This weekend, among more serious and frightening headlines, one news story offered a bit of relief: some patrons of a Brooklyn bar found themselves ordering drinks from a man who looked suspiciously like the actor Bill Murray. And that was, of course, because it was in fact the star of Ghostbusters and Lost in Translation, who appeared to work a shift at his son’s soon-to-open establishment. Involving charismatic performance, an everyday ritual of hospitality, and an invitation to revelry, the role of bartender surely fits Murray’s role as a trickster-god within the celebrity pantheon.
The appearance was actually scheduled in advance, but it carried the flavor of the improvisatory engagements with the surrounding world Murray has made a second career out of, since the days before Saturday Night Live and a raft of films made him famous (on the streets of Manhattan he would call out to passersby, “Hey, there’s a lobster loose!”), from playing to (and with) the spectators at celebrity golf tournaments to the many reported occurrences of Murray crashing bachelor parties, switching places with his cab driver (so the man could spend time practicing his saxophone), or sneaking up on people to put his hands over their eyes (offering the teasing farewell “No one will ever believe you”).
In his new book The Tao of Bill Murray, Gavin Edwards tracks down and compiles the history of interwoven life, work, and play from an actor who seems determined to blur the line that ordinarily separates the audience from the performer. The resulting book, presenting the portrait of a star unlike any other, a study in hilarity, creativity, and surprising moments of pathos. Among the tasks required: watch (or in Edwards’s case, largely re-watch) the Murray cinematic oeuvre, which ranges through a surprising range of comedy and drama, hits and misses. He volunteered to share a set of the most memorable, revelatory and sometimes unjustly overlooked moments in Murray’s characteristically unpredictable career. – Eds.
While writing The Tao of Bill Murray: Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing, I watched every movie Bill Murray’s ever made: over sixty of them. Because Bill makes his choices based on personal loyalty and what messages get left on his 1-800 number (no, really — he has no agent or manager), his output can be erratic. So there are some stinkers: if you’re feeling masochistic, the two worst are the 1980 sketch anthology Loose Shoes and the 2012 Charlie Sheen vehicle A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III. On the other hand, Bill has made his fair share of amazing films, most of which have received the praise they deserve. My top five would be Lost in Translation, Ghostbusters, Rushmore, Broken Flowers, and Tootsie, which are generally acknowledged as stone-cold classics.
As I worked my way through a Netflix queue devoted to the four-decade cinematic output of Bill Murray, I treasured the moments when I saw Bill inventing himself onscreen, showing off talents he had kept to himself or discovering new aspects of himself. Sometimes it was over in an eyeblink: for example, Bill plays the venal mayor of an underground city in the middling YA dystopia City of Ember. There’s a wonderful moment when a look of malice flashes across Bill’s face, quickly replaced by his public smile. I can’t recommend that you watch the movie just for that split second, but I’m glad I saw it.
These are ten great but lesser-known movies with sneakily great performances by Bill, where he showed off unexpected talents or gave his career a new spin.
1. Quick Change (1990)
Most people remember this as the movie where Bill pulls off a bank heist while dressed as a clown, answering a guard’s question as to what type of clown he is with the answer “The crying on the inside kind, I guess.” Some know that it’s the only time Bill directed a movie — he had the clout and the ability to direct more, but decided it was too much work. But I remember it for a scene where that clown swindles a hostage out of an extraordinarily expensive Audemars Piguet watch: it was a self-winding timepiece, but if Bill didn’t wear it for a couple of months during filming, it’d get out of sync and he’d have to pay $150 to have it professionally wound. Bill had Howard Franklin (his screenwriter and codirector) write that scene so his character could wear the watch. It’s a reminder that Bill’s real life and onscreen identity bleed into each other in unexpected ways.
2. Mad Dog and Glory (1993)
Offscreen, Bill can be winsome or withering, depending on his mood. Usually, the public gets to see his delightful side — the difficult behavior is reserved for his collaborators. But a performance like this, where Bill plays a steely gangster (opposite Robert De Niro’s nebbish), shows us that there’s a corner of his psyche filled with barbed wire.
