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00:00From Hollywood, it's Jimmy Kimmel live.
00:04Tonight, Eddie Murphy and Morgan Fairchild with Cleto and the Cletos.
00:11And now, Jimmy Kimmel.
00:30I just want to say, please sit.
00:47We've been on the air for almost 23 years.
00:50And I've had to do some hard monologues along the way.
00:54But this will, this one's the hardest.
00:56Because late last night, early this morning, we lost someone very special who was much too young to go.
01:03And I'd like to tell you about him, if you don't mind.
01:08In 1977, my family moved to Las Vegas.
01:12My parents sold our house in Brooklyn.
01:14And we moved 3,000 miles across the country.
01:17They bought a house in a subdivision of Las Vegas called Spring Valley.
01:21They bought one of these cookie-cutter tract homes in a neighborhood that had just been built.
01:26There was not a tree on the block when we moved in.
01:29It was stucco and dirt.
01:31And that is where I grew up, on Meadowlark Lane.
01:34And there was a boy who lived on my block.
01:39He lived across the street and two houses over.
01:42And, I'm sorry, he was a little bit older than me.
01:47He was a year older than me.
01:48His name was Cleto.
01:49But we all called him Junior.
01:58We called him Junior because his dad was Cleto II, even though he was the third.
02:03Cleto, as he would say, Valentin Escobedo III.
02:07And one day, I was on my block.
02:09I was riding my bike.
02:10I was wearing boxing gloves and my mother's sunglasses and a headband.
02:15And Cleto watched me go down the street.
02:16And years later, he told me the first time he saw me, he thought I was special.
02:22I don't mean special.
02:23Like, this fellow is special.
02:24I mean, like, Special Olympics-type special.
02:28And he saw me.
02:29He went on a poor, mentally unfortunate kid.
02:32And eventually, we met.
02:33We became friends.
02:34And not just regular friends.
02:36We became, like, 24-7, Mom, please let me sleep over, please, kind of friends.
02:42One summer, I slept over at the Escobedo house 33 nights in a row.
02:46For real.
02:47My mother used to make me get down on my knees and beg to sleep at his house in front of him.
02:52And I would gladly do it because we were never bored.
02:55We were always up to something.
02:57Wiffle ball on the front lawn.
02:59Nerf football in the street.
03:01We dressed up as cowboys.
03:02We set fire to Hot Wheels.
03:04Cleto had a warped, second-hand pool table in his garage.
03:07We'd shoot pool.
03:07We would box for hours in his backyard.
03:10In his bedroom, we would box.
03:12We definitely gave each other many concussions.
03:15We would cut off each other's air supply and knock each other out for fun.
03:20We would stay up all night ordering pizzas to our neighbors' houses.
03:24And we'd make crank calls in the middle.
03:26We'd make crank calls, record them with a little microphone attached to a suction cup so we could listen back.
03:31We made a rap album like the Beastie Boys, except very bad.
03:36We made mean songs about our neighbors and friends.
03:39He'd play piano.
03:40I would sing along.
03:41His parents had a Betamax and HBO, which we would use to try to see naked people.
03:47Cleto was very focused on sex from a young age.
03:51He knew everything about sex, and he taught me all of it.
03:55Now, half of the everything he taught me was sometimes dangerously wrong, very wrong.
04:02Like, he told me it was impossible to get a girl pregnant in a jacuzzi because hot water deactivated the sperm.
04:09And that, by the way, is incorrect.
04:11Don't try that.
04:12But he knew a lot of stuff, and I wanted to hear all of it.
04:15Cleto lost his virginity.
04:17When most kids are still eating pouches of big league juice, so he was very cool.
04:22He wore his hair like John Travolta.
04:24He blow-dried it.
04:25He sometimes wore a tie to school just for the hell of it.
04:29He'd dress up.
04:29Yeah, there you go.
04:30And then, so I wore a tie and blow-dried my hair like John Travolta's sister, Ellen Travolta.
04:38In Little League, Cleto played catcher, which he felt was the best position, so I played catcher in Little League.
04:43We'd go to the gym sometimes.
04:45We were both very skinny, and he would read these bodybuilder magazines.
04:48He wanted to be muscular, like Frank Zane was his favorite bodybuilder, even though we were both built like Muppets.
04:54So he signed up for this crappy gym in Vegas called Camelot.
04:59And sometimes I would go with him.
05:00He would work out.
05:02I'd lay on the massage table with the rollers on it.
05:04And sometimes Siegfried from Siegfried and Roy would come into Camelot, which was one of the beautiful little miracles that happened when you grow up in Las Vegas.
05:13Siegfried would come in.
05:14He'd do 20 sit-ups and then go sit in the hot tub for an hour.
05:17We could never figure out why this millionaire magician, who probably had a hot tub at home, would want to be in a gross locker room in the suburbs of Las Vegas with a bunch of naked guys walking around.
05:29And then eventually we figured out why.
05:31You know, you can't get pregnant in a hot tub.
05:36Cleto taught me all the dirty things.
05:38He was so much fun.
