HOLLYWOOD -- Chris Tucker is a funny man.

Anyone who devoutly follows North American stand-up already knows that this motor-mouthing, eye-popping, manic 24-year-old is a rising star of cutting-edge comedy. Now he is trying to make the crossover into mainstream Hollywood movies.

Even Charlie Sheen, in one of his few lucid moments during a recent word ramble, focused long enough to call himself "a fan" and pay tribute to the Atlanta-born Tucker: "I think he's Eddie Murphy squared!"

Sheen plays straight man to Tucker's antics in a violent new thriller comedy called Money Talks, scheduled to open in Toronto cinemas on Friday.

Tucker plays a petty hustler from the Los Angeles streets. Set up for arrest in a sting orchestrated by Sheen, who portrays a slick TV crime reporter, Tucker is caught up in a bloody escape led by another prisoner. Now wanted for murders he didn't commit, Tucker turns back to Sheen for help and Money Talks turns into a reluctant `buddy movie.' So reluctant that New Line Cinema and Alliance Releasing are touting it with anti-advertising: "This ain't no buddy movie!"

Tucker thinks that's a bit silly. Money Talks is a buddy flick. "We want to be like Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor," he says proudly of his on- and off-screen buddy relationship with Sheen, "and we're thinking about doing something else, just a small movie with no action in it."

Meanwhile, Tucker takes Sheen's comparison -- the Eddie Murphy squared bit -- as something worth celebrating. "That is definitely a compliment for me because Eddie Murphy inspired all the young comedians. He took comedy to another level and his movies were so successful that it opened a lot of doors for the rest of the comedians coming."

Unlike many in Hollywood, the amiable Tucker does not find comparisons odious. "I know Eddie Murphy got compared to Richard Pryor," Tucker says, emphasizing the obvious, that Murphy still made his own mark. "And I think I'm going to set my mark. So it's good to be compared to somebody who is doing that good."

Tucker, who calls himself a fan and now a friend of Sheen, was astonished that, in the development of Money Talks, Sheen insisted that Tucker's name be featured on top of the cast list, a place reserved for a film's biggest name. Tucker claims he didn't ask for top billing, even though he is also the film's executive producer, brought the project to New Line Cinema in the first place and "punched up the script" without screen credit. Still, Sheen showed none of the ego outbursts that billing often generates, Tucker implies.

Sheen shrugs it off. "I accepted the reality that it was his shot, his movie, pretty early on," he says of Tucker. "I learned a valuable lesson on Wall Street (the Oliver Stone drama) working with an actor named John C. McGinley. Good actor, good guy, good God! He maintained an energy level that was hyperbolic, `mondo crescendic!' Ha, I just make words up. Anyway, I didn't have the energy or interest really to match how he was coming in. He was coming in in an F18 Hornet and I was a single engine prop.

"This is boring ("No it's not," I tell Sheen) but I applied that to the Chris situation. I was aware instantly of his wealth of talent and his absence of fear. He's not ego driven. He just went completely insane. I just became a fan."

Tucker returns the compliment with enthusiasm that far exceeds what is appropriate, based on Sheen's plummeting status in Hollywood. "When I met him," Tucker says of his pal, "I admired him. He really set the standard for movies in Hollywood (Tucker says this with such a serious face I don't laugh out loud) so I was really happy to be working with him because I knew he had a good sense of humor and I could play out for him with the comedy thing. As soon as we met we clicked because he was willing to do whatever. He just put all his own stuff aside for the movie."

Money Talks is Tucker's biggest movie role so far. He happily jolted audiences with a brief cameo as Johnny Booze in House Party III. He starred as Smokey, opposite Ice Cube, in the surprise hit Friday. He played heroin-addicted Skip in the post-Vietnam war saga Dead Presidents for Allen and Albert Hughes. Luc Besson cast him as a wacko futuristic TV talk show host opposite Bruce Willis in the extravagant sci-fi comedy The Fifth Element earlier this year.

"When we did Friday we were just all hungry to do a movie," Tucker says of the role as Smokey. "I was on the road travelling so much (with his stand-up comedy tour) that I needed to get out there a little more (in the public eye). I was ready to make a movie and make sure it was good."

For Tucker, the movies Dead Presidents, The Fifth Element and now Money Talks are steps in the process of making himself a bigger name with a wider audience. Not that he can actually watch himself in any of these flicks without flinching. "Some scenes I hate," he says of Money Talks. "Damn, why did I do that?"

Not included in the scenes he hates are ones that involve racial humor. In Money Talks, Tucker repeatedly refers to Sheen's "white ass" and singles him out on racial differences. Typically, Tucker doesn't give a damn if anyone finds that offensive. He did it because it's real.

"I wanted to keep it like real. A guy coming from the situation he was in, that's what he would say. I didn't really care if people got a little uncomfortable.

"Charlie, he had a scene where he said: `Keep your nappy head down!' I was cool but it wasn't his character so we had to cut it out because he wouldn't say nothing like that. I would say something like that because I was from the street. I was saying stuff like, `White boy!' It wasn't like I called him `a honky' or nothing like that."

Chris Tucker is a funny man -- but only on his own terms.


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