Bill Murray, party animal

Say it's 1976, '77, sometime after 1 AM on Sunday morning.  The party's in full swing.  You've traveled back in time.  You find Bill Murray in the crowd, pull him away from a friendly argument with Aykroyd, make him put down Gilda who he's been carrying around all night, thown over his shoulder.  You drag him off into a quiet corner to tell him about his future.

You tell him he's the one in the room's going to have the real movie career.  It may look right now like Belushi's the break-out guy, the star on the rise, you say, but trushtme on this, he's not going as far as it looks like he might.

It's going to be you, Bill.

Sure, there's this black kid, still in high school, can't even drive yet, he's going to make the blockbusters.   And there's a Canadian dude, he's got a couple of spy spoofs in his future will make him rich.  But I'm talking about a serious acting career for you, Bill.  An Academy Award nomination is what I'm saying.

You'll do your share of comedies.  Some will be better than others, at least one will be great.  Others will be classics of a kind.  But you'll do dramatic roles too.  Twenty-five, thirty years from now, you'll have played Polonius in an adaptation of Hamlet.  You'll have become a regular feature player in the movies of one of the brightest, oddest, arguably hippest young directors of the time.  You'll get that Oscar nomination for playing the Platonic romantic lead opposite the hottest young actress going.

And to top it all off, man...

You'll do the voice of Garfield the Cat.

For two movies.

Depending on what he's been ingesting, Murray might be cool with that.

If he's not, you can at least assure him that he's funny and the movies aren't half bad.

Burritoboy is right.  We need to raise the quality level of the feature presentations for Mannion Family Movie Night.

But Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties really wasn't half bad.  And Murray's voice work is funny.

It was a lot more enjoyable than X-Men 3, that's for sure.

And there were no morals.

And no lessons either, except that naps are necessary and lasagna is a miracle food, fit for royalty.

Comments

[Fledermaus]

And to top it off - and I can't believe you forgot this one, Lance - also play a generational icon perfectly.

[Cryptic Ned]

I think the next Mannion Family Movie Night should be Sergei Paradjanov's "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors". It's a fairy tale with weird old music.

[Linkmeister]

Since the director died the other day, shouldn't you watch "The Battle for Algiers" as an homage?

Well, maybe not for family night.

[sfmike]

Pontecorvo, one of the faces of God, is dead? This is sad news. And no, "Battle of Algiers" is not for family night. I've also read that "Garfield II" is not as craptastic as "Garfield I" because of its judicious use of "The Prince and The Pauper" as a template. Only Lance can tell us for sure.

[Jennifer]

At least you weren't watching him in "The Razor's Edge" which I believe they said should have been renamed, "The Razor's Dull".

[Mike Schilling]

"And you'll become a fixture at a golf tournament.

[blue girl]

I would really like to party with Bill Murray. I think he and I would get along really good. Maybe I'll try to get him to come to the Algonquin if the Democrats win.

I could never replace Gilda, but still. We'd be a load of laughs!

Who's your buddy? Who's your pal?!

Maybe I can talk him into helping out with that huge bar tab Tom Watson's already racking up.

[KC45s]

I assume Steve Martin is at this hypothetical party. Man, is he going to be disappointed to hear this news about who gets the serious acting career....

[Kevin Wolf]

Can't stand the Garfield strip/character but love Murray. So I remain frozen between these poles and unable to see the movie.

[velvet goldmine]

Yup. I think Murray really has had the dream film career: Early on, he made the kind of movies that a lot of women would call neglible and a lot of men would call iconic, but either way were rather...broad. Then he had enough clout or financal security to choose movies that one can almost always count on to be interesting.

Kevin, I'll give you my experience, for what it's worth. My mother took it for the team by taking my kids to the first Garfield movie, and I have the feeling I was lucky to have escaped it. But I saw G2 in the theaters and enjoyed it, largely because of the on-screen cast and the voicing. (Tim Burton! Always fun!) So if you are forced to rent it by family decree, you'll live through it. Although it's annoying to have the "two cities" title but the "prince and the pauper" storyline. And one yearns to slap Jon around, but maybe that's just me.

KC! What are you saying?! I think Steve Martin's had a really similar career to Bill Murray's -- that mixture of successful broad comedies with highly experimental movies and stage stuff, e.g. waiting for Godot," "Pennies from Heaven" and "Shopgirl." Just my opinion, of course.

Lance, I know this is a pedantic bore of a point, but didn't Murray carry Gilda around not as a regular heyday thing, but during that party shortly before she died? Sorry to step on your creative license, but as I remember that's such a moving part of "Live from New York" -- everyone getting into the act and carrying her around all night so that she wouldn't leave.