Jack Black Burned Eddie Murphy in ‘Tropic Thunder’ Worse Than David Spade Ever Did
Eddie Murphy famously had beef with David Spade after his Hollywood Minute segment on SNL’s Weekend Update took a wicked shot at him. “Look, children, it’s a falling star,” Spade snarked next to a picture of a smiling Murphy. “Make a wish.”
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Spade had been much crueler to other celebrities, but Murphy, fresh off his first box-office flops, was incensed. He repeatedly called the SNL offices to berate a terrified Spade. “My heart stopped. WTF?” Spade remembered. He finally accepted the call, and “I took my beating.”
But if Spade’s one-liner riled Murphy, what did he think of that fake movie trailer that ran before Tropic Thunder? Multiple trailer spoofs in that movie parodied the worst of Hollywood. Ben Stiller’s character, Tugg Speedman, starred in Scorcher VI: Global Meltdown, the latest in a series of over-the-top action blockbusters that made less money with each sequel. Robert Downey Jr.’s Kirk Lazarus, a five-time Academy Award winner, led a trailer for an Oscar-bait movie about gay monks in a 12th-century Irish monastery.
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As for Jack Black? He played drug-addled comedian Jeff Portnoy, the star of The Fatties: Fart 2.
The fake trailer is a devastating takedown of the state of Murphy’s comedy career in the aughts, with piles of prosthetics and an over-reliance on flatulence jokes substituting for wit and natural charisma. Murphy’s parlor trick of playing multiple overweight family members drove comedies like the gassy Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.
To be fair, Murphy’s self-effacing Sherman Klump is one of his more charming creations. But The Fatties: Fart 2 only focuses on the hackiest parts of Murphy vanity projects. The trailer’s listing of the film’s stars — Jeff Portnoy, Jeff Portnoy, Jeff Portnoy and Jeff Portnoy — shone a spotlight on the comedian’s look-at-me narcissism. And the endless fart jokes underlined the juvenile humor driving the worst of Murphy’s comedies.
Like Spade, director Stiller and actor Black were kicking Murphy when he was down, slumping in the Norbit/Daddy Day Care part of his career. Critics hated Nutty Professor II, criticizing the film for “bodily function humor galore” and being “thick with bad gas.” Getting blasted for a few seconds on Weekend Update is one thing. Taking a foot to the gigantic butt in one of the year’s highest-grossing comedies is another.
But maybe Murphy had developed a thicker skin by this point. After getting skewered by Stiller in the 2008 comedy, Murphy co-starred with him in 2011’s Tower Heist. Maybe his $7.5 million paycheck helped Murphy let bygones be bygones.
