Bill Murray’s bizarre relationship with 1989’s ‘Road House’
They say too much cheese is bad for the body, but in the case of 1989’s cult classic Road House, copious amounts of cheese is great for the soul. The remake might be gearing up for release, but it’s got a long way to go to hold a candle to its beloved predecessor.
Director Rowdy Herrington didn’t make a particularly good movie, but he definitely made an entertaining one. Bolstered by Patrick Swayze and his mullet roundhouse kicking everything within sight, it beggars belief that the bar-brawling favourite was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards including ‘Worst Picture’, ‘Worst Actor’, and ‘Worst Screenplay’, but at least it went home empty-handed.
Swayze’s James Dalton takes a job as a bouncer at The Double Deuce bar, only to end up on the wrong side of the locals when he begins a romance with Kelly Lynch’s Dr Elizabeth Clay. One of Road House‘s biggest fans has turned out to be none other than Bill Murray, but not for the reasons anyone expected.
In fact, it’s all to do with his long-time friend Mitch Glazer, whom Murray first met when Glazer wrote an article on John Belushi in 1977. From there, they became close off-screen and regular collaborators on it, having worked together on Scrooged, Lost in Translation, Passion Play, Rock the Kasbah, and the TV special A Very Murray Christmas.
Glazer has also been married to Road House star Lynch since 1982, which is where Murray’s obsession begins. In the movie, her character has a steamy love scene opposite Swayze, which sparked the Ghostbusters star into action anytime he caught the film playing on television.
As Lynch would reveal to AV Club, “Every time Road House is on, and he or one of his idiot brothers are watching TV – and they’re always watching TV – one of them calls my husband and says, ‘Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now. They’re doing it. He’s throwing her against the rocks'”.
Murray even once called Glazer from Russia for the express purpose of telling him he was watching his wife’s sex scene for the umpteenth time, and it’s become an accepted tradition for both the Murray family and the Lynch/Glazer household. Understandably, the actor becomes stricken with fear whenever she knows it’s about to make the airwaves.
“I dread it”, she admitted, “I know if it’s coming on – and I can tell when it’s coming on, because it blows up on Twitter when it is – I’m just like, ‘Oh my God'”. According to Lynch, “it doesn’t matter if it’s two or three in the morning,” a member of the Murray clan – whether that’s Bill, Joel, or Brian Doyle – will make a point of calling to inform either Lynch or Glazer that her big moment is on-screen.
