Craig Brewer’s movie sets world premiere
Memphis director Craig Brewer’s Eddie Murphy movie, “Dolemite Is My Name,” will have its world premiere during the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 515.
A comedic biopic, the movie stars Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore, the raunchy “party record” comic and proto-rap raconteur who achieved cult fame in the 1970s as the pimp hero “Dolemite” in a series of low-budget action films.
Shot last summer in Los Angeles, the production went so well that Murphy tapped Brewer to direct “Coming 2 America,” the three-decades-later sequel to his 1988 hit, “Coming to America,” which begins shooting soon.
Produced for Netflix, the Toronto premiere ensures that “Dolemite” will have at least one or two big-screen presentations before it debuts on the paycable channel in October. Netflix has not announced whether the movie will receive a limited theatrical run, as happened with last year’s Best Picture nominee, “Roma.”
Netflix apparently is high on the film. According to reports, the network has offered Murphy $70 million to star in a series of comedy specials that would represent the actor-comic’s first standup work in decades, an indication that “Dolemite” will return Murphy to prominence after a decade-plus of idiosyncratic films (”Norbit”), voice-character work (the “Shrek” films) and supporting roles (”Dreamgirls”).
The impressive supporting cast including Chris Rock, Wesley Snipes, Keegan-michael Key, Tituss Burgess, Craig Robinson, Kodi Smit-mcphee and Mike Epps. Also appearing in a brief role will be Memphis actor Claude Phillips, a distinctive if limited presence in such previous Brewer films as “Hustle & Flow,” “Black Snake Moan” and “Footloose.” Meanwhile, the funk/r&b-infused music score is by Memphis’ Scott Bomar, who also scored “Hustle” and “Black Snake.”
“Dolemite Is My Name” was written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, a team that specializes in biographical films about unusual pop-culture heroes and infamous newsmakers: Their filmography includes “Ed Wood,” “Big Eyes” (about the artists Margaret and Walter Keane), “Man on the Moon” (about Andy Kaufman), TV’S “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” and the made-in-memphis “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” Karaszewski has been a frequent guest at the Indie Memphis Film Festival.
The comparison to “Ed Wood” is especially apt. Like that 1994 film, in which Johnny Depp played the delusional but sincere auteur responsible for a series of bad 1950s science-fiction films, “Dolemite” is a comical but affectionate tribute to an artist working on the margins of Hollywood who did not let his limited resources and arguable talent stop him from creating memorable and highly personal work.
“Dolemite” is set to screen Sept. 7 at Toronto; the exact date for its Netflix debut has yet to be announced, although subscribers already can add it to their Netflix queue. (”The movie is: Heartfelt, Raunchy, Irreverent,” according to the prompt on the network site.) The film marks the Memphis-based Brewer’s first feature since the 2011 “Footloose” remake, after almost a decade of writing, directing and producing for television, from such major-network series as “Empire” to such small-scale projects as the Memphis-based comedy competition, “You Look Like.”
Some other high-profile films set to debut at Toronto include the Tom Hanks “Mr. Rogers” biopic, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”; Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet Tubman biography, “Harriet;” and “Joker,” with Joaquin Phoenix as the Batman villain.