“So unique, so original”: Bill Murray on the greatest conceptual script of his career
As one of the most lauded comedic performers of the modern era, Bill Murray has experienced virtually all of the ups and downs that Hollywood has to offer, which he’s decided to navigate by making himself nigh-on unreachable to anyone who doesn’t know how.
The actor famously doesn’t have an agent, a mobile phone, or an email address, making it very difficult for anyone not named Wes Anderson to contact him directly. Even when people do manage to get through, sometimes he ends up agreeing to star in something for all the wrong reasons.
After all, this is the guy who thought voicing Garfield in the animated movie focusing on the lasagne-loving feline was going to be something special because it was written by one of the Coen brothers. Of course, it was not, but despite admitting he’d gotten actual screenwriter Joel Cohen mixed up with the acclaimed thespian bearing an almost-identical moniker, the lure of a hefty paycheque convinced him that the sequel was worth doing.
That was hardly his first – or last – dalliance with high-concept comedic capers, but it does stand out as one of his worst. Sports comedy Caddyshack, supernatural romp Ghostbusters, revisionist Dickens update Scrooged, the psychological buffoonery of What About Bob?, and a self-aware turn as himself in Space Jam all utilised Murray’s talents to fantastic effect, but he’s adamant that one of his most popular roles doesn’t get the credit it deserves.
It’s become an annual tradition for Groundhog Day to be revisited on February 2nd and has been ever since it was first released in 1993. The production may have been so fractious, laborious, and tortured that it caused a schism in the friendship between the star and writer/director Harold Ramis that would take decades to heal, but Murray has never been above praising a script that’s been endlessly dissected, discussed, and debated for three decades to uncover the specificities of Phil Connors’s ordeal.
In a Reddit AMA, the Academy Award nominee called it “one of the greatest conceptual scripts I’ve ever seen,” to the point where he was adamant it should have been a shoo-in for awards season consideration. It did win a Bafta for ‘Best Original Screenplay’, but that was the only nomination it received from any of the major ceremonies.
For Murray, that was scandalous. He found it to be “a script that was so unique, so original, and yet it got no acclaim.” Labelling it as “the greatest script of the year,” he’s completely correct in saying that people are still picking apart the intricacies of Groundhog Day so long after the fact, “but they forget no one paid any attention to it at the time.”
Movies about time loops have been a regular part of cinema for decades, but he’s right in saying there aren’t many to have tackled the tricky conceit with as much imagination, inventiveness, and panache as Groundhog Day. He may have had a tough time making it, but he’s not spiteful or resentful to the point where he’s going to say the writing wasn’t up to scratch because that would be a blatant falsehood.
