The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray

by Robert Schnakenberg

  CANDY, JOHN

  Larger-than-life comic actor who played Private Dewey “Ox” Oxberger in Stripes. Candy also appeared with Murray on a 1982 episode of SCTV and was offered the part of Louis Tully in Ghostbusters. The two Second City veterans remained close friends until Candy’s death in 1994.

  Candy and Murray joined the Chicago branch of Second City the same week in 1973. At the time, the troupe was known by the nickname the Seven Giant Goyim, because everyone in the cast was a gentile over six feet tall. The two neophytes often appeared together in scenes because, Murray claimed, no one else in the cast wanted to work with them. Murray later described their improv collaborations as “endless death, incredible death.” A typical sketch, set in a delicatessen in India called the “New Deli” was, in Murray’s words, “the dumbest thing I’ve ever been part of.”

  While they may not have clicked on stage, Murray and Candy became fast friends off it. The Chicago-area native took the Canadian-born Candy under his wing. “He was a wonderful tour guide,” Candy once said. “He took me all over the city, showed me every landmark—we’d have a hamburger at the original McDonald’s, a pancake at the first International House of Pancakes. We went to every weird, seedy area imaginable. He’d always say, ‘This is my town, and this can be your town, too!’ When we’d go to Wrigley Field, he knew every Cubs player that had ever lived.”

  In 1980, when Canadian diplomats gave safe harbor to six Americans trying to evade capture during the Iran hostage crisis—a rescue mission dramatized in the Oscar-winning film Argo—Murray called Candy at four o’clock in the morning to personally thank him for being a Canadian.

  CAPE FEAR

  Murray was director Steven Spielberg’s first choice for the role of Max Cady, the vengeful ex-con, in his proposed early-1990s remake of the classic 1962 thriller. When Spielberg’s friend Martin Scorsese took over the project, Robert De Niro won the role and with it an Oscar nomination for best actor.

  CARAY, HARRY

  Legendary Chicago Cubs play-by-play announcer, known for his predilection for Budweiser and his spaced-out affect. Caray welcomed Murray into the broadcast booth on many occasions, including the first night game at Wrigley Field, held on August 8, 1988. During their on-air conversations, Caray would invariably ask after the health of Murray’s mother. According to Caray’s broadcast partner Steve Stone in his book Where’s Harry?, Caray kept on doing so even after Lucille Murray died. “Bill, how’s your mom doing up there in Wilmette?” Caray asked Murray the very next time he came up to the booth. “Well, she’s dead, Harry,” Murray replied. “And don’t ask me about my father, because he’s dead too.”

  “THAT WAS A GREAT PIECE OF WORK. THAT WAS THE PEAK OF MY PERFORMING CAREER. THAT WAS THE PEAK—WHAT I WAS BORN FOR.”

  —MURRAY, on the day he spent filling in for Harry Caray in the Chicago Cubs broadcast booth

  When Caray suffered a stroke in the spring of 1987, Murray was one of several Chicago-area natives—including Jim Belushi, George Wendt, and Tom Bosley—who filled in for him on WGN TV broadcasts. Murray’s turn in the booth came on April 17, 1987. He prepared for the telecast by watching the other guest announcers and ignoring their example:

  “I saw that these people were trying to be broadcasters. And I thought, ‘What the hell?’ That’s not how I would do it. So I made the decision to do it as a fan, calling it like a person would sitting in front of his TV. I was very fortunate. The Cubs had lost every game of the season so far, at the start of the season. I asked my friend if he had any suggestions for me, and he said, ‘Well, you know what T. S. Eliot said. April is the cruelest month.’ So that’s how I started the broadcast. It’s always true of the Cubs, they were always brutalized in the first month of the season. And a huge umpire named Eric Gregg—his equipment didn’t show up. So they had to find some equipment for him, and what they found came from, like, a local high school. So this 220-pound guy comes out wearing a chest protector and shin guards of a high school kid. It looked hilarious. That was good for another fifteen, twenty minutes. I couldn’t get enough of it. And then the Cubs won the game, on top of it. I also noticed under the desk, Harry Caray had a cooler there, his own refrigerator, and it was full of beer. So I started pulling out all this beer.”