05:39He was wild.
05:40It's funny because as an adult, he was not wild.
05:42He was a dad who, if we did go out, we'd go on a fishing trip.
05:47He liked to stay home with his family.
05:48He never missed a day of work.
05:50But when we were kids, he was stealing fire extinguishers out of motels and shooting kites out of the sky with a shotgun on our block in our neighborhood.
06:01He would, every weekend when we were in high school, we'd go out carousing, as we called it, with our friends Jimmy and Tommy.
06:07We'd just drive around and do dumb stuff.
06:09And inevitably, we'd end up in one of those giant, brightly lit Vegas adult novelty stores.
06:15The ones that sold sex toys and refrigerator magnets.
06:19That kind of thing.
06:20And every time, I still don't know how he did it, every time we'd go through the store, we'd get in the car and he would pull out, out of nowhere, he'd pull out the largest rubber penis you've ever seen in your life.
06:32Each one bigger than the next.
06:35One time, my parents went away for the weekend.
06:37We had a party at my house.
06:38And Cleto, of course, saw this as an opportunity to implement sex with his girlfriend.
06:44So Cleto was very advanced, but also very careful.
06:47He wore two condoms just in case.
06:49He would layer his condoms.
06:52Unfortunately, he left a wrapper for one of the two condoms next to my parents' bed.
06:57And, of course, my mother found it within seconds of coming home from vacation, which was big trouble.
07:02This was a major thing.
07:03But the sad part of the story is my parents came down with this Trojan wrapper.
07:07Not for one second did they think it might be mine.
07:09They knew it was Cleto's, which was insulting.
07:14So they brought me in the kitchen.
07:16My mother held it up like the Eucharist.
07:19She's like, whose is this?
07:21Cleto?
07:22And I had to admit, yeah, it was Cleto.
07:24They're like, why was he in our bed?
07:26Why wouldn't he at least do it in your bed?
07:29And I had to explain he refused to do it in my room because I had a trundle bed, which is one of those beds you pull out from under another bed.
07:37And he didn't want us to hear it squeak.
07:39So Cleto was at work when my parents confronted me about this.
07:42I couldn't call him to give him a heads up.
07:45My dad wanted to talk to him about it.
07:47And my dad never talked to anyone about anything other than bowling and yard work.
07:52So I went into, we worked at a clothing store, Miller's Outpost.
07:56Cleto was at the register.
07:57And I said, what's the worst thing that could have happened?
08:02And he said, without a second's hesitation, David Letterman died.
08:06And I said, okay, what's the second worst thing that could happen?
08:10And he knew.
08:11I didn't even have to tell him.
08:12He knew he left a condom wrapper next to my parents' bed.
08:17And then my dad talked to him, which was funny.
08:20My dad knew he couldn't get him to stop having sex.
08:23So I think he made him promise to stop littering.
08:27We had so many adventures.
08:30We would laugh so hard.
08:31We had our own language that, like, almost no one else understood.
08:35We didn't have to say anything.
08:36We'd sit here at rehearsal every day.
08:38We didn't have to look at each other.
08:39I knew he was thinking about looking at me.
08:41And I was thinking about looking at him.
08:43We'd look at each other like this.
08:45And that would be it.
08:46We loved all the same things, baseball, fishing, boxing, Ali, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Woody Allen, Michael McDonald, Huey Lewis, Stevie Wonder.
08:58And most of all, we loved David Letterman.
09:00We never missed David Letterman.
09:02And the first time I was on the Letterman show was 1999.
09:06It was a really big deal for both of us.
09:08That afternoon before the show, I was so nervous.
09:11I was walking in New York City, just walking fast, trying to burn off the nervous energy.
09:16And I called him just so we could be amazed together that this was happening.
09:21And it was an amazing thing.
09:23Cleto was a phenomenal saxophone player.
09:26From a very young age, he was a child prodigy who would get standing ovations in junior high school, if you can imagine that.
09:32And his dad was a sax player.
09:34His dad was in a band, a very successful band from Texas called Los Blues.
09:39But he gave up his career because he didn't want to go on the road and be away from his son.
09:43He didn't want to miss raising his son.
09:45So he quit being a musician in 1966 when Junior was born.
09:49He got a job as a busboy at Caesars Palace, where Sammy Davis Jr. recognized him.
09:55He knew him from the band he was a fan of.
09:57And he felt bad seeing him busting tables.
09:59So he called the man who ran entertainment at Caesars Palace and got Cleto Sr. a job as Sammy's personal room service butler,
10:07which was a solid consolation for hanging up his horn, which he gladly did to be with his family.
10:13Not even a hint of regret or resentment.
10:16So when Cleto Jr. became a professional musician, Cleto Sr. was thrilled.
10:20He got to live vicariously through his son, who started playing in bars and clubs and lounges in Las Vegas.
10:26And then eventually, he was spotted by a guy who worked for Paula Abdul.
10:31Paula Abdul was a huge star at the time.
10:33And she hired Cleto to sing and play sax on her tour.
10:37Oh, Cleto, sing it to me.
