Everybody loves Bill Murray. More than that, everybody loves stories about Bill Murray The ones where he crashes strangers’ parties and pitches in with the washing up. The one where he wanders into a stag night and delivers a spontaneous speech about marriage, then hoists the groom-to-be up on his shoulders. The one where he steals a golf cart and drives it drunkenly through the streets of Stockholm. The one about him replacing his movie agent with an answering machine where potential employers can offer him roles in the hopes he will occasionally check his messages.  These are the actions of a man who has mastered life. Workaday notions of rules and restrictions, career and ambitions don’t matter to him. Murray saunters through a world that envies and admires his effortless cool and deadpan demeanour. Bill Murray inspires the goodwill of a hip, weird uncle who shows up unexpectedly, charms and baffles in equal measures, and makes everyone wish they were him. But when was the last time you actually laughed at one of his movies?  It’s not like he doesn’t make comedies anymore. His latest, “Rock The Kasbah”, directed by Barry Levinson, co-starring Bruce Willis, Zooey Deschanel and Kate Hudson, opened to a sobering $1.5 million weekend. (“It’s tough to settle for a single pejorative for Rock The Kasbah, though abysmal might do,” raved the New York Times). But you’d probably have to go back to Murray’s 2009 cameo in Zombieland tor hard evidence that Bill Murray is still capable of being funny.  His constant presence in Wes Anderson’s ensembles aside, Murray has spent the best part of the last decade squandering his talents on unmemorable titles like City Of Ember, Passion Play, New York On Hudson, George Clooney’s leaden Monuments Men, Charlie Sheen’s mid-meltdown A Glimpse Inside The Mind of Charles Swann III, an unabashed Oscar grab playing a misanthropic reprobate with a deeply-buried heart of gold in last year’s St. Vincent, Cameron Crowe’s baffling Aloha and the voice of Garfield the cat. Twice.  That’s a pretty rough decade. But this is far from an obituary for a comedic titan gone astray, because Bill Murray has been down this road before.  “I don’t think I’m making it on the show. I’m a funny guy but I haven’t been so funny on the show. My friends say, How come they're giving you all the parts that aren’t funny? Well, it’s not the material, it’s me …”  In January, 1977, the-then 26 year-old, little known Murray joined the white-hot cast of Saturday Night Live, replacing it’s most popular member, the departing Chevy Chase. For the next two months, Bill Murray suffered by comparison to Chase. Audiences didn’t warm to him. He failed to make an impression in sketches. He felt his days might be numbered so he approached producer Lorne Michaels with the idea of directly addressing the audience with his concerns.  “What I’m asking for is your support,” he told America.”I’ve gotten some nice letters from old friends and people I owe money to ... But from you people I hear nothing … If you could see it in your heart to laugh whenever I say something, I don’t care what it is … Or if you can’t laugh, think about my family, and the father I never really got to know …”  Murray’s appeal was a bold move. SNL devotees still remained apathetic but, as his time on the show continued, Murray finally made his mark with recurring characters Todd and Lisa, a touching nerd duet he performed with Gilda Radner, and Nick the lounge singer.  What ultimately elevated Murray from being a reliable TV cast member to the sardonic stoned slacker Eighties adolescent America most wanted to emulate was his talent at being the best thing in bad movies. Meatballs, released in 1980, was a cheap and shoddy Canadian summer camp comedy directed by Ivan Reitman. Murray, improvising his entire role as camp counsellor Tripper, spends his extensive screen time signalling to the audience that the movie in which he’s mysteriously marooned is tripe, that his co-stars are clods, and that they are fools for watching.  Meatballs became a classic of the summer camp genre. Released the same year, Caddyshack promised to do for golf what Animal House had done for college. Instead, it was like one of those old Marx Brothers movies where the high-jinks are slotted into the narrative of a tedious love story. As groundsman Carl, Murray’s protracted battle with a destructive gopher, provided audiences’ fondest memory of the film.  Another Ivan Reitman production, 1981’s Stripes, was Murray’s first starring role. As a broken-down jaded hipster who joins the US Army, Murray caused movie industry antenna to shoot skywards. Stripes hasn’t dated well – it’s leisurely paced and towards the end it tries and fails to turns into a real war movie – but it made Bill Murray’s slovenly insolence seem cool. Cool enough to get the girl, cool enough to credibly shoot a gun and lead a platoon of ragtag misfits.  