[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

[Narrator] This week on "On Story," Larry Karaszewski, Craig Brewer, and Scott Alexander discuss their film "Dolemite Is My Name" and its journey from script to screen.

- Backstory is so valuable in a movie, and we pack in so much backstory.

He was a shake dancer.

He was a fortune teller.

But it's ridiculous information.

This is all good stuff to learn about your lead character.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] - In this episode, celebrated writing team Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski alongside filmmaker Craig Brewer discuss their collaboration on the hilarious and outrageous film "Dolemite Is My Name."

[typewriter dings] - I would love to hear how this transpired, right?

Like, not a usual person for, but that's of course what you guys do, but not a usual person for us to be thinking about, you know, when it this came out, was it '19 or '20?

It came out- - Yeah, no, 2020.

But it was in, I mean, we'd been talking about- - '19, '19.

- it for a long time, and early 2000s, we got a phone call, our agents or something, basically saying, "Eddie Murphy wants to meet you."

And we're like, "Ooh," you know, we're being summoned to Eddie Murphy.

And I was like, "Oh, that sounds amazing," 'cause we were just gigantic fans of Eddie Murphy.

And we walked into this office, and it was just Eddie, and Eddie looked up at us and just started doing lines from our movie "Ed Wood."

I mean, he literally was doing Tor Johnson, like, "Do my toes," and he was like doing all this stuff like that.

And we were kind of blown away that we were just walking in and Eddie Murphy was doing our material to us.

And so it was, we, it was instantly like a great thing.

And then Eddie said, "Do you guys know who Rudy Ray Moore is?"

And we both dispersed into laughter because when we were in college, we worshiped Rudy Ray Moore.

I mean, we just loved Rudy Ray Moore.

But the second Eddie said that, it was like, "Oh my, god, Eddie wants to do Rudy Ray Moore in an 'Ed Wood' fashion," and we totally got it.

He barely had to say anything else.

That led to a meeting with the real Rudy Ray Moore.

- He showed up in the silver suit with the spangled shoes and the hat.

- All the executives kinda left, and Rudy really kind of didn't leave.

And so he was just sitting there, and so we were sort of like hanging out with him, and you saw the persona drop, and you saw kind of the real Rudy.

And that's when we kind of like really thought, "Oh, maybe like that's what the movie could be about," is this kinda dichotomy of this man's stage presence and this character he creates and who the real guy was.

And so we went and tried to sell it, and, you know, we couldn't sell it.

- Even over the years, like, word got around in the very small Rudy circles that we had tried to do it with Eddie.

And so every three, four years, someone new would wanna do a Rudy movie and then track us down.

And at that point we would just say, "You know what?

We've tried, we give up, but we encourage you."

- And then, you know, we did this television show called "The People v.

O.J.," and it was like a kind of a global sensation.

And we've been around, we've had that moment a couple times.

You know that like, hey, for the next year, you can kind of go out and pitch just about anything, and someone will buy it.

[laughs] And once that happened, it happened pretty quickly.

We went to Netflix, who wanted to get Eddie in the comedy business again, and we wrote the script pretty quickly, and-- - And what was really great when we went in to sell it to Netflix, Ted Sarandos, who runs the joint, turns out, we thought we were gonna have to spend 10 minutes explaining who is Rudy Ray Moore to this middle-aged white guy, and Ted had run video stores in the '80s.

And he's like, "Rudy paid the bills for us."

[laughing] "I know who Rudy is."

And then Eddie shows up at the meeting, and then Eddie just starts doing the magic.

And it's like, all right, you can sell that.

- Yeah, the legend I heard is that you guys were going to have a whole pitch that you had rehearsed, that you would start off, Scott would go back, and you'd go back and forth, and you literally inhaled to begin it.

And then Eddie walked in, did 20 minutes of Rudy, and then they just said, "Well, we're gonna be making it," and you guys never-- - Yeah, we never talked.

- We never talked.

- That's a perfect pitch.

[audience laughing] - So Craig, how did you get involved?

- I'm sure Fincher passed.

[audience laughs] No, it was actually one of the best phone calls I have ever gotten from my agent.

And I said, "Well, say yes, and then send me the script."

And he said, "You really want to be with Eddie."

And I was like, "Well, you had me at Larry and Scott."

And also just, when I was making movies in like in the '90s with my friends with just like video cameras, we would get together at night and we would, you know, the '90s was kind of that special time with indie cinema, but along with indie cinema was also just kind of embracing blaxploitation in this way that wasn't, you know, we respected it, but "Dolemite" was that one that we would just watch and would start off being that thing where we would call people into the room and say, "This is really awful.

It's really bad."

But then we kept on laughing at it, and then we kept on quoting it, and then we just kept on watching it.

I just thought it was a perfect match.

It's like I hadn't even read it, and I was like, "No, I know the writers' work.

I know if these writers are interested in this man," you know, guy from Arkansas came out to try to like break into the music business.

You know, instead he records his own comedy albums in his apartment.

And I felt like kind of a "Hustle & Flow" connection to that in a way.

- What y'all think'd happen if somebody took those jokes, a professional, and polished them and turned it into a act?

- Yeah, and did it on the stoop.

[laughs] - In the barbershop.

- Yeah, the barber shop.

[laughing] - Rudy, that's a good idea.

- Yeah, man, that'd [bleep] work.

- Say, Rudy, man, all them slave jokes, that [bleep] not gonna work.

I wouldn't put it in my act, personally.

- Hey, man, funny is funny.

- They're not ready for the big time.

- I don't know what time it's gonna make it to, but this [bleep] is funny.

- It's like this bunch of friends hanging out, and I think that's what Craig really just nailed 1000%, how closely it follows actually the script but with like, you know, it's almost like jazz.

A couple people go, like Mike Epps, you know, Mike Epps has this thing where he barely, he can barely deliver a line straight in any way.

So it goes this way in that way.

It's the same, it's basically the same line, but it goes 10 different ways to get there.

- I think that like, [sighs] and I'm guilty of this as a writer, you're writing that things have to happen, right?

So now he's beginning to figure out his character.

And I think that sometimes as a director, I gotta go like, "Okay, that reads really great, but now I gotta like, I gotta really figure out how to like rhythmically like make that just work."

And there's something about Eddie, who we know as being such a, like, on the moment, in the pocket, immediately funny, right the first take.

I don't think we've ever seen Eddie not funny.

And to see him work on something and eventually build up into that character was something, I have to say, like I was excited to do because it was on the page, but I didn't know if like Eddie would be able to pull that off because we've grown up with Eddie being so entertaining all of our life in every moment.

And I think it's the imperfect moments that finally he begins to get to that moment where he's looking at himself in the mirror, and he's doing the full-on Dolemite that, to me, is the most exciting part of his journey.

- Well, I think the other thing that is, that really stood out about this from the first time I saw it, because I grew up with those movies, too, I wasn't expecting Rudy Ray Moore to be somebody I kind of felt sorry for in your film, you know, and so, or not felt sorry for, but like had more depth, I think, than what I was expecting him to have simply from having watched those movies, right?

- Well, in all honesty, that's been the story of our career.

I remember so many people who read "The People vs. Larry Flynt," I remember before it was a movie, I just remember particularly women or somebody would be like, "I saw that in the pile, and I was like, 'No one should make a movie about that guy.

That's horrible,' and then I picked it up and I read three page, then I read four, then I read," and they couldn't believe that they got sucked into the story.

And I think it's that, you know, it isn't necessarily about making these people heroes.

I'm not sure any of these people are heroes, but it's about, you know, figuring out a way to get you emotionally attached.

And then Rudy's, that scene alone, you get emotionally attached to Rudy Ray Moore.

[typewriter dings] - Larry and I love to do research, and Rudy ended up shooting, he ended up moving into a condemned old hotel in South Central LA, and reading about it, it was the Dunbar Hotel, and he ends up shooting most of "Dolemite" in this hotel.

And the Dunbar, there was a Black renaissance in LA in the '20s and '30s, and Duke Ellington would play there and Count Basie and Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday.

And there was poetry and books, and it was a thriving cultural scene.

And then just the neighborhood went to [bleep].

And then by the, you know, by the time Rudy comes along in the '70s, it's a condemned building, and he can move in there 'cause it's free.

[audience laughs] And so to sort of like, to sort of weave that information into the movie, then it starts to make things contextual.

So it's like, it's the story of a guy in the '70s, but we're sort of trying to tell the larger story, too.

- Let us nourish our body in Jesus' name.

Amen, amen.

- In Jesus' name.

Oh, well, thank you.

- Ha-ha, all right, then.

- This pork chop, now as I was saying- - You want some hot sauce?

- Come on now, Auntie.

Now, I wanna be entrepreneurial on this thing, and I need you to loan me some money so I can get some recording equipment.

- No, no, hm-mm.

- Come on, Auntie.

You a rich woman!

- I'm not rich!

What make you think I'm rich?

- What happened to all that money you made when you fell off that bus?

- Uh, that is my money to do with what I want to, and I only got $250.

- That's exactly how much I need to be a star!

- Oh, no, hm-mm.

- Come on, woman!

Loan me the money, woman.

Please!

Come on, Auntie!

- I got my coat on layaway.

- Please gimme the money!

- I'm already into 'em for $50 already.

- Please!

Oh!

She gonna gimme the money.

- Yeah, 'cause you about to cut off my air supply.

Get up off of my neck.

- Oh, thank you!

[Scott] I love that scene.

- Uh-huh, you know, and this really wonderful relationship the two of them had, is that real, was that-- - Yeah, so what's an interesting story is that when we were casting the movie, I had just done 10 episodes of "Empire."

For the first time ever, I was in the writers' room, and I was, you know, I was directing, and I had done four features before I started on "Empire," but I also worked with a lot of new actors and actresses.

And this one actress, completely new, named Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who played, those of you who watched "Empire," there was a whole season where Cookie was flashing back to when she was in prison, and there was this really tough woman that was in there with her, and I just loved her.

And then when she came in to read, I was like, "This is her."

And I showed her tape to Eddie, and Eddie's like, "I got somebody else for this.

You gotta meet Luenell."

And so what I do in those situations is that I just read both of them and try to help everybody kind of throw their best ball.

And when Eddie watches, he was like, he finally admitted, he's like, "I really think Da'Vine is really good.

It's just, the thing is is that I've got this really great relationship with Luenell, and I love her, and I think she's a really amazing talent."

And I was like, "Hold up.

You know, there's this scene that you're not thinking about, and that's with your auntie."

And like Eddie just like leapt out of his chair.

He was like, "Yeah, that's it, that's it."

- And one thing I think that that scene emphasizes is Scott and I, I think we just write biopics differently than everybody else, and we concentrate on the things that other people would probably leave out.

And like we found just some, I think it's only one line in someplace somewhere that Rudy, one of the ways he raised money for his first comedy record was his aunt was in a bus accident, and she had sued the city, and she got a little bit of money and he somehow, I mean, but it was literally one sentence.

- We knew nothing about her.

- Yeah, and there's no reason why that technically should be in the movie.

You could cut the scene, blah, blah blah.

But we're, so it was like, "Oh, my god, he is gotta hit his aunt up for the bus money."

- I mean- - And also, to be honest, it's the first thing that like I think a major studio would say, "That could go."

- I'm really proud of that scene, 'cause we pack in so much backstory.

He was a shake dancer.

He was a fortune teller.

But it's ridiculous information.

"Comedy?

You're a singer!"

It's like we're learning all this stuff about him that we didn't know already, and it's presented kind of as jokes.

And so it's painless going down.

And then, and we're hearing about, though, he grew up back in the South, and "[bleep] back home, I don't wanna go back there."

We're like, "Oh, okay, we're learning, bad relationships back home.

He's not gonna go back home.

He fled out to LA."

It's like, this is all good stuff to learn about your lead character.

- I'm not really no pimp.

I ain't got no stable of whores.

I just created a character.

I do it all the time.

I've been Prince DuMarr.

I've been the Harlem Hillbilly, and tonight, look at this here.

[clears throat] Tug on my [bleep].

- Tug on what?

- Tug on my, just, just tug on me.

- Tug on this?

- Mm-hmm, just give it a little tug.

- Just a little.

- Don't tug too hard.

Don't take the mother [beep].

- Oh, [bleep], that's a mother [bleep] wig!

- Yeah, that's right.

It's all pretend.

You put on a cape and turn into a [bleep] superhero, leave the real you behind, go on stage and [snap].

- Magic, huh.

[Rudy chuckling] You a trip.

- One of the things I really love about this scene is that it feels like he's seducing her, and he is, but in a different way, right?

And so it was just brilliant.

