In ‘Coming 2 America,’ Craig Brewer takes Eddie Murphy back to Zamunda
It’s pretty much redundant to comment that someone “never imagined” some major event in his or her life, because, well, duh. Life generally doesn’t work that way.
Still, let’s go ahead and say it: When Memphis filmmaker Craig Brewer was a teenager, and he and his late father, Walter Brewer, went to see “Coming to America” at the theater in 1988, when Eddie Murphy was one of the fatherand-son duo’s favorite performers, he never suspected, dreamed, intuited, fantasized, prophesied or imagined that he, Craig Brewer, student actor and high-school playwright, would one day direct a sequel to the film that Murphy last week described, in an interview, as “the first movie in the history of movies that had an all-black cast that was successful around the world.”
That sequel, “Coming 2 America,” debuts March 5 on the Amazon Prime Video streaming service. Amazon bought the film in October from Paramount in a reported $125 million deal, after it became apparent that
COVID-19 uncertainty would make a wide theatrical release unlikely until at least mid-2021.
Filled with comedy and dance and music (a Prince cover!) and cameos (Salt-n-pepa!) and lions and lavish sets and costumes by Ruth E. Carter that take the Oscar-winning Afrofuturism of her “Black Panther” designs to new levels of extravagant imagination, “Coming 2 America” was made to be seen in a packed movie house with an enthusiastic audience.
The pandemic has made that impossible. The compensation, for those who created it, is that the movie likely will be seen by millions more people in its first few days of availability than would have watched it in a theater in its opening weekend in the Before Time. Social media will explode, in real time, as people react to the film.
The compensation, for the audience, is that “Coming 2 America” no doubt will be Event Viewing in an era when most events have been canceled. The PG-13 film (the original is rated R) is likely to be a social happening in an age of social distancing — an excuse for young and old members of the household to gather together to watch Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Shari Headley, John Amos and James Earl Jones join hands with a new, younger generation of “Zamundans“(”Zamunda“being the fictional African nation from whence Murphy’s Prince Akeem came in “Coming to America”).
“Anyone who is Black anywhere on the planet and a lot of folks in general love and quote and live this movie,” said Amos, referring to the 1988 original, in a Zoom interview with reporters earlier this month.
“I’m pretty confident we’re going to be huge on Amazon,” Brewer said.
Anyway you size it, “Coming 2 America” — generous in budget and scale — is the biggest project yet from the Memphis-based filmmaker who premiered his first feature, “The Poor & Hungry,” a made-in-memphis almost no-budget video drama, on May 16, 2000, at the Malco Ridgeway Four.
33 years after ‘Coming to America’
Directed by John Landis, whose first hit was “Animal House” and who previously had worked with Murphy on “Trading Places,” “Coming to America” is the story of Akeem, prince of Zamunda, who defies his nation’s arrangedmarriage tradition and travels to America — to be specific, Queens (where else would one find a potential princess?) — in hopes of finding a woman he actually loves to be his wife.
The new movie reunites most of the original characters (including the hilarious barbershop old-timers played by Murphy and Hall under layers of prosthetic makeup), but reverses the geographical emphasis: “The first movie is bookended by Zamunda and takes place in Queens, whereas this movie is bookended by Queens and takes place in Zamunda,” Brewer said.
More significant, the script — credited to the original movie’s writers, Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield, and relative newcomer Kenya Barris, the creator of the TV series “Black-ish“— recognizes that 33 years have passed since audiences last saw Akeem.
The conflict this time is over a different Zamundan tradition: The idea that the country’s ruling monarch must be a man. To this end, Akeem’s previously unknown son and only male offspring — a result of the sowing of “royal oats” named Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler) — is brought to Zamunda, to be a prince-intraining.
The product of a misbegotten onenight-stand, Lavelle initially is considered an unwelcome intruder by his three half-sisters. The most aggrieved of these is Meeka (Kiki Layne), who has spent her life preparing to succeed her father on the throne. (Lavelle’s mother is played by Memphis-born “Saturday Night Live” alum Leslie Jones; “I love her to death,” Brewer said. “She would always call me ‘Memphis.’”)
