Eddie Murphy on his relationship with the audience
"The audience has no clue what’s funny. You’ve got to show them what’s funny."
The Interview: Eddie Murphy Is Ready to Look Back. Here’s Murphy on how he never takes the audience into consideration…
I never take the audience into consideration. I’m like, “This is what I’m doing.” If the audience likes it, great, and if they don’t like it, everything isn’t for everybody. A lot of comedians started out as the outsider-type person who used their sense of humor to become an insider. Because I was funny, I was always a really popular guy. So I’m not that needy comic; they were laughing from the very beginning. I never went through that period that comics go through where you’re trying to find what’s funny about me and trying to get laughs and bombing and all that.
…because the audience has no clue what’s funny…
How could you think about the audience’s needs? Eight billion people on the planet. They don’t know — that’s a better way of putting it: The audience has no clue what’s funny. You’ve got to show them what’s funny. They don’t know. And if something is funny to me — I’ve never had anything that made me laugh that then when I said it to an audience, the audience just sat there and looked at me. If I think it’s funny, it’s always funny.
But also…the audience comes, um, first.
Because first and foremost I’m trying to be funny for my audience. You want to do stuff that you know is going to be funny for them. I still do all different types of things even though I don’t want to be challenged. What’s challenging is when you’re in a movie and the movie ain’t [expletive]. That’s challenging: when you’re sitting in the screening room and you see the first print of “Pluto Nash.” I remember the first time we watched “Pluto Nash,” I had my son Myles with me. He was probably about 8. Myles is sitting there with me, and the movie’s all soft. Then at the end, it goes silent, and my little baby son goes, “Corny.” That was challenging. [Laughs.] Even the baby knows it’s corny.
Sounds contradictory yet also kinda makes sense. They’re all that matters and yet at the same time they’ve got no idea what’s funny. You need to lead them and yet they’re leading you. Reminds me of how Seinfeld says you need to be both harsh and nurturing with yourself.
Speaking of contradictions, remember when Murphy said he “never went through that period that comics go through where you’re trying to find what’s funny about me and trying to get laughs and bombing and all that.” Well, also, being a comic felt like the front lines in Nam to him.
I used to have little periods where I’d be like, “I’m going to do it again." The closest I got to doing it again was right before the pandemic. Because I had done “Saturday Night Live,” and I was like, “Let me go do one standup special and bring it all full circle.” Then the pandemic hit, and when you’re stuck in the house for two years — I wasn’t going, “When I get out of here, I want to do stand up again!” Here’s a good analogy. It’s like somebody that was in the military. They were on the front line in Vietnam, and they got all these medals because they did all this amazing stuff. Then they moved up and became a general. So it’s like going to the general and saying: “Hey, you ever think about going back to the front line? You want to have bullets whiz past your ear again?” No!
I read the NYT Interview with Eddie Murphy (thanks for the link) which noted that Eddie Murphy: Raw was the most fabulousest stand up performance, worldwide, now and forever. I'm not being sarcastic when I exaggerate that assessment -- just playfully acknowledging it's true, based on the number of comedians from almost every continent who have credited a bootleg tape of Murphy as inspiring them. Trevor Noah and Harith Iskandar come to mind.