19 thoughts on “This Bill Murray?

  1. Anne Laurie (not that I know her) thinks Ross Douthat (not that I know him) is too cool for the room? That must have been one critically uncool room.Report

  2. well i think the titty bar scene in Lost in Translation, Bill is clearly hipper then the room and his understated reaction is The Funny. maybe somebody should post that.Report

  3. You can’t ignore the dominating effect of Ghostbusters’ Bill Murray, who was not only too hip for this or any room, he was hipper than Zuul and Gozer the Gozerian combined.Report

  4. Tangentially, does anyone know of a place to watch Matthew Gray Gubler’s film, Matthew Gray Gubler’s Life Aquatic Intern Journal on the internets? Apparently I bought the DVD too soon.Report

  5. I don’t think of Murray as too cool for the room. One thing fascinates me about his delivery though: I am a huge Marx brothers fan, and whenever I watch their movies, it occurs to me that Bill Murray is the only comedian who could deliver Groucho’s lines. Anyone else would seem like a jerk doing Groucho’s character, but Murray could make it clear that they were partly jokes on himself and let the audience in on them in the way Groucho did.Report

  6. I think Murray’s schtick, except in Lost in Translation, is that his characters act too hip until the crisis happens. Example Sgt. Hulka punching him in the latrine scene. The characters then display a bit of humanity, ie. the scene where he explains to the recruits that all Americans are immigrant losers and mongrels, “Look, his nose is wet!” Or his character in Meatballs exhorting his campers to remember, “It just doesn’t matter!” I think his charaters are too humane and wish to cover it up with the hip act. Another example would be his lounge singer on SNL, a guy trying so hard yet failing so miserably; that’s Murray at his best showing compassion for a Pagliacci.Report

  7. “A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I’m a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald… striking. So, I’m on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one – big hitter, the Lama – long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga… gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he’s gonna stiff me. And I say, “Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.” And he says, “Oh, uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.” So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.”Report

  8. A pox on you Dierkes for bringing up Murray on Groundhog day. Now I am going to have to watch that movie at least twice. I was all set to forget the day and just go blithely on my way too.Report

      1. Man, it’s everywhere now.

        From Time’s Top 10 List of Oscar Snubs

        An Oscar should have gone to Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin for the script, which deftly balances comedy and philosophy (Is God a groundhog? Discuss), and another to Best Actor Bill Murray. From Caddyshack to What About Bob?, Murray had refined his amiable doofus into the minimalist modern man: his posture a question mark, his face a concrete poem of anticipated disappointment. In Groundhog Day he can rise to romance and sink to despair — and be wonderfully funny — all in the same day after day after day.Report

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