Like the intentional absence of animal pelts in Carter’s costume design (which includes an Elvis-esque jumpsuit that represents the first nod to the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in a Brewer film), the female empowerment angle is a way in which “Coming 2 America” updates its 1988 context for a 2021 consciousness.
“Craig Brewer read the room when he was directing those powerful scenes” for women, said actress Nomzamo Mbatha, who plays the “royal barber,” in a Zoom interview. She said the film amplifies “the power of the female voice.”
From Memphis to Zamunda
Brewer was brought to “Coming 2 America” by Murphy, following the pair’s director/star collaboration on the fact-based comedy biopic “Dolemite Is My Name,” which debuted on Netflix in 2019. He and Murphy reworked the script (versions of which had been floating in development for decades), and production began in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic.
Although James Earl Jones’ scenes were filmed in New York, because the actor could not travel, the rest of the movie was shot at the Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, where the soundstages are named for such significant Black film personalities as Harry Belafonte and Brewer’s mentor as a professional filmmaker, the late John Singleton, the “Boyz N The Hood” director who was a producer on Brewer’s locally made second and third features, the Oscar-winning “Hustle & Flow” (2005), and “Black Snake Moan” (2007).
Even so, “Coming 2 America” is another of Brewer’s made-in-memphis movies, to a certain extent. When the pandemic made social distancing a priority, Brewer worked on the editing and mixing of the film from his office at Crosstown Concourse, where he has a state-of-the-art screening room.
“The post-production people at Paramount figured out a way they could link my theater to the mixing stage,” Brewer said. The innovation enabled him to work with his collaborators long-distance.
“My daughter would come in from her virtual school and say, ‘What are you doing, dad?,’ and I’d say, ‘Well, we’re working on Wesley Snipes’ dialogue, why don’t you come and help me make notes?’”
The presence of that daughter and the fact that Brewer is a father — in addition to 13-year-old Wren he has a 19year-old son, Graham — is one reason the premise of “Coming 2 America” resonated with the director. (And with his star; in fact, Eddie Murphy’s teenage daughter, Bella Murphy, plays one of Akeem’s daughters in the new film.)
Said Brewer: “The one big advantage we have with this movie taking place 30-some odd years after the original is that a lot of the audience is going through the same thing Akeem is going through, which is the same thing I’m going through, which is the same thing Eddie is going through.
“We’re parents now,” he said. “You just want your kids to be safe and you want there to be peace.”
Brewer grew up in a close family, but one relationship ended too soon. “My dad died at 49 (of a heart attack), and I am now 49,” Brewer said.
This awareness made for some especially meaningful experiences during the shooting of “Coming 2 America.” The most emotional of these may have occurred in New York, where Brewer directed James Earl Jones — a favorite actor of Brewer’s father — in scenes to be cut into footage with the other actors in Atlanta.
“So I spent the whole day not only directing him but also acting with him,” Brewer said. “I was the guy reading the lines of the other characters in the scene and everything. And I got to talking about how much he meant to my dad, not only ‘Star Wars’ and ‘The Lion King’ but we were really big fans of ‘Matewan‘ (a 1987 John Sayles movie).”
In the new film, Jones — who turned 90 on Jan. 17 — reprises the role of King Joffer, Akeem’s father, who goes out with a death scene during which he reveals how much he has enjoyed his life and his family. Shooting the scene made a big impression on Brewer.
“I’m sitting on this apple box maybe three feet away from him,” Brewer said, “and he looks at me with this smile and he says, ‘Son, remember what I’ve told you... I’m going to die now...’
“And then the life just left his eyes and his head began to slump and I had a moment — I couldn’t stop it, I felt this big lump in my throat and my lip began to quiver and my eyes began to fill up with tears and I couldn’t call ‘Cut’... I never got to say goodbye to my dad, and it felt like this could have been what we said, I thought, ‘What a wonderful thing for him to tell me...’”