The “terrible” betrayal Bill Murray could never forgive: “It was like they killed my baby”
Whenever Bill Murray adds a new name to his enemies list, they’re usually there forever, with the actor and comedian having never really shown himself to be someone willing to mend fences and make amends.
Harold Ramis might be the exception to the rule, with the Groundhog Day star finally resolving his 20-year feud with the filmmaker who was instrumental to the success of his early films, including Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, and Ghostbusters, with the pair putting their bad blood behind them before the writer and director’s death in 2014.
As for everyone else? Not so much. After Lucy Liu came forward to detail her experience working with Murray on the set of Charlie’s Angels, McG also revealed that he had a run-in with the wayward star that could have resulted in a broken nose, a recollection that was vehemently disputed to the point where the Saturday Night Live alum said the filmmaker deserved to die, not have his nasal cavity shattered.
Then there were his spats with Chevy Chase during their time spent on the aforementioned sketch show, his habit of rubbing almost everyone the wrong way on the set of What About Bob?, and Anjelica Huston being less than effusive in her memories of collaborating with Murray on Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
He’s pissed a lot of people off over the years, so there’s a hint of irony in Murray being left stewing when his directorial debut, Quick Change, co-helmed with Howard Franklin, was left to wither and die on the cinematic vine. The crime caper flopped at the box office despite an enthusiastic critical response, leaving him to point the finger of blame in one direction, and one direction only: Warner Bros.
“I sound pretty cool now when I talk about it, but I could have killed someone back then,” he told Deseret. “It was like they killed my baby. It was a terrible time for me; I was completely baffled by what happened. The really tough part was that I knew we had done our job. It was a really good movie. I think it was even better than Dances with Wolves.”
The same Dancing with Wolves that earned over $420 million from cinemas and won seven Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’? The very same, although Murray would know better than anyone else that there was more than a hint of bias in calling a film he directed superior to the one that the Oscars declared to be the best of the preceding calendar year.
“The Warners marketing department didn’t do its job,” he continued. “They knew weeks in advance that the public wasn’t aware of the movie. They track these kinds of things, and they knew that more people were aware of the capital of Burma than were aware of our movie. Instead of doing something about it, or pulling it from the schedule and releasing it a few months later when it could have had a chance, they just opened it and let it disappear.”
He’d get over it eventually, even if it was another seven years before he played a major role in another Warner Bros picture, The Man Who Knew Too Little. Murray has never directed again, and the way Quick Change was left to evaporate into the cultural ether is one of the main reasons why.