- What I love about the whole movie is that I think that there's many times that our, the rhythm of movies that we've all seen where we go, "Well, of course he now needs to get with her and they've gotta be a thing."

But, you know, I just, I guess because I grew up in theater and I was around just so many people that really, their love was performing, that was their mistress, that they were always, you know, everybody was in service to wanting to sing or wanting to dance or be up on stage, and he speaks to that.

And there's such, throughout the movie and throughout all their movies, they're like a brother and sister team, you know?

- And Eddie's a nice Pied Piper in the scene.

I think a lot of our movies are about these just very determined, demented people who have a dream and wanna pull everyone around them into this dream, and so in that scene, Lady Reed is not looking to be in showbiz, and she's actually denying it.

It's like, "Okay, well, fine, yeah, I was a backup singer, but that's not me anymore."

And he's like, "No, no, no, I see that little light on you, and I wanna pull you into my circus that all my friends have been pulled into, too."

- Rudy saw something in people that Hollywood never saw or never recognized, and so that became actually, so almost the arc of Lady Reed's character is that she became a person who became confident, who became, learned to love herself, because you know, Rudy treated her like a movie star.

And you watch those Rudy Ray real, the real Rudy Ray movies, it's like Lady Reed does, it's one of those things where like, oh, my god, she would, you'd never see that kind of person in a Hollywood production, but there she is, and she's the female lead, you know, and it's kinda, and it is amazing.

And so I think that that, the fact that we, you know, we turned her into the heroine of the movie.

- But, you know, he's also a, you've also made him all the way through the film a person who's very attractive to everybody.

Like, in other words, I don't mean physically, I mean like in the sense that he says things or does things that people seem to gravitate in his direction.

He may first try to get their attention, but he's sort of got a bit of a gravitational pull.

Was he like-- you met him-- was he like that?

- Sure, I mean, when we met him, he was old and a bit broken down.

I mean, but I mean, it goes down to like anyone in this room, you know, who made a movie in high school with their friends, and your friends weren't necessarily looking to make a student film on Saturday and Sunday.

- Right.

- They were planning on having fun, and you're like, "No, no, no, it's gonna be great, and you're gonna hold the mic, and you're gonna play the cop," and you're sort of just like imposing this dream upon people.

[typewriter dings] - In storytelling, it's always best to, um, you know, write what you know.

- Now, what do you mean when you say, "Write what you know"?

- What do I, [chuckles] well, I mean, you've lived a life.

You know, you, you, things you've done, so you tell stories about your own experience.

- Ain't nothing to talk my personal life whatsoever, man.

Nothing interesting happened there.

I deal with the professional.

- Okay, good.

- Yeah, that's the nightlife, and it's clubs and club owners and promoters and, and mobsters, and the money be disappearing all the time, and you got the, the pimps and whores turning tricks in the walk-in freezer.

- That's good.

Okay, then.

- I do like Q&A's at the American Cinematheque, and I did one with the real Jerry Jones, who's, it was after Rudy died, so Rudy wasn't around.

[laughs] And when we met the real Jerry Jones, Jerry Jones definitely is like above it all.

He definitely, you know, unlike almost everybody else in this movie, he actually, he thinks he's a real writer.

He does like plays.

He does, you know, serious dramas.

And he definitely always felt like he was floating above the rest of these people.

And when we looked at Rudy's movies, the other thing that really informed my, Rudy's movies all seemed to kind of revolve around clearly Rudy's world.

They were always, he was always a nightclub comic.

They were always in the same places.

And it felt like Rudy just made a movie in the five-block area he was in.

And it was one of those things, like literally putting those two sensibilities together.

This might have one of the easiest scenes we ever wrote, I think, yeah.

It was like it wrote, it kind of wrote itself.

It's like, you know, it's the idea of pitching this, pitching the actual story of "Dolemite" [laughs] to somebody who's gotta type it.

It's just, it is just naturally funny.

- It's a perfectly written scene.

And I'm still floored when I play it for young writers that they still miss it, that they still kind of resist.

I know that everybody in here could write like an action movie.

I'm not saying that it always has to be "write what you know," but I think that there's a lot of people that are just truly surprised that if you just had a different perspective on your own experience and your own life, just how interesting it is and how much just fertile soil there is for something to grow out of.

