Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The funniest thing you'll read all day

I'm going to leave you with something truly awesome today. You know, a lot of people don't remember how truly great Bill Murray was.

Even I only caught the tail end of his awesome before he kind of disappeared, only to reemerge as a quirky character actor that I still adore. I'm even looking forward to his underhyped Get Low because it seems to be a bit of return to form for the man. It also doesn't hurt that he's a Chicago sports enthusiast second only to me.

GQ has an interview that answers two burning questions about the man: (1) What up with Ghostbusters 3 and (2) why the f**k did he do Garfield? The answer to the first is somewhat expected. He says there's no movement on the project and that all rumors of movement are lies. I believe him. He points out that the biggest thrust was made by the people who did Year One and then pointed out that although he's never seen that movie, he was told it was bad. It wasn't bad, Bill. It was the worst comedy I have ever seen. There was not a laugh in that film, and whoever is responsible for writing it should not only be barred from writing Ghostbusters 3 they should be barred from watching any Ghostbusters movie. Yeah, even Ghostbusters 2. Murray adds that the fan enthusiasm is so high that he often thinks he'll just agree to do it if the project ever gets that far, but the take home message is: No Ghostbusters anytime soon. Sorry.

The second answer is the best thing I've read in an interview in ages. Why did he do Garfield? Because he thought it was a Coen brothers movie.

"I thought it would be kind of fun, because doing a voice is challenging, and I’d never done that. Plus, I looked at the script, and it said, “So-and-so and Joel Coen.” And I thought: Christ, well, I love those Coens! They’re funny. So I sorta read a few pages of it and thought, Yeah, I’d like to do that."

That's right, he claims to have confused Joel Coen with Joel Cohen, the actual writer of Garfield. He's lying, we all know that, as he even agreed to do a sequel, but how great is that as an answer? His full explanation gets better.

I don’t know if I should even tell this story, because it’s kind of mean. [beat] What the hell? It’s interesting. So I worked all day and kept going, “That’s the line? Well, I can’t say that.” And you sit there and go, What can I say that will make this funny? And make it make sense? And I worked. I was exhausted, soaked with sweat, and the lines got worse and worse. And I said, “Okay, you better show me the whole rest of the movie, so we can see what we’re dealing with.” So I sat down and watched the whole thing, and I kept saying, “Who the hell cut this thing? Who did this? What the f**k was Coen thinking?” And then they explained it to me: It wasn’t written by that Joel Coen.

Folks, this is what we're missing in a world with diminished Bill Murray usage. I demand he be reinstated into the primary throne of comedy post haste. He claims to have done Garfield because he thought it was a Coen Brothers movie?! God, that's the best interview ever, right?

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