Bill Murray is ready for prime time
Actor Burt Reynolds, second right, appears on the set with cast members of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” from left, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, and Bill Murray, right, in New York, April 12, 1980. (AP Photo/Suzanne Vlamis, File)
Bill Murray is ready for prime time, as he is proving in the nation’s theaters and on the stages at Universal Studios.
“Meatballs,” starring Murray as the bedeviled counselor of a summer camp, proved Paramount’s sleeper hit of the season. Now Murray is starring for Universal in “Where The Buffalo Roam,” based on the adventures into gonzo journalism by Hunter S. Thompson, hipster laurete of Rolling Stone.
Murray is a member of the misnamed Not Ready for Prime Time Players of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” which has also sent Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Dan Akroyd to films and Gilda Radner to her own Broadway show. As soon as he winds up “Buffalo,” Murray will be hustling back to “Saturday Night Live” -- “I think I’ve got another year in me.”
The other day Bill Murray was deep into his Hunter Thompson portrayal. On Universal’s Stage 44, a jet sliced in half depicted the press plane following a certain presidential candidate (portrayed in the film by the actor Richard M. Dixon). Murray as Thompson was cutting a grapefruit in half and drinking the juice, laced with a slug of vodka.
A press aide, looking strangely like Ron Ziegler, evicted Thompson (Murray) from the plane. That is the story of the gonzo’s life: Terminal.
“Where The Buffalo Roam” is the brainchild of onetime rock music manager Art Linson. He saw a movie in Thompson’s article for Rolling Stone’s 10th anniversary, “The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat.” Thompson agreed to go along with it, and he consulted with Linson and co-writer John Kaye.
Thompson also consulted with the man who is portaying him.
“I may be the most fortunate of actors,” said Bill Murray when he came out of the airplane scene. “Hunter is my houseguest while I’m playing him in the movie. It has been very helpful. I have been able to see his wild side, as well as his more thoughtful moments. In both cases, he is extremely funny.”
Thompson and Murray have been friends for a couple of years, having met beside a swimming pool in Aspen, Colo. The actor recalled:
“I was entertaining some friends, and he was entertaining some friends, so we started entertaining together. We started talking about escape artists, and we talked about how it would be if you were strapped to a wrought iron chair and thrown in the water.”
Murray agreed to be the guinea pig, specifying five-foot depth in the pool. He hadn’t calculated on not being able to stand up when tied to the chair. He was rescued before drowning.
“The BBC was out here doing a show on Nixon, so Hunter and I agreed to stage a ‘Nixon in ’80' rally for their cameras,” Murray continued. “We had searchlights and everything at my house above the Sunset Strip. The cops arrived very soon, and I handed them our leaflets: ‘He’s tanned, rested and ready.’ They still said we had to shut down.
“Hunter and I wanted to have skywriters over Watts printing: ‘Nixon in ’80 -- Black is Weird,’ but the BBC wouldn’t pay for it.”
Bill Murray is off beat, all right. One of nine children reared in a Chicago suburb, he learned comic skills in the famed improvisational group, Second City, went on to the Broadway revue “The National Lampoon Show.” The producer was Ivan Reitman, who later picked him to star in “Meatballs.”
“Nobody expected anything of the movie,” Murray recalled. “We shot it in six weeks in Canada, without much of a script. Ivan let me contribute some of my own things, so I felt comfortable.
“I think ‘Meatballs’ has a lot of appeal for kids, and it’s better than most of the entertainment they usually get. I’m glad it’s a success. It meant I didn’t have to do an ‘Airport’ for my second movie.”
