The reason why Bill Murray will always refuse to work with Ron Howard: “He lost me at that moment”
There’s nobody in Hollywood quite like Bill Murray, and whether or not that’s a good or bad thing remains entirely in the eye of the beholder.
For a lot of people, he’s an influential legend of laconic comedy who deserves his place among the modern greats for his contributions to putting Saturday Night Live on the cultural map before starring in a string of hit movies, including Stripes, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, and more.
His complete avoidance of modern technology, inability to let people contact him unless they know exactly how, and his repeated habit of showing up in the most unexpected places to do the most unexpected things have created an unpredictable and eccentric persona that’s made him a cult hero.
On the other side of the coin is his reputation for being a highly-strung and regularly difficult presence, one who’s made plenty of enemies during his four decades in the spotlight. Murray has feuded with screenwriters, directors, actors, and producers, and the evidence has been gradually mounting up that he might actually be a bit of a dickhead.
He certainly knows how to hold a grudge, anyway, after he’s carried through with his vow to never work with Ron Howard, a pledge he made in the late 1980s. It seems bizarre when the Academy Award-winning director is about the least offensive person in Hollywood, and nobody’s ever had a bad word to say about him either personally or professionally, but he pissed Murray off so much that he’s never been forgiven.
Murray has only helmed one feature in his career, and from the sound of it, he didn’t really want to. 1990’s Quick Change is one of the more underrated entries in the star’s filmography, bombing hard at the box office after audiences proved less than receptive to the heist caper.
At the time, Howard was already an established name in the business with Splash, Cocoon, Willow, and Parenthood under his belt, and Murray was confident he was the perfect candidate to take the reins on Quick Change after his first choice, Jonathan Demme, had politely declined.
“We asked Ron Howard because Ron Howard had made something that I thought was funny,” he told GQ. “He made a funny movie back then; I can’t remember what it was. And he said he didn’t know who to root for in the script. And I was like, ‘Hooooooo’. He lost me at that moment. I’ve never gone back to him since.”
Technically, Murray and Howard have worked on the same picture since Quick Change, but they were never forced to cross paths. The former played the leading live-action role in the disastrous Osmosis Jones, while the latter voiced the animated character Tom Colonic. Beyond that, though, he’s been a man of his word and never once considered Howard as a potential creative partner.
