The Tao of Bill Murray

by Gavin Edwards

Just a bunch of (mostly funny) stories from the life of Bill Murray. The canonical example is something like this: You’re standing on a streetcorner in, say, NYC. Suddenly, someone behind you puts his hands over your eyes and says, “Guess who?” You turn around, and it’s Bill Murray! He smirks and says, “No one will ever believe you,” then walks away.

I can’t tell what the goal of this book is. The stories aren’t funny enough to stand alone, but if the point is that we should emulate Bill, I profoundly disagree. He’s kind of funny to read about, and I like his best movies (esp. Groundhog Day), but I wouldn’t want to meet him in person at all.

A summary of his character from What About Bob? sums up his real self pretty well. “Bob isn’t a fun character to watch. In some ways, he’s a cautionary tale for those seeking to emulate Bill’s gate-crashing approach to life. If you do it right, you become a ringleader for good times; if you do it wrong, you’re the biggest jerk at the party.” (238)

He comes across as a god of mischief and randomness. At his best, he’s showing up at a college party and doing the dishes. Or engaging in “reverse pickpocketing” (28). At his worst, he’s leaving home for weeks without even telling his wife, traveling overseas, doing drugs, drinking, and committing adultery. According to his ex-wife, he once “hit her in the face and told her she was ’lucky he didn’t kill her.’” (28)

In his Golden Globe acceptance for Lost in Translation, he says, “You can all relax. I fired my agents a couple of months ago. My trainer, my physical trainer, killed himself.” Everyone laughed, but this was not a joke. You often can’t tell when he’s joking.

While working on Groundhog Day, he was hard to reach, and they suggested he hire a personal assistant. “He assented, but in a totally unhelpful way: He hired a profoundly deaf woman. She couldn’t communicate orally, and nobody else working on the movie knew American Sign Language, including Bill.” (69)

Reflecting on how Hollywood is so much easier than SNL or Second City: “On a movie, they’ll say, ‘All right, we’re only going to have three minutes to get this coat off and get you in the other shirt.’ And I just start laughing. Three minutes? In three minutes I can take off a shirt, put on a wig, a hat, a fat stomach, an enormous raincoat, galoshes, soak my head, take a shower, and be covered with soap and walk out and talk in another language.” (18)

Showing up for a golf game in rumpled shorts which “appeared to have been carefully slept in” (Sports Illustrated), he said, “I just signed a very lucrative deal with Goodwill Industries.” (167)