I Miss Eddie Murphy

In my last post (Saturday Night Live Shows Its Age), I mentioned, almost in passing, Eddie Murphy's disappointing cameo in SNL's 40th anniversary episode. Since then, many other people have made similar complaints about Murphy's apparent decision to appear but not perform on the SNL special, and a popular question everyone's posing to each other is "Eddie Murphy: unwilling or unable?"

I'll address that question in a moment, but first, it's important to acknowledge that between my most recent post and this one, Norm MacDonald has taken to Twitter to partially explain Murphy's lack of more active involvement with the anniversary special. MacDonald revealed that he was the producer and writer of the "Celebrity Jeopardy" sketch (which was, by far, the funniest segment of the entire production) and that he had approached Murphy to play the role of Bill Cosby, who appears briefly in the segment, ultimately played by current SNL cast member Kenan Thompson.

MacDonald went on to explain that Murphy had gone back and forth about whether to do the Cosby cameo, and ultimately decided against it, because he couldn't bring himself to "kick a man when he's down." MacDonald, though no stranger to sarcasm, seems to be sincere when he asserts that he views the reasons behind Murphy's decision as classy. Regardless of where you stand on the current Bill Cosby scandal, there is surely also a very personal aspect to Murphy's decision: Despite the stylistic differences between Cosby and Murphy -- Murphy even poked fun at this in some of his own stand-up material back in the day -- Murphy has never been shy in telling people that Cosby was one of his idols.

Okay, so now we know that Murphy was supposed to play Cosby, and we know his reasons for turning it down. But that still doesn't answer the original question: Why wasn't his involvement anything more than a few "thank you"s? No jokes, no sketches, no anecdotes about his glory days at SNL, nothing. One thing's for certain: Lorne Michaels and the other decision makers, who have been trying to get Murphy to return to SNL for 35 years, surely would have allowed him to do more if he had wanted to. And so we ask again, Eddie Murphy: unwilling or unable?

The idea that a man once commonly described as "fearless," a man who started his showbiz career as a stand-up comedian and then rose to fame by doing a live national TV show, has developed stagefright, seems, at first, to be a ludicrous idea. But he hasn't done stand-up in decades, and when he was supposed to return to the format as the host of the Oscars a couple of years back, he did back out at the last minute. Same as he did with SNL's 40th. Methinks I spy a pattern developing.

Back when he was an SNL cast member (then, as now, the cast did much of their own writing) he was nothing short of brilliant. Thirty-five years later, and people still talk about it, they still quote his SNL characters. Then he and the other big-name SNL star at the time -- Joe Piscopo -- both left to conquer Hollywood. Piscopo quickly faded into obscurity as a result, but Murphy became the biggest money-maker for Paramount Pictures in the entire history of the studio's existence.  Not only that, but most of those movies weren't just mind-numbing heaps of stupidity that still somehow managed to earn tons of money; on the contrary, most of those movies were actually good, and still stand up today.

So what happened? Don't get me wrong. Eddie Murphy can still be funny. But he's no longer event funny, no longer exciting funny. Some of his movies fail, some succeed, but people generally don't flock to the theaters to see an Eddie Murphy picture anymore. His struggle to become mainstream succeeded all too well, at the expense of being cutting edge. It's not entirely his fault, that's just what happens sometimes with exposure. But still. SNL 40 was a prime opportunity for him to shine, and there's no argument that all the anticipation, all the build-up, to his return was sorely, grievously, enormously disappointing. If he had done a sketch or stand-up routine that proved to be unfunny, that might have been sad in a way, but it still would have been welcome to have him back. But he didn't even try. Eddie Murphy: unwilling or unable?