Frustrating fart jokes, workplace frenemies, and full-on egomania! The Nutty Professor
might be hilarious — but behind the scenes, the film was far from a laughing matter!
Jerry Lewis movies were popular with kids, and he always strove to make entertainment
the entire family could enjoy. While The Nutty Professor was of course
popular with young tykes, it was surprisingly geared more towards an adult audience.
Paramount was concerned about The Nutty Professor because it was more of an adult film,
or as adult as Jerry Lewis could get. As it turned out, the film was a big crowd-pleasing
hit for people of all ages, while earning Jerry Lewis some of the best reviews of his career.
It would also be Lewis' peak as a filmmaker, the ultimate culmination of his skills as a funny man
and writer-director. In 2004, The Nutty Professor was entered into the Library
of Congress as an important comedy that will be preserved for generations to come.
When Eddie Murphy wanted to remake The Nutty Professor, he had to go to Jerry Lewis directly,
because he owned the rights. The film was going to feature a Lewis cameo before he
decided to back out. The reason? Too many fart jokes. Lewis confirmed to Entertainment Weekly:
"When he had to do fart jokes, he lost me."
"Who there called my name?"
"Yeah, I called you if your name is (fart)."
Even though the Nutty Professor remake turned out well, with decent reviews and strong box office,
Lewis eventually regretted letting the picture move forward. Lewis told Entertainment Weekly,
"I have such respect for Eddie,
but I shouldn't have done it. What I did was perfect the first time around,
and all you're going to do is diminish that perfection by letting someone else do it."
Like many comedians, Eddie Murphy used Saturday Night Live as the launching pad for his success.
After the box office success of 48 Hours, Murphy's career took off like a rocket. The
actor would soon make a trio of hits with Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, and Coming to America.
After he made Coming to America, however, Murphy's career took a nose dive with bombs
like Harlem Nights, Boomerang, and the painfully unfunny Beverly Hills Cop III.
Murphy desperately needed a hit, and The Nutty Professor felt like it was make or break.
Thankfully, Eddie Murphy pulled it off, and The Nutty Professor was indeed a big success,
making $273 million worldwide. It also got mostly positive notices from critics,
who were delighted that Murphy was finally funny again.
Not only was The Nutty Professor a big hit when Eddie Murphy needed it, it was also the beginning
of a new phase of his career where he was doing more family-friendly entertainment. Back in the
'80s, Murphy was known for his outrageous, down-and-dirty brand of comedy. In order to
reinvent himself, he had to play a more vulnerable role, and leave his usual slick, wisecracking,
foul-mouthed persona behind him. Brian Grazer, who produced The Nutty Professor, told the L.A. Times,
"The only way to do that is have him play a character that
is vulnerable [...] it strips away Eddie's coolness for a while and
is a role that allows him not to be in control or powerful in the beginning."
After The Nutty Professor, Murphy had some of the biggest hits of his
career with more family-friendly films like Doctor Dolittle, Daddy Daycare,
and of course, the animated blockbuster Shrek.
"You must bleach or something because that is one
dazzling smile you got there. And do I detect a hint of minty freshness?"
He was also nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Dreamgirls,
proving he had even greater range and depth than many people realized.
In 1978, John Landis established himself as an A-list director
when he helmed National Lampoon's Animal House, which was the biggest comedy hit of its time.
"I'm a zit. Get it?"
Landis also directed Eddie Murphy in the smash hits
Trading Places and Coming to America. But Landis and Murphy had a difficult
working relationship on Coming to America. Landis revealed to Collider,
"The guy on 'Trading Places' was young and full of energy and curious and funny
and fresh and great. The guy on 'Coming to America' was the pig of the world [...]"
Eventually Landis and Murphy patched things up and worked together again on Beverly Hills Cop III. It
was also revealed that Landis nearly directed The Nutty Professor. According to a report in the Los
Angeles Times, Landis was eager to come aboard. It's not clear why he didn't helm the movie,
but Landis and Murphy reportedly remain cordial, with Landis telling Empire:
"I see Eddie around occasionally. I drive by, we wave."
While another Landis-Murphy pairing didn't come together, Tom Shadyac,
who just had a big hit with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, came aboard instead, amounting to a
big step up in his directing career. In fact, after the success of The Nutty Professor,
Shaydac became a comedy powerhouse, directing Jim Carrey again in Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty.
Over time, however, Shadyac had a spiritual awakening after suffering
a bicycling accident in 2007 that left him with some lingering brain issues.
