Nieuwe Films

GQ komt met een geweldig interview met Bill Murray. Hierin gaat hij in op de ontwikkeling van Ghostbusters 3 en legt hij uit waarom hij ooit heeft meegewerkt aan de Garfield films. We beginnen met de derde Ghostbusters, aangezien daar nogal wat onzekerheid over bestaat. Murray zou in eerste instantie nog meewerken aan het project maar de laatste tijd blijft hij er maar op hameren dat de sequel er helemaal nooit gaat komen. Hij zegt het volgende:

It’s all a bunch of crock. It’s a crock… 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. 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.

Daarnaast gaat hij in op Garfield, de franchise waaraan hij tweemaal zijn stem verleende en films die Murray-fanaten hem niet in dank afnemen. De reden dat hij besloot om aan de films mee te werken is vrij hilarisch: hij dacht namelijk dat het een film van de Coen brothers was.

I thought it would be kind of fun, because doing a voice is challenging, and I’d never done that. Plus, I looked at the script, and it said, “So-and-so and Joel Coen.” And I thought: Christ, well, I love those Coens! They’re funny. So I sorta read a few pages of it and thought, Yeah, I’d like to do that. I had these agents at the time, and I said, “What do they give you to do one of these things?” And they said, “Oh, they give you $50,000.” So I said, “Okay, well, I don’t even leave the fuckin’ driveway for that kind of money.”

Finally, I went out to L.A. to record my lines. And usually when you’re looping a movie, if it takes two days, that’s a lot. I don’t know if I should even tell this story, because it’s kind of mean. [beat] What the hell? It’s interesting. So I worked all day and kept going, “That’s the line? Well, I can’t say that.” And you sit there and go, What can I say that will make this funny? And make it make sense? And I worked. I was exhausted, soaked with sweat, and the lines got worse and worse. And I said, “Okay, you better show me the whole rest of the movie, so we can see what we’re dealing with.” So I sat down and watched the whole thing, and I kept saying, “Who the hell cut this thing? Who did this? What the fuck was Coen thinking?” And then they explained it to me: It wasn’t written by that Joel Coen.

Tot nu toe alleen maar films waar Murray niet blij mee is. Welke film vindt hij dan wel leuk?

Unfortunately, the last time I watched [Quick Change, the one film Murray directed] was right after Kung Fu Hustle, which is the supreme achievement of the modern age in terms of comedy….Quick Change after it looked like a home movie. It looked like a fucking high school film. I was like, “Oh man, I just saw this thing,” and “God, that’s just staggering, just staggering. That movie is just AHHHHHH!”