Word: harlem
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...AMERICAN EXPERIENCE (PBS, Tuesdays, 9 p.m. on most stations). What's this? A documentary series featuring real-life news footage rather than actors re- creating it? That is an admirably quaint notion that has spawned some fascinating programs. Former Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell is profiled this week...
...HARLEM NIGHTS Directed and Written by Eddie Murphy...
...star gets what may be his best laugh in Harlem Nights before he appears. The moment occurs when Eddie Murphy's name flashes in the credits for the fifth time. This may represent the new Hollywood record for authorial egotism. It is, in any case, three more mentions than Woody Allen requires to state his creative credentials for a truly imaginative comedy and two more than Orson Welles took for his film directorial debut, which was -- let's see, oh, yes -- Citizen Kane...
...attractive idea lurks at the center of this movie: evoke the glamorous, dangerous spirit of after-hours Harlem in the 1930s and do it in the style of a studio-bound gangster film of the time, in which sets, costumes, lighting all impart a dreamily enhancing air to reality. Implicit in this notion is an even better one: bring blacks in from the fringe of the movie's frame, where they were segregated in the old Hollywood, and make them the story's movers and shakers. To that end, Murphy recruited performers he obviously, and justifiably, admires -- Richard Pryor, Redd...
After meshing amiably with Murphy in Coming to America (in which he played multiple roles, ranging from a grizzled barber-shop customer to a fiery evangelist), Hall seems poised for a movie breakthrough. In Harlem Nights, which Murphy wrote and directed, Hall is onscreen for only a few minutes, as a gangster who "hates Eddie's guts." He is currently talking with producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (Beverly Hills Cop) about starring in an action-comedy, which would probably be shot next fall. "By then," Hall says, "either I'll have a grasp on what I'm doing...