“Hey man, how did my life get so damn small? I was gonna do it all, like Sammy Davis Jr: movies, concerts, TV, everything. I ain’t got nothing nobody want.”
Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore, Dolemite Is My Name
Picture it: Cleveland OH, early 1970s: A living room hazy with cigarette smoke, a card table covered with half-empty shot glasses and grown folks playing cards, laughing and slapping one another fives as raucous rhymes pumped out of speakers as tall as I was: “Way doooooown in the jungle deep, the lion stepped down on the signifying monkey’s feet!”
Rudy Ray Moore, AKA Dolemite, was just one of the comedians that my parents kept in heavy rotation back in the day, and just like Red Foxx or Moms Mabley, their routines were too raunchy for my delicate young ears and designated by the both of them, understandably, as “off limits.” Eventually, the cultural phenomenon known as hip-hop incorporated Moore’s bravado and cadence into its own burgeoning style of music, earning the MC-turned-singer-turned-comedian-turned-guerilla filmmaker a wider and younger audience (myself now included). Vulgar one-liners and cringe-worthy political incorrectness aside, the rough-and-tumble, self-initiated path to stardom is what’s illuminated so convincingly in Eddie Murphy’s first-ever biopic, Dolemite Is My Name.
Based in the early 1970s and tracking Moore’s meteoric rise to blaxploitation, Dolemite…. initially comes across as little more than a smack-talking, street-walking caricature embellished from the colorful tales of a local wino, but the man pulling Dolemite’s strings is Rudy Ray Moore (1927-2008), an AK native, Army veteran and CA transplant with high hopes of basking in the spotlight. It wasn’t enough for him to be fame-adjacent, selling music out of the renowned Dolphin’s of Hollywood and moonlighting as a joke-telling MC: Moore had lofty ideals and platinum dreams that only celebrity would help him to achieve. In one pivotal scene, when Rudy asks his record label to front money for the film, Moore is told that “you’re not supposed to make a movie for the five square blocks of people you know.” His cocky response? “Every city in America got them same five blocks, and those folks are gonna love it!”
Because Yours Truly is writing for a family publication, I’m unable to share any of the raunchy lines that Eddie-as-Rudy spoke, but what I can say is that Murphy gifts the screen with one of his most compelling performances in years, illustrating a “second act-era” success story that many can learn from and relate to. Being inexperienced, pudgy and middle-aged—Billy Dee Williams he was not—didn’t stop Moore from surrounding himself with talented allies and recalibrating a canned comedy routine into a sharp-dressed kung-fu-wielding ghetto griot of the people. Rudy’s comedic gifts and cinematic prowess definitely weren’t for everyone, nor were they intended to be, but through sheer perseverance and a “why not me?” mindset, Moore proved that he didn’t have to follow the mainstream formula to get his unique flavor on the menu. If his alter-ego Dolemite was the frothy icing on the cake, Rudy Ray Moore was the solid substance underneath, the one who gave it all balance and firmness without falling apart.
A film nearly two decades in the making, Dolemite…. finally became a reality thanks to Eddie Murphy’s unwavering commitment to portraying his comedic idol and the backing of the streaming and content creating giant, Netflix. Just last week, members of the African American Film Critic Association joined the company for a tastemaker event in Los Angeles that screened the film and gave access to its director, Craig Brewer, and Mr. Murphy himself. “I just thought it was a really great, unique story,” Murphy said to me about the appeal of Dolemite. “That’s why I didn’t let the idea die.”
Given his reputation as “Mr. Box Office,” Mr. Murphy’s choice to forego a conventional film studio was surprising. For him, however, there was simply no other option. “Studios weren’t gonna make a movie about Rudy Ray Moore, they’re trying to make the films with the big special effects, the superhero franchises. Netflix is doing all kinds of different movies now, so this was the perfect place for Dolemite.”
