Our group has chosen to examine Bill Murray as an attraction himself, through both his filmic work and his public persona. We decided that we would each take a distinct period of his career and write about how that period affected him as an attraction in the public eye. The three periods are from his beginning to 1984’s Razor Edge, where he was a wilder comedian that retired for two years following his dramatic failure. The middle period of 1986’s Scrooged until 1997s Wild Things can be understood as his “golden period” where he achieved widespread recognition, despite being plagued by poor critical reception. His final period encompasses 1998s Rushmore up until the present. His most recent performances have focused on more dramatic roles while still maintaining his happy-go-lucky public persona.
We feel Bill Murray provides an interesting entry point into a discussion of how an actor’s public image interacts with and is influenced by his onscreen performances. We also believe Bill Murray is a particularly interesting case study because though he is an international icon he resists many of the implied structures of Hollywood’s “star system” – i.e. Murray doesn’t have an agent, instead opting to use a 1-800 number as a means of people contacting him for work. We hope that an examination of Murray’s appearance in both films and television interviews will help to unravel the complex relationship between the “star” as a character in a film and the “star” as a figure in the public sphere.
Source:
http://www.gq.com/entertainment/celebrities/201008/bill-murray-dan-fierman-gq-interview
Savva: 1977 SNL-1984 Razor’s Edge
This interview from 1982 shows Bill Murray speaking with David Letterman and in turn showing us his commanding presence and ability to win the affection of the crowd almost instantly upon appearing before them. He derides Letterman (half jokingly, half seriously), essentially providing all of the show’s entertainment value. While he certainly is famous for his often carefree attitude and sometimes offensive behavior these qualities seem to only add to his charm, qualifying him more so as a “real” and “regular” person than some intangible figure on Hollywood’s screens.
This is a short excerpt from the classic 1980 film Caddyshack, wherein Murray displays his crude personality and humor with the golf course’s greenskeeper. By the end of the 1970s Bill Murray was already a recognized and beloved comedic actor due to his performances on Saturday Night Live and early film roles such as Meatballs (1979). He was able to rise so fast into the Hollywood spotlight perhaps, ironically, because there isn’t anything typically “Hollywood” about him. He is indeed much more of a man of the people than an attractive ethereal star of Hollywood blockbusters. That is to say he seems to possess a quality that the public finds universally appealing and genuinely charismatic, regardless of how crude and vulgar some of his films may depict him.
Mike: 1986 Scrooged-1998 Wild Things
Groundhog Day is the pinnacle, critically and almost financially, of Bill Murray’s career because it has one of the most widely recognized comedians in the world playing such a completely miserable and downtrodden man, who still remains endearing and likable to the viewer simply because Bill Murray is the man playing the role. If any other actor had been cast, it would’ve been far goofier or far too serious so that no one would sympathize with him, but Bill Murray draws people in with his face, his demeanor and the almost smirk at the end of the clip that reveals his good humor about the setup, but subtly and without an obvious wink.
This interview of Bill Murray is from the press tour around Groundhog Day where the person that Bill Murray is in real life really came out as a candid, somewhat quirky but generally down to earth person. He wasn’t acting or doing anything outrageous, just being personable. This down to earth likability is the unteachable quality that he brings to his performances in film that has made him so in demand for such a wide berth of roles. In the interview, he setup his next career move by mentioning that he likes dramatic roles, but enjoys being funny, and the attraction to someone who generally likes doing their job, especially when it is making people laugh is a positive characteristic established in this clip
Diana: 1998 Rushmore-Present
In the latter period of his career Bill Murray began to accept roles that while still comedic can be understood as markedly more dramatic. In Rushmore Bill Murray plays a washed-up older man, a role that would be echoed in later works such as Lost in Translation, and Broken Flowers. These roles also seem linked to Murray’s personal life–Murray is twice divorced once for cheating and once for alleged drug and alcohol abuse. These later roles seem to be oddly related to his personal life, and many of the director’s wrote the parts with him specifically in mind. Murray’s transition to more “serious” roles demonstrates a versatility that is rare among comedic actors (see Jim Carrey and Robin Williams’ unsuccessful attempts to break into dramatic roles).
Bill Murray has continued to remain in the public eye appearing fairly frequently in (often strange) interviews on shows such as Joy Behar and David Letterman. This clip of him dumpster diving is typical of the way in which he inserts himself into public discourse. Despite the frequency of his appearances he remains enigmatic and reveals little about himself in the clips, opting instead for quick quirky appearances (such as his dramatic reading of an Emily Dickinson poem to a group of construction workers). In this later period of his career we see Murray as a self-mythologizing figure, the subject of numerous urban legend-esque anecdotes (bar tending at parties in Brooklyn, doing odd things to strangers and whispering “no one will ever believe you”).
The Cinema of Attractions 