April 2003 DysFUNKtional Family : An Interview with Eddie Griffin

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Interviewed by Wilson Morales DysFUNKtional Family: An Interview with Eddie Griffin The time has come for Eddie Griffin to make his mark amongst the “Giants” of comedians. Through the use of VHS and now DVD, I have seen Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, and Chris Rock all do their best work on stage and each time I couldn’t stop laughing. Eddie Griffin has been doing his thing as well but I hadn’t seen do his best work yet. After last year’s Undercover Brother, he must have known it was time for his “peeps” to see him and know him. That’s not all for he even brought in members of the family to help us understand him. The comedy concert film he has out is called DysFUNKtional Family and in an interview with blackfilm.com, Eddie Griffin talks about his chance to do his things and his role models. WM: A couple of years ago you played a stand-up comedian in “Foolish” and now here you again in your own film. How do you feel about that and sharing your family with us? EG: It is a dream come true. It’s one of those reactions like: I did that. But it don’t look like you when you watch it. My family I’m used to seeing but myself… it don’t look like you. It’s like watching some dude doing standup. WM: Are you paying your family a lot of loot for their participation? EG: No. Family is love. They’re not coming at it like “Hit me off with five hundred thousand”. My family is an open book as you can see from the film. They don’t hide. They’re proud to let the world know. We just showed up at the house. We showed up with the cameras and said we just want to sit down for a while and film you for Eddie’s movie. “Cool” [And he [Uncle Curtis] said] let me show you some movies. Well that’s Curtis. If any of y’all show up at the house he’s gonna show you some shit. [Laughter] “Have you seen this one? Here let me show it to you.” WM: Your uncle has a colorful that some may not want explored. Did you talk to him and explained how his life will be out there for the world to know if they see this film? EG: I think you’re making it more difficult than it was. We were in Kansas City for a week and they just followed me around with a camera for 24 hours a day and we bumped into all my family members out there. The main ones I wanted to talk to was Bucky, Curtis and my moms ‘cause that’s the piece that I was doing on the set. The three of them are just open. You know. So, Bucky nervous? Hell no. Bucky’s just laid back like that. Moms had two white Zinfandel’s and I knew she was just gonna floor’em. WM: Did any of them have reservations about you going on stage and talking about them? EG: I’m not talking about them I’m just telling the truth, shit. No we don’t have any issues. They come see the show and they like “Don’t leave out the part on when I…” You know. It’s more like they’ll add to the story then detract it. WM: Rumor has it that you will be doing the Sammy Davis Jr. movie. Care to comment? EG: Yes this is true. It’s started up with Miramax. It’ll take me a year to get ready to play Sammy ‘cause Sammy did everything but fly. [Laughter] WM: Are you ready for the challenge of playing a legend? EG: Oh you know, we gotta brush up on tapping ‘cause I ain’t tapped dance in at least nine years. I gotta learn how to play the drums, bass ‘cause he played every instrument. So there’s a lot of work going into that. WM: Why do you think his story should be told? EG: Why not man? That’s an interesting question and I’d like to pose an answer if I may. The reason the story has to be told is because that was the cat that knocked down the doors man. If there wasn’t a Sammy there’d be no Michael Jackson, there would be no Puffy Combs so the story has to be told man. WM: Was it worked at all? EG: No. I wanted to tell the real story, know what I mean? ‘Cause a lot of that story hasn’t been told. He had a lot of turbulence. He had it rough. Imagine being in the army and then a group of guys piss on you. There’s a lot of stuff that hasn’t been told. The rat pack didn’t service his life at all. WM: Is there anything new you learned about Sammy? EG: I didn’t know his dick was that big? He had a reputation for being a swordsman. Yeah, he was a knight of the round table. WM: If you were doing the casting, who would you get to play the rest of the parts? EG: I know I would want Harry Connick Jr. to play Frank Sinatra. The rest of the rat pack I’m not really concerned with ‘cause in the Sammy story, it’s really a story about two friends which is him and Frank Sinatra where it wasn’t cool for a white man to have a black friend they were just blood brothers. When Sammy got in trouble, Frank was always there, when he got in trouble with the IRS, Frank was there to bail him out. So I want to follow that friendship and how they could go through the 60’s and 50’s. There was a time when Sammy was first performing in Vegas and they wouldn’t let him come through the front door. They told him to go around back and he’s on the fucking bill. And Frank Sinatra went up to the casino owner and said "if he don’t walk through the front door I don’t perform here." That was the first time a black entertainer was allowed to walk through the front door. WM: You use a lot of political references in some of your jokes. Do you think it’s necessary in light of