10:40Girl, you know I love you.
10:43Oh.
10:44And I always will.
10:47Hey, babe.
10:48If we live to forever be.
10:52I'll be loving you.
10:54I'll be loving you.
10:56See you.
10:57We never stopped making fun of that hair sign.
11:02And then, when the tour was over, Paula Abdul signed him to a record deal.
11:08He made an album.
11:09We were all so excited about it.
11:11You know, we're still kids.
11:12And all of a sudden, Cleto has an album.
11:14You know, I went to Tower Records and bought it there.
11:17But Cleto was never really a pop star.
11:19He was more of a serious musician.
11:21He was a great saxophone player.
11:23He loved jazz and R&B and different kinds of music than what the record company wanted from him.
11:28And the album didn't sell.
11:29So Cleto went back out on the road with big artists Luis Miguel, Marc Anthony, Philip Bailey.
11:35He did a lot of studio work.
11:37And for fun, he had a band he would play with here in town at local restaurants and bars.
11:42And then one day in September of 2002, I got a talk show just out of nowhere.
11:48I had a meeting with an executive at ABC named Lloyd Braun, and he hired me to host this show.
11:53And when you do a show like this, you need a few things.
11:56You need a desk.
11:57You need an announcer.
11:58You need a Guillermo.
11:59And you need a band.
12:01And, of course, I wanted Cleto to lead my band.
12:04We grew up watching Dave and Paul.
12:06And the idea that anyone other than him would lead the band was terrifying.
12:10It had to be him.
12:12I was so scared they would say no, and I would have to have another band lead.
12:15I had to work up the nerve to even bring it up because I knew my best friend from growing
12:20up plays the saxophone.
12:22He could lead the band.
12:23It wasn't a great pitch.
12:24But it had to happen.
12:25And not only did I want Cleto to lead the band, I wanted his dad to be in the band.
12:29So I pitched it to Lloyd.
12:31I said, okay, so the guy I have in mind is my best friend from childhood.
12:35But he's really good.
12:37You have to see him.
12:37We set up an audition.
12:38Cleto had a regular gig at a restaurant in the Valley called Cafe Cordial.
12:43I told him the plan.
12:44I said, call your dad, tell him to come out here, tell him to bring his sax, which,
12:48again, he hadn't played professionally for, at that time, like 30 years.
12:52I said, don't tell him this is an audition because I know he's going to get nervous.
12:56So his dad came out from Vegas.
12:58He brought his sax.
12:59He lost the neck of his saxophone minutes before the gig.
13:03But he found it.
13:04And they played.
13:04And they were great.
13:06Cleto put together a great group of musicians.
13:08Our band, the original lineup, Jeff Babko, Toshi Yanagi, Jimmy Earle, Jonathan Dressel,
13:13Cleto Sr., some of the most talented musicians in the world.
13:17And Cleto and his dad did a special song.
13:19They played Pick Up the Pieces by The Average White Band, which is two saxophones.
13:23And Lloyd saw it.
13:24He saw the father and son together.
13:26He said, I love it.
13:27And he just got up and left.
13:28And we've been working together every day for almost 23 years now.
13:35When we told him, when he told Cleto Sr. that he had the job,
13:41I said, hey, you've got to take a leave of absence from your room service gig
13:46at Caesar's Palace in case the show gets canceled and you have to go back.
13:50So he went in.
13:50He took one leave of absence.
13:52And we were still on the air.
13:53He took another one.
13:54We were still on the air.
13:55He took another one.
13:56And finally, they're like, Cleto, you don't work here anymore.
13:58You're on TV.
14:00And so he quit that job and never went back.
14:03And I've often said that the single best thing about doing this show
14:11was getting the opportunity to allow Cleto Sr. to pick up where he left off
14:15in 1966 and become a musician again with his son.
14:20And Ringo Sr. and his wife, Sylvia, Cleto's mom, have been my, like, second parents since
14:33I was in the fourth grade.
14:35I've known them 47 years.
14:37These people have never once yelled at me.
14:39Not one time.
14:39They are the best people.
14:41Sylvia comes to work here every day and sits in that seat despite the fact that she does
14:46not work here.
14:47She does not have a job here.
14:48She comes and stays all day to be near her husband and son.
14:53She's working those rosary beads in the audience every night.
14:56She's probably halfway through a Hail Mary right now.
14:59This is a very tight family.
15:01This is the kind of family when they aren't together, call each other 15 times a day.
15:05It is a small, tight family.
15:07And then around 20 years ago, it got bigger.
15:09Cleto met a girl.
15:10Cleto met a lot of girls.
15:11But this girl was the one.
15:13She was working as a waitress across the street.
15:15Her name is Lori.
15:16She's from Minnesota.
15:18Cleto and Lori fell in love.
15:19They got married.
15:20They had two beautiful kids, Jesse and Cruz, who Cleto loves so much.
15:25And I hope I can remind them as they grow up how much he loves them because it's a lot.
15:31And, um, I mean, everyone loves Cleto.
15:34He's, uh, everyone here at the show, we are devastated by this.
