I have a recurring fantasy about Bill Murray, whom I have termed the American Loki. No, not the Asgardian from the Thor movies, but the god of mischief. He pops in where he’s most needed, then fades away, leaving wonder and bemusement.
Anyway, I am walking along my San Fernando Valley street when a black car pulls up. The passenger window rolls down. It’s Bill Murray. “Do you want to talk about life? About love? About laughing?”
I say what anyone would say, “Hell, yes!” And I get in. We go for pizza and beer, and Bill Murray proceeds to give me life, love and laugh lessons worth treasuring. He drops me off after a couple of hours at home, leaving me to wonder who was that man in the black car.
As a child brought up in the shadow of Watergate, I could notice an underlying cynicism and distrust of authority that filtered into mainstream media. The two biggest films of 1977, Star Wars and Smokey and the Bandit, featured blatant acts of rebellion against standing authority figures. No other film star of the 1980s and 1990s personified this anti-establishment attitude more than Bill Murray.
Murray, fresh from the Second City, National Lampoon, and Saturday Night Live, differed from contemporary and rival Chevy Chase in that Chase patterned himself after Groucho Marx, the ultimate outsider who snuck in when no one was looking. Murray was more subversive; he was an insider whose loathing of his own social strata led to him dismantling and rebuilding the status quo.
Detroit loved Bill Murray too — well, WKBD TV-50 did. Caddyshack, Where The Buffalo Roam, and Stripes seemed to play on the Eight O’Clock Movie once a month. I knew these broadcast versions so well that when I finally saw the theatrical versions, it felt wrong. Still does. The opening two minutes of The Blues Brothers was cut to fit into the time slot, so every time I see those opening aerial shots of Chicago, I feel like something is wrong. When Ghostbusters came along in 1984, the Murray pump had been primed and was ready for action. From that point until the present day, with few exceptions, Murray could do no wrong.
(Should Bill ever read this, please know that I know you sometimes have to do a The Man Who Knew Too Little or a Garfield to put food on the table or pay kids’ tuition. It’s cool, Bill. I’m still here.)
Murray sought out new challenges and new adventures in filmmaking because, early on, he found out how boring movies truly are. Murray needed an audience to perform for. And rather than be a slave to boredom, no matter how much money thrown his way, he took chances and became one of the quirkiest Hollywood stars, doing cameos in Little Shop of Horrors, Zombieland, and Get Smart and starring in Wes Anderson films. Murray often trades appearances in surefire hit movies for greenlit passion projects.
The first one was, most famously, The Razor’s Edge, in 1984. Columbia agreed to finance the remake of Somerset Maugham’s 1944 novel if Murray would appear in Ghostbusters. Maugham’s novel dealt with the aftermath of World War I and its effects on the psyche of those who came back. Murray, whose spiritual readings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff are well-known, found a kindred spirit in Larry Darrell.
Darrell is a man who is on the cusp of marrying Isabel, his sweetheart, when he joins up to be an ambulance operator prior to the War. Once America becomes involved, he watches the majority of the men in his unit die and once his commander dies saving him from a German soldier, Darrell is a wreck. He returns home after the War with survivor’s guilt, believing he should’ve died with the rest of the men. He breaks off the engagement and travels the world, from India to Paris, studying philosophy and looking for meaning in the world. To relate much more of the plot would be difficult, because it involves a lot of existential questioning and soap-opera dramatics. The Murray you see today is the Murray of this.
Quick Change (1990) was Murray’s first and only directorial effort. An adaptation of Jay Cronley’s novel (which had been adapted once before as Hold-Up [1985]), it concerns a heist and the subsequent getaway through New York. Murray plays Grimm, the mastermind of the heist, Randy Quaid plays Loomis, his best friend, and Geena Davis is his girlfriend, Phyllis. Murray was a producer on the movie and couldn’t find anyone to direct after original director Jonathan Demme dropped out (and if you ask me, since Demme made The Silence of the Lambs next, he made the right decision). Finally, he decided to take it on himself.
