What About Bill?

May 6th, 2004 · No Comments

I walked into the projection booth this afternoon to grab some stuff and heard a very familiar voice saying “Yeah, we can show that, let’s go with that one.” It was Bill Murray, and he had just chosen a rented video copy of his 1990 directorial debut Quick Change to screen for Elvis Mitchell’s last class here. We had some prints of Kingpin and Groundhog Day, but they went with the more obscure film instead. The secret hadn’t gotten out too much, so the only people in the screening room besides students were building employees, faculty, and staff. He introduced the film, briefly, by asking (and try to picture his laid-back, deadpan delivery when you read this) “How many days of school do you have left after this?” When the reply came up “Zero!,” he countered, “OK, well the let’s blow it out. Whatever you’re packin’, that’s fine. Beer, wine, open it up, just don’t spill.” As he left, he held the door open for students coming in late, only one or two of whom realized what was going on.

change.jpgAfter the film screened, he came back to take questions from students (or “the nine people in this room who are actually students,” as Elvis said; by this time, the word had gotten out, a little) about the film and his career in general. He couldn’t have been more cool, to be honest. It’s a cliché to say someone is “just like they are in the movies,” but he had a genuine way about him that made me think it wasn’t far off. He engaged in a sort of memoir-standup, telling stories about the making of the film that were filled with hilarious impressions and dry punch-lines. On Jason Robards: “He always called Lauren Bacall ‘The Widow Bogart.’ ‘Ahh, the Widow Bogart says…’ Even though he married her, she still talked about Bogie all the time.” And he couldn’t praise highly enough Robards’ recording of the Gettysburg Address. “Listening to his recording, you’d think no one had ever spoken those words before. You’d think only one person could have said them as well. [pause] And I mean Abraham Lincoln. I don’t mean me. Though I could give it a shot…”

Or on Tony Shalhoub, who played the cab driver in the film: “He was amazing, getting out and doing that scene in the middle of the street in New York. People who hadn’t sat up straight in years, lying on the sidewalk, sat up and paid attention. And people watching were saying ‘Look at what those horrible movie people have done to that poor cab driver!’ ” And on the absolutely classic bicycle jousting scene in the film: “That is still about the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in the movies. If we’d done only that, I’d be happy. We’ve done something good. The first time we saw it in a wide shot, we actually almost hurt ourselves laughing so hard. Not to say that ‘neighbors called the police,’ but neighbors called the police. There was a woman screaming, a chicken got in there somehow, and we had to explain to the cops, it’s a movie, they’re just broomhandles, they’re not sharp…” And on Woody Allen, whose crew he used to shoot the film: “It’s great to work on a film with Woody, because if it’s sunny, he doesn’t shoot. He only shoots when it’s overcast, so the light is even, so there are no shadows, so there’s no work to do. I can say this because he’s not here.”

bill.jpgAfter talking about “Sofia’s film” and his “twelve hours stuck in a room with the Wu-Tang Clan” (he met Jim Jarmusch, and was asked to be in his new film, with the offer that it would require only a day’s work. “How about half a day?” was his counter-offer), I had to leave. I was displeased at not being able to stay to the end, especially because I was leaving to attend the polar opposite of an intimate Q and A with Bill Murray, which, if you polled a thousand people, would be the following: an informational session with an HR department officer telling us how to fill out Position Description Questionnaires. It doesn’t get much worse than a PowerPoint presentation, the phrase “let’s talk offline” when you’re all in the same room, and the question “Who are your direct reports?” It was the place I would like to have been the least, mathematically, so it was almost funny. When we were told that we could just email him our thoughts instead of hand-writing them in that room for fifteen minutes, we took off and got back just in time for Bill’s exit. I introduced myself and talked to him about the collection, and suggested he come do a series of films of his choosing for our program. He said “I’ve heard most of the collection is stolen and I should stay away” – in typical fashion, it was not wholly untrue and very funny. He was gracious and charming, and funny as hell.

Tags: Film