Did you catch Eddie Murphy's brilliant comeback recently playing pioneering black filmmaker and comic Rudy Ray Moore? If you're like me, it made you want to learn more about the real Rudy, who died little remembered in 2008. I had to settle largely for Wikipedia. Want to read the authorized Rudy Ray Moore biography? Well, you can't. Not yet anyway. As of this post, it's only halfway to its Kickstarter goal.
I first saw the name of Rudy Ray Moore when digging through comedy album record bins in the 1970s. I never heard anything by him then, but I sure got an eyeful!
Then I saw his name in the newspapers, in the movie ads, as "Dolemite." I didn't know what a Dolemite was and even though I, a teenage lower-middle-class white kid, was catching some blaxploitation flicks downtown myself, I never caught one of his.
After the Murphy bio-movie, I sought out and watched MOST of Rudy's low-budget home-made epics. Terrible, for the most part, they were majorly entertaining in the way of Ed Wood flicks.
But I still wanted to know more. That's the way I am. So I'm being selfish here. Please consider supporting Mark Murray's Kickstarter campaign now so I can be reading "Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself" later this summer!
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