What people responded to in Murphy from the start was his live-wire presence. He got a physical charge out of turning people on (and suffered more than most comics when he was only heard, on records). He specialized less in rage than in effrontery. Though he was applauded for "angry black humor," one of Murphy's major wellsprings was black self-satire. He got off on African-American tackiness. His hustler character, "Velvet Jones," peddled a book called "I Wanna Be a Ho." A convict character on "SNL" recited a poem called "Kill My Landlord" and blew his rebel-poet front by spelling Kill "C-I-L-L." The surface joke behind his militant black film critic, "Raheem Abdul Muhammad," was his anger that blaxploitation icons like Fred Williamson weren't taken seriously.

The deeper joke came from Murphy's own inability to keep a straight face when saying lines like, "What about Isaac Hayes in 'Truck Turner'? He made a contribution." In one way, Reggie Hammond was a role Murphy had been preparing for with nearly everything he'd done. To Murphy, there was never anything funnier than a style that misfits a man. The sex-starved, prison-rusty Reggie Hammond, dressed to lady-kill, was unable in the romantic clutch to arrive at a better erotic come-on than, "It's 10:05 -- by 10:10 I want to be into some serious flesh."

Murphy became a huge hit in "48 HRS." partly by playing a metropolitan thief, not a suburban wiseguy. Even if his best stand-up comic characters came straight out of Roosevelt (like gay hairdresser Dion), the persona that made him an instant superstar was pure urban fantasy.

But was that necessarily a bad thing? As Hill told me in '82, "We're asking a lot of Eddie, and it's really to his credit that he chose to put up with it. I mean, he could have done 'Meatballs III' or any of those other things that late-night comedians usually end up with. But he really has to act in this movie. It's got humor, but nothing hokey. It's a lot to ask a first-time movie actor, but we're asking it and we're getting it."

Murphy later confessed to me, "At first I was nervous, or at least a little out of it. I mean, literally, I'd been doing comedy on Saturday night and then had to do a prison scene Monday morning. Those prison scenes did scare me. Then I just realized I had to get back that 'fuck-it-Eddie' attitude." And he did. During the last weeks of shooting, Murphy was flying high on the release of a comedy album, appearances on "The Tonight Show" and the success he was already beginning to savor on "48 HRS."

"When I first started the movie," he said, "some people were being too nice to me -- they were saying, 'Oh, you're beautiful' when they were thinking 'Oh, you suck.' I know, because later we re-shot some of the shit. But I got more confident. Now I'm really confident. And next week I'll probably feel so confident I'll want to go back and shoot the whole movie over again.

"It wasn't hard to get into character; Reggie Hammond reminds me a lot of my older brother, Charlie, a badass dude. He's in the Navy now -- that's how slick he is. Staying in character was harder. Walter and Nick kept me from overdoing things."

I mentioned to Murphy that a few crew members were surprised that a nice suburban kid like him could be so scary. "Rage was the hardest emotion for me to carry through the movie," he admitted. "I'd have to be crazy to feel that kind of anger. I have had a real damn nice life. I have no rage in me. An acting teacher, David Proval [who this year wowed audiences as the ticking-bomb Richie Aprile in "The Sopranos"], had to teach me how to express Reggie's anger. He taught me how to use the little things that irritate me to get me really angry."

Since Murphy's portrayals of black lowlifes brought him criticism even when performed as flat-out comedy on "SNL," you might think he'd have been reluctant to start his movie career playing a felon. But he bristled at any suggestion that Reggie Hammond is a demeaning figure: "I think this is the first time that you'll see a black character like him in a movie. He will be articulate and snazzy and hip and smart. He's funny -- he doesn't just go around saying, 'You jive turkey,' or 'You white motherfucker.' He's not a crook -- he's a thief. There's a difference. He chooses to do what he does. And he's a good con man. There's nothing demeaning about him."

Murphy credited Hill's open-mindedness for allowing his character to grow. "There was none of that producer's attitude -- you know what I mean, some old guy telling me [for this Murphy assumed a New York-nasal accent], 'Whaddaya mean you people don't say these things, a' course you say these things.'" Murphy knew his credibility was on the line. "What did scare me is that movies are what I want to end up doing. I thought that if I fucked up I'd be on TV the rest of my life."

But after just two TV seasons and one movie, Murphy managed to turn his industrial-strength sass into a devastating comedy-delivery package. No one before or since -- including Murphy -- has so deftly communicated a visceral giddiness at being young, gifted, black and beautiful.

In his "Klump" movies, Murphy attempts to bring the same zing to characters drawn from his suburban-family roots. But he's trying to do it with directors like Tom Shadyac (the first "Nutty") and Peter Segal ("Nutty II") whose scrappy timing and go-for-the-guffaw desperation reduce even the juiciest material to a series of skits.

Whatever one thought of last year's "Bowfinger," Murphy, in his dual supporting parts, showed a rare willingness to submerge his talent in Steve Martin's comic vision. In the Klumps he's all over the place in more ways than one. Without the collaboration of directors with blue pencils to prune the potty jokes and purple shenanigans, Murphy may find that the public will weary of his earthy family-man act more swiftly than it did his slick bachelor with a badge.

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