As he recovered, he decided to sell his mansion and live in a trailer park in Malibu.
He also gave away a substantial amount of money, telling CBS:
"The more I give away, the wealthier I feel."
Shadyac's spiritual journey was chronicled in the documentary I Am,
and as he said in Pepperdine University's online magazine:
"The accident didn't create a wisdom moment — I simply got knocked from my head to my heart
and had the courage to talk about the hypocrisy I'd woken up to in my life."
In both versions of The Nutty Professor, Buddy Love is an egotistical jerk.
Some feel the character isn't too far from Jerry Lewis and Eddie Murphy in real life.
"You rude, discourteous egomaniac."
"You're crazy about me right? And I can understand it."
As Landis revealed in an interview with Collider, Murphy reached a point where
he really got carried away with himself. Murphy even admitted to The Seattle Times:
"I've had periods when I wasn't grounded. Anytime you saw me in a leather suit with
a leather glove with a ring on the outside of the glove, at that period I'm not grounded."
Jerry Lewis wasn't exactly Mr. Humble either.
As critic Jonathan Rosenbaum observed in American Movie Classics magazine:
"Part of what's so disturbing about Buddy Love is
that Lewis clearly knows him like the back of his hand."
Film historian James Neibaur also noted in the New York Post,
"Everybody's got a Jekyll and Hyde personality — and [Buddy] was [Jerry Lewis'] Mr. Hyde."
One of Eddie Murphy's most important creative partners is legendary make-up artist Rick Baker,
who provided pioneering effects for An American Werewolf in London,
Thriller, and Men in Black, to name a few. Baker and Murphy worked together on a number of films,
and their partnership on The Nutty Professor was probably their most groundbreaking collaboration.
Baker did the make-up for Coming to America, which is the first time Murphy hilariously
played multiple characters. With The Nutty Professor, Murphy took the multiple character
idea even further, playing a total of seven people, including Sherman's mother and father,
who make hilarious banter around the dinner table. The Nutty Professor was
one of Baker's most challenging make-up jobs, yet he told The New York Post:
"[Eddie] was so polite and cooperative. He actually enjoys the process of becoming someone
else. [...] Eddie would disappear so completely as soon as I slipped that mask over his face."
When The Nutty Professor came out, there was no such term as "fat shaming,"
and fat people had long been an easy target of cruel jokes. Yet from the beginning,
Murphy wanted to show a more compassionate look at being heavyset.
Before the Nutty Professor shoot, Murphy told the Los Angeles Times:
"America is obsessed with weight — you have to look a certain way. There
will be fat jokes at every turn, but this movie is not a [put down] of fat people."
With at least one plus-size performer, The Nutty Professor hit a nerve.
Pop singer Lizzo recently told Variety that she related in an emotional way to a scene in
which Professor Klump opens a drawer to reveal a secret stash of candy. Lizzo told the outlet:
"I could literally cry right now thinking about it. People around me were laughing,
but I hide food too. I feel him. I feel sympathy and empathy for him."
Jada Pinkett Smith played Sherman Klump's love interest, Carla Purty,
in The Nutty Professor. The role was a big step up for Pinkett Smith's career — except
that she hated the wig she was forced to wear. As she recalled on "Red Table Talk,"
"They put me in some crazy wigs for sure, where people didn't really know enough
about Black hair to know how to make wigs and what wigs should look like."
Smith called the wig she had to wear a "rough one," adding that the woman who created it
did not have a good grasp of how Black women wore and styled their own hair. After that,
Pinkett Smith had her own hairdresser on every subsequent film.
While the second Nutty Professor film, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, wasn't the box office
powerhouse that the first movie was, the sequel still did well. So it's not surprising that
there's been another remake in the works. But the real surprise is who's planning the new version.
James Vanderbilt, who wrote the David Fincher true crime classic Zodiac, as well as Scream 5,
managed to secure the rights for a Nutty Professor remake. It's strange to think
that the screenwriter behind such scary and grim entertainment could be spearheading the
next Nutty Professor film, and it definitely feels like an odd fit. But maybe Vanderbilt
can come up with a whole new imaginative spin on the story for today's audiences.
Ultimately, the Nutty Professor movies have a terrific legacy.
The original will always be considered Jerry Lewis' best-known work, and Eddie Murphy
was able to create a surprisingly empathetic update that made audiences howl with laughter.
If there are more Nutty Professor movies in the future, here's hoping they can deliver
the same good message of self-love and individuality that worked so well before.