STACK #138 Apr 2016

DVD & BD FEATURE

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BILL MURRAY

You gotta start somewhere... Following comedy stints on the National Lampoon Radio Hour and TV’s Saturday Night Live in the mid-seventies, Murray made his movie debut in Ivan Reitman’s summer camp comedy Meatballs (1979) as head counsellor Tripper, after an opportunity to appear in Animal House fell through. The following year he played Hunter S. Thompson in the biopic Where the Buffalo Roam (1980), hanging out with the gonzo journalist on his ranch to get into character. “I took on another persona that was hard to shake,” he recalls. “I still have Hunter in me.”

1979

1980

HAROLD RAMIS PHASE Murray made a further five films with Meatballs ’ co-writer Ramis, who would alternate between writing, acting and directing. Most of them rank among his most successful and best work – Stripes (1981), Caddyshack (1980), Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II (1989) and Groundhog Day (1993). His fruitful collaboration with Ramis came to an end on Groundhog Day – Murray was involved in divorce proceedings at the time, and disagreements over the tone of the film (philosophical or comedic) strained their working relationship. DRAMATIC PHASE Every comic actor has one, and Murray has the ability to be as cynical as he can be deadpan. “I don’t know what my fans are going to think, it’s definitely not what they’re used to from me,” he said of his role in The Razor’s Edge (1984). The film proved to be a disastrous foray

1984

1993

DVD & BD

1995

1998

2001

into drama for the actor, tanking badly at the box office following the success of Ghostbusters the same year. He fared better in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003), garnering critical acclaim and an Oscar

2003

2004

nomination for Best Actor. “It was cool that an Oscar nomination never happened for a long time, and then it was cool that it did happen,” he noted.

GARFIELD PHASE “I thought it would be kind of fun, because doing a voice is challenging,” Murray says of his decision to voice the eponymous comic strip cat in a live-action version of Garfield (2004). The fact that he mistook screenwriter Joel Cohen for one of the Coen brothers was another reason he did it, only to later realise his error. That didn’t stop him from appearing in the 2006 sequel, however. Playing himself in Zombieland (2009), he’s asked if he has any regrets, and quips: “ Garfield , maybe.”

2007

2009

2012

2014

WES ANDERSON PHASE Intersecting with Murray's dramatic phase is his collaboration with master of whimsy Anderson, who has monopolised Murray for all of his films since Rushmore in 1998. Murray is to Anderson what Johnny Depp is to Tim Burton (the director reportedly always writes with Bill in mind) and has appeared in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

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