Netflix's 'Dolemite Is My Name' director shares 2 wacky stories from the making of the original movie that he couldn't fit in

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Netflix's 'Dolemite Is My Name' director shares 2 wacky stories from the making of the original movie that he couldn't fit in

This image released by Netflix shows Eddie Murphy in a scene from

Associated Press

"Dolemite Is My Name."

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  • "Dolemite Is My Name" is filled with wacky moments recounting Rudy Ray Moore's quest to make the blaxploitation classic, "Dolemite," but director Craig Brewer said most of it really happened.
  • Brewer told Business Insider that there were even more ridiculous stories from the making of "Dolemite" that he couldn't fit in his movie.
  • The director shared two with us.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

"Dolemite Is My Name" (available now on Netflix) stars Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore, a comic-musician-entertainer who gained stardom in the mid-1970s when he brought a character he'd been crafting on the night club circuit for years, Dolemite, to the big screen.

Moore's Dolemite alter ego is brash, knows kung-fu (debatable), and has one of the foulest mouths in movie history.

Though the movie, "Dolemite," may be one of the worst-produced feature films ever made, Moore's performance made it a classic from the blaxploitation era. And Moore's profanity-laced insults and rhyming speech in the middle of the movie, called "Signifying Monkey," has gone on to gain popularity with stand-ups, rappers, and other entertainers.

dolemite

Xenon Pictures

Rudy Ray Moore in "Dolemite."

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"Dolemite Is My Name" delves into Moore's underdog story and spotlights the lengths he had to go to get his character on the big screen. That included living in a dilapidated hotel that doubled as a shooting location, and spending every dollar he had to make it (made for $100,000, it went on to earn $12 million).

And Brewer insisted that most of the events in "Dolemite Is My Name" really happened.

"The reality is we didn't have enough room in the movie to put it all in," Brewer told Business Insider.

During our interview, Brewer gave us two examples of things that really happened on the set of "Dolemite" that he couldn't fit into his movie:

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