The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray

by Robert Schnakenberg

  ST. JOSEPH SCHOOL

  Catholic grade school in Wilmette, Illinois, that Murray attended from 1956 to 1964. While at St. Joseph, Murray’s class clown antics often got him in hot water with the nuns. “I was basically causing trouble all the time,” he told an interviewer. “But not very serious trouble.” He later described his experience at the school as “good practice for the entertainment business. I was constantly playing with danger and trying to get laughs out of an audience that doesn’t think it’s funny. That’s what working with nuns was all about.”

  In 2004, Murray returned to St. Joseph for his fortieth reunion. He had to take time off from shooting The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou to make it to the event, which he described as “a hoot.” “I made an extraordinary effort to be there,” he said. “I had to work extra-long days to get the day off to go. But it was worth it. The kids laughed at me at school and they still laugh today. I got the wish to play to an audience from them.” Murray reunited with the Meatballs creative troika of Harold Ramis, Ivan Reitman, and Danny Goldberg to make this 1981 service comedy. The result was somewhat less successful, unless you look at it from the perspective of Murray’s accountant.

  STRIPES

  DIRECTOR: Ivan Reitman

  SCREENPLAY: Len Blum, Harold Ramis, and Daniel Goldberg

  RELEASE DATE: June 26, 1981

  FILM RATING: **½

  MURRAY RATING: ****

  PLOT: A pair of shlubby New Yorkers join the army and keep its monstrous new weapon from falling into the hands of the Russians.

  STARRING BILL MURRAY AS: John Winger, cab driver turned U.S. Army recruiting tool

  “By the time I made Stripes, I’d made money from SNL and I was famous from SNL,” Murray observed later. “That made it a lot easier to make the right decisions.” In this case, the decision was to attach himself to a long-moldering vehicle for the comedy duo of Cheech and Chong, retooled for him and Harold Ramis at the behest of director Ivan Reitman. As Reitman told the New Yorker in 2004: “Bill is this great improv player, but he needs Harold, the focused composer who understands setting a theme and the rules of orchestration. So I told Harold, ‘One, I want you to costar in my movie, and, two, I want you to rewrite it for two really intelligent guys—you and Bill.’”

  Ramis obliged, cutting the creaky pot jokes from the Cheech and Chong script and convincing Murray to take on the new lead role of John Winger, a down-on-his-luck New York City cab driver who joins the army after his life falls apart. Ramis took the secondary lead as Winger’s friend, laconic English as a Second Language teacher Russell Ziskey. Studio executives balked at the casting of Ramis, preferring the more seasoned Dennis Quaid for the role, but Murray insisted. Either Ramis was in or he was out. The suits relented, and Stripes ended up being Ramis’s big-screen acting debut. A raft of newcomers who would go on to leave their mark on 1980s pop culture, including John Candy, John Larroquette, Sean Young, and Judge Reinhold, rounded out the supporting cast.

  Production of Stripes took place during November and December of 1980, with Kentucky’s Fort Knox doubling as the fictional Fort Arnold. For his first few days on the set, Murray tried getting up at five in the morning to go jogging with the real-life U.S. Army troops. But he quickly abandoned his plans to keep up the regimen for two full weeks. The rigors of day-to-day army life did leave an impression on the filmmakers, however, and that was reflected in the finished film. “It wasn’t Reds or anything, but it captured what it was like on an army base,” Murray later remarked. “It was cold, you had to wear the same green clothes, you had to do a lot of physical stuff, you got treated pretty badly, and had bad coffee.”

  John Winger wound up being one of Murray’s most beloved fictional creations (and the inspiration and namesake of Joel McHale’s Jeff Winger on the TV sitcom Community). Playing a character closer to his real-life personality than, say, Carl Spackler or Hunter S. Thompson, Murray inhabits the part in a manner not seen since Meatballs. Speaking to an interviewer about his experience on the film, Murray said he worked “more efficiently than I ever worked before. The hard part with movies is to sit around and wait and still have yourself right there when you’re needed for those three minutes a day they actually film. I really tried to keep control of myself for this one.” Indeed, his performance is more restrained and less volatile than in his previous films. Winger’s confrontation with Sergeant Hulka, the no-nonsense drill instructor played by veteran character actor Warren Oates, provides a rare early opportunity for Murray to show off his acting chops.