15:38It's not, it's just not fair.
15:41He was the nicest, most humble, kind, and always funny person.
15:48And more than anything, um, more than anything, Cleto loved to show his ass to others.
15:54He, you turn around, you look back, and there he is, his ass was just out.
15:59He loved to moon.
16:00He kept that tradition alive.
16:03When we were kids, my mother would sometimes drive us to school.
16:05We had a big Chevy Impala station wagon.
16:07Cleto would quietly slip his pants down and move people from the back of the car.
16:13Um, that's us together.
16:20Can you, can you tell which one of us is which?
16:23His little brown ass pressed up against the window of my mom's car directly over a bumper
16:30sticker that said, the family that prays together stays together.
16:34We had a lot of fun when we were kids.
16:36Much of it at my expense, by the way.
16:38This is me.
16:39He's dumping freezing cold water on me in the shower.
16:41Cleto had a bicycle with a sidecar attached to it, welded to the frame.
16:46He called it his side hack.
16:48And he had me sit in the side hack.
16:50And then he would drive me directly into garbage cans and bushes.
16:54I'd sleep over his house.
16:55And when I'd wake up, he'd almost always be on the phone with a girlfriend.
16:58One morning, we're in bed.
17:00We're both in our underwear.
17:01Cleto's on the phone.
17:01He says, Jim, will you go grab my glasses?
17:03I left them in the living room.
17:04I was like, is anyone home?
17:05Because I was in my underwear.
17:06I didn't want anyone to see me.
17:07So nobody's home.
17:08So I run in the living room.
17:10And I get in.
17:11And there are his grandparents sitting on the couch.
17:14And I went back in.
17:16And he's dying laughing in the room.
17:18Cleto was the leader growing up.
17:19I was the sidekick.
17:21He was the star.
17:22Cleto played saxophone.
17:23I played clarinet.
17:24That's kind of all you need to know about him.
17:27When I was a local DJ at a junky little radio station in Palm Springs,
17:31Cleto was on stage playing to 20,000 people.
17:33And then a few years went by, and our roles reversed.
17:37It was my show.
17:38My name was on everything.
17:40I was all of a sudden the star.
17:42And a lot of people who have a huge amount of talent
17:44would have a problem with that.
17:46Cleto never did.
17:46Not a twinge of jealousy, envy, passive aggressiveness.
17:51None of that ever.
17:52The opposite.
17:52He was proud of me.
17:53He loved me.
17:55He loved seeing all of this happen.
17:58He loved being a part of it.
18:00He never took it for granted.
18:02He would call me.
18:04He'd send me notes all the time.
18:06Big stuff, little stuff, whatever.
18:07Telling me, oh, this is so funny.
18:09I love this.
18:10I'm so proud of you.
18:11I'm so happy that we get to be together all the time.
18:14He would tell me how lucky he was.
18:16He was just a great older brother.
18:18No baggage.
18:19All love.
18:20There's no one in my life I felt more comfortable with.
18:23He was the godfather to my son, Kevin.
18:27We were best men at each other's weddings.
18:29He threw me, like, the worst bachelor party ever at his Uncle David's apartment.
18:38Uncle David didn't even have furniture.
18:40We sat on the floor with a 12-pack of beer and watched The Honeymooners.
18:44We watched the same three movies over and over and over again.
18:49It never was enough.
18:50It's just so strange.
18:52There were thousands of houses for sale in Vegas.
18:54My parents happened to buy one that was right across the street from this kid that I would
18:59just fit together with so perfectly.
19:02And maybe the most important thing Cleto ever taught me was that my relatives were funny.
19:07When I was a kid, my Aunt Chippy and Uncle Frank were always yelling at each other.
19:13Mostly she was yelling at him.
19:14And I didn't like it.
19:15And one day he called me.
19:17He said, come over.
19:18I said, I can't.
19:18My Aunt Chippy and Uncle Frank are coming for dinner.
19:21And he said, oh, can I come?
19:23Which was weird because we always slept over at his house.
19:26I said, well, why do you want to come?
19:27He said, oh, those two are hilarious.
19:30And that night I watched him watching them.
19:33And I thought, oh, yeah, they are hilarious.
19:35And years later, they became a big part of this show largely because of that.
19:40You know, when my Uncle Frank was sick, my Uncle Frank passed away.
19:43Cleto visited him in the hospital every day on his way home from work.
19:47Every day.
19:48And by the way, it wasn't even on his way home from work.
19:51It was out of the way home.
19:53But he loved Uncle Frank.
19:54And Uncle Frank loved him.
19:55He used to say, Junior, when you're on stage, you sparkle.
19:58You sparkle.
20:00Uncle Frank passed away in 2011 on August 23rd, which was Cleto's birthday.
20:04And early this morning, not long after midnight, Cleto passed away on what was Uncle Frank's birthday, 11-11, Veterans Day.
20:14And even though I'm heartbroken to lose him, I'm going to take yet another lesson from him
20:20and acknowledge how lucky I was to have him literally at my side for so many years.
