Bill Murray has to be one of my favorite actors of all time. Not because he's a great actor (which he is), but he's a great personality - on camera, or off (when I say 'off' I mean in interviews, etc.). He's not always happy or chirpy. In fact he's rarely "on" in the same way that many comedic actors of his time seem to be (see: Robin Williams, Martin Short, Jim Carrey) which makes him more real and more likeable.
The above pic is taken from a scene in Kingpin, where he played Ernie McCracken, one of my favorite Bill Murray characters.
I love when people of power and/or celebrity give honest, frank interviews even though it may rub some people the wrong way, including their friends. This is well worth the read - it's great to hear him talk about stuff like Harold Ramis' Year One being among the worst movies every made, wondering who wrote the piece of shit that was Garfield and realizing it was Joel Cohen & not Joel Coen (of the Coen brothers), doing movies that he thinks won't have a chance, and copping to the fact that he barely ever watches any popular TV & movies. I mean - who hasn't seen Seinfeld!
Here's a snippet:Is the third Ghostbusters movie happening? What's the story with that?
It's all a bunch of crock. It's a crock. There was a story—and I gotta be careful here, I don't want to hurt someone's feelings. When I hurt someone's feelings, I really want to hurt them. [laughs] Harold Ramis said, Oh, I've got these guys, they write on The Office, and they're really funny. They're going to write the next Ghostbusters. And they had just written this movie that he had directed.
Year One.
Year One. Well, I never went to see Year One, but people who did, including other Ghostbusters, said it was one of the worst things they had ever seen in their lives. So that dream just vaporized. That was gone. But it's the studio that really wants this thing. It's a franchise. It's a franchise, and they made a whole lot of money on Ghostbusters.
Oh, sure, I remember. The soundtrack. The lunchboxes. The action figures.
Right. And it's still one of the biggest movies of all time. And ever since that story broke, everywhere I go people are like, "So are you gonna make that movie?" I was down in Austin at South by Southwest, and you go at it hard down there—fun but, man, you need to sleep for days afterwards. Anyhow, I got into it one night with a bunch of younger people who were like, Oh, I love Peter Venkman! I grew up with Peter Venkman! We got to talking, and the more we talked about it, the more I thought, Oh Christ, I should just do this thing.
GQ is really putting out some great articles lately. If they get an iPad version of their magazine, I might have to start buying it. EDIT: GQ DOES have an iPad app. Kudos GQ, I will be downloading and purchasing your contents.
