Bill Murray in The Driver's Seat

By RICHARD CORLISS Sunday, June 24, 2001
    • If Bill Murray the actor were to be paid tribute by "Bill Murray," the unctuously impolite bon vivant familiar from Saturday Night Live and a dozen film comedies, the evening might go something like this:

    What, ladies and gentlemen, is stardom? Stardom is, you replace the most famous performer on a hot TV show -- as Bill Murray did in 1977 when Chevy Chase left Saturday Night Live -- and you effortlessly out-fame him. Stardom is, you top-line in the most popular comedy of its time, Ghostbusters. Stardom is, you seem to be yourself on screen and people love you. Stardom is, you've got two movies out at once -- your hit comedy Groundhog Day and the new crime drama Mad Dog and Glory -- so you are your very own multiplex festival.

    Stardom -- are you gettin' where I'm goin', folks? -- stardom is Bill Murray.

    We call to the dais Harold Ramis, who has known Bill since 1969 and gave us a new, gentler side of Bill by directing him in Groundhog Day. Brother Harold.

    "Before Bill was an actor, he already was who he is. He's laid back. He's a realist but not necessarily a cynic. He's witty, tending toward irony. He's like a nasty Jimmy Stewart. He's a hero for our generation, because he talks the talk of our generation but embodies the classic American-hero myths. Working with Bill this time was simply helping him honor things I know are there -- tenderness, genuine concern for others, a kind of goodness without too much irony -- but that he wasn't ready to risk showing to people before."

    Thank you, Harold. But I'd add that the old Bill Murray was pretty revelatory too. Who said, "The work of any pioneering artist first looks like excess, then reveals itself as precision"? Well, I guess I did, just now. But / as Nick the Lounge Singer on SNL and in a lot of his movies, Bill taught us that there was a magical, very American bliss to be achieved by failing in public and not realizing it. He was the soul of the showman in every CPA who's just had that third Scotch on the rocks. He was the spirit of unfazed, unfounded self-assurance. He was Karaoke before Karaoke was cool. He was conviviality masking contempt masking -- who knows what? He was . . . Everyguy.

    Danny Rubin, who wrote Groundhog Day, can speak to this subject. Danny?

    "The same lines in somebody else's mouth would seem insulting. But there's that charm with Bill, that magical quality, and you like him anyway. He can get away with things. I'm sure he's been doing it his whole life. He's very good at it."

    Thank you, Danny. And now Bill is very good at something else. In John McNaughton's Mad Dog and Glory, he's a loan-shark boss who shows his gratitude to a cop, Robert De Niro, by sending him a woman, Uma Thurman, for a week's pleasure. The movie is a little gimpy, and I wanted to fast-forward during the reaction shots. And you know our guy is playing the villain, because he goes to White Sox games and Bill is a famous Cubs fan. But, hey, he's molto impressive. He drops his voice half an octave; he walks like a golem tailored by Armani; he puts his silky style in the service of menace. It's a whole nother dimension to him.

    Let's hear testimony from the co-producer of Mad Dog and Glory, Steve Jones.

    "If you sit in a room with Bill, it's obvious there's some darkness in his soul. And if you work with him the way we did, you find that it bubbles up every once in a while. I think Bill was hungry for a serious role. He likes to project a persona that he just rolls out of bed and does these things. But I found out he was doing dance-movement exercises to get himself in shape."

    An actor prepares. Thanks, Steve. Now folks, let me ask you: What becomes a legend most? That's right. Disappearing. You remember, after Ghostbusters and The Razor's Edge, Bill vamoosed to Paris with his family. Took courses at the Sorbonne -- that's French for Harvard and Yale put together. He did a great cameo in Little Shop of Horrors, but otherwise, for four years Bill was J.D. Showbiz Salinger. And we're sorry to say that Bill couldn't be here tonight. Maybe he thought this was a roast and not a toast. He can be a suspicious guy. As Harold told me, "Bill has one of the most overworked bulls detectors of anyone I know."

    But Bill, wherever you are, I just wanted to tell you that -- after Steve Martin, and just ahead of Billy Crystal, and until Eddie Murphy and Bette Midler regain their strides -- you are screen comedy, pal. And I mean that, even if when Bill says, "I mean that," you're pretty sure he doesn't mean that. I do mean that. Really. I mean that.