, we're doing
"Coming to America" together.
- Thank you guys for coming by.
- [Craig] Thank you.
- [Eddie] Thank you for having us.
(jazz riff)