Bill Murray Plays A-Holes for Atonement: ‘I Know I’ve Done Some Damage’
“It’s always interesting when you’re playing a guy who has done some damage.” That was comic actor Bill Murray, preparing to tell on himself during a surprise appearance at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend.
“I know I’ve done some damage,” he told critic Elvis Mitchell, per Variety. “It’s unconscious damage, but it’s some sort of penance to play them and to show that, you know, to show accepting responsibility for it.”
Getting a fat paycheck to relive your sins seems a pretty easy way out, as far as atonement goes. Take, for example, On the Rocks, Sofia Coppola’s 2020 film about a woman wrestling with her relationship with an emotionally distant father. “I was answering for a lot of things through that role,” Murray said.
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Wouldn’t Murray’s six sons prefer he answers for those things in real life rather than onscreen with Rashida Jones? It can’t be easy to have Murray as your dad, at least based on this parenting “advice” he gave during an Esquire interview in 2012: “If you bite on everything they throw at you, they will grind you down. You have to ignore a certain amount of stuff,” he explained. “The thing I keep saying to them lately is: ‘I have to love you, and I have the right to ignore you.’”
Ouch. At least the kids have On the Rocks on DVD when Murray isn’t around to pay attention.
What are the latest examples of Murray making things right by playing difficult men? There aren’t many, he admitted. “I’ve been lazy,” he told Mitchell. “I don’t have an agent anymore, so I’m not the first person people think of to be in studio movies.”
“Only in this last year, doing these (independent movies) has reawakened me about searching for material,” Murray said. “I’ve lived the life of a bass, waiting for something to come down at me. If something lands in my mouth, I’ll eat it.”
Of course, there might be another reason Murray hasn’t been working much — recent a-hole behavior on set got an entire movie canceled. That was 2022’s Being Mortal, the would-have-been directorial debut of Aziz Ansari. As you might remember, Murray got handsy with a “horrified” young female production assistant, kissing and straddling her. Her complaints caused the studio to pull the plug on production, putting cast and crew out of work and, by coincidence, launching Murray’s “lazy” period of relative unemployment.
The incident was just another example of Murray doing damage. “I did something I thought was funny and it wasn’t taken that way,” he told CNBC. “As of now we’re talking and we’re trying to make peace with each other.” Her attorneys helped him make peace when he handed over a six-figure check.
Paying up is one way to say you’re sorry. But maybe Murray should also make a movie about an actor who can’t keep his hands to himself — just as a way to accept responsibility.