Reitman re-teamed Murray with his Stripes co-star Harold Ramis and fellow SNL alumni Dan Aykroyd for 1984’s Ghostbusters. From being the cast member who had to beg Saturday Night Live audiences to like him, Bill Murray was suddenly the star of the year’s biggest-grossing, most heavily merchandised and inescapable cultural phenomenon. In the middle of the maelstrom of demon dogs and impending apocalypse, Murray remained his unkempt, unimpressed cynical self.  Unlike Eddie Murphy the star of the year’s second biggest-grossing movie, Beverly Hills Cop, Murray didn’t immediately sign up for sequels and as many big-money blockbusters as he could grab. Instead, he starred in and co-wrote an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge. But Murray had not yet assumed the air of melancholy that made his later drift into drama so credible and the movie received little in the way of critical or financial love.  Wounded by the reaction to what had been his passion project, Murray moved to Paris to study French at the Sorbonne. His next starring role was in 1988’s Scrooged. Bill Murray as a modern-day Ebenezer Scrooge: what an inspired combination of actor and material! And yet, it’s an unfunny, heavy-handed ordeal to sit through.  The inevitable Ghostbusters sequel was the eighth-largest grossing film of 1989. It wasn’t received as a disappointment so much as the sense of excitement that greeted the original had entirely evaporated. (Murray would spend decades refusing to participate in Dan Aykroyd’s plans for a third movie, telling David Letterman the idea of making the movie is “my nightmare”.) The fondly-regarded What About Bob? and Murray’s directorial debut and, to-date, swan song, Quick Change, followed. But it wasn’t until 1993 that America fell back in love with Bill Murray.  Ivan Reitman described Murray’s character in Stripes as “a nasty James Stewart”. Right description, wrong movie. Phil Connors, the brittle, disdainful weatherman Murray plays in Groundhog Day, is a nasty James Stewart. Watching Connors’ heart begin to grow as he slowly learns about life and love through the same endlessly repeating day in America’s most annoying picturesque small town is as close to a perfect moviegoing experience as we’ve been given over these past few decades. That the most prestigious accolade Murray won for his performance was an MTV award is a national embarrassment.  A scene-stealing supporting role in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood was the pinnacle of Murray’s filmography for the next five years. Then, in 1998, Wes Anderson cast him as Herman Blume in Rushmore. One of the many reasons for the ignoble demise of The Razor’s Edge was that, even if Murray had been capable of pulling off a dramatic performance, no one wanted to see it.  But now, audiences had seen him tentatively express actual emotion in Groundhog Day.They were ready to accept the sadness and disappointment he brought to Herman Blume. Whether reliving his lost youth through his friendship with the insane Max Fischer or finding himself Max’s sworn rival for the love of Olivia Williams’ Miss Cross, the Bill Murray in Rushmore is someone we’d never seen before.  Sofia Coppola directed Murray in his last great performance, the alienated movie star who bonds with Scarlett Johansson’s abandoned wife in Lost In Translation. Coppola saw him as a warm, wise older man, gave him the chance to sing Roxy Music at karaoke and played him in a classic enigmatic heart-tugger of a final scene. The role won him a Best Oscar nomination. When he lost to Sean Penn, sharp-eyed Oscar viewers were able to spot Murray’s wounded soul depart his body.  It could, and has, been argued that if Bill Murray had an actual agent rather than an answering machine, his filmography might not be such a stomach-churning journey of towering highs and lengthy, inexplicable lows. But it’s his stubborn refusal to follow the accepted career blueprint that caused those highs to happen.  Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola saw Murray through fresh eyes. Is it so unlikely to think that someone with the same unique vision will dial that answering machine? Even if that doesn’t happen, Murray is approaching senior citizen status and Hollywood has an unquenchable thirst for films featuring irascible old coots wandering around in frayed underwear.  Let’s not give up hope that another career-redefining role lurks in his future. (Although it won’t be in his immediate future, which includes reteaming with Sofia Coppola for the Netflix seasonal variety special, A Very Murray Christmas, and cameoing in Paul Feig’s all-girl Ghostbusters.)  We can sustain ourselves with stories of his spontaneous appearances in the everyday loves of the unsuspecting, but wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to love Bill Murray for the reason we first fell in love with him?
Bill Murray: great guy, bad career choices. But don't give up on comedy's sad-sack king of sarcasm just yet...