“Pursue peace of mind,” Eddie Murphy says in the trailer (below) for Netflix documentary Being Eddie. “If you’ve got that, then you’ve got it all.”
It’s great advice. But then again, it’s coming from the guy who next says that Rob Dyrdek’s MTV clip show Ridiculousness is “the best show on TV,” so weight it as you will.
Pete Davidson, one of the many, many comics honored to be interviewed for Being Eddie and Murphy’s co-star in Amazon heist comedy The Pickup, closes the trailer with this thought: “I love that [Murphy] is sitting around watching Ridiculousness. That’s fucking hilarious.”
It kind of is. The synopsis for Being Eddie is pretty funny itself.
“It goes without saying that there is only one Eddie Murphy,” it begins. “No other teen comedian shared a stage with Jerry Seinfeld at 17, and joined the cast of Saturday Night Live right out of high school.”
OK, that’s all earnest, accurate and totally crazy when you think about it.
“No actor has ever played a cop, a doctor and a donkey — and dominated every facet of Hollywood he’s touched,” it continues, introducing some sort of entertainment trifecta that no one has ever considered before.
“Fewer still have been an A-list celebrity for over four decades, and never succumbed to its darker side. Murphy’s unusual combination of explosive charisma, focused ambition, raw talent and deep-set circumspection puts him in a league of his own,” the synopsis reads. “For the first time ever, Murphy invites the public into his home to revisit his breathtaking body of work, all the while revealing the dazzling interior life that has long driven — and grounded — this once-in-a-century star.”
Joining Murphy (and Davidson) in the doc are Seinfeld, Arsenio Hall, Brian Grazer, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Jamie Foxx, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jerry Bruckheimer, John Landis, Kenan Thompson, Kevin Hart, Michael Che, Ruth Carter, Tracee Ellis Ross and Tracy Morgan. Being Eddie is directed by Angus Wall and produced by John Davis, John Fox, Charisse Hewitt-Webster, Terry Leonard and Kent Kubena.
Being Eddie premieres on Netflix on Nov. 12.
