Here's Boardwalk Empire's Michael Shannon on Letterman last night, and at the top of the interview, he tells a story about filming a small part in Groundhog Day as a teenager and being convinced that Bill Murray hates him. It's not the best Bill Murray story, but any Bill Murray story is better than no Bill Murray story.
Melissa McCarthy and Bill Murray may be making a movie together this summer. Deadline reports that McCarthy is about to be offered the female lead in St. Vincent De Van Nuys, a low-budget comedy-drama that Bill Murray signed onto last year. Deadline writes that "this is a role that all the top comic actresses chased" and that McCarthy auditioned and campaigned hard for the part. St. Vincent, from new writer/director Ted Melfi, follows a debaucherous misanthrope (Murray) who takes the 12-year-old son of his single mother neighbor (McCarthy, possibly) under his wing, but the kid only extracts the good from all of Murray's character's morally dubious life [...]
Bill Murray has made a lot of really great movies in the past decade, but none of them are comedies in the traditional sense — at least not like his early work in movies like Stripes, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day. In the new GQ profile on Murray, he ponders this: "It's really a question I have. I think there's something that I can bring to a comedy today, but I don't know where to bring it," he says. "I've actually thought about having a manager again. Just to clear my head and have a plan." He pauses, as if working it out in his mind. "Eh, it's not [...]
The Oscars have historically been an awards show that doesn't give comedy its proper due, but last year, things looked like they were starting to change, with Bridesmaids receiving two nominations (Best Supporting Actress for Melissa McCarthy and Best Original Screenplay for Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo), Jonah Hill scoring a Best Supporting Actor nom for his turn in the drama Moneyball, Flight of the Conchords' Bret McKenzie winning an Academy Award for his song "Man or Muppet" from Jason Segel's Muppets movie, and Nat Faxon and Jim Rash winning a screenwriting Oscar for The Descendants. This time around, it doesn't look like comedies and comedians will do quite as well [...]
Bill Murray's next movie St. Vincent De Van Nuys, just found a new home at The Weinstein Company. According to Deadline, the studio will be financing and distributing the film, which is the feature directorial debut of the movie's writer Ted Melfi. Murray signed on to the project this summer, which he'll star in as a debaucherous older guy who starts looking after the 12-year-old son of a single mother, his neighbor. The man teaches the kid all about gambling, fighting, stealing, and other dirtbag stuff, but the boy only takes away the good from all this. Here's writer/director Ted Melfi describing meeting Bill Murray, who's always [...]
Amazon unveiled eight comedy pilots on its streaming service this morning, and one of them, Alpha House, features a cameo from Bill Murray. Here's the cameo in its entirety, courtesy of Vulture. It features John Goodman as a Senator waking up Murray's Senator character. It may not top Bill Murray's Zombieland cameo, but it's still a pretty good Bill Murray cameo.
Having gone to college with the members of the comedy group The State in the late '80s, actor Mather Zickel began working with The State alumni like Reno 911!, The Ten, and Stella in the early 2000s. Now, he's front and center in Adult Swim's newest 11-minute comedy Newsreaders, a spin-off of Childrens Hospital produced and created by Rob Corddry, Jonathan Stern, and The State's David Wain. As Louis La Fonda, the host of Newsreaders, a fake newsmagazine show, Zickel nails the cadence and feel of tabloidy reporters, helping the show to take on 60 Minutes in the same way that Childrens Hospital skewers Grey's Anatomy. I recently had the chance to talk [...]
“While almost all of the dialogue in original [Ghostbusters] screenplay is echoed on screen, the Venkman character is completely improvised. It's as if Bill Murray was given a mumblecore-style essay about each scene and then permitted to say whatever he wanted as long as he got the point across… He's like a jazz musician who knows, 'I have eight measures here and have to hit this note here and as long as I follow those rules everything else is up to me.'"
- Writer/director Jason Reitman to EW about the improvisation skills of Bill Murray in his dad Ivan's movie Ghostbusters.
Here's the brand new trailer for A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, an upcoming movie that stars Charlie Sheen, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, and Aubrey Plaza, and was written and directed by Roman Coppola, who co-wrote Moonrise Kingdom and The Darjeeling Limited with Wes Anderson. If you've ever wondered what it would look like if all your favorite people made a movie with Charlie Sheen, this is it.
"You could argue that Sean Penn didn't deserve the Oscar for that movie [Mystic River], but he probably did for a couple of others that he didn't get. [Laughs]. That’s the way it goes. He did some amazing jobs, like Dead Man Walking, and he didn't get the notice. So then he got it that time, and it’s like, I didn't get it, so what are you going to do? Someone said, 'What do you think about this,' and I said, 'Well, I think it's going to be a regular thing. I think I'm going to get nominated every 25 years so.' [Laughs]. I can yuk about it a little bit."
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Chris O'Dowd may reunite with his Bridesmaids co-star Melissa McCarthy in St. Vincent De Van Nuys, a new comedy-drama that has Bill Murray in the lead role. Deadline reports that O'Dowd is in "early talks" to join the cast as a nice Catholic priest who is concerned about Murray's cranky misanthrope character mentoring a 12-year-old neighbor boy whose hardworking single mom (McCarthy) unwisely leaves him in Murray's hands. St. Vincent is the feature film debut of writer/director Ted Melfi, who has a fun Bill Murray story just like everybody who works with Bill Murray does. Chris O'Dowd will probably have one soon too.
Filmmaker Wes Anderson is getting ready to shoot his new movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and he revealed a full cast list to THR last week. Some of the names, like Bill Murray were announced previously while others are new. Not that it's a surprise to see Anderson and Murray working together, but Budapest does see the director branching out by hiring some new actors (and of course, some old favorites). Few details are known about the plot of this mysterious mysterious project, but here's Wes Anderson revealing the full cast list:
"Yes, it’s Grand Budapest Hotel. It’s a Euro movie. It’s a period picture. I [...]
David Letterman must be having all of America's greatest comedy people on his show this week. After yesterday's wonderful appearance by Albert Brooks, Bill Murray paid a visit to the show – after being dragged in handcuffed against his will and tazed by a bunch of goons.
Hit the jump to see Bill Murray and David Letterman celebrate the Rockefeller Center tree lighting:
"The early days, you could change every single word [in a screenplay], and no one cared. It was like: 'That’s fine. That was terrible anyway.' But now, if the script's really good, you don't need to change very much. I realized the more fun I had, the more relaxed I was working, the better I worked… The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself."
- Bill Murray in a whimsical, eccentric, Murray-esque interview with The New York Times.
