Chris Rock vs. Film History

December 7th, 2006 in Actors, Comedy

Over at the Moviefone website, Chis Rock explains why he thinks Eddie Murphy should receive an Academy Award:

“There would be no Chris Tucker, me, Martin Lawrence or any new young black comic today if Eddie hadn’t paved the way for us, especially in films. Without Eddie, then Chris, Martin and myself would have only have made as many movies in our career as Jude Law made the last three months. Peter Sellers got tons of credit for doing multiple characters, but that was just him doing him. Eddie is all those wacky family characters he portrays in ‘Coming to America’ and ‘The Nutty Professor’ pictures. Eddie should have got multiple Oscars for the multiple characters that he played in those movies alone.”

While Mr. Rock is entitled to his opinion, giving Eddie Murphy an award for paving the way for a new generation of comics is the stuff of a Lifetime Achievement awards, not Oscars. There were some film critics who in fact cited Murphy for his performances in the Nutty Proffesor films as part of the year end critics’ awards. The advanced word on Dreamgirls from several sources is that Murphy delivers the goods as a singer modeled after James Brown. It is still too early to predict whether Murphy will get nominated, much less win. We will have a clearer idea when the critics’ awards and the Golden Globe nominations appear. And, yes, Academy Awards are often given out to recognize a career as much as to honor a single performance, but there are so many people both behind as well as in front of the screen that have never been honored.

What truly offends me is Rock dismissing Peter Sellers as “just him doing him”. You have to wonder if Rock actually has seen Dr. Strangelove where Sellers had played three very different characters, and would have played a fourth has director Stanley Kubrick had his way. A check at the Sellers filmography at the Internet Movie Database indicates that Sellers had been playing multiple roles in movies as early as 1951 with his second film Let’s Go Crazy. Sellers gained international attention playing multiple roles in The Mouse that Roared in 1959 and also played two roles in his final film, The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu in 1980. Between the voices and the make-up, there is a reason why Peter Sellers is still remembered for his multiple performances in a single film, especially for Dr. Strangelove.

While we’re at it, Rock should consider Seller’s inspiration, all should hail Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sir Alec Guinness. Way back in 1949, Guinness played eight different roles in Kind Hearts and Coronets. Guinness set the record for multiple characters in a single film until Murphy tied with his eight characters in Nutty Professor II. For those interested, Kind Hearts and Coronets is on DVD. Credit should be given where due, and I say it should go to the man with both the force and the farce.

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