Interview by T.J. English
In October 1988, T.J. English headed out to Bill Murray’s house in New Jersey to do an interview. He was writing a profile for Irish America magazine.
The Animated Transcript
T.J. English is a prolific writer on crime, the underworld, and the mob. Check out his latest book: Where the Bodies Were Buried: Whitey Bulger and the World That Made Him You know what the format is with this interview? It’s not Q&A, is it? It is. Oh, shit. Felicia! What do you got against Q&A? Can you make some more coffee? Oh, no, I had to do one the other day and I was a little sloppy for it. I saw this guy going … just realizing he would have to make me sound coherent. I realize it’s impossible to have any sympathy, I mean, true sympathy, for people that are famous. People usually go through a bad period when they first get successful. You’re new and you’re hot and things go wrong. So you’re not used to all the attention, people treat you differently, and what happens is you start taking that seriously and then you start becoming an ass and then they treat you like an ass, and then… Was there a period like that for you where things were a little out of control? Right now. One of my favorite things used to be in traffic in New York and there’s a Cadillac honking or something, a Mercedes honking. I used to do this all the time before I was famous, I would jump into the middle of the street and say, “excuse me, there’s a Mercedes that’s got to get through here.” And I would push people out of the way, “get out of the way! Let him through!” Smacking their cars and stuff. Just like, “whack” and you just jump into it. You can’t do it, because now you do it and he goes, “Hey, hey, look, Meatballs!” The whole thing is lost, the point you were trying to make or whatever fun you were trying to have is sort of undercut. The money thing is, the sort of Elvis Presley thing of buying you mother car is great, that’s very good. My mother has learned how to spend money. She used to call and say, “Bill we really need a boiler.” Just for the hell of it I’d say, “well, why don’t you shop around and see which one, and don’t blow a lot of money. I mean, just get a bargain.” A boiler in the house to heat the house in the winter in Chicago. Finally I got her an American Express card and the number she puts up are geometric, every year. I mean the first year I think she bought a tow when her car broke down. The second year she went to dinner on her birthday or something. The third year she rented a condo in Florida for the winter and took a couple of cousins and friends down. So she’s figured it out. She had nine kids. Technically she could commit murder and get away with it. Whatever number she runs up on me is not even a misdemeanor. I know it could have been anybody. It’s just a weird lucky thing really.. It could have been any actor. There are a lot of actors that are more talented than me at Second City who quit it before they even got to a paying status. Weird luck. I had no other option. You know I’m still just like a punk kid really. I’m just an obnoxious guy who can make it appear charming, that’s what they pay me to do. I’d sort of gone through some sort of spiritual change in the late 70s where I sort of saw there was some other life to live. It changed the way that I worked just having a different presence and a different tension. That’s the reason I’m not the one that’s dead because the attraction of the fast life is very powerful. Even today I could go at any time. Something wild can happen to anybody and I caution anybody that walks out on the street, just settle your accounts before you leave the house every day. The only good thing about fame that I’ve gotten is I’ve gotten out of a couple of speeding tickets. I’ve gotten into a restaurant when I didn’t have a suit and tie on. That’s really about it. And you can talk to girls more easily. They will talk to you. You don’t necessarily do any better with them but it’s almost like being in the ladies room sometimes because they feel comfortable with you. They will say a lot of things that they wouldn’t tell anybody that they potentially see as a suitor. They think of you as some freak. You may as well have an elephant on a rope for the way they deal with you. I act like a jerk sometimes, and that’s sort of what the product is. You get these people who act like, “what the hell.” When you act obnoxious towards people, like on a movie set, they say “we’re ready for you” and I say “oh, go to hell, my feet hurt and my head aches.” You want to have a margarita for lunch, and people like these little ADs and production assistants are like, “well, he’s drinking again.” Drinking again? Go to hell. All I ever do is make some movies that made a lot of money now leave me alone, I want to have some fun. On Ghostbusters they had somebody following us. Following us. You walk down the street, you turn around and somebody would duck into a doorway. Just to control us and make sure we didn’t do anything too weird. It’s like, “what the hell.” I didn’t get into this position by being like a stiff sitting on the set in a folding chair. I did it by walking around on the streets and stirring things up.
HOW WE CREATED THIS EPISODE
Bill Murray Talks About Saturday Night Live
Credit: Michael Sheerin / Irish America
John Belushi
“When John was John, he was the best. He liked the dynamic, he liked working a lot, he liked working with other people. He liked to have other people make him laugh. What affected him was just the way he dealt with the studio. He got later and later as time went on, but everybody did. They way he dealt with the producer and NBC became different. You know, he was a star and stars do act differently.”
