Bill Murray, born on this day - Sept. 21, 1950 in Wilmette, Illinois. Bill Murray is funny person. This is not opinion, but verifiable scientific fact. People who do not agree with this fact are entitled to their particular form of anti-whimsy and rogue seriousness, but the fact remains. He got his start at the beginning of Saturday Night Live in the mid - 70s, and moved into movie roles that most of us have seen or know about. About my favorite, and one of my personal Top 10 from all genres - was the box office flop, The Razors Edge (1984 film) which he co-wrote, and which was an adaptation from the book by W. Somerset Maugham and a re-make of the landmark film, from 1947 with Tyrone Power of a deep personal quest. The story is epic - a man, returned from the horrors of WWII on a search for meaning, who eschews the predictable bourgeois life and embarks on a journey that embraces life as laborer, as Paris expat, and on to Tibet and back. In the film, Murray plays off his talents and nature as a wise, troubled, inscrutable, understated rebel - and deftly walks the tightrope between ironic comedy and pointed drama. What is interesting to note is that, discouraged by the poor reception of the film, which he funded as part of an agreement to do Ghostbusters - he left the film altogether, and actually went to Paris to study history and philosophy at the Sorbonne for a period of 4 years. The curriculum must have been good, because not long after in the early 90s he attracted not only another spiritual-philosophical romp, - but a box office hit in Groundhog Day. He has teamed up with the innovative indie film-maker Wes Anderson to star in Wes Anderson, including Rushmore (1998), 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). Murray likes and invests sports teams and is an an avid semi-pro golfer. Never a Hollywood guy, he has no agent nor manager, using a personal phone line that he checks infrequently for messages about film roles. He says that if someone can successfully write a screenplay, it should not be all that difficult to track him down. His reputation has a chilled-out observer of life running amok is well -earned. He is a funny person.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 23:02:10 +0000
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