20:27And I want to thank the doctors and nurses at UCLA Medical Center for taking incredibly good care of him,
20:34particularly Dr. Fatih Kaldas, Dr. Katherine Donat, Dr. Emily Switzer, Dr. Manuel Blanco,
20:42our good friend Dr. Jake Lentz, so many strong and caring nurses and technicians,
20:48including Remy, Becca, Tess, Gigi, Brian, Michelle, Andrew Baird, who works at UCLA.
20:53I'm sorry if I missed anybody.
20:55I want to also thank the team at Sherman Oaks Hospital that initially took him in.
20:59I'm grateful for my friends, Cleto's friends, Jimmy, Jeff, Fred, Toshi, Jonathan, Damon, Jenny, Jane, Guillermo,
21:08Mickey, Rick, Debbie, Eric, everyone who checked in on him, everyone who called and visited him,
21:13his great neighbors who've been helping his family, everyone here at our show have been so supportive.
21:18My family, my wife, Molly, Cleto's wife, Lori, Cleto's kids, Lori's family, who all did their best to be strong during these awful few months.
21:30And mostly, I want to thank Cleto's parents, Cleto and Sylvia, for making him.
21:36And for sharing him with me and with all of us.
21:43And for treating me like their own son, always.
21:49Cherish your friends.
21:51We're not here forever.
21:54Thank you for indulging me.
21:57We're going to take the next couple of nights off.
22:00But I want to be here tonight to tell you about my friend.
22:03And also, Cleto loved Eddie Murphy a lot.
22:08And I don't think he would have wanted us to miss this.
22:11So we will be right back with Eddie Murphy.
22:38Hi, welcome back.
22:51Tonight, a lady who has a podcast called Two Bitches from Texas.
22:56Her name is Morgan Fairchild.
22:58And she is here with us now.
22:59In the year 1980, our first guest changed comedy forever and did it while he was still living at his mother's house.
23:08He is a living legend who finally tells his story in a new documentary, Being Eddie, premieres tomorrow on Netflix.
23:15Please welcome Eddie Murphy.
23:45I'm very happy to have you here.
23:49Thank you for being here.
23:50Yeah, man.
23:51It's really good to have you here, especially tonight.
23:53Yeah, man.
23:54You, boy, this documentary is so good.
23:56I mean, it is just absolutely fascinating.
24:00I think that one of the things that really hit me because I was, you know, going through this situation,
24:05my friend is your brother, Charlie, and how much you obviously loved him and how much he absolutely loved you, and just your idea of the afterlife, of what we experience after we die.
24:23Yeah, that's what we all are part of, but we're all part of this bigger thing, and I think that that thing that connects us, that never dies.
24:32I think that just goes on and on and on.
24:35You know, consciousness, conscious awareness that we all have, that's what's, you know, that's how we're all connected.
24:43Oh, I think we're all that.
24:45I like that.
24:46You know what else I like?
24:47Your house has a retractable roof, which is awesome.
24:50Oh.
24:52It's like your own SoFi Stadium.
24:55It's incredible.
24:55Well, you know, I bought a house from Cher in the 80s, and the house I bought from her, that had that opening roof, so when I built the house out here, I was like, oh, now that roof's like Cher's house.
25:08So Cher was the pioneer when it came to that.
25:11Yeah.
25:11And Flavor heard about it.
25:12He was like, hey, yo, G, when you go invite me to your convertible house?
25:20Have you invited Flavor to your convertible house?
25:23Not yet.
25:24It seems like it's time, right?
25:25I will.
25:26Were you worried about?
25:27Because I know you're a very private guy.
25:28Were you, did you have to be convinced to let people into your home?
25:32You know, the documentary started off, I wasn't even thinking, oh, people are going to be coming in the house and stuff like that.
25:38The documentary, when we started doing it, it was supposed to be like, okay, I'm going to go back and do stand-up, and we're going to, we're going to monitor, we're going to go and document all the steps, getting back to the stage again.
25:48And then it turned into this thing where people will come, because the pandemic hit, and we stopped.
25:53Oh.
25:54And people, then we could only do interviews, you know, at the house with camera up.
25:59There was nobody around.
26:01And it kind of happened, like, we didn't plan for it to happen the way it happened.
26:06Arsenio in the documentary, there's a lot of wood paneling behind him at all times.
26:12Is it?
26:13Yeah, did you notice that?
26:14Is that real, though?
26:15It looks like he lives in a cabin or something.
26:21One of the things you talk about is, like, you were almost fired from 48 hours, like, two weeks after filming began, right?
26:29Yeah.
26:30But I didn't know why you were, why?
26:32They just didn't think I was, I was cutting it.
26:34They didn't think you were cutting it.
26:36Yeah, it was two weeks in, they was like, this is and, uh, Jeff Katzenberg, my dear friend, Jeff Katzenberg, he, uh, was the president of production at the time, and he didn't let them fire me, and I, and the rest, it's, it's history.
26:52Do you, that's just bananas to me, you know, at least to me to believe that nobody knows anything.
26:57After that happens, are you now, are you, did you, were you aware that they were thinking about it?
27:01I found out this, like, a few years ago.
27:04Oh, okay, okay, because it would be hard to go on if that was the case.
27:08Yeah, I didn't, but actually it wouldn't, because that was, when I did that movie, that was my first picture, and I was just so happy to be in a movie that if they would have fired me, I would be like, okay, it's cool, fine.
27:21Coming to America, I was interested to learn is.
27:26You know, there are, there are a lot of people who claim to be, like, Prince Akeem was based on me, but you said that it was based on, the story was based on you.
27:37It was on your personal life.
27:38Absolutely, yeah, yeah, but that movie, more than any picture I did, got so many people came out that said that they were the real, I got sued by all these different people, they were like, I was the real king from Africa.
27:50I would be out, and African people would come up, Eddie, that is my life, you stole it from me.
27:58That's me, Eddie.
27:59You said nobody had more fun than you did in the 80s.
28:02Nobody.
28:02But you were not drinking or doing drugs.
28:06But, no, but back then, there was no crack yet, there was no AIDS, there was none, none of that was, it was, it was innocent, like, the number one record was, all night long, but that's how innocent the times were, you know, and just nobody had more fun.
28:22And we was laughing all the time, between me and Charlie, and Mooney, and my Uncle Ray, and we just laughed constantly, just raucous laughter all the time.
28:32I feel like there was more than just laughing, though.
28:34I feel like all night long meant, like, all night long, you know what I'm saying?
28:41Oh, yeah, it was lots of girls around.
28:43Yes, that's kind of what I was thinking, yeah.
28:45How many was the most?
28:47How many girls were around?
28:50No, I'm.
28:51Oh, how many girls would I be with?
28:53Well, you know, I wouldn't be, I wasn't into the whole, you know, get a group of chicks and stuff.
28:57I was, you know what they used to call me?
28:59And this is true, the gentleman's gentleman.
29:01Really?
29:02That they would tease me, they would say, you're the gentleman.
29:04The gentleman's gentleman.
29:05I'm the gentleman, I'd be like, I was a gentleman, you know, opening the door and tip the, they'd be teasing me, do you know who you just tipped your hat to?
29:18You were friends with Todd Bridges, who played Willis on Different Strokes.
29:25I wasn't friends with him, I knew him.
29:26You knew him.
29:27But you knew him enough to care about him.
29:29You knew him enough, according to Todd anyway, to say, hey, like, this kid's got a problem and we need to do something to help him.
29:36Hey, you know, I heard that story and I don't remember that.
29:40Well, Todd says that.
29:42I know he says that I did an intervention and I had Rick James go to him.
29:47Yeah.
29:48Now, I don't doubt that that may have happened, but I would, I knew what, I would have never have sent Rick to him.
29:55You didn't send Rick to him.
29:56Yeah, but that may have happened, because he didn't, he, I know he said that I sent Rick, but I didn't see Rick.
30:03Because he did say Rick came to his house and he said, hey, where are your drugs?
30:07And he took, brought out his drugs and then he did all his drugs.
30:10He took his drug drink.
30:12And then he went home.
30:13That's hysterically funny.
30:15I wish I would have sent him.
30:16That's such a great story.
30:18All right, we're going to take a break.
30:19Eddie Murphy is here with us, folks.
30:21Eddie Murphy is his documentary.
30:23It comes out tomorrow on Netflix.
30:25You'll be right back.
30:35Around 12 or 13, I started saying I was going to be famous.
30:39And then I started saying when I'm 18, I'm going to be famous.
30:42That was my mantra.
30:44And I really, really, really, really believed it with every fiber.
30:48It was like, the, I, what if you don't get famous was like, what the are you talking about?
30:53I am getting, I am going to be famous.
30:55That's Eddie Murphy in his documentary, Being Eddie.
30:58It premieres tomorrow on Netflix.
31:01Where do you think that, have you ever thought, like, where did that confidence come from?
31:06It wasn't confidence.
31:07I, I knew it.
31:09Yeah, it's beyond confidence.
31:10It was more, it was more clairvoyance than confidence.
31:13Yeah, it was like, I just, I just knew it deep down in my blood that I was going.
31:19Do you think it happened because you knew it?
31:20Or do you think you knew it and then it happened?
31:22I think it happened, I think it was just like, you, you know it and you, you put it out there.
31:27I think that's how everything happens.
31:28You put it out there and it happens.
31:29I put it out there.
31:30You said you wanted to be as funny as Richard Pryor, which I did not achieve.
31:35If not, you got real close.
31:39Cool like Elvis.
31:41And I, I, I think I'm cooler than Elvis.
31:44I think so too.
31:47Not, not, not early Elvis, but Elvis in those, those jumpsuits and all that
31:51Elvis towards the end.
31:54Elvis on the toilet.
31:55He can't with me.
31:58And as big as the Beatles.
32:00And, uh, yeah, I mean, that's, uh, those are, those are pretty lofty clothes.
32:04Pretty lofty aspirations.
32:06You, um, were talking about, um, Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger when they made the movie Twins.
32:12Originally it was supposed to be you as a triplet.
32:14It was triplets, right?
32:15No, they came and they were going to do a sequel to Twins and they were going to do triplets.
32:20And, uh, it just, it didn't come to go.
32:23We're sure the people are just giggling at the idea.
32:26Seems not too late.
32:27Yeah.
32:30Who pitched you on that?
32:32Arnold himself?
32:33Yeah, Arnold and, uh, yeah, Arnold was the, you're going to do it, it's going to be fun,
32:37you're going to be triplets, and it's going to be the three of us, and we all look different,
32:42and Danny's little, I'm big, and you're the black one, you know.
32:45I was like, but wait a second, y'all are a little older than me, huh?
32:57How are you going to be triplets if y'all, you know, 20 years old?
32:59We'll work it out, we'll figure it out sometime in a year.
33:02I love hearing you do impressions, and I, uh, in the documentary, you do this bit with
33:10these puppets.
33:11You got a Richard Pryor puppet, you got a Bill Cosby puppet, and it is absolutely magical.
33:16And a Paul Mooney puppet.
33:17And a Paul Mooney puppet, also, uh, I had the Paul Mooney puppet before the documentary.
33:24They made the, uh, the Richard Pryor and the Bill Cosby.
33:26Oh, they made those for the documentary.
33:27Because during the documentary, at one time, I said, if I ever do stand-up again, I'm going
33:31to get a Richard Pryor puppet and a Bill Cosby puppet, and I'm going to be in the middle
33:35and have a conversation.
33:37So then the director, Angus, he went out and bought those puppets and popped them up
33:41on me, and I was like, oh, and then they made it into the documentary.
33:44I love the idea of you, your big return is as a ventriloquist.
33:48Eddie Turing with Jeff Dunham and Peanut.
33:55What's the dude's name?
33:56Terry Fat-Factor?
33:57Terry Fedor.
33:58Yeah, that's the big one.
33:59Yeah, that's, yeah, that, you can get on with him, you know?
34:01Yeah.
34:01I'm sure you can get a little residency going.
34:03Yeah.
34:04Or like a crash of stage.
34:06People would lose their minds if it becomes a night, a night of Eddie Murphy and puppets.
34:10Can you imagine how mad the audience would be?
34:13No!
34:13If they came to TV to do stand-up, it would just be a puppet.
34:16The name of the documentary is Being Eddie.
34:25It premieres tomorrow on Netflix.
34:27The great Eddie Murphy, everybody.
34:29Thanks for being here, Eddie.
34:30I'll be back with Morgan Fairchild.
34:46I'll be back with you.
35:11You know, our next guest from classic 80s programs like Falcon Crest and Flamingo Road.
35:23She co-starred with Pee Wee Herman and Ray's Chandler Bing.
35:27She has her own podcast now.
35:29It's called Two Bitches from Texas.
35:30Please welcome Morgan Fairchild.
35:40How are you?
35:55Thank you for coming.
35:58And thank you for doing this.
35:59And I'm so sorry about Cleto.
36:02To his dad, I'm so sorry.
36:04And to his mom, I'm so sorry.
36:06You know, it's a hard show.
36:08But, Jimmy, I just want to tell you one thing.
36:10Yes.
36:12I want to offer my profound gratitude for everything you're doing and everything you've done from an aging vixen.
36:20I appreciate that.
36:23I want to tell you that's very meaningful to me because we don't know each other.
36:29But when I was a kid, and this was supposed to be 80s week, so, you know, I wanted to talk about 80s things.
36:38And I had a desk in my room, and I had a drawer in my desk.
36:43And I saw a picture of you in a magazine.
36:45Just a picture of you, a head shot of you smiling.
36:47Head.
36:48Head.
36:48That's true.
36:49It was a perfectly wholesome photograph.
36:52And I ripped it out of the magazine, and I wasn't allowed to, like, hang, you know, that sort of thing in my room.
36:58Yeah, I heard about your mom.
37:00Yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:01Yeah, yes.
37:02You're exactly right.
37:04And I had it in my drawer, and every once in a while, I would pull my drawer open, and I'd just look at your face.
37:11Oh.
37:12I did.
37:13That's true.
37:14Yeah.
37:14And you're still quite beautiful.
37:16Well, thank you.
37:17Yeah.
37:19Thank you for being in my drawers.
37:22And this face loves you.
37:25You know, this is a different magazine.
37:28This is not the one that I had in my drawer.
37:30But it says, Is She Too Sexy for TV?
37:35What the Moral Majority is Shouting About.
37:37And this is a group led by a guy named Jerry Falwell, who was a troublemaker.
37:44Yeah, yeah, under the guise of Christianity, and yet he seemed to raise quite a bit of money for himself.
37:51Yeah.
37:51Is this something that upset you?
37:52No, no, actually, this is when I was doing Flamingo Road, and I had, we had shot the cover and shot everything, and then Ronald Reagan got shot.
38:02And so our cover and the whole story got bumped, and then they didn't know what to do with us because we had only, we were in that interim, you know, where we didn't know if the show was picked up.
38:12And then Reverend Falwell and Wildman declared me too sexy for TV, and, honey, the religious group handed me my cover back.
38:22They did.
38:24So this actually helped.
38:26It gave you a boost.
38:27It backfired on them.
38:28A few years later, you were in Pee-wee's Big Adventure, that one, right?
38:34Yes, yes.
38:34And that was a great scene with you and James Brolin.
38:38Did you know Paul Reubens?
38:39Is he somebody with a friend?
38:40Well, you know, it was so funny because I met Paul when I was hosting Night at the Improv, and so we became great friends.
38:46And so, yeah, and so we would go a lot of places together, and, you know, he would go as Pee-wee.
38:51You know, you show up at a gala, and he's as Pee-wee.
38:55You know, and anyway, so one day I got a call.
38:58This was back when I still had an answering company.
39:01And I got the call, and they said, we have Pee-wee Herman on the line.
39:05And I said, put him on.
39:06I said, Paul, I know your real name.
39:09You don't have to say it's Pee-wee.
39:11So he said, I have a big favor to ask.
39:13I said, yeah, what?
39:14And he says, well, I'm doing my first movie.
39:17And I said, great.
39:18And he said, yeah, we need some celebrity cameos, and everybody's turned us down.
39:21We have no money.
39:22It's a shoestring budget.
39:23And I said, okay, well, don't tell everybody everyone's already turned you down.
39:27And we have no money.
39:29I said, I heard the no money, but when do you need me?
39:32I'm shooting Falcon Crest.
39:33And he says, Thursday.
39:35So I said, okay, great.
39:37So I call Falcon Crest, get off for the day.
39:39So I arrive in the back lot at Warner Brothers, and they're shooting the ninja fight scene.
39:44You know, I looked at Jim, and I said, hey, do you have to go back to work today?
39:47Because I knew Jim because we'd done the pilot of Hotel a couple of years before.
39:50Oh, yeah, yeah.
39:51And so I said, you have to go back to work today?
39:53And he said, no.
39:54I got the day off.
39:55I said, yeah, so did I.
39:57You want to do more?
39:58And he said, yeah, what can we do?
39:59I said, I don't know.
40:00Let's go over and talk to the guys.
40:01So suddenly, Jim becomes a big game hunter, and I become a spy, and Paul becomes a bellhop,
40:06and it's like paging Mr. Herman.
40:08And it's one of the scenes in the movie, and it's just thrown together because-
40:11Whipped together like that?
40:12But we're just improvising everything.
40:15That's very unusual.
40:18Wow.
40:18That's pretty crazy.
40:20That's what friends are for.
40:21Yeah.
40:22That's a good friend to have.
40:23Now, you're doing a podcast with your sister.
40:27Yes.
40:27You know, well, during COVID, we started realizing that we weren't talking as much as we had because
40:32we were both worried about treading on the other's work schedule.
40:35So we just started scheduling a Sunday night phone call where she would finish work teaching
40:40acting and drive to her lake, and we would talk on her whole drive to the lake.
40:44And so we were thinking, what could we do together?
40:47So I said, what about a podcast?
40:49And then we were trying to think of a name.
40:51You know, it's hard to come up with a name.
40:52You came easy because you just called it the Jimmy Kimmel Show.
40:55But, you know, we're trying to make it something fun.
40:58And finally, I said, you know, it's just two bitches from Texas sitting around talking.
41:01And we said, oh, that's not bad.
41:04So we became two bitches from Texas.
41:06Two bitches from Texas.
41:07Yeah.
41:07Which of you is more bitchy?
41:10My sister likes to say she's the bigger, meaner one.
41:13Okay.
41:13All right.
41:14All right.
41:14If she likes to say it, then it must be true.
41:16That I'm not going to question.
41:19Well, it's really great to have you here.
41:21And you know what?
41:22I'm going to get a picture of this tonight.
41:23I'm going to keep it in my drawer.
41:25Will you send one to me?
41:27Yes, I will.
41:27I would love to be in your drawer, too.
41:30Morgan Fairchild, everybody.
41:31Listen to our podcast.
41:33Two bitches from Texas.
41:35Be right back.
41:41Well, thank you for bearing with me through the show tonight.
41:45Thanks to our guests, Eddie Murphy and Morgan Fairchild.
41:48Apologies to Matt Damon.
41:50We did run out of time for him tonight.
41:52Nightline is next.
41:53Thanks for watching.
41:54Good night.
41:54Good night.
41:55Good night.
41:56Good night.
41:57Good night.
41:58Good night.
41:59Good night.
42:00Good night.
42:00Good night.
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42:03Good night.
42:03Good night.
42:03Good night.
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42:03Good night.
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42:07Good night.
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42:08Good night.
42:08Good night.
42:09Good night.
42:09Good night.
42:10Good night.
42:10Good night.
42:11Good night.
42:12Good night.
42:12Good night.
42:13Good night.
42:13Good night.
42:14Good night.
42:15Good night.
42:15Good night.
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