  For the record, the Cubs defeated the Montreal Expos that day 7–0.

  CATS

  Murray is allergic to cats. During a 2014 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, he admitted that he once taught himself hypnosis in an effort to surmount his aversion to felines. “I read someplace that allergies are psychosomatic and you can actually hypnotize yourself and overcome the allergy,” Murray said. “So I used to do that. I used to go to girls’ houses and they had cats and all of a sudden I’d be looking at them crying and they’d be like, ‘What did I say?’ and I’d go, ‘No, it’s not you!’ So I learned to hypnotize myself and get over it. But then I decided I didn’t really like cats that much, so I stopped. I’m more of a dog guy.” Murray only rarely interacted with cats on screen until 2014’s St. Vincent, where his character cares for a cantankerous Persian named Felix. The two cats playing Felix, Teddy and Jagger, were kept meticulously groomed throughout the shoot to keep dander to a minimum.

  CELTIC PRIDE

  Murray claims this 1996 basketball comedy is the only Judd Apatow movie he’s ever seen. Cowritten by Apatow and Colin Quinn, Celtic Pride stars Dan Aykroyd and Daniel Stern as a pair of rabid Boston Celtics fans who kidnap a star player for the Utah Jazz. Murray was not impressed by the film. “It’s just brutal! Totally brutal,” he once said. “And Danny’s in it! Danny doesn’t even know how many players are on a team in basketball. And he’s in this movie? Oh my Jesus mercy.”

  CHAMPA TAMPA

  Champagne and orange juice cocktail favored by Murray and roommate John Belushi during their time in the touring cast of The National Lampoon Show. The struggling performers saw the Champa Tampa as a less expensive alternative to hard drugs, which they couldn’t afford. “We didn’t have the money [for cocaine],” Murray told Rolling Stone magazine. Basically, we were juicers at the time.” Murray has described the energizing libation as “a great drink to work on because it’s got that sugar pump, and it’s nice and cold.”

  See also Montana Cooler.

  CHARIOTS OF FIRE

  Oscar-winning 1981 historical drama about anti-Semitism and class conflict among British track-and-field athletes at the 1924 Olympics. The film is known for its majestic instrumental theme, composed by Greek synthesizer maestro Vangelis. On the set of Nothing Lasts Forever in 1982, Murray improvised his own lyrics to Vangelis’s title theme:

  They run by the ocean

  They run by the shore

  They run almost as fast as a chariot of fire!

  CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

  Murray was among a who’s who of A-list actors considered for the role of Willy Wonka in the second big-screen adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s novel. Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, and Christopher Walken were also in contention to play the mercurial candy magnate. Johnny Depp wound up with the part.

  CHARLIE’S ANGELS

  DIRECTED BY: McG

  WRITTEN BY: Ryan Rowe, Ed Solomon, and John August

  RELEASE DATE: November 3, 2000

  FILM RATING: **

  MURRAY RATING: **

  PLOT: An elite crime-fighting team searches for a kidnapped software tycoon.

  STARRING BILL MURRAY AS: John Bosley, Charlie’s factotum

  After several years in the indie wilderness, Murray returned to Popcornland with this slick, soulless big-screen reboot of the 1970s television series about three gorgeous female superagents. Directed by music video veteran Joseph McGinty Nichol, or “McG,” as he prefers to style himself, Charlie’s Angels is about as far from Rushmore as you can get without leaving Earth’s orbit entirely. That Murray said yes to this cartoonish film speaks either to his boredom with lo-fi prestige projects or to his keen commercial instincts. Not surprising
ly, an aggressively stupid action comedy headlined by the beautiful but talent-deficient trio of Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu turned out to be a smash hit at the box office.

