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"Dolemite is My Name" -- A Sequel to "Ed Wood"? (MINOR SPOILERS)

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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"Dolemite is My Name" it's written by the screenwriting team of Alexander & Karazewski who wrote "Ed Wood"...so it doesn't take too long to figure out that "Dolemite" is a sweet and sassy companion piece to Ed Wood(my favorite Tim Burton movie and one of my favorites in a very favorite year: 1994.)

Both films are variations on the same story: an outsider with a dream(a very WEIRD dream) somehow gets through and around the Hollywood system to make some very weird movies. Ed Wood gave us a very evocative 1950s and Johnny Depp (back when he was new, good, and surprising as a star) as the anchor. Dolemite gives us a very evocative 1970's and Eddie Murphy(on the comeback trail) as the anchor. The two films share scenes of threadbare productions being filmed by crews running out of money(and in Dolemite, out of FILM.) I like the 70's additive of the "Blaxploitation movie" here using a very white, very nerdish UCLA film school grad as the DP (Says Murphy to the kid, "You look like one of those Alfred Hitchcock people" -- whether he means as a director, or as Norman Bates, isn't clear.)

But most of the cast is black. Wesley Snipes works on HIS comeback playing the real actor D'Urville(sp?) Martin, who, the movie points out, "worked with Roman Polanski." On Rosemary's Baby(the elevator operator in the apartment building.) That's two movies in one year with mention of Roman Polanski and Rosemary's Baby as "big deals." (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the other.)

While the PG(13?) Ed Wood roped in the "kinky" side of Wood's cross-dressing ways and Bill Murray's seeking of an early sex change operation, "Dolemite"(which would be a hard R in theaters) ladles on the more basic sex and cussing of 70's black comedy albums(Redd Foxx is heard - he was a notorious "blue" comedian on record albums before he became a sitcom star) and it is suggested that Rudy Ray Moore(who became "Dolemite" on the screen) found his calling first in a kind of X-rated sexual comedy(for African-American audiences) before parlaying it into cheapo deluxe movies(with plenty of nude women, just like on his comedy album covers). As in Ed Wood, a climactic premiere is a big deal -- but I think the "Dolemite" premiere is a real one, "Ed Wood" ended with a fantasy premiere.

"Ed Wood" and "Dolemite is My Name" share a lot of things -- fringe Hollywood mileau, shoestring movie production(with bad writing, bad fight scenes, and bad acting), the promise of money made versus losing everything - but what they ALSO share is an essential decency to the characters. Depp's Ed Wood and Murphy's Rudy Ray Moore are essentially good people, loyal to friends, watching out for the underdog -- underdogs themselves.

What a treat this new movie is if you are(like me) an Ed Wood fan.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And this: there is a scene early in the movie where Murphy takes his "gang of misfits" to see a new comedy(it is 1974.) The movie is Billy Wilder's The Front Page, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau -- and while it wasn't as bad as Billy Wilder's Buddy, Buddy of 1981 starring Lemmon and Matthau -- well, it did feel too old-fashioned(in a bad way, not the 20's source play, the bad new topical Nixon jokes) and...well Wilder was one of those stayed-too-long directors Quentin Tarantino has warned us about. (Tarantino says he will likely retire after 10 films to avoid turning out the same way.)

Now I was and remain a huge Walter Matthau fan, and he "carried" The Front Page in '74(he was now a bigger star than Lemmon, who was by then not fun to watch or listen to on screen). But in this "Dolemite" scene, Murphy and company come out of the theater and Murphy says: "I don't get it. Why they putting old wrinkled people to star in these movies. That wasn't funny and there were no boobies in it. We can make a better movie than that."

Its a bittersweet scene -- The Front Page was problematic in '74(it was an Xmas release one year after the Xmas '73 release of The Sting, and meant to emulate the feeling, but without the box office.) But it wasn't THAT bad. Still...one gets what the "Dolemite" scene is saying: the times were changing(yet again) and a big budget Lemmon/Matthau picture was not going to cut it anymore. The thing was: "Dolemite" movies were no real replacement, either.

[–] Zilkin (401) 5 years ago

I didn't know the same writers did the Ed Wood script, that is really cool to know. The scene where they are watching the white comedy movie in the cinema is basically to show us the big difference between the comedy made for middle and upper class whites and the audience that was black and living in a ghetto. You can see Dolomite can't relate to old fashioned white actors and that brand of humor because it is not his world. Therefore you had a need for movies that showed a part of black culture with black actors even though Dolomite is a technically bad movie, it is still more precious to black movie goers because it is more relatable.

[–] L1 (1316) 5 years ago

I was very disapinted/