  Although Stripes is maddeningly uneven—Ramis’s soporific performance as Ziskey is a real lowlight—it does boast a number of bravura comic scenes. Murray gets to deliver another one of his signature improvised speeches—an oration exhorting his fellow army recruits to pull themselves together before the graduation ceremony—and the film briefly put the catchphrase “That’s the fact, Jack” on the lips of every twelve-year-old in America. What holds Stripes back from classic status, however, is the toothlessness of its take on military authority. Strip away the sex and mud wrestling scenes and the film is virtually indistinguishable from the tepid service comedies of the 1940s and ’50s. Even more problematic is the fact that Stripes goes completely off the rails in the final reel, an interminable chase sequence set in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia. The sequence’s slapstick pratfalls and jingoist subtext seem jarringly out of sync with the rest of the film. “That was just Ivan grinding his anti-Communist ax,” Harold Ramis later revealed. (The director’s parents were Czech refugees who fled to Canada after the Communists seized power.) Years later, Murray was still kvetching about some of the violent action scenes Reitman insisted on making him film. “I’m still a little queasy that I actually made a movie where I carry a machine gun,” he confessed. “But I felt if you were rescuing your friends it was okay.”

  With a bombastic score from Academy Award–winning composer Elmer Bernstein and positive PR support from the Pentagon (who provided “technical assistance” in return for an advance look at the script), Stripes struck a chord with audiences in the emerging era of Ronald Reagan, G. I. Joe, and Rambo. It grossed more than $85 million and proved that Murray’s name above a title could carry a movie. Critics were more divided. “Stripes will keep potential felons off the streets for two hours,” wrote Time magazine in a decidedly backhanded rave. Newsweek called Murray “a funny original presence” but questioned his participation in the project. “Could it be that Murray himself doesn’t give a damn that he’s diddling away his talents on mediocrity?” the reviewer asked. “Stripes reeks of halfheartedness.” The doyenne of American cinephiles, Pauline Kael, was even more cutting. Writing about Murray’s character in Stripes, she opined, “I wouldn’t want to be within fifty yards of anything he believed in.”

  NEXT MOVIE: Tootsie (1982)

  ST. VINCENT

  DIRECTED BY: Theodore Melfi

  WRITTEN BY: Theodore Melfi

  RELEASE DATE: October 10, 2014

  FILM RATING: ***

  MURRAY RATING: ***

  PLOT: An adorable tyke teaches a grouchy alcoholic how to care again.

  STARRING BILL MURRAY AS: Vincent MacKenna, irascible Brooklyn barfly

  “I’m a sucker for hero roles,” Murray once said. “The big brother parts, especially superheroes—providing they have flaws.” He found just such a part in writer/director Ted Melfi’s crowd-pleasing St. Vincent, which finds Murray fishing for his elusive Oscar in the brackish waters off Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Playing an outer-borough grump who reluctantly befriends a single mother and her twelve-year-old son, Murray struggles mightily to maintain his Brooklyn accent. (At times he comes off as Chicago crossed with South Boston.) But his performance is so hammily charming it seems uncharitable to nitpick.

  Jack Nicholson was Melfi’s original choice for the title role, but he turned it down. (An interesting turn of events, since Nicholson had poached several parts from Murray’s reject pile in the 1980s.) At Nicholson’s
urging, Melfi then embarked on a full-court press to convince Murray to sign on to the project. He secured the actor’s secret 800 number from Fred Roos, the legendary Hollywood producer, and cold-called it incessantly over two months in early 2012. When that proved fruitless, Melfi turned to Murray’s attorney, David Nochimson, who suggested writing a letter and mailing it to a mysterious post office box somewhere on the East Coast. That seemed to get Murray’s attention. He requested a script and then promptly cut off all communication.

  Several months later, according to Melfi, Murray texted him out of the blue and asked him to meet up at the Los Angeles International Airport. So began an unusual rolling story conference, as Murray’s chauffeured Lincoln town car took the actor and the would-be auteur first to In-N-Out Burger to pick up grilled cheese sandwiches and then on a three-hour drive through the Pechanga Indian reservation to Murray’s mansion adjacent to a golf course about an hour north of San Diego. All the while, Murray gave Melfi notes on the script. As the afternoon drew to a close, he announced: “We should do this. Let’s make a movie.” And the deal was done.