  To its credit, Charlie’s Angels doesn’t pretend to be anything more than it is—a loud, leering smash-’em-up pitched at hormonal teenage boys with attention deficit disorder. Murray “plays” John Bosley, the buffoonish retainer originated by David Doyle in the TV version. While it is mildly amusing to watch him flounce around in loud clothes and a bad toupee, there is nothing distinctively “Bill Murray” about this thankless sidekick. Anyone could have played Bosley—a fact that became evident three years later when Bernie Mac replaced Murray in the sequel Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

  In interviews, Murray has insisted his unwillingness to sign on to the follow-up had nothing to do with his legendary on-set clashes with McG and Lucy Liu. But given the ferocity of those dust-ups, that is hard to believe. In a 2009 article in the Guardian, McG revealed that Murray had head-butted him during a physical altercation on the set. “An inch later and my nose would have been obliterated,” the director claimed. Murray later dismissed the charge. “That’s bullshit! That’s complete crap!” he railed. “I don’t know why he made that story up. He has a very active imagination… . He deserves to die!” He went on to say that McG “should be pierced with a lance, not head-butted” for fabricating the incident.

  As for Liu, the story goes that Murray stopped work midscene and pointed to Barrymore, Diaz, and Liu in turn, saying: “I get why you’re here … and you’ve got talent … but what in the hell are you doing here? You can’t act!” Liu reportedly flew into a rage and physically accosted Murray. The two had to be separated and sent to opposite ends of the set to cool off.

  According to Murray, however, that’s not quite how it happened. “We began rehearsing this scene and I said, ‘Lucy, how can you want to say these lines? These are so crazy,’” he told Access Hollywood. “She got furious with me because she thought it was a personal assault, but the reality is she hated these lines as much as I did. But for fifteen or twenty minutes there, we went to our separate corners and threw hand grenades and sky rockets at each other. We made peace and I got to know her better from that day.”

  In Lucy Liu’s version, the entire confrontation was blown out of proportion by the press, amounting to nothing more than “a creative difference about the script”—one of many that plagued the production. “They had a scene for me and they had written it in a certain way,” she told an audience at San Diego Comic Con in 2002. “[Bill] came in and obviously he’s a talented writer and he’s very smart, and he had a writer that he was working with as well… . It wasn’t that big of a deal. If I had punched him or anything, I would have remembered.”

  Whatever the truth of these encounters, by the time 2003 rolled around Murray wanted nothing to do with the Charlie’s Angels sequel. He declined another go-round as Bosley, citing an unnamed enemy in the ranks. “That same person was going to be involved in the second one,” he said, “so I wasn’t going to show up again.”

  NEXT MOVIE: Osmosis Jones (2001)

  CHARTREUSE

  French liqueur favored by Murray in recent years. Made from a centuries-old recipe crafted by Carthusian monks, Chartreuse is distinguished by its high alcohol content and lime green color.

  CHASE, CORNELIUS “CHEVY”

  Glib comic writer and performer whose 1976 departure for Hollywood paved the way for Murray to join the cast of Saturday Night Live. Murray and Chase famously brawled backstage before the show’s February 18, 1978, episode, Chase’s first time back as guest host. According to multiple published reports, Murray personally called out Chase after learning how badly he had treated the other SNL cast members during his year and a half on the show. Chase responded by comparing Murray’s acne scars to the craters of the moon. “Why don’t you fuck your wife once in a while?” Murray taunted. “She needs it.” A rolling fistfight ensued, which had to be broken up by Murray’s brother Brian moments before Chase went on stage to start the show. “It was really a Hollywood fight,” Murray later confessed to an interviewer for Empire magazine. “A ‘Don’t touch my face!’ kind of thing… . So it was kind of a nonevent. It was just the significance of it. It was an oedipal thing, a rupture. Because we all felt mad he had left us, and somehow I was the anointed avenging angel who had to speak for everyone.” Murray and Chase later patched up their differences and worked together amicably on the set of Caddyshack in 1979.

  On August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley died in his Memphis mansion. Two days later, he was laid to rest next to his mother at nearby Forest Hill Cemetery. A crowd of nearly eighty thousand fans gathered along the processional route in ninety-degree heat to pay their last respects to the King of Rock ’n’ Roll. Numerous celebrities attended the funeral, including Caroline Kennedy, Ann-Margret, George Hamilton—and a junior member of the Saturday Night Live cast named Bill Murray. He had not been invited.

