Press & Publicity

Stills Magazine

"Murray the Mouth"

Article by Pat S Broeske

Published - December 1985

For the past ten years, Bill Murray, one of the stars of Saturday Night Live, has been the sort of actor who couldn't walk down an American street without someone stopping him and expecting him to be funny.

Now, with Ghostbusters all set to scare up a Christmas storm in Britain, these shores no longer look like being safe for the film's crumpled, laid-back star. STILLS correspondent Pat H Broeske trailed him up and down the East Coats of America, and found out what spirits really move actor and comedian Bill Murray.

Hollywood's newest superstar looks as if he sleeps in his clothes. With his fly-away hair, pasty complexion and what seems to be a permanent slouch, Bill Murray doesn't really fit anybody's idea of a movie star, Not, that is, until it comes to ticket sales. Meatballs, his first film, grossed more than $55 million, Stripes and Caddyshack together brought in over $100 million.

And Ghostbusters, which has materialized as the film of 1984, can claim US domestic grosses of more than $210 million.

Obviously, Murray is doing something right. What exactly it is, however, remains elusive, though critics and audiences seem to agree that Murray's screen persona -which brings to mind the guy next door - gives him a comfortable 'so, how are ya, tonight?' quality. Moreover the characters he plays, whether they are drooling country-club groundskeepers out to slaughter gopher puppets or poltergeist exterminators, tend to be sweetly daffy, making Murray the man moviegoers love to love.

What he is not, perhaps, to judge by the early box-office returns on The Razor's Edge, is the man moviegoers want to get serious with - though the second adaptation of Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel (previously filmed in 1946, starring Tyrone Power) is by no means a critical failure. The challenges of his first serious role, as well as his specialization in screen silliness, were something that obviously concerned him during recent interviews in New York City and Quebec, Dressed each time as if he'd just emerged from a whirlwind the rumpled Murray - who seems to favour loose-fitting shirts, baggy coats and blue jeans - was, however, in particularly good spirits over Ghostbusters.

Filmed at a cost of more than $33 million, Hollywood's must auspicious supernatural send-up startled the summer box-office by outgrossing such blockbusters as Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Starring Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis as a flaky trio of ghost exterminators, the film, which was scripted by Aykroyd and Ramis, represents the evolution of a spate of illustrious careers, all of which blossomed on television.

While Aykroyd provided the impetus for the picture, it is Murray's comedic slight-of-hand that dominates. According to America's critics he walked away or, in this case, sauntered off with the films best lines. 'Who's been sayin' that? I want to know. I had the best lines because Dan likes to drive around and Harold likes to sit at home,' purrs Murray, to hear him tell it, the Aykroyd / Ramis script conceived the Ghostbusters trio as a kind of unit. They figured out that I would be the mouth, Dan would be the heart, and Harold would he the brains. Murray also gets to he a romantic lead opposite Sigourney Weaver, 'Well, the mouth comes into play there.'

It was, says Murray, easy getting into the Ghostbuster roles; but maintaining those characterizations was not. 'Comedy is not effortless. The key is to get in a good humour -to have fun. That's not as easy as you might think. Obviously, if you're going to work for eight to twelve hours, you're not going to be in a good mood all day. So it takes a lot of tricks.
'You really have to get yourself to a place where you're ready to work. You've got to free yourself of a lot of tension so you can make your responses as genuine as possible. The real magic happens when you've got it socked in - when you know all the moves. You know exactly what you're supposed to do, but you're also relaxed. And then, something happens. It's physical, but it's also in the way you speak. And it's within. Then, when you face the camera, the real magic comes. To get to that point, though, can take years of practice.'

While garnering his funnyman folk hero status, however, Murray began to look for a dramatic vehicle. It was director John Byrum (Inserts, Heart Beat) who gave him a copy of The Razor's Edge. Fifty pages into the novel, Murray knew it was the project he'd been looking for. But, when he went shopping for financial backing, it turned out that the studios were looking for comedies.

Finally, he resorted to sonic wheeling-and-dealing. He agreed to do Ghostbusters if Columbia Pictures would also back The Razor's Edge. 'It was blackmail. But of a good kind. Nobody got hurt nobody's reputation was destroyed.' The dramatic plunge was so important to Murray that he didn't take an acting salary for The Razor's Edge (though he did get $12,000 for co-authoring the script with Byrum), and completed it only a week prior to jumping into his zany Ghostbusters uniform. 'I had just come back from the Himalayas, from a project about spiritual fulfilment, and there I was zapping invisible special-effects creatures, and, yes, it was a weird experience.'

Nervous about his first-time-out drama ('I don't know what my fans are going to think, It's definitely not what they're used to from me'), Murray points out that he injected humour into his portrayal of Larry Darrell, central character of The Razor's Edge, 'because my experience in meeting people who are on some sort of search for anything is that, the more they understand about themselves, the better their sense of humour becomes. They gain a much wider viewpoint, because they can laugh at themselves,'

As Murray points out, when Maugham wrote the original script (later rewritten, because Twentieth Century-Fox did not feel it was good enough), his notes to the director stressed the works humour. He wrote, ''This is a comedy, with some serious scenes" That was one of the last things I read before I actually did The Razor's Edge, and I got so excited because of it. The humour allowed me to play Larry Darrell as a normal guy .

Not some sanctimonious sort, but a real person.' That is precisely why, believes Byrum, Murray was a natural for the project. Citing the 'stodginess' of the original screen version, and in particular Tyrone Powers 'pretty pious' portrayal, Byrum says: 'If he wasn't famous as Bill Murray, comedian, I would like to think that we'd just discovered a new star. It's nice that Bill, who's an idol of today's kids, is asking important questions as the character in the film. I think audiences are going to like that. Not that this is a great art film or anything, but it's better than the usual stuff for kids. "Have you noticed that all the movies for teenagers are about getting laid? Well, this is better than watching Tom Hanks get laid,'

Murray himself is a bit uneasy as he assesses his Razor's Edge performance, though. 'What did I bring to the role? Definitely not my own clothes. I don't know, I guess I'm going to have to look at the film again. I like some of what I did very much,' Bringing his own clothes is something Murray has had to live with, especially when he is spied by fans on the street. You know, 20 million people watched Saturday Night Live, and they have their expectations. It's a little like being a doctor. All of a sudden, you've got to make a house call in the middle of the day! You feel like you've got to be funny. Well, I don't always feel funny.'

Understandably tired after doing two films back-to-back, Murray now plans to spend some time with his wife Margaret and young son Homer Banks (named after Ernie Banks, a slugger with the Chicago Cubs), before deciding on a next project. Surmising that it will probably be a comedy, there is a twinge of nostalgia in his voice as he admits that, while the thought of a Frank Capraesque comedy is appealing, he has doubts as to whether an attempt would succeed. They've been trying to write them for the last few years.

About five years ago, everyone said, "I know: we'll make a Capra movie.'' So there were something like 60 imitation It's a Wonderful Life scripts that came out in about 45 minutes.' A firm believer that 'good comedy takes a good script', Murray reckons that it 'takes a while to make progress: you can't make a sophisticated comedy right out of the box, I mean, we came out of cabaret theatre. We worked for National Lampoon. We had a different sort of comedic edge right from the beginning. But I think it's starting to get a little slicker. I think each movie is better, I think Ghostbusters is the best one so far.'