Chevy Chase
“It wasn’t so hard that I had to live up to Chevy’s shadow, because I didn’t feel that from the other actors. They didn’t miss him. It was just more room for them. They didn’t mind a new guy coming in.”
“We had a good fight. It was a Hollywood push fight. He stood to lose a lot more. He was a better looking guy. He wasn’t gonna get hit. To give you an idea of how sincere that fight was, my brother Brian, who’s smaller than both of you, held us apart.”
“Live TV you sweat blood. So terrifying to do it that, anytime you could do something that made you stop thinking about the terror of it and really move it up a level.”“When people first become famous everyone treats you differently so, you start acting differently. It’s just a mechanical thing. When everybody starts kissing your butt you walk in bent over, you know. That happens, but there was a way within the group, that you could be cut down to size pretty quickly. All you had to do was fuck a job and that was serious. A cause for concern. It was like, nice going.”
Bill Murray + Wes Anderson = A Beautiful Thing
-
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
-
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
-
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
A Bill Murray Story
A Bill Murray story is when you create an outlandish (yet plausible) story that involves you witnessing Bill Murray doing something totally unusual; often followed by him walking up you and whispering, “No one will ever believe you” and walking away. (Urban Dictionary)
1. Cameo
The time Bill Murray agreed to walk in slow motion down a hallway with a bunch of fans. And he let them film it a la Wes Anderson.
Credit: David Walton Smith
2. Love Doctor
That time Bill Murray crashed a bachelor party and gave some love advice
“If you have someone that you think is the one… take that person and travel around the world… and if you come back and you’re still in love with that person, get married at the airport.”
3. “I Have to Pee”
“In the early 80s, during my time in art school, I was a messenger for a bit. One day I had a delivery in The Chrysler Building and was in the lobby waiting for the elevator. I heard a familiar voice behind me a few feet away; I turned and saw Bill Murray with an older woman, his Mom I assumed at the time. Not many people noticed him in until I heard him tell the woman, “I have to pee”. He got on all fours at the wall by the banks of elevators and lifted his leg like a dog taking a pee. You had to be there, it was very funny with her smacking him telling him to stop.” (billmurraystory.com)
4. “You crazy Eskimo girl!”
“I was on a first date at a tea lounge in Brooklyn, when the person sitting at the table beside us pointed out Bill Murray. I excitedly asked my date if we could go over and say hi, he reluctantly agreed to go when Bill was alone. We went over and Bill was so nice! He shook my date’s hand and then put his hand out to shake mine. At this point, I should mention that I don’t shake men’s hands for religious reasons, and that’s what I told Bill.
It was loud in the room and he didn’t seem to hear me, so he took a step closer and asked me to repeat myself. So again, I told him, “I’m sorry, I don’t shake men’s hands for religious reasons.” Bill, at this point very close, said, “So what do you do?” As he took my face in his hands “Rub noses?” and rubbed his nose against mine. As he walked away, he called over his shoulder, “You crazy Eskimo girl!” Needless to say, it was my most memorable date.” (billmurraystory.com)
5. Meow, Meow
“My freshman year of college, I was hanging out with some friends playing Halo 2 in my dorm. Sure enough, I hear a strange meowing sound coming from outside my window. As I open the curtains and look out, there was Bill Murray, clinging to a branch about 10 feet in the air, meowing at a kitten stuck a little higher up the tree. He turned around and looked at me, and mouthed ‘No one will ever believe you’ before climbing out of sight.”
Bill and Hunter S. Thompson
Murray played HST in the 1980 film Where the Buffalo Roam.
During his interview with T.J. he had this to say about the hijinks on set:
“Our house had a guest house and he lived in the guest house. So I’d get up and go to work, work all day and I’d come back and he’d be waking up. I’d stay up with him until sunrise. I’d sleep for an hour and a half and then there’d be a pounding on the door saying wake up. He’d come in over the fence and pound on the glass.
I got so I could really drink with him. I can’t do drugs like he can but, I can drink with him. Well I can’t now, I really had to get up to it. At a point I could really, really drink a lot.
Certainly I picked up vocal mannerisms and then I stopped hanging around him because I picked up so many vocal mannerisms and cues.”
Bill at Wrigley
Bill’s from Chicago. He loves the Cubs.
-
Bill Murray in the booth at Wrigley Field in 1987
Credits
Executive Producer
David Gerlach
Animator
Patrick Smith
Audio Producer
Amy Drozdowska
Colorist
Jennifer Yoo
Music
via APM
“Hot Club Swing” Marti Amado
“Cafe Paris” Paul Reeves
“Disentangled” Mac McKenzie
“Today We Hung”
Eric Nicholas, Wencelas Muller,
Maurin Zahnd, Laurent Dumont,
Julien Guillaume, Andre Matrot
Photo
Paul Sherwood via Flickr