Everyone loves Bill Murray, but only the die hard fans recognize the majority of his work. The rest, unfortunately, concentrate too much on his greatest films, such as Stripes, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Lost in Translationand all of his collaborations with Wes Anderson. Yet while each of these films, and Murray’s roles and performances in them, are certainly deserving of their preferred and predominant praises, Murray is the kind of actor who is so talented and entertaining that he can be enjoyed in even the worst movies on his resume. In fact, he’s probably the only A-lister who could lend his voice to a bastardized CG version of a beloved cartoon character and get away with barely any contempt from his devotees.
This week, Bill Murray makes an appearance in the new kiddie sci-fi flick City of Emberas the selfish mayor of a doomed underground metropolis. And it’s sure to be one of his less-appreciated roles, whether because it’s in a children’s movie, because it’s a supporting part in an ensemble filled with many talented actors, or because it’s not Ghostbusters 3. But those who really love Murray will likely flock to the movie primarily to see him, just as they did and do for the rest of these movies with underrated Murray roles:
Bill Murray’s indie film career resurgence over the past decade, through which the sometime “funny man” has taken melancholic serio-comic roles in films like Rushmore,Lost in Translationand Broken Flowers, has been animated by a kind of communal, revisionist nostalgia. Filmmakers like Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola were teenagers during Murray’s first brush with fame in the early 80s, which would have made them extremely susceptible to the prototypical Murray character of the day, which hit its zenith with Ghostbusters.
About a week ago, a YouTuber posted an unofficial music video for the first single off Scarlett Johansson’s album of Tom Waits covers, “Falling Down,” made up entirely of footage from Lost In Translation. Now the official video for the song is making the rounds (see above), and although it’s made up of all new footage, the concept is basically the same as the fan clip. It’s a day-in-the-life of Scarlett…shot on a day when Scarlett happens to spend a lot of time pensively staring out of windows, rolling around on beds, hugging an older dude and having her photo taken by a Japanese man. Watch. Discuss.
Inspired the news that Bill Murray was stopped in Stockholm on suspicion of drunkenly driving a golf cart (yes, seriously), I just spent an hour on YouTube watching fan tributes to the former Ghostbuster. It’s amazing how many of these somehow involve Bill Murray successfully or unsuccessfully attempting to save the world. The clip above is my favorite–I just think it’s really funny that even with the Power Rangers egging him on, our hero just isn’t very good at flying–but there’s also this clip, in which Bill Murray “rebuilds the WTC in godlike miracle.” And really: on some level, isn’t Lost in Translation just a little girl’s fantasy of Bill Murray rescuing her from adulthood? Especially if you assign any merit to this interpretation of the final scene.
Is the idea that Bill Murray will bail us out of catastrophe just ingrained in the collective consciousness of our generation? Has everybody really seen Ghostbusters as many times as I have? Or is it more of a Groundhog Day, “he’s A god, he’s not THE God” type of thing?
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Bill Murray’s indie film career resurgence over the past decade, through which the sometime “funny man” has taken melancholic serio-comic roles in films like Rushmore, Lost in Translation and Broken Flowers, has been animated by a kind of communal, revisionist nostalgia. Filmmakers like Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola were teenagers during Murray’s first brush with fame in the early 80s, which would have made them extremely susceptible to the prototypical Murray character of the day, which hit its zenith with Ghostbusters.
