From Saturday Night Live and Beverly Hills Cop to Shrek and beyond, the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award celebrates the comedy icon whose influence transformed film, television, and popular culture.
“Tonight, beyond the echo of laughter, we honour a man who broke barriers to drive culture forward.”
It was those words from comedy legend Mel Brooks that kicked off an all-star evening which saw another comedy legend, Eddie Murphy, honoured with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement award. Each year, the AFI honours an individual whose career in movies or television “has greatly contributed to the enrichment of American culture” and “whose talent has in a fundamental way, advanced the film art: whose accomplishments have been acknowledged by scholars, critics, professional peers, and the general public and whose work has stood the test of time.” The 65-year-old Murphy is the 51st recipient of the award. Previous honourees have included George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas, Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Warren Beatty, and Al Pacino, but Murphy is one of only a handful of comedians onto whom the honour has been bestowed.
Held at the Dolby Center in Los Angeles on April 18th and now streaming on Netflix, the tribute brought out a veritable who’s who from the world of comedy including Chris Rock, Keegan-Michael Key, Kenan Thompson, Arsenio Hall, Martin Lawrence and Bill Burr. Kevin Hart told the audience “I stand where I stand today because of the work that you did before me, because of the doors that you opened up before me.” Tracy Morgan called Murphy an “icon” and “an inspiration” who “changed the movie business and paved the way for an entire generation of actors.”
For those who weren’t around in the 1980s, it is almost impossible to articulate just how much Eddie Murphy ruled the decade and the massive impact he had on pop culture. After bursting on to the scene on Saturday Night Live in 1980 at the age of 19 – making him the sketch comedy show’s youngest ever cast member at the time – Murphy went on to create several memorable and pivotal characters like Buckwheat, Gumby, and Mr. Robinson, and is credited with reviving the show from a massive slump. He transitioned to film with 1982’s 48 Hrs co-starring Nick Nolte – a movie largely credited with pioneering the buddy cop genre. What followed was a legendary run of box office blockbusters with films like Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Coming To America, plus the Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hrs. sequels. “Movies just kind of happened,” Murphy told the tribute. “I never thought I could be in the movies.” While his film career may not have been planned, its impact and success cannot be overstated. Trading Places, Coming to America and the Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hrs franchises alone brought in more than one billion at the box office. And that’s in 1980s dollars.
Standing in for her father Dan Aykroyd, Belle Aykroyd said of Murphy’s contribution to their movie, Trading Places, “It was you, your power, brilliance, talent, skills, and vibrant charisma that propelled the movie into the realm of the greats.” Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop co-star Judge Reinhold credited Murphy with defining the modern day action comedy.
One cannot pay tribute to Eddie Murphy’s impressive career without also including his landmark standup specials: 1983’s Delirious and 1987’s Raw where the comedian, clad in all leather, brought an energy to the stage more aligned with a rock concert than a stand-up comedy special. “You would never have thought of it as a comedy show,” Murphy told the tribute.” I was all out, I leaned into it.” “Eddie introduced us to comedy in rock star fashion,” said Martin Lawrence. Both Bill Burr and Dave Chappelle spoke about seeing Murphy on the Raw tour and the impact it had on them. “When I was 14-years-old, Raw came out,” recalled Chappelle. “And I would go and watch it every day after school like I was taking a class, like I knew somehow this was really important in my life.” Raw surpassed Richard Pryor’s special, Richard Pryor: Live On The Sunset Strip as the highest grossing concert film, pulling in more than 50 million dollars, the equivalent of nearly 150 million dollars today. The special also held the distinction of the most F words dropped in a feature length theatrically released film (surpassing Scarface with a total of 223 F bombs) until the record was beaten by Goodfellas in 1990.
As the ‘80s turned into the ‘90s, Murphy continued to have success with movies like Boomerang, and family fare like the Dr. Doolittle and The Nutty Professor franchises. Murphy played a multitude of roles in The Nutty Professormovies, something he started back in 1988 with Coming to America. The following decade would bring Murphy unfathomable success in the form of the animated Shrek franchise in which he voiced the character of Donkey. As Mike Myers reminded the crowd during the tribute Shrek won the first Academy Award for an animated feature, is in the top 20 franchise films of all time, and its first sequel was the highest grossing movie of 2004. “None of Shrek’ssuccess could have happened without Eddie Murphy,” Myers told the crowd, calling Murphy’s Donkey performances “a tour de force” and “a masterpiece as is every character that Eddie has created over the years.”
But Eddie Murphy’s impact goes far beyond the box office. As his friends and former co-stars attested to many times throughout the tribute, his legacy is one of progress, innovation, and boundary-pushing. Eva Longoria called him “a powerful force in driving culture forward,” while SNL veteran Kenan Thompson called him “a man who didn’t just change comedy, he redefined what it could be.” Fellow comedian and SNL alum Chris Rock said simply, “there is no us without you.” Murphy himself says of his multi-decade career, “laughter is the best thing there is and to be in this business and to make movies and to be an artist and make people laugh and for all my blessings to come from that – it don’t get no better.”
AFI Lifetime Achievement Award: A Tribute to Eddie Murphy is now streaming on Netflix.
