While it was difficult not to see an Eddie Murphy film in the cinema in the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s, the multifaceted talent has been more reticent to accept roles over the past decade. Although he will soon be seen on television screens as classic character Axel Foley in Netflix’s upcoming Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, he’s not sure how many films he has left in him, but there is one project he’s been waiting for the right moment for.
“This one thing I’ve been threatening to do for years is called ‘Soul, Soul, Soul,'” Murphy said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “It’s like this fake documentary that I love.”
Murphy described it as “a sort of ‘Zelig’ thing,” referring to Woody Allen’s 1983 mockumentary about a fictional 1920s character whose desire to fit in led him to take on the characteristics of those around him. The satire included statements from real-life figures such as Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow and Irving Howe.
“It’s this guy who was part of the rock and roll and R&B thing in the ’60s and worked with everybody; all these great moments, and he’s connected to all these things,” Murphy said, describing his dream project. He later added, “I’ll tell you, I’ve almost made this movie several times. I’ve been right where I wanted to make it and then I said, ‘No, not now,’ because I feel like it’s so self-indulgent and few people would watch it – but they would laugh so hard.”
Murphy was so amused by the idea that he even had a fake trailer put together for the film, starring himself as Murray Murray, which included jokes like: “I coined the phrase ‘I have a dream.’ Before Martin Luther King. It was actually going to be the name of an album: ‘I Have a Dream’. They liked the way it flowed. It was a good hook. Then he took that and ran with it.”
Another typically inappropriate Murphy joke from the trailer involves Murray telling an interviewer about his first time having sex. Murphy’s character says it was with a woman named Daisy. Then when asked how old they were when it happened, the character says, “I was nine and she was 37.”
It is not yet known when “Soul, Soul, Soul” will see the light of day, but “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” will be released on Netflix next week, on Wednesday, July 3.
