In time, Stepin Fetchit’s name became an epithet, synonymous with “sellout.” During the Civil Rights Movement, he became an embarrassing symbol of African-Americans’ acquiescence to the disparaging image that Hollywood and the white establishment foisted on them.
As Keenen and Robert Townsend had discovered, though, the demonization of Stepin Fetchit hadn’t done much to change Hollywood’s view of black people. “Black Acting School” was their first real chance to make that point. They’d written the sketch back in 1984, but Townsend’s twenty-five thousand dollars in savings had run out before they could film it. After Townsend replenished the coffers with a few acting jobs, he and Keenen filmed the sketch, a broad but devastatingly detailed satire that became the beating heart of the film that grew from it, Hollywood Shuffle.
Opening on a scene of slaves escaping their master with the sound of barking dogs behind them, the sketch offers a quick tour of fifty years of demeaning Hollywood stereotypes: the simpering slave, cowering from the white man; the hulking Mandingo, brimming with sexual potency, unable to keep his hands off a white woman; the “house nigger,” more comfortable in bondage than freedom; and Townsend, essentially doing a spot-on impersonation of Fetchit, as the slow-witted, malingering butler. It was a sly, piercing denunciation of exactly how far the industry hadn’t come in the previous half century.
The big joke in the sketch—and another subtle nod to Fetchit—is that once the director yells “Cut,” Townsend jumps out of character: He’s actually a classically trained British actor. His fellow slaves are all well-educated thespians too, but also graduates of Hollywood’s first black acting school. The infomercial promises to teach its enrollees how to play “TV Pimps,” “Movie Muggers,” and “Street Punks.” It was all of Townsend and Keenen’s career frustrations rolled into five minutes. But after filming it, they were, once again, broke. They could never seem to book enough outside acting jobs to fund their film project.
Townsend stumbled on a novel solution. Looking through his mail one day, he found an application for a preapproved credit card with an eight-thousand-dollar credit line. He applied for that one and four more. Hollywood Shuffle was financed on credit and ingenuity. Townsend cadged leftover film stock from other acting projects he worked on. He discovered that wearing a UCLA T-shirt could fool merchants into granting him a student discount. For locations, they used the outside of Keenen’s house, the inside of Townsend’s apartment, or sometimes, random restaurant parking lots. They couldn’t afford permits, so they piled their equipment into a van and filmed with one person in charge of looking out for trouble.
“It was crazy but a lot of fun,” says Townsend. “A lot of times we had to steal locations, and you can go to jail for that in California.” Often, Townsend would station a crew member on the corner as a lookout. If anyone spotted a police car, they’d whistle, all the equipment would quickly disappear back into the van, and they’d drive off, only to return fifteen minutes later to try again. Years later, people would ask Townsend, Why didn’t you hold that shot? Why didn’t you zoom for another close-up? “They don’t know that the police were coming!”
In addition to directing, Townsend played the film’s lead, Bobby Taylor, a not-at-all-disguised version of himself. Keenen got a producer’s credit and played Taylor’s workmate at a fast-food joint, as well as Jheri Curl in the “Death of a Break Dancer” sketch. The rest of the cast was drawn mainly from the pair’s friends, many of whom, like Rusty Cundieff, Don Reed, Michael Colyar, and Myra J, were regulars at the Comedy Act. Damon was part of the ensemble too, as was Kim Wayans, who’d recently graduated with honors from Wesleyan. Nick Stewart, the former Amos ’n Andy star, had a small cameo too. In most cases, Keenen and Robert couldn’t afford to pay their actors, so instead they offered to use a credit card to gas up their cars.
“It was really exciting,” says Cundieff, who later made his own films (Fear of a Black Hat, Tales from the Hood) and directed Chappelle’s Show. “We all felt like we were involved in something special. It was positive in terms of black actors and actresses feeling that they were involved in something that hadn’t come before it. It was the beginning of careers of a lot of different people. The theme of the film really supported this idea that we could do some things on our own.”
