Trust Me: These Two Click Together

A nearly breathless Eddie Murphy comes dashing over to producer Brian Grazer’s trailer from the set of their new movie to tell him that he’s just found out the rights to a famous person’s life are available and he has the perfect take for a movie.

“You can do a kind of ‘Terms of Endearment,’ ” he tells Grazer.

Psyched by Murphy’s earnest enthusiasm, Grazer doesn’t hesitate a moment before assuring the actor of his interest. “I’ll check into it immediately,” he tells Murphy, who no doubt trusts that Grazer’s response is genuine and not just what he wants to hear, as is so often the case in Hollywood.

More significantly, the brief exchange between movie star and producer could actually materialize into a major motion picture someday.

It has happened that way before between Grazer and Murphy, whose close friendship and business relationship evolved from working together on the 1992 comedy “Boomerang” and the 1996 hit “The Nutty Professor” and has since resulted in three back-to-back movie projects and a new TV series for the Fox Network.

In Hollywood, the value of relationships between top executives and the creative talent can add considerable value to an entertainment company.

“We work well together,” said Murphy, seated in Grazer’s trailer at Universal Studios on the set of their latest movie project, “Life,” which teams Murphy and Martin Lawrence in a story of two wrongfully imprisoned inmates.

Like “Boomerang” and the remake of “Nutty Professor,” the film was spawned by Murphy’s ideas and then transformed into movie reality by Grazer and his creative team at Imagine Entertainment. The same is true for the Murphy-conceived TV show “The PJ’s,” a claymation series about life in the inner city that Fox picked up for next January.

Dressed in a dark brown suit, matching turtleneck sweater and chocolate Hush Puppies, Murphy--whose screen persona as the often boisterous wise guy belies an often soft-spoken demeanor--explained why his relationship with Grazer seems to work so well.

“It’s two artists trusting each other,” says Murphy, an admitted skeptic about such things as honesty in Hollywood and a man for whom trust doesn’t come easily.

“You settle for someone who just shoots straight with you in this town,” says the Brooklyn-born Murphy, who grew up in Hempstead, N.Y., and today lives with his wife and children far from the Hollywood limelight in a New Jersey suburb.

“This is a guy who . . . shoots straight. He’s a smart guy and I like him too,” Murphy says of Grazer.

Director Ron Howard, Grazer’s longtime partner and co-head of Imagine, said, “Eddie seems really relaxed around Brian, and I’ve observed him in other business situations and he’s pretty tight-lipped and plays it close to the vest.” With Grazer, Howard added, “Eddie can relax and he’ll just start riffing.”

Grazer and Murphy have a lot in common, not the least of which is their knack for constantly hatching movie ideas, which they often exchange during nearly daily telephone chats.

In Grazer and Murphy’s next movie project, “Bowfinger’s Big Thing,” a comedy written by Steve Martin and to be directed by Frank Oz this June, a wannabe Hollywood filmmaker is told by thirtysomething studio executives that the only way he’ll ever get a movie made is by landing a major star. The wannabe producer-director (played by Martin) puts together a small crew to surreptitiously film the world’s biggest action star (Murphy) in real-life situations, which he then stitches together into a movie.

Both Grazer and Murphy have had success in separate endeavors.

Grazer, 46, who along with his longtime director-partner Howard at Imagine, has made such hits as “Liar, Liar,” “Ransom” and “Apollo 13,” is one of Hollywood’s most successful and prolific producers.

Murphy, 36, who gained fame in the 1980s with such hits as “48 HRS.,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Trading Places” is a top box-office star.

But at a time when Murphy’s once-invincible track record was marred by a string of duds such as “Beverly Hills Cop III,” “Harlem Nights” and “A Vampire in Brooklyn,” he and Grazer hit box-office magic with “The Nutty Professor,” a remake of the 1963 Jerry Lewis comedy. The remake grossed more than $270 million worldwide.

“If you get the right artist to do even close to the right thing, you exponentially increase your chances of success,” said Grazer, who counts several top Hollywood stars among his best friends, including Martin, Tom Hanks and Michael Keaton--all of whom have made multiple movies with the producer.

Grazer appreciates the business advantages of having great talent relationships.

If not for his friendship with Murphy, he said, the actor would probably never have called him at home one night to pitch his take for a remake of “Nutty” after he learned Grazer had acquired the rights. Murphy’s idea was to make the main character, Sherman Klump, a shy, 400-pound professor who invents a magic potion that transforms him into the slim, suave hipster Buddy Love.

“Eddie called and said, ‘I have this take on this thing. I’ve got to tell you in person,’ ” recalls Grazer, who rushed over to the set of “Beverly Hills Cop III” to hear him out.

Grazer instantly got it.

“The hardest thing to find in this town is people who get it,” says Murphy. “Brian has a great sense. He can pick a story and tell what people are going to find provocative about it. . . . If I pitch something to somebody, they might not be able to get it. If I pitch something to Brian, even if he didn’t get it, he’ll at least go with me to hear what my whole idea is and let me flesh it out all the way.”

Murphy said that if he pitches something Grazer doesn’t like, the producer will say something like, “ ‘I don’t know . . .’ and he never mentions the idea again, or he might do a couple of jokes about it later and how the movie would have turned out.”

Murphy says Grazer always seems to be ahead of the curve, which he attributes to intuition and curiosity.

“Brian will go have lunch with some odd person. . . . He’s all over the place,” said Murphy, referring to Grazer’s ritual of seeking out experts in a various fields that interest him.

Grazer rarely develops movie ideas with actors and holds Murphy to be an exception to the rule.

“Because Eddie’s a writer, he’s able to implement his ideas and they have matured into real movies,” Grazer said. Murphy began his career as a writer and series regular on TV’s “Saturday Night Live” from 1980-84.

“What Eddie does is, we’ll just be talking and he’ll throw out a line and I’ll get curious about it. He’ll expand upon it to the point that it becomes really clear, then I’ll get really excited. . . . What I try to do is sort of nurture those moments.”