Josh Spiegel
That Saturday Night Live served as a proving ground for so many comic talents has long since been established. But the ways in which its most notable early cast members or frequent hosts would leap from the small screen to bigger projects has shifted. Now, we see alums like Jason Sudeikis or Bill Hader make their name with distinctive TV projects like Ted Lasso or Barry. But there was a time when these comic improvisers would leap to the big screen, with directly inspired films like The Blues Brothers and Wayne’s World to high-concept comedies like Trading Places and National Lampoon’s Vacation. For two men whose early careers were synonymous with the success of Saturday Night Live, the last time they truly hit their comic peaks was the only time they worked together, in a movie about making movies. The two men were Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy, and the film, celebrating its 25th anniversary this week, was Bowfinger.
Written by Martin, Bowfinger vacillates between mercilessly mocking the Hollywood studio system and embracing the often quixotic quest to make an actually enjoyable film within that system. Bobby Bowfinger (Martin) has had to accept that he can only make films on the periphery of the system, indulging in D-grade schlock and barely making ends meet. When his accountant/in-house writer shares his latest project, a sci-fi action film called Chubby Rain, Bowfinger decides to go big or go home, lying his way into a random encounter with a slick exec (Robert Downey, Jr.) who sarcastically agrees to green-light the project…if Bobby can get A-List action star Kit Ramsey (Murphy) to star. Unsurprisingly, his attempt to sway the vain and slightly insane Ramsey fails, so Bobby just decides to make the movie and include Ramsey without his knowledge, thus inadvertently making the movie star begin to lose his already fragile mind.
Bowfinger could have easily served as a straightforward and savage satire of the industry. When it does satirize Los Angeles, it does so with great ease. Consider the scene when we see Kit with his guru (Terence Stamp), who is definitely not meant to be a stand-in for a Scientologist (ahem), or when the exec ignores the entire script of Chubby Rain except for the final line of dialogue, which could serve as a poster tagline. Murphy arguably gets the lion’s share of the big laughs, both as the fierce and loquacious Kit as well as his nerdy twin brother Jiff, who serves as a valuable stand-in for Kit in filming. The makeup is far less detailed here than when he played multiple characters in his Nutty Professor remake, but Murphy is as hilarious as the awkward Jiff when forced to run across a freeway full of daytime traffic for a key shot as he is as Kit, demanding that his agent find him a script sure to net him an Oscar, where he would play a character like “Buck the Wonder Slave.”
Martin’s filmography shifted in the new century, with even more family-friendly titles, such as the two Cheaper by the Dozen films, before tailing off in the last decade. Murphy, meanwhile, would not be able to ride the mid-90s success of films like The Nutty Professor and Dr. Dolittle much longer, excluding the one franchise that continues to hit big, the Shrek series. Just as it felt like a notable combination of comic icons to co-lead Bowfinger at all, the plain fact is that it marked the high points of their film careers. Both of these men felt comfortable enough with their separate legacies to be merciless in attacking, with enough sly kindness, the industry that made them so famous via the small screen. Twenty-five years later, Martin has remained solidly in the public eye thanks to his delightful friendship and partnership with Martin Short; Murphy had a reasonably solid return with the recent Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, but he’s a long way from playing Kit and Jiff.
Martin walks a fine line with his script, depicting the doe-eyed newcomer Daisy (Heather Graham) as a cutthroat who will do anything (and anyone) to move up in the industry and mocking the Los Angeles of the 1990s with the gifted eye of someone who’d survived that locale for years. But he and director Frank Oz conclude the film with the ragtag cast and crew watching the big premiere of Chubby Rain with joy and awe, and manage to pull off the shift in tones. That’s because the core idea of Bowfinger is just as fixated on the power of filmmaking as it is on how Los Angeles warps people’s brains. The satire of the film is fierce, but so too is the love for making cinema, even if it’s as ridiculous as a story about rain that’s chubbier than you’d expect.
“Bowfinger” is streaming on Amazon Prime Video and is available for digital rental or purchase.
