A Quote by Neal Brennan

I think that [Eddie Murphy's famous "White Like Me"] is probably the first time I thought, "Oh. Being black is different. That is a totally different experience." — © Neal Brennan
I think that [Eddie Murphy's famous "White Like Me"] is probably the first time I thought, "Oh. Being black is different. That is a totally different experience."
A Murphy [Eddie Murphy] movie is like a Sidney Poitier comedy - he's that intensely good... He revolutionized acting. He's literally black Brando. Before Eddie Murphy, there were two schools of acting for a black actor: Either you played it LIKE THIS or youplayeditlahkdis. He was the first black guy in a movie to talk like I am talking right now. That did not exist for black actors before him.
To me, there were comedies that should go up for Oscars. I think Eddie Murphy in 'The Nutty Professor' was one of the greatest acting performances of all time, but it'd never be recognized that way. They always go for De Niro and Pacino, but Eddie Murphy played seven different people!
At one point, people thought that Eddie Murphy would only reach one sector of the audience, but now everyone sees everything Eddie Murphy does.
The actors are different, although I didn't set out to be different. My inspiration came from people like Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. The genre is what it is. My inspiration was drawn from great movies like 48 Hours, Bad Boys and Rush Hour.
The black comedians meeting? Oh yeah, we hold one every year at Eddie Murphy's house.
Right around 11 or 12, when I saw Eddie Murphy's standup special 'Delirious,' and I taped it on a VHS tape - I think I watched it every single day. I lived and breathed Eddie Murphy for that whole year.
For a black person who's Senegalese, growing up in France, or a New York Jamaican, that's a completely different relationship with being black and how you might be accepted in that culture or that world. Everyone's experience is different. Especially black women and black men.
I always wanted to be famous because I thought that if I couldn't be good [at something], I'd be famous. I was never really good. I was just something different and I got to be famous for being different.
I think Eddie Murphy is the greatest comedian. I do think that Richard Pryor is the Godfather, but Eddie Murphy, in my opinion, has every comedic category in his arsenal. He can roast you. He can freestyle. He can host. He was LeBron James before we even saw LeBron James.
My favourite chant is 'you're just a fat Eddie Murphy.' When I heard that I could not stop laughing. I would prefer a 'muscular Eddie Murphy.'
They're working their way down. Next year, Todd Bridges gets the award. When I was a kid I wanted to be Eddie Murphy and now I'm a rip-off of Eddie Murphy.
I don't want everybody to try to sound like something; I think that God has given us each unique talents and passions. The things that come out of me will be different than my neighbor, because I have a totally different set of relationships, totally different set influences and personality traits.
I think being biracial is a different experience. I think that, and coming from the U.K., I feel as much white as I do black. And so it's really important for me to address these issues of identity in my work. But also, you know, we're always stronger when we work on, you know, what we have in common. And I love exploring that in my work.
Eddie Conway is central to my first memories. My parents used to take me to, when it was open, the Baltimore city penitentiary to see Eddie Conway - I was talking to my dad about this recently - from the time I might have been one or two years old. I mean, literally, my first memories are of black men in jail, specifically of Eddie Conway.
I have a perhaps naive point of view informed by my own kind of snowflake-in-the-unique-sense rather than the political sense, personal story. I mean I feel like my experiences are so hard to map onto any kind of generalized identity. For example, I'm a black person, but I come from a very particular black experience which is not unlike the experience of the Barack Obama. I have an African mother and a white father and I feel like I have a different experience of being a black person as a result of that identity than someone who is from the descendants of slaves.
I think it's important for people to understand that dance, movement, choreography is about an experience and entertainment but it's also about perception and a lens. So when we're talking about a Black female's experience through a Black female's lens, that's going to be totally different from a Black female's perspective through a Black male's lens.
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