Delirious to Donkey

On Sunday I watched Eddie Murphy's 1983 stand-up special Delirious. A whole bunch of it is pretty hilarious (hey wait...that sort of rhymes with delirious), even if Mr. Murphy's attire has dated considerably in the last 25 years.

More than anything, though, I was struck by how drastically Murphy's persona has changed since then. According to the blogger's desk reference, "The 70 minute show, released in 1983, showcases his most racy material - the word 'fuck' is used a total of 230 times, and 'shit' is used 171 times." And now, the dude's best known roles over the last ten years are pretty much restricted to Dr. Doolittle (parts 1 and 2) and the Shrek trilogy. (Soon to be, by the way, a quad-logy with Shrek Goes Fourth slated for a 2010 release according to imdb.com.) Dreamgirls was big also, but Murphy wasn't the lead, and since I haven't ever seen that movie I have no idea how big his role actually was.

Point is, it's a weird little transition to go from this:



to this:

It's like the reverse Bob Saget scenario.