  Murray was the twenty-seventh person on standby for the last flight out of New York to Memphis on the night of August 17. He made it onto the plane only because several celebrities who said they were going—including Sammy Davis Jr., Farrah Fawcett, Burt Reynolds, and John Wayne—failed to show up. When he embarked, he found a jet full of A-listers that was eerily silent. A couple hours later, the Elvis Funeral Express touched down in Tennessee.

  The next morning, Murray took a cab to Graceland for the start of the service. He found Elvis’s home jam-packed with mourners—more than thirty thousand of whom were allowed inside to view the King’s body one last time. Paparazzi drifted in and out, desperately trying to snap pictures of Elvis lying in state. Security guards confiscated cameras as fast as the photographers could whip them out. After several hours, the gates were closed and the crowd escorted out so that the procession to the cemetery could begin.

  Murray and the other celebrities were herded into a press bus that drove ahead of the slow-moving hearse. All along the road, Elvis fans held up homemade signs bidding goodbye to the fallen rock icon: “God Bless You, Elvis,” they read. “The King Lives,” “Long Live the King,” “We Will Miss You.” Murray believed he could feel the presence of Elvis’s spirit all around. As he watched the hearse pass by the assembled throngs, “like a swan gliding down the road,” he was moved to tears.

  When the cortege arrived at the cemetery, the scene was more chaotic. A group of overzealous mourners tried to storm the rear gate. Murray jumped out of the press bus and started running toward the scene of the riot. He was greeted by the arriving hearse, flanked by a phalanx of two dozen motorcycle police officers. One cop turned to Murray and froze him in his tracks with a look that said, “If you move, I will shoot you right through the heart.” As Murray stumbled backward, he realized he was standing on Elvis’s mother’s grave.

  Dazed, Murray watched as the pallbearers lifted Elvis’s enormous casket and carried it up the steps to the mausoleum. They staggered from the weight of it, nearly dropping it. The massive metal box was festooned with hundreds of roses, which shook loose with each uncertain step, drawing gasps from the crowds. Murray managed to grab one of the flowers to take with him on his trip back to New York. With the casket at last in place inside the crypt, Presley’s widow, Priscilla, left the cemetery. So too, Murray felt, did Elvis’s spirit.

  After the burial, Murray returned to Graceland for one last look at Elvis’s palatial home, which was soon to be turned into a museum. In a surreal coda to his funeral experience, a banged-up car with Michigan plates and a bad muffler rolled up beside him as he stood outside the mansion gates. The driver leaned out the window and asked, “Is there gonna be a reception?”

  CHEERS

  Murray is not a fan of the classic 1980s sitcom about the denizens of a Boston bar. “I never really got it,” he said.

  CHICAGO

  Murray grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, just outside Chicago. He once jokingly called his adopted hometown “the greatest city on
Lake Michigan.” In a 2008 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Murray listed a few must-see Chicago-area attractions he always recommends to tourists:

  “I always tell them they have to get a cheeseburger over at the Billy Goat. I tell them, if they are downtown by Navy Pier, there’s going to be fireworks. I tell them to see the Bean [Cloud Gate]; I love the spitting fountain. I tell them to go to the Original House of Pancakes in Wilmette. See the Baha’i Temple as well. Obviously Wrigley Field is on the trip, they have to see that. If there’s a way they can just drive around in the Loop at sunset around the river and just see the light ricocheting off all those buildings, it’s spectacular.”

  CHICAGO CUBS

  Murray has been a passionate fan of Chicago’s North Side baseball team since he was a boy. “My passion for the Chicago Cubs is as deep as the green of the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day,” he once said. “It’s a deep, deep color. Except that it’s blue.” Murray had the Cubs team logo painted on the floor of the swimming pool at his mansion in Palisades, New York.

  Murray attended his first Cubs game when he was seven years old. Having seen Wrigley Field only on a black-and-white TV until then, he found the experience revelatory: “My brother Brian said, ‘Wait, Billy,’ and he put his hands over my eyes, and he walked me up the stairs. And then he took his hands away. And there was Wrigley Field, in green. There was this beautiful grass and this beautiful ivy… . It was like I was a blind man made to see. It was something.” Around the same time, Cubs first baseman Dale Long bought a house a few doors down from the Murray home in Wilmette, Illinois.