Edward Regan Murphy is an American actor, comedian, and singer. He had his breakthrough as a standup comic before gaining stardom for his film roles; he is widely recognized as one of the greatest comedians of all time. He has received several accolades including a Golden Globe Award, a Grammy Award, and an Emmy Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award. He was honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2015 and the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2023.
Coming to America is a 1988 American romantic comedy film directed by John Landis, based on a story originally created by Eddie Murphy, written by David Sheffield and Barry W. Blaustein, and starring Murphy, Arsenio Hall, James Earl Jones, John Amos, Madge Sinclair, and Shari Headley. It tells the story of Akeem Joffer, the crown prince of the fictional African nation of Zamunda who travels to the United States in the hopes of finding a woman he can marry and will love him for who he is, not for his status or for having been trained to please him. The film was released in the United States on June 29, 1988.
Christopher Julius Rock is an American comedian, actor, and filmmaker. He first gained prominence for his stand-up routines in the 1980s in which he tackled subjects including race relations, human sexuality, and observational comedy. His success branched off into productions in film, television, and on-stage, having received multiple accolades including three Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award nomination. Rock was ranked No. 5 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time. He also ranked No. 5 on Rolling Stone's list of the 50 Best Stand-Up Comics of All Time.
Charles Quinton Murphy was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He was best known as a writer and cast member of the Comedy Central sketch-comedy series Chappelle's Show as well as the co-star of the sitcom Black Jesus. He was the older brother of actor and comedian Eddie Murphy.
Dolemite is a 1975 American blaxploitation crime comedy film and is also the name of its principal character, played by Rudy Ray Moore, who co-wrote the film and its soundtrack. Moore, who started his career as a stand-up comedian in the late 1960s, heard a rhymed toast about an urban hero named Dolemite from a regular at the record store where he worked, and decided to adopt the persona as an alter ego in his act.
Rudolph Frank Moore, known as Rudy Ray Moore, was an American comedian, singer, actor, and film producer. He created the character Dolemite, the pimp from the 1975 film Dolemite and its sequels, The Human Tornado and The Dolemite Explosion. The persona was developed during his early comedy records. The recordings often featured Moore delivering profanity-filled rhyming poetry, which later earned Moore the nickname "the Godfather of Rap." Actor and comedian Eddie Murphy portrayed Moore in the 2019 film Dolemite Is My Name.
John Andrew Davis is an American film producer and founder of Davis Entertainment.
Craig Houston Brewer is an American filmmaker. His 2005 movie Hustle & Flow won the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and achieved commercial success, along with an Academy Award for Best Original Song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp". He is also known for directing the 2011 remake of Footloose, the 2019 film Dolemite Is My Name and the 2021 film Coming 2 America, the latter two films starring Academy Award nominee Eddie Murphy.
Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski are an American screenwriting duo, recognized for their unique approach to biopics. They introduced the term "anti-biopic" to describe their distinctive style of storytelling, which focuses on individuals who might not traditionally be considered worthy of a biographical film. Instead of highlighting conventional "great men," their work often centers on lesser-known figures within American pop culture. Their notable films in this genre include Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon, Big Eyes, Dolemite Is My Name, and the series The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story.
The Human Tornado is a 1976 American blaxploitation film directed by Cliff Roquemore. The film is a sequel to Dolemite.
D'Urville Martin was an American actor in both film and television. He appeared in numerous 1970s movies in the blaxploitation genre. He also appeared in two unaired pilots of what would become All in the Family as Lionel Jefferson. Born in New York City, Martin began his career in the mid-1960s and soon appeared in prominent films such as Black Like Me, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Rosemary's Baby. Martin also directed films in his career, including Dolemite, starring Rudy Ray Moore.
The Front Page is a 1974 American black comedy-drama film directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. The screenplay by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond is based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's 1928 play of the same name.
In US cinema, Blaxploitation is the film subgenre of action movie derived from the exploitation film genre in the early 1970s, consequent to the combined cultural momentum of the Black civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Black Panther Party, political and sociological circumstances that facilitated Black artists reclaiming their power of the Representation of the Black ethnic identity in the arts. The term blaxploitation is a portmanteau of the words Black and exploitation, coined by Junius Griffin, president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood branch of the NAACP in 1972. In criticizing the Hollywood portrayal of the multiracial society of the US, Griffin said that the blaxploitation genre was "proliferating offenses" to and against the Black community, by perpetuating racist stereotypes of inherent criminality.
Petey Wheatstraw is a 1977 American blaxploitation comedy film written and directed by Cliff Roquemore, and starring comedian Rudy Ray Moore alongside Jimmy Lynch, Leroy Daniels, Ernest Mayhand, Ebony Wright, and Wildman Steve Gallon. It is typical of Moore's other films from the same era, such as Dolemite and The Human Tornado.
Ron Cephas Jones was an American actor, best known for his role as William Hill in the drama series This Is Us (2016–2022), which earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award; along with four consecutive Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning twice for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2018 and 2020.
The Politician is an American comedy-drama television series created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan and released on Netflix. The trio also serves as executive producers with Alexis Martin Woodall, Ben Platt, and Gwyneth Paltrow. The series centers on the story of Payton Hobart (Platt), a wealthy Santa Barbaran, and each season revolves around a different political race his character is involved in.
Coming 2 America is a 2021 American romantic comedy film that serves as a sequel to the 1988 film Coming to America starring Eddie Murphy in various roles and directed by Craig Brewer, from a screenplay by Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield, the original writers, and Kenya Barris, and a story by Blaustein, Sheffield, and Justin Kanew, based on characters created by Murphy. It co-stars Arsenio Hall, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, KiKi Layne, Shari Headley, Teyana Taylor, Wesley Snipes, and James Earl Jones. It tells the story of King Akeem Joffer who returns to New York to find the son he didn't know he fathered back in his last visit to New York. The film was the final appearance for both James Earl Jones and Louie Anderson before their deaths in 2024 and 2022 respectively.
The 24th San Diego Film Critics Society Awards were announced on December 9, 2019.
William Clifford Brown, who went by the name Big Brown, was a mid-twentieth century American street poet, performer, and recording artist. Prominent among the Beats in New York City from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, his distinctive language and style influenced a number of artists and musicians, including Bob Dylan, who declared Brown's to be the best poetry he had ever heard. Brown also influenced the later genres of hip hop and rap. In 1973, after moving to California, he recorded an album, The First Man of Poetry, Big Brown: Between Heaven and Hell, produced by Rudy Ray Moore. Brown was murdered in Los Angeles seven years later.