  Murray later revealed that he had been attracted to the project by the quality of Melfi’s writing (“The people sounded like real people,” he told Bloomberg.com) and by the chance to sink his teeth into a meaty role for the first time since Hyde Park on Hudson. “It is ambitious and it is larger,” he said. “I’ve just been taking the jobs I like. I haven’t had any kind of a plan, really. It really was a big, leading part. I thought to myself, ‘God, I haven’t had to be the leading part in a while.’” The revelation that there was a vegetarian option at In-N-Out Burger may have had something to do with it as well. “I didn’t realize you could get a cheeseburger without a hamburger,” he confessed to USA Today. “No meat.”

  Shooting for St. Vincent took place in Sheepshead Bay and surrounding Brooklyn neighborhoods over thirty-seven days in the summer of 2013. Murray bunked at a friend’s house in the hipster enclave of Williamsburg the entire time, riding a ten-speed bicycle fifteen miles to and from the location each day. “I got myself in some kind of shape,” he said afterwards. “People have been talking about Brooklyn for a long time, but I’d never really seen it. Williamsburg is hopping.” On the set, Murray was his usual antic self, repeatedly tossing banana peels in the paths of passing crew members and periodically disappearing on impromptu walkabouts. One day Murray wandered off to chew the fat with a local military veteran who sat on his porch every day watching the shoot. Another time, he commandeered a golf cart and took costars Naomi Watts and Jaeden Lieberher for a joyride. The studio eventually hired a production assistant just to follow Murray around and record his whereabouts.

  NEXT MOVIE: Dumb and Dumber To (2014)

  SULLAVAN, MARGARET

  Spitfire screen actress of the 1930s and ’40s whose work Murray admires. “What a creature she was,” he gushed to film critic Elvis Mitchell during a 2008 interview. “She could really do some funny physical stuff, which you didn’t see in those old movies. Everyone was such a glamor puss… . This girl was really, really funny and beautiful. And to me that is fatal. I’m crazy about funny girls.” Murray is especially enamored with Sullavan’s performance in the 1936 screwball comedy The Moon’s Our Home, in which she has a spirited pillow fight with her ex-husband Henry Fonda. “I love pillow fights with girls,” Murray has admitted. “One of my favorite things.”

  “SUMMER BREEZE”

  Murray loathes this 1972 hit song from pop duo Seals and Crofts. The soft-rock chestnut received so much AM radio airplay in the 1970s that the actor grew sick of it.

  SWEET SPOT, THE

  Golf-themed reality series featuring Murray and three of his brothers that aired on Comedy Central over five weeks in April 2002. The show followed Bill, John, Brian, and Joel Murray as they travelled the world, visiting exotic golf courses and teeing off against one another in pursuit of the elusive “Braggart’s Cup.” Interstitial comedy skits occasionally broke up the brotherly banter, which rarely rose above a “Dorf on Golf” level of humor.

  In July 2014, Murray was filming Rock the Kasbah in Sherman Oaks, California, when neighborhood ice cream vendor Joe Nicchi decided to throw a “Bill Murray Ice Cream Social” in his honor. After parking his fully restored 1961 Mister Softee ice cream truck just off the set, Nicchi spread the word among the crew that he would scoop free cones in Murray’s honor all evening long. To the ice cream man’s astonishment, the guest of honor ambled over to test the wares. “When he actually started walking toward the truck, the crew members were following closely behind him,” said Nicchi. “They seemed like proud parents excited to see this moment actually happening for me.” On Nicchi’s recommendation, Murray treated himself to a chocolate and vanilla twist with sea salt on the house. He took a few photos, asked Nicchi to deliver trays of ice cream to feed the rest of the crew, and then left.

  TARZOON, SHAME OF THE JUNGLE

  See Shame of the Jungle.

  THAT’S NOT FUNNY, THAT’S SICK

  National Lampoon sketch comedy album from 1977 on which Murray appears. The vinyl LP collects material from the recently canceled National Lampoon Radio Hour and includes performances from Murray’s brother Brian, Christopher Guest, and Richard Belzer.

  THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY

  Two years after he made Kingpin for the Farrelly brothers, Murray was considered for the part of private eye Pat Healy in this high-grossing gross-out comedy. In the end, the brothers decided Murray was too old for the part and instead offered it to Matt Dillon.

  THIS OLD CUB

  DIRECTED BY: Jeff Santo

  WRITTEN BY: Jeff Santo

  RELEASE DATE: August 25, 2004

  FILM RATING: **½

  MURRAY RATING: **

  PLOT: A documentary about retired Chicago Cubs legend Ron Santo and his lifelong battle with diabetes.

  STARRING BILL MURRAY AS: Himself

  Murray is among a bevy of Chicago-area actors offering reminiscences of Hall of Fame third baseman Ron Santo in this reverent documentary directed by Santo’s son Jeff. Dennis Franz, Gary Sinise, Dennis Farina, and Murray’s brothers Brian and Joel also appear. Murray was recruited to the project by the film’s narrator, Joe Mantegna. He filmed his segments in the summer of 2003 at a golf course on the outskirts of Chicago.

  NEXT MOVIE: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

  THOMPSON, HUNTER S.

  Iconic American outlaw journalist, best known as the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Murray befriended Thompson in the late 1970s, when Thompson’s sometime girlfriend, Laila Nabulsi, worked as a producer for Saturday Night Live. In the summer of 1979, the two men became inseparable as Murray prepared to play Thompson in Where the Buffalo Roam. After filming wrapped, Murray went through an extended personality crisis during which he adopted Thompson’s voice and mannerisms.

  “I HATE TO ADVOCATE DRUGS OR LIQUOR, VIOLENCE, INSANITY TO ANYONE. BUT IN MY CASE IT’S WORKED.”

  —MURRAY, as Hunter S. Thompson in Where the Buffalo Roam

  Thompson committed suicide in 2005. Murray attended his memorial service, during which Thompson’s ashes were blasted out of a cannon onto the heads of the assembled mourners, including Jack Nicholson, John Oates, and U.S. senator John Kerry. The alcohol- and drug-infused bacchanal that followed concluded with Murray swimming in Thompson’s neighbor’s swimming pool “somewhere between midnight and dawn.” Murray later called it “the best funeral I’ve ever been to in my life.”

  See also Where the Buffalo Roam.

  ¡THREE AMIGOS!

  In the early 1980s, when he was still attached as director, Steven Spielberg strongly considered Murray for the role of Dusty Bottoms in this Western comedy film. Steve Martin and Robin Williams were set to play the other two amigos. By the time the movie was made in 1986, only Martin remained. John Landis had replaced Spielberg behind the camera, with Chevy Chase in Murray’s old role and Martin Short rounding out the trio.

  TIPPINGr />
  Murray is known as a generous tipper, a trait that dates back to his early days working service jobs in support of his acting career. “Everyone I know is a waiter or waitress,” he once said. “They’re working hand to mouth, just trying to keep a gig where they have some cash coming in, so they can do what they want to do otherwise.” During a visit to Maxim’s de Paris Hotel in Palm Springs in 1989, Murray gave his bellboy a $20 tip (about forty bucks today). In recent years, Murray has been known to tip his limo driver with In-N-Out Burger coupons.

  TOOTSIE

  DIRECTED BY: Sydney Pollack

  WRITTEN BY: Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal

  RELEASE DATE: December 17, 1982

  FILM RATING: ****

  MURRAY RATING: ****

  PLOT: A struggling actor impersonates a woman to land a part on a soap opera.

  STARRING BILL MURRAY AS: Jeff Slater, playwright and roommate

  Red hot following the success of Stripes, Murray could have named his price for his next project—provided it was another lowbrow comedy aimed at the Animal House audience. “I was some sort of movie star then, on a junior level,” he said, “but not of an adult nature yet.” Pigeonholed as the smirking comic lead, he longed to do more serious work. “I thought, ‘If only somebody would hire me to be a second banana so I could play straight, then they would see that I can act.” Determined to break out of the mold Hollywood had set for him, Murray lobbied hard for a supporting role in a prestige project whose script was already starting to generate buzz within the film community: director Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie.