He’ll be doing a four night run Club Helium starting next Wednesday. We talked to him about Chappelle, Rick James, BJs, LSD, pimps, cancer, Norbit, his wife’s death and who was funnier when they were kids — him or Eddie? Look for it tomorrow on a Phawker near you.
UPDATE: Eddie Murphy is dropping out as the host of the Oscars telecast, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences said Wednesday, just one day after the show’s producer, Brett Ratner, stepped aside amid a storm of criticism over his use of an anti-gay slur. The hasty departures represented an embarrassing collapse of the Academy’s plans with less than four months before the ceremony, and left it scrambling to fill key roles on a show that is one of the most elaborately staged on television. Mr. Ratner, who was named the Oscar co-producer on Aug. 4, resigned on Tuesday morning because of the furor provoked by his public use over the weekend of an anti-gay slur, and a subsequent, salacious discussion of his own sexual habits on Howard Stern’s radio program. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation strongly objected to the derisive remark about gays, and a flood of objections by academy members and media commentators quickly made clear that the Academy’s Feb. 26 Oscar show on ABC, if Mr. Ratner remained in charge, was going to be as much about Mr. Ratner as the movies. Mr. Murphy on Wednesday followed Mr. Ratner — his friend, and the director of his latest film “Tower Heist” — out the door. MORE