I understand that it sometimes is painful.

Sometimes you think it's like something you wanna escape from.

What's funny in the scene is everybody's going like, "Yeah, Rudy, that's amazing what you're saying," and he can't see it.

He doesn't even think it's that interesting.

[Rudy] That's him.

That's our director-photographer.

- How old is that cat, man?

- I don't know.

16.

20.

- Oh, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy!

Do you have any idea what you're doing, man?

Look, man, you need a DP that knows how to shoot Black peoples.

- Oh, whoa, man, that's some racist [bleep] you're talking about.

- No, it's not, it's not racist!

It's a fact.

Look, look, look, Black people absorb light.

White people reflect light.

It's a cinemagical reality.

- Another reality is this room is giving me a headache.

What else we got?

- Larry and I get so much pointless joy out of just like bringing in all these little moments from our own lives and just throwing them into these stories.

"Black people absorb light, and white people reflect light."

[laughs] That goes back to when we were directing a movie in Vancouver in 1998.

And the DP, who was a little tactless at times, said this to Dave Chappelle, and Dave was like, "What?"

He was like, and he has a, the guy had a German accent.

"Well, you absorb light."

And he's like, "I absorb light."

And Dave talked about, and then he was ecstatic, and he was like going around the set going, "I absorb light, you reflect light, I absorb light, you reflect light."

[audience laughing] And it was like one of those like great moments where we just like, "I'm remembering this.

I'm putting this in my pocket."

And then 20 years later, we got to use the line in a movie, so that made us happy.

[typewrite dings] - "Dolemite" is dreadful, humorless, and a technically terrible movie."

[Bleep] that, Jerry, man.

Critics don't know nothing.

Critics don't even, I don't even know why they come out in the first place.

They don't even like to have fun.

Nobody care what the critics say.

And beside, everybody knows when the brothers go to movies, they wanna see car crashes, explosions, and [bleep], and we've delivered that.

- Sho' did.

- Look at this one right here.

This is perfect.

"'Dolemite' isn't fit for a blind dog to see.

It is coarse, rude, crude, and vulgar."

Perfect.

- Perfect.

Well, why in the world do you like that one?

- 'Cause that's gonna make people say, "I'm going!"

They gonna wanna see just how coarse, rude, crude, and vulgar "Dolemite" is.

- It's really those lonely moments in the ride to your premiere where you have to remind yourself that there's a greater win than just a bunch of audience people cheering your movie and your title.

You used to not have something, and now you've made something, and that should be the victory.

- Well, so what, how much of that dialogue in there, that conversation was actual, were those actual reviews?

- Oh, those- - Those are real reviews.

Those are all real reviews.

- And actually Rudy was very proud of, he would quote the "not fit for a blind dog to see."

That wasn't, that's from some interview with Rudy.

I mean, I actually remember, I think like the day before you shot this, though, you pulled us aside, and you're like, "You crazy [bleep]."

You like, "Literally, the third-act climax of the movie is six people in the back of a limo.

I don't even know if we have a limo that can fit.

How can I direct six people in the back of a limo?

I can shoot one side, I can shoot the other side.

There's nothing, this is your climax?"

- We cut two cars in half.

We took the front off of one car and then the back end of another car and made a longer car with it.

And the producers didn't wanna do that because they had a limo that they thought that we could all fit in.

And I was like, "Um, guys, I don't think this is gonna work."

They're like, "Well, it's gonna cost us money to cut the cars in half and put it together."

And I was like, "Okay, well, can we have a meeting now?"

And they're like, "Yeah, let's have a meeting."

I go, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Let's get in this limo that you want me to shoot in."

And they're like- [Scott and Larry] Ha-ha.

- And they're like, "Craig, there's eight of us."

And I was like, "Yeah."

And you should have seen them all just like cramming in there.

And it's like, "No, shut the door.

Shut the door.

Just go, wham!"

And then it was like, really, really hot.

And I go, "Okay, I just want you to imagine Eddie Murphy in here for a minute, just as we shoot in this all day.

Continue, what, let's continue with the meeting.

Where's the lighting gonna go?"

And they were just, after about 10 minutes, like, "Get us out!

Fine.

We'll spend the money," you know.

[typewriter dings] [Narrator] You've been watching inside the making of "Dolemite Is My Name" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about "On Story" and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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