our current situation and the war? EG: That’s just me. But it’s not a prerequisite to being a comedian. Some comedians don’t even like dealing with those issues ‘cause it’s not in their makeup. Just like my man said the war is heavy on my mind but it’s not heavy on his. So if he were doing stand up you wouldn’t here him talk about the war ‘cause he ain’t concerned about it. So it just depends on the person. Me, I’m an avid CNN watcher. C-SPAN all that shit, so when you bombard yourself with all that shit 24 hours a day as I do, for some strange WM: Michael Jackson is mentioned in one of your jokes. Do you still have respect for him? EG: Yeah. He’s one of the most talented motherfuckers that ever walked on stage. Let’s not get it twisted. I respect the shit outta him. Anybody that can grow up from age six in that fucking business it’s like, when you look at him; you’re looking at the business. He’s a product of the business. He didn’t have a regular childhood. When we were outside playing on the slide or the jungle gym, this dude’s rehearsing backstage watching the temptations snort cocaine. He’s seen a lot. WM: Who’s your favorite comedian and what’s the best comedy show you’ve ever seen? EG: Richard Prior. You know, if James Brown is the godfather of soul then Richard Prior is the godfather of comedy, period. That man knocked down all those last freedom of speech doors. Lenny Bruce started it knocking on the door. When it was that conservative, when it was Leave It To Beaver land, a motherfucker couldn’t say “motherfukcer” on stage without going to jail. And this is America, to actually think that in the 60’s Lenny Bruce got locked up in fucking jail for saying “fucking”. We’ve come a long way from having verbal freedom. As far as best comedy show, Richard Prior live. The Long Beach show. That’s the apex, that’s the pinnacle. That’s what everybody’s trying to reach for. When he walked on that stage he had the red shirt on in Long Beach and when he walked on that stage to the time he left, he was on fire. I think we captured that in Dysfunktional ‘cause that was one of those magical nights that we shot in Chicago and I knew from the time I walked out “I’m ON tonight” and we had it on film. Usually when we have those shows you say “damn I wish we’d filmed that”. WM: What other films and projects do you have lined up? EG: I’m doing Scary Movie 3. I’m doing the Morpheus character. I’m looking forward to it. We’ll film that in June. I also have “Enter The Hood”, which I just set up over at Miramax. It’s a comedy that I wrote. Remember Enter The Dragon with Bruce Lee? We have Enter The Hood and Mr. Handman has fuck you fingers that he puts on, fingers that have roach clips for his joints, and feathers that he spanks his bitch’s ass with. I play the Bruce Lee character. But everybody that was Asian in Enter The Dragon is black with the little Asian wigs on and the one black character that Jim Kelly played is Asian with an Afro. It’s all gonna be sub titled. The only motherfucker that speaks English is the Asian dude but he sounds like he’s from the hood. We start shooting in November. WM: Will you be doing all your own stunts? EG: Oh yeah. I just finished a movie doing all my own stunts. It’s called BLAST and it was shot in South Africa. It’s an action film. It’s me, Breckin Meyer, Vinny Jones, and Vivica Fox. It’s written by Steven E de Souza, the guy that wrote Die Hard for Bruce Willis and it’s basically Die Hard on an oil rig. I play this tugboat captain who’s positioning this oil rig off the coast of California. Vinny Jones you think is this environmentalist whose protesting this oil rig and oil company, blah blah blah So he ends up getting on this oil rig and we find out he’s a terrorist and he’s taken over this whole damn oil rig and my godson is trapped on this oil rig with him ‘cause we were gonna do a surprise Christmas party. It takes place around Christmas. I think it comes out this fall before Christmas. So it’s just an everyday Joe put in this extreme situation. You know, would he rise to the occasion. It’s basically what Bruce Willis had to do in Die Hard. WM: Was it difficult for you to make that transition from comedy to action-drama? EG: Oh no, I took to action like a fish takes to water. Yeah, I like it. I did every stunt. The stand-in that they had for me was 40 lbs heavier than me so it didn’t make any sense. I’m running and fat man jumping. [Hard laughter] So after looking at his ass I’m like “I got it. I’ll do it myself”. Thank God I was in South Africa ‘cause half the stunts I did they wouldn’t allow you to do here in the States. WM: It seems that everything comes naturally to you. Do you ever feel the pressure of doing anything? EG: They’re all hard but I think if you love what you’re doing you don’t think about the difficulty of it. Getting on stage doing standup anytime is hard. You never know what you’re going to say. You live and die on your next word. It’s the most dangerous form of entertainment, which is why I get an adrenaline rush off it, a natural high off it ‘cause you never know. So it’s like Russian roulette the whole fucking time. It’s difficult but when you love what you’re doing, you don’t look at it for difficulty reasons. You just like “This is me. This is what the fuck I do.” But if I actually sat back and thought about it, shit, I couldn’t do it. So just do it. The Nike slogan: just do it.