How Bill Murray turned Woody Harrelson against Hollywood: “He wouldn’t return our calls”
Hollywood is full of coincidences, domino effects, and chain reactions that can affect actors and filmmakers in any number of ways, and it was Bill Murray’s preference for being impossible to find that almost permanently turned Woody Harrelson against the movie business.
Of course, it’s no secret that the former is a hard man to locate, with Murray having missed out on countless roles because nobody knew where he was or how to get in contact with him. