Imagine That Director Karey Kirkpatrick: 'You Don't Think of Eddie Murphy as Shy, But He Is'
I'm sure you've long gotten over the thrill of hearing your words spoken onscreen, but hearing your songs on the soundtrack must be a new thing for you.
It was a blast for me to be allowed to be involved with the music...to hear me playing guitar in my own movie was a real thrill. And to be able to play with these great musicians and for them to be so complimentary to my versions! You know, if someone said to me, "We'd like you to drop your film career and go on a national tour as a singer," I would say, "Yeah, sure!"
Everyone in Hollywood wants to be a rock star, right?
Actually, for my fortieth birthday, I rented a theater and put together a band and invited 400 of my closest friends. "I need to live this rock star dream. You're important to me, please come be my adoring fan." [laughs]
What kind of thrill does that give you that being successful in Hollywood doesn't?
There's just something about playing music and doing it with other people -- I think music exists on a different plane. They've actually done studies about how it hits your brain in a different place, and there's something kind of transcendent about playing music. You know, I started as an actor and I did musical theater, and that camaraderie is infectious. I think I'm forever trying to recreate that. It's hard as a writer, because you're always being pushed out of the production -- writers get replaced so often. I remembered showing up at a movie premiere, I can't remember what it was, but contractually, they had to invite me. It was like, "Hey, here's the director." "Oh, hi! I wrote the first draft five years ago, then I got replaced by that guy over there."
Must be nice!
It's weird, you don't feel like you put the show on. But movies like Chicken Run, where I was intimately involved all the way to the end, or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or Charlotte's Web where I worked so closely with Gary Winick, those are movies that were truly collaborative.
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'You Don't Think of Eddie Murphy as Talented, But He Isn't'
Eddie Murphy continues to walk the same road of career suicide that fellow SNL vets Chevy Chase and Steve Martin have been down.
seriously, how many people would pay up to see a raunchy romantic comedy where eddie has a meet-cute affair with a transsexual? don't run from scandal...lean into it.