There are a great many unanswered philosophical questions in the world: Does God Exist? Is there life after death? Is Free Will an illusion? But the greatest and most imponderable question of all is: Who is Bill Murray?
He’s an unknown quantity, is our Bill. He did write an autobiography (with George Peper) called “Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf” but as an autobiography it’s a bit too heavy on golf and a bit too light on it’s supposed subject of William James Murray.
He’s never shown any enthusiasm for allowing or contributing to an authorised biography. Even asking him about it would be tricky enough; he fired his agents in 2000 and replaced them with a semi-secret 800 number that goes through to an old fashioned telephone answering machine. This he checks only irregularly.
Robert Schakenberg has tried a different approach: this book is an alphabetical assemblage of quotes, stories, reports and apocrypha about his subject interspersed with film reviews by the author (each with separate “Movie Rating” and “Murray” Rating). It’s advertised as: “Part biography, part critical appreciation, part love letter”.
And the result?
Well, I know more about Murray in a factual sense after reading it. I now know he was born in Evanston, Illinois and raised in Wilmette, Illinois, son of Lucille and Edward Murray. I know how many siblings he has (eight, including three brothers who are actors – all of whom appeared in Scrooged – and a sister who’s a Dominican Nun), how many kids he has (six) and how many messy divorces (two at time of press).
There are also some fun Murray facts that I didn’t know, such as: he only agreed to provide the voice for the eponymous cat in famously bad live action Garfield Movie because he thought it was being written by Joel Coen (one half of famed film making duo the Coen Brothers). It was actually written by Joel Cohen (who wrote a quarter of Toy Story 1 and the entire script for ropey Steve Martin vehicle ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’).
Quite why Murray agreed to return for “Garfield 2: A Tail of Two Kitties” may never be adequately explained; not before the secret of turning base metals into gold or the heat death of the universe.
And, to be fair, Schakenberg doesn’t hold back from recounting stories that paint Murray’s behaviour in its sometimes capricious, prickly and uncooperative glory. As much as he tends to add value to every picture he appears in this is often to the detriment of the mental well-being of everyone else involved. He can reputably be a fun-loving, goofy heart-and-soul of the film set. Equally he can be an unapproachable, absent and unprofessional in the extreme. His twenty year estrangement from his old friend, regular collaborator and fellow Ghostbuster Harold Ramis was only properly lifted when he visited Ramis on his deathbed and things like that make the book sometimes a bitter read.
But why does he do things like that? What fuels this occasionally wanton behaviour? What makes Bill Murray tick? I’m none the wiser after finishing this book. It’s a diverting enough read and easy on the eye due to a wealth of photographs, but the alphabetical structure is a bit lazy and repetitive, it lacks any attempt at insight and considering it’s a book about Bill Murray, it’s not particularly funny.
What really put me off it, though, was the author opining that “Scrooged” is the worst film Bill Murray has ever made. Blasphemy. There will be a special circle of Hell reserved for him for that kind of talk.
Twitter: @Epistler