3. Kingpin (1996)
Bill has improvised his way through an astonishing number of his films: especially on comedies, his M.O. has been to show up, read whatever pages he’s supposed to be performing that day, and then throw out the screenplay and improvise something much funnier. When he’s playing the lead, he’s responsible for “driving the boat,” as he puts it — but when he’s in a supporting role, he can make choices that are even more off-kilter (like the scene in Tootsie where he eats a plate full of lemon slices). Here, playing the villain “Big Ern” in a bowling comedy, he accessorizes with a spectacular comb-over hairstyle and a bowling ball that has a rose embedded in Lucite. Best improvised line in a movie stuffed with genius Bill-isms: “I finally got enough money that I can buy my way out of anything!”
Bill plays Polonius, the windbag adviser to the king (or in this modern-dress version, the CEO) who becomes an early victim in Hamlet’s killing spree. Hewing to Shakespeare’s text means that Bill has no room to improvise, but he gets right into the flow of the iambic pentameter. This part feels like a window into an alternate universe where Bill made his living as a member of a repertory theater: supporting role in a Shakespeare tragedy one week, leading man in a new musical comedy the next.
Bill stepped down from the lead role in Rushmore to playing just one member of a large ensemble in The Royal Tenenbaums: it turned out that his personal repertory company was being in Wes Anderson movies. He plays Raleigh St. Clair, who’s married to Margot Tennenbaum, the unfaithful wife portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow. His closer relationship is with his test subject Dudley, which provides a sad gloss on his opening scene in Ghostbusters, when he administers fake ESP tests: these are the limits of smart-assery.
Bill agreed to be in Ed Wood (the Tim Burton movie about the misfit transvestite director) before he read the script, and then was dismayed to discover that the part was written as a gay stereotype. “The last thing I want is to be obvious, direct, and offensive,” he said. Instead, he delivered an unforgettable performance as an upper-crust heir yearning for a sex-change operation, unlike anything else on his resume: smooth, unflappable, and so covered with powder that in the film’s black-and-white footage, he glows.
7. Get Low (2009)
Bill’s reason for agreeing to make this movie: “Well, no one’s ever asked me to work with Robert Duvall before.” Bill delivers a sly performance in this period piece as a struggling undertaker, and he and Duvall bring out the best in each other — really, Bill should make movies with all of the Godfather principals.
Bill has a great rapport with Frances McDormand — both in Olive Kitteridge and in this Wes Anderson movie, where they play a married couple, both lawyers, on a New England island. In a movie that’s centered on the love story between two runaway twelve-year-olds, Bill has a scene-stealing turn that feels like it’s drawn from a wild night out in his own life: He wanders unsteadily past a Parcheesi game played by three kids. Wearing plaid pants and no shirt, with an ax in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other, Bill announces, “I’ll be out back. I’m going to find a tree to chop down.”
9. The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997)
This forgotten gem is a farce with misunderstandings so finely tuned that Bill couldn’t modify most of the dialogue. But playing a video store clerk who gets pulled into a web of international intrigue in London, Bill gets to play sustained naiveté, displaying innocent joy at all his new adventures, whether he’s kissing a beautiful operative or driving through a line of orange cones on the motorway.
Bill is underestimated as an impressionist: it’s a skill that he needed for Saturday Night Live (when he was playing, say, Walter Cronkite) but that’s rarely needed in his film career. When he wanted to play his badger lawyer character in Fantastic Mr. Fox with a strong Wisconsin accent (Wisconsin is the Badger State), he prepared by listening to lots of Wisconsin NPR — but director Wes Anderson vetoed that choice. Here, playing Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he does a marvelous job of vocal (and physical) impersonation, which frames his version of FDR: brilliant, impish, randy.
11. Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
The foundation of a myth: when you’re a customer at a late-night café, you might find that your waiter, for no reason at all, is Bill Murray. But no one will ever believe you.
The Barnes & Noble Review http://ift.tt/2deRAkB
Sig Nordal 