March 25, 2010

Bill Murray is easily my favorite performer to be launched into stardom by the now only intermittently humorous NBC sausage factory known as “Saturday Night Live.” Murray has always been hilarious, even in movies that are so far beneath him they barely deserve to exist. But his relatively recent entry into semi-serious roles in honest-to-God motion pictures with actual story lines and character development is a pleasant, unexpected turn of events.

Murray is full of surprises, whether he's skydiving for charity, getting arrested in Stockholm for drunk-driving a golf cart down the street, or guest announcing a Cubs game. Just a few months ago, he made an un-credited cameo appearance in a hit comedy that’s one of the more uproarious things I’ve seen in years (If you didn’t see it, I’m not ruining the surrealistic surprise by revealing the movie.)

Nobody, not even Steve Martin, is as consistently entertaining on talk shows as Murray is. It’s no secret, though, that he's eccentric bordering on nuts. He’s famous for having no agency to call if you’re a filmmaker who wants to work with him - most stars of Murray's stature have a battalion of morbidly obsequious underlings - and Sofia Coppola has said she didn’t know for sure that he had accepted her offer to co-star in “Lost in Translation” until she was already in Tokyo, ready to shoot. He just showed up.

I have a friend who worked with Murray years ago on a so-so John McNaughton picture called “Mad Dog and Glory,” and he says the crew never knew which Bill they would get from one minute to the next. He could be goofy and ingratiating, singing songs and doing absurd impersonations, then turn around and bite somebody’s head off with shocking viciousness.

It says a lot that John Belushi didn’t want to share a dressing room with Murray during Murray’s first season on SNL because he knew Bill from their Chicago improv days and was frightened by his outbursts. Think about that. He scared John Belushi.

Then there’s the time Murray punched Chevy Chase in the face moments before Chase, who had left SNL the year before to pursue a movie career, had to appear before the cameras as that week’s host. You can supposedly see the welt on Chase's face while he does Weekend Update during the episode. That’s not really a “crazy” story, though— I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t mind popping Chevy Chase a good one.

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Punch-happy or not - he’s never tried to punch me - I love Bill Murray, because he’s plain old funny as hell, and just doesn’t seem to give a damn.

This is one of the best thing he’s ever done. It’s a track off a 1977 album called “That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick!” by the gang at the National Lampoon Radio Hour. A takeoff on “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” entitled “Mister Roberts,” it features Christopher Guest as the prissy kiddie show host, and Murray as a jazz bass player who’s a tad too blunt for this particular gig. I almost busted a gut when I first heard this back in high school.

”Mr. Roberts”

“I-I’ll buy the goddamn stamp.”

Download: “Mister Roberts” by Bill Murray and Christopher Guest. Album: “That's Not Funny, That's Sick!” (1977).

Paul Tatara