Eddie Murphy is fuckin’ up motherfuckers left and right in the lead trailer for Netflix’s Dolemite Is My Name, a raucous, feel-good look at foul-mouthed comedian, singer, and blaxploitation legend Rudy Ray Moore. Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the writers behind acclaimed biopics Man On The Moon, The People Vs. Larry Flynt, and Ed Wood, handled the script, which hopefully means we’ll be getting something more nuanced than the paint-by-numbers biopics that sully the genre.
Murphy plays Moore as a struggling singer who finds success in comedy via “party records” like Eat Out More Often and I Can’t Believe I Ate The Whole Thing!. A meeting with actor D’Urville Martin (Wesley Snipes) helps give him the clout to make it onscreen, and some profane ingenuity results in the low-budget hit that is Dolemite. Keegan-Michael Key co-stars as writer Jerry Jones, who Moore told us back in 2002 was “responsible for my career going where it did.”
Tituss Burgess, Craig Robinson, Mike Epps, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Snoop Dogg co-star in Craig Brewer’s film, which will premiere at TIFF and hit theaters this fall.