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Dolemite is My Name
Film
Film & Media Alumni Fest

Dolemite Is My Name

with Michelle Brattson Majors '96 from Netflix
November 16, 2019

This event occurred as part of the 19/20 Hop Film season. This is an archived view.

Eddie Murphy stars in the true story of a never-was who became the baddest mother there ever was.

19/20 Hop Film

Stung by a string of showbiz failures, floundering comedian Rudy Ray Moore (Eddie Murphy) has an epiphany that turns him into a word-of-mouth sensation: Step onstage as someone else. Borrowing from the street mythology of 1970s Los Angeles, Moore assumes the persona of Dolemite, a pimp with a cane and an arsenal of obscene fables. 

However, his ambitions exceed selling bootleg records deemed too racy for mainstream radio stations to play. Moore convinces a social justice-minded dramatist (Keegan-Michael Key) to write his alter ego a film, incorporating kung fu, car chases, and Lady Reed (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), an ex-backup singer who becomes his unexpected comedic foil. Despite clashing with pretentious director D'Urville Martin (Wesley Snipes), and countless production hurdles at their studio in the dilapidated Dunbar Hotel, Moore's Dolemite becomes a runaway box office smash and a defining movie of the Blaxploitation era. D: Craig Brewer, US, 2019
 
After the film, Production Executive Michelle Brattson Majors '96 will share tales from the trenches while working on the film and offer her thoughts on how streaming platforms have impacted her side of the movie business. 

“As the brash hustler who made Dolemite, Eddie Murphy has his best role in years in a film that's like a blaxploitation answer to The Disaster Artist.”

Variety

“Murphy brings so much hope and hunger and pure life force to the role that he makes you believe in every punchline, pelvic thrust, and egregiously misplaced karate kick.”

Entertainment Weekly

In the News

Dolemite is My Name

Review: 'Dolemite is My Name'

Rogerebert.com, Oct. 2, 2019: A review of "Dolemite is My Name" that calls it "a typical biopic buoyed by its unrelenting hilarity, its affection for its subject and commitment to the time and place...

Dartmouth Film and Media Alumni 250th Celebration Weekend
Dartmouth 250 Film & Media Alumni Fest

Our guests included independent film producer Alix Madigan '84 , Netflix production executive Michelle Brattson Majors '96 , music supervisor Barry Cole '93 , game designer Prof. Owen Gottlieb '95 ,...

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Black Family Visual Arts Center
22 Lebanon Street
Hanover, NH

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