Like Reservoir Dogs two years later, the heist part of the movie isn’t as important as what came after. And while Tarantino played the drama, Murray and Howard Franklin, his co-director, play it for laughs. The opening heist sequence is a slam-bang opening to the film, and Grimm’s disguise as the clown was plastered all over the film’s marketing. What makes the movie unique is the aftermath. The three have to successfully navigate a getaway out of New York. The relationships slowly unravel as the pressure to escape mounts, exacerbated by the Chief of Police Rotzinger (Jason Robards) who pursues them relentlessly.
Murray’s performance as Grimm could be compared to his John Winger of Stripes (1981) a decade previous. Winger was cocky and headstrong, always certain of himself and his place in the world. Grimm is a dead man walking, who can’t stand New York and suffers from terminal burnout. His performance drives the film and worth watching. Davis and Quaid turn in solid performances, but nothing extraordinary.
https://youtu.be/7_IrvNw6OPc
One of my favorite undiscovered films is Mad Dog and Glory (1993). Murray, Robert DeNiro, and Uma Thurman are the leads in this sweet, role-reversed romantic comedy. DeNiro plays against type as mild-mannered police officer Wayne Dobie, sarcastically called “Mad Dog” by his peers.
When Wayne saves the life of mobster Frank Milo (Murray), Frank gives him the use of Glory (Thurman). Glory is working off her brother’s debt through indentured servitude to Frank. Frank calls himself “the expediter of your dreams,” a phrase that is used genuinely by Murray each time he says it, although each inflection carries a different connotation. At first, he means it expansively, as though he is benevolently bestowing gifts from heaven. By the final time, after Wayne and Frank finish fighting for who keeps Glory, he says it in a mutter, ironically.
Frank is a mobster who would rather be a stand-up comedian. The only problem is that he uses his own personal life as grist for material, and that involves breaking legs, killing people, and the general sort of Scorsese mobster mayhem. Frank makes sure to keep a table full of cronies so that they’ll laugh at everything he says. He believes that he is untouchable and befriending a cop without any friends will keep him that way. Frank doesn’t count on Wayne and Glory falling for each other. Wayne tries to purchase Glory’s brother’s debt from Frank, but the asking price is $40,000 and Wayne couldn’t raise even half that.
The fight at the end, where Wayne and Frank battle for Glory’s independence, is one of the most brutal fistfights on film. Not realistic, nor gory, but the two actors going head-to-head looks like we are witnessing a real brawl. Believe it or not, Murray actually broke DeNiro’s nose during the filming of the scene. Frank, in the original ending, beats Wayne in the fight. The ending was reshot because test audiences couldn’t accept that Bill Murray could beat Robert DeNiro in a fist fight.
In Get Low (2009), it is the 1930s. Robert Duvall plays Bush, a hermit whose enemy has just died and that gets him thinking about his mortality. He is refused assistance by the church, when the pastor (Gerald McRaney) requires he ask for forgiveness. Enter Murray. He plays an undertaker, Frank Quinn, who lives in a town where very few people are dying.
We’re introduced to him complaining that his situation is ironic; he has a service everyone needs, but there’s no one who’s taking advantage of it. Quinn hears about the big wad of cash Bush flashed in front of the pastor and despite Bush’s surliness, is able to convince him of a funeral party. The funeral party brings up old wounds, including a 40-year-old mystery, which the audience witnesses, without context, in the opening frames of the film.
After Rock The Kasbah (which bombed at the box office and drew poor reviews), if you still have the desire for a less clownish, more dramatic Bill Murray, these are some of the best forgotten gems of his career. You can’t go wrong with any of them.
John P. Inloes (@suburbandwarf) believes in the power of Bill Murray. You can learn a lesson from each and every single thing he says, as long as you listen closely. If he wanted anyone to give his eulogy, it would be Murray. Here’s what Murray said about the late, great Michael O’Donoghue: “He hated the horrible things in life, and the horrible people in life. And he hated them so good.” He’s also in the middle of Hart of Dixie, thanks for asking.
