the last half century, Bill Murray has cultivated an elder statesman status among comedians, his dry wit and expert timing shining in films that didn’t always merit his presence. Is he doing it out of the goodness of his heart, or does he really enjoy doing favors? No, he’s just one of the easiest brands in entertainment. And after the third or fourth time, you’d think he’d be more careful.
You might think he doesn’t take it all that seriously since he stopped making films for a few years to study philosophy in France, and there might be some truth to that. Over the years, he has demonstrated a questionable selection process for vetting projects. The aloofness and aloof personality often seen in his movies doesn’t seem far removed from his real life. On the set of Kingpin, he threw aside the script handed to him and improvised most of his own lines on the spot. “More than any movie we’ve ever made,” Bobby Farrelly praised Murray“it’s the one role where an actor just went off the page and created something incredible.”
Murray slips in and out of movie sets without much formality or premeditation, pulling off his best performances without any preparation. However, that easygoing approach to filmmaking has got him biting his ass more than once.
What are friends for?
Lured back into Peter Venkman’s jumpsuit for ghost buster 2 with a dynamic premise after a long hiatus from major roles, Murray appeared hyped on set. His hopes were dashed when he discovered too late that the new script was not the same story he had been promised. “I came on set and said, ‘What the hell is this? What is this?'” he joked in a virtual interview at the 2021 Santa Barbara Film Festival (via Collider). “But we were already working on it, so we had to figure out how to make it work.” The show must go on – and it did, the snafu possibly explaining why he came to despise his old friend, ghost buster writer, Harold Ramis for the last 15 years of Ramis’ life.
It was not an isolated incident. A decade or so prior to the Ghostbusters continued joke, Ramis had inadvertently put Murray in a similar position, writing an inevitable scene where his character Carl Spackler meets Chevy Chase’s Ty Webb in Caddyshack. Ramis knew the audience would want it, and wrote it without knowing the bad blood between the two actors. Out of the blue, Murray flew back from New York one day and came face to face with his old enemy, Chase. To Ramis’ surprise, the two comedians were mortal enemies dating back to a fistfight on the set of Saturday Night Live.
Luckily they kept it civil this time. Both actors had grown enough since that dust to continue filming professionally. He commuted from his during filming Saturday Night Live performance to the Caddyshack site, making up his scenes on the fly with no problem. “I was never told they can’t be on set at the same time,” the executive producer said at the time (via Sports illustrated), “but I think they chose not to be on set at the same time.” Ramis played the whole thing off as an accident, but Murray couldn’t have been pleased.
Hating Mondays was contractually obligated
As is now common knowledge, Murray regularly stumbles upon these sorts of sitcom-quality misunderstandings. The most notable blunder was when he signed on to star in the live action Garfield film from a simple lack of due diligence in the early 2000s. When he read the director’s name, ‘Joel Cohen’, into the script, the Illinois native jumped at the chance to work with one of his fellow showbiz royalties from the Midwest. Joel Coen, of the Coen Brothers, was one of two brothers behind it Fargo, The great LebowskiAnd Miller’s crossing.
Coen needed no introduction, but Murray should probably have asked around before signing on the dotted line. Understandably, in the moment of excitement, he didn’t understand that this writer named Joel Cohen was not who he thought, the writer in question was Cohen with an ‘H’. That first meeting had to be incredibly awkward. And if that wasn’t odd enough, Murray agreed to make a sequel, despite his admission that the first film was terrible. We still don’t know his excuse for it A tale of two cats. The Irish are said to be immune to psychoanalysis, and Bill Murray probably explains why Freud came to this conclusion.
What is a little “aggressive” lawsuit among friends?
The procession of indignation followed him. He adamantly hated the script (which didn’t stop him from trying the Garfield sequel), he refused to star in the future Ghostbusters IP or movies. The idea of a cameo disgusted him and he wanted no part of the Sony 2016 reboot to be led by Paul Feig. So why did he end up appearing in the movie, casually hanging around and looking disinterested? Anytime you have to ask these kinds of questions, it’s obviously about money.
This time, Murray had a pretty good excuse for why he ended up in a disappointing movie role. Sony’s top boss ordered him to show up for fear of a lawsuit. The Sony leaks exposed the studio’s inner workings, dirty laundry and all. One such private exchange between the suits and pantsuits lays out in alarming detail the plot to force Murray to appear in the film at the risk of “‘aggressive’ litigator.” By convention, he was also supposed to do a publicity tour for the movie he secretly hated, the look of irritation can be felt on his face during some of those junket appearances.
Regardless of the constant gotcha moments, he’s fulfilled his part of the bargain, for better or for worse. The thrill of spontaneity is what has driven his best work, and as an accomplished improv actor, it’s the one thing he knows he does better than anyone else on the planet. Why does Bill Murray keep getting duped by writers, directors, friends and executives? Because he’s Bill Murray.