In New York, an NYU film grad named Spike Lee was on a similar, concurrent mission, working on his first film, She’s Gotta Have It. Keenen recalled flying to New York for the premiere of Lee’s film. “We went to the screening and met Spike,” he said. “For every great idea, there are a hundred other people with the same idea. While we were in L.A. doing our thing, Spike was in New York doing his. You could feel that something was starting to happen.”
When Hollywood Shuffle was completed, Townsend used the last of his credit to stage a screening in hopes of securing a distributor. It worked. Samuel Goldwyn picked up the film, paid off Townsend’s debts, and when the film was released, it became a modest hit and a big winner with critics. She’s Gotta Have It had come out nine months earlier, and Lee was already working on his next film, School Daze. Townsend didn’t see Lee as competition, but as a fellow struggler forging a path where none had existed.
“Before that, there were no black movies,” says Townsend. “There was no business model. Then Spike does She’s Gotta Have It, we start doing Hollywood Shuffle. We didn’t think, ‘The market is saturated.’ It only made the door open that much more because Spike had made some money. It was good for everybody.”
Among those who knew him well in the mid-to-late eighties, Eddie Murphy was sometimes known as “Money.” The name was a term of respect, but also just an acknowledgment of fact: Whatever Eddie did in those days turned to cash, and lots of it. It was also a constant reminder of the pecking order among friends—Eddie made it rain, and the rest of his crew were often positioning themselves to just get wet.
On a late night in early 1987, Money was in his large hotel room at the L’Ermitage in Los Angeles. Arrayed around him were many of his closest friends—Keenen, Arsenio, Paul Mooney. Nights out with these guys were not drug-and-drink-fueled bacchanals. Most of them lived pretty clean. They liked to hit dance clubs, they liked to clown on each other, but their main vice was women, which seemed to always be in plentiful supply. There were a few around that night who had wandered home with them from the clubs. The conversation soon turned to the perpetual state of competition between the friends.
They all felt like they were outsiders storming the gates in Hollywood, but the gatekeepers had always severely restricted how many black men—particularly black comedians—could come through at once. For years, in fact, there had really only been room for one funny black guy at a time: First it was Cosby, then Flip Wilson, then Pryor, and now it was Eddie. But Eddie had already had a great run, and the unspoken question seemed to be, Who’s next? Whether they’d admit to it or not, that created a natural jockeying for places, for pole position behind Eddie. Sitting in that hotel room, there was a sense that none of them were being well served by this dynamic. Arsenio suggested another way.
“If we’d stop raggin’ on each other,” he said, “talking about who’s best and who ain’t shit—instead of this, come together. Why should we bicker when we could chisel a whole lot harder at success through unity?”
Someone commented that none of them were likely to get cast in a John Hughes film anytime soon anyway. Then Mooney, the group’s elder statesman, chimed in: “They got the Brat Pack. And we’re the Black Pack, homey.”
At a press conference for Beverly Hills Cop II that August, Eddie made an offhand comment that formalized the crew’s existence. “We have a group that I like to call the Black Pack. We hang out together and bounce ideas off each other.” He included Arsenio, Keenen, Mooney, and Townsend as the group’s charter members, but almost immediately others seemed to get drafted in too, if not by the group themselves then by media speculation and/or proclamation: Chris Rock, Denzel Washington, Damon, Robin Harris, Eddie’s broth
er Charlie, Spike Lee.
“I didn’t consider myself part of that group,” says Charlie Murphy, who began working for his brother, initially doing security, after getting out of the navy in 1985, but didn’t start his own comedy career until decades later. “Those guys were all around the same age, all hitting the clubs around the same time, all had big dreams. They had a camaraderie.”
Initially the alliance seemed to pay dividends for the Black Pack. When Arsenio took over hosting The Late Show on Fox in the second half of 1987, his Black Pack buddies were there—backstage, watching from the audience, making appearances on the show. An Eddie guest spot meant a sure ratings bump. Arsenio’s stature was automatically enhanced.
“We became a bit of a clique,” says Townsend. “We were all young artists. When you’re young and have healthy egos, you want to take over the world. You look at Hollywood and you’re like ‘We could do this.’ ” Close proximity also seemed to keep all the comics at the top of their game. “Steel sharpened steel,” says Townsend. “Eddie had done 48 Hrs., Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop. He was just killing the game. It couldn’t help but inspire. Because when people are really funny, it just makes you go, ‘Ooh, I really need to work on my stuff.’ It affected Keenen, Damon, everyone.”
One night, at Eddie’s house, the crew was prepping to go out clubbing. Keenen was in Eddie’s closet, rifling through a rack of clothes that fans had sent him. “It was all these bad versions of the Delirious outfit,” Keenen said, referring to the red leather getup that Eddie wore in his first HBO special. “I held one up and was like, ‘I should wear this tonight.’ ” A lark quickly grew into something of a dare. He put on what Eddie recalled was the actual Delirious one-piece and, to go with it, found a long curly brown wig, large studded Gazelle sunglasses, and a cheap gold chain with an “F” on it, courtesy of a guy who worked for Eddie named Federov.
Keenen declared, “I’m going to be your cousin Frenchy, from Augusta, Georgia.”
Eddie didn’t believe him: “You ain’t going out like this.”
“I’m doing it.”
Before leaving the house, Keenen found a long sausage in Eddie’s refrigerator and stuffed it into his skintight pants, giving him what he described as “the hugest schlong in the world.”
At the club, Keenen/Frenchy danced, stomped around, and generally made a spectacle of himself. “The sausage is bouncing around while I’m dancing, and women are just like, ‘Oh my god.’ ” Later in the night, Eddie and Keenen ran across their buddy Rick James, the guy whom Frenchy—or at least his fashion sense—was based on. Eddie introduced Keenen as Frenchy, and James was none the wiser.
“Rick has a drink in his hand and I snatch his drink, chug it down,” said Keenen. Rick James, being Rick James, was charmed.
“I like this man! You’re going to hang out with me!” James told him.
“He takes me and I’m in Rick’s limo with Rick and the Mary Jane Girls, dressed as Frenchy,” said Keenen. “I stayed in character all night.” As it turned out, he didn’t have a choice. Keenen had planned on bringing a change of clothes, so he could bow out of the gag once it got old, but Eddie purposely ditched the other outfit back at the house. “It’s a good thing I was committed. If not, I would’ve just been a guy in a high-water, tight leather suit with a sausage in his pants.”
Eddie was impressed. “We were out from eleven to six in the morning, and Keenen never came out of character,” he said. “The next morning the suit was all fucked up. Keenen’s like 6′5″ and he was busting all out of the suit.” Frenchy would later be revived as one of Keenen’s recurring characters on In Living Color.
Richie Tienken, Eddie’s co-manager at the time, wasn’t that amused by his client’s friends.
“I felt like, ‘Watch out for these guys,’ ” he says. “ ‘You’re surrounding yourself, they’re all going to leech on to you.’ ” Arsenio may have defused some of the group’s more cutthroat instincts by suggesting they work together, but they couldn’t change the facts: There were limited opportunities for young black comics in Hollywood, and Eddie had the power to anoint. Tienken recalled Keenen and Arsenio, in particular, jostling for Eddie’s affections.
“Keenen and Arsenio didn’t get along,” he says. “It was like watching two broads try to pick up a guy.”
There were other cracks in the Black Pack’s foundation. Keenen and Townsend had been partners on Hollywood Shuffle—they wrote it together, Townsend directed, Keenen produced—but in the wake of the film’s success, Townsend became its public face. Not only was he the film’s star, his story about financing it with credit cards resonated in the media. He was the one everyone wanted to interview. He was the one who got the invite to go on The Tonight Show.
“After the movie came out, most of the credit was given to Robert,” Keenen said.
Townsend reaped the spoils of his rising profile. He landed a lead alongside his friend Denzel Washington in The Mighty Quinn, a comic caper set in Jamaica. And Chris Albrecht, at HBO, offered him his own comedy-variety show. Keenen was part of that deal, coming along in the same capacity he had on Shuffle, as a co-writer, co-producer, and performer. But the title of the series of four specials made it clear the way the two friends’ partnership was seen from the outside: Robert Townsend and His Partners in Crime.
The Partners in Crime specials were formatted like old-school variety shows, with a mixture of sketches, standup, and musical performances. Even more than Shuffle, Partners drew heavily from the Comedy Act. There were musical performances by Bobby Brown, MC Hammer, and Heavy D. The most memorable stuff tended to be the sketches. One featured Townsend and Keenen playing Michael Jackson and Prince, respectively, as cops. Then there was a send-up of a Jerry Springer–type talk show, a Western spoof called “How the West Was Won . . . Maybe,” and a series of recurring sketches called “The Bold, The Black, The Beautiful,” which imagined the trials and tribulations of a wealthy black family. The initial Partners specials were well received, but Keenen was restless. After working on the first two installments, he stepped away.
“I wanted to do more,” he said. “I wanted to direct. I wanted to have more input beyond writing and performing. I needed to spread my wings.”
Eddie Murphy rolled up to the Fulton Houses in style. His limousine would’ve stood out all by itself, but stepping from it wearing tight, cow-skin pants, Eddie wasn’t exactly incognito. This was the mideighties, and he was the biggest movie star in the world. He didn’t make a lot of house calls. Usually, if you were hanging with Eddie, you were at his place—whether it was his hotel room, his home in New Jersey, his house in California, or the set of his latest movie. But there were exceptions. This was one of them.
The Wayans family still lived in the same four-bedroom apartment in the projects. Keenen had been dutiful about sending money back home from California when he could, but in truth, he hadn’t made much. When he was in town, he was sleeping back in his childhood bedroom. Eddie stopped by to pick him up for a night out, but ended up staying a few hours.
It was an event. Shawn, Marlon, and their sister Diedra’s son Craig were all there for Eddie’s arrival. Keenen had bought a new couch for the occasion because, as Shawn put it, “He didn’t want Eddie sitting on the roach-infested couch that my mother still had plastic covers on.” Shawn and Marlon were barely teenagers then and certainly knew who Eddie was but treated him no differently than they did any of Keenen’s other friends.
“He walked in, he had some cow-skin pants on—ain’t too many Negroes in the projects got cow-skin pants,” said Marlon. “So while he was there, me, Shawn, and Craig were snapping on Eddie, cracking jokes about his pants. Every time he sat down, we’d go ‘Moooo!’ We tagged him for hours.”
Word spread quickly through the projects that Eddie was afoot, and it became a bit of a scene. “You ever see The Birds?” said Shawn, referring to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film. “Where they’re trying to escape at the end? It was that with proj
ect people. You had to step over them.”
Keenen and Eddie had been hanging out a lot around that time. They were working on Eddie’s new film project. It was going to be a mix of sketches and standup that Eddie was calling Pieces of My Mind. Townsend would direct. They were working out of a Manhattan brownstone just a few miles from the Wayans family’s Chelsea apartment. Eventually, the parameters for the film changed. The idea of interspersing Eddie’s standup with a series of sketches was pared down to just a single sketch to open the movie. That sketch—which features future Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star Tatyana Ali, a then unknown Samuel Jackson, and Keenen’s seven-year-old nephew Damien Dante Wayans in small roles—re-creates a scene from Eddie’s childhood, standing up in front of a family gathering and telling a wildly inappropriate joke. The rest of the film is Eddie’s crackling, gleefully profane standup. The film’s title changed to reflect the new reality: Raw.
Raw was released in theaters—unheard of for a standup concert film—and grossed over fifty million dollars. Behind the scenes there was some grumbling over Keenen’s credits as both a writer and producer. Richie Tienken insists Keenen’s work on Raw was negligible.
“Eddie was working on his routine and was having a problem with a line,” says Tienken. “He talked to Keenen about it and Keenen basically said, ‘Well, why don’t you say it this way?’ And it worked. I said to Eddie, ‘That was really nice of Keenen to help you with that.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, he asked me for a co-writing credit.’ I was like, ‘What? It was one fucking line. This guy’s your friend.’ ” Tienken points out that comedians are always helping each other out with bits. He’s worked with comics such as Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser, and Ray Romano. “They all helped each other. They didn’t ask for anything. I think I even went to Keenen and said, ‘You’ve got some pair of fucking balls asking him for that.’ ”
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