“He was terrible”: Bill Murray turned a bad actor into a good one by scaring the shit out of them
Nobody would call him an intimidating or terrifying person, but since he’s a big-screen comedy legend, the baggage Bill Murray naturally carries with him can turn a younger actor into a gibbering wreck.
At least two generations have grown up watching him on the screen, from Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters to Groundhog Day and Lost in Translation, and his reputation as someone who can switch between cold and aloof without warning has only increased that sense of trepidation.
There’s also a litany of stories about him being a dick, which wouldn’t make things any easier for a fresh-faced and nervous performer gearing up to share their first scene with the man dubbed ‘The Murricane’, especially when his first impression of the thespian in question is that they’re shite.
One of the very few filmmakers who doesn’t have to worry about jumping through hoops to track down and convince Murray to make a movie with him is Wes Anderson, of course, with their collaboration dating back to Rushmore, which was also the feature-length debut of a teenage Jason Schwartzman.
Not only was it his first film, but he was playing the lead role, not that Murray gave a shit about his nervousness. “Schwartzman and I rehearsed our lines in your room, and he was terrible, just terrible,” he recalled to Anderson. “And I got very depressed and immediately afterwards went straight to the bar.”
The director noted that he was in a bad mood already, and it was all the rookie actor’s fault. “Yeah,” Murray acknowledged. “Because I knew I had to work with this guy who didn’t have a clue.” He persevered, though, but the more they ran lines, the more he began to convince himself that Schwartzman was simply a bad actor.
“I thought, ‘God, I’m really in trouble here,'” Murray reflected, although he did note that his co-star’s nerves were palpable, at which point Anderson pointed out that it was because “you were scaring the shit out of him, Bill.” In a last-ditch attempt to salvage a scene partner he thought was beyond saving, Murray took Schwartzman out for dinner, which “relaxed him and put him on a higher plane.”
That was awfully nice of him, since history has shown there’s at least one side of Bill Murray that would have sandbagged the wide-eyed debutant instead of offering him a helping hand. He was the bigger man, and after they bonded over some chicken-fried steak, Schwartzman raised his game to a level the Academy Award nominee found acceptable.
Sharing scenes with someone of Murray’s standing in your first movie is a tall order, so it’s only fair that Schwartzman was bricking it. He knew that the SNL veteran knew he was bricking it, too, which only made things worse. Fortunately, a decent scran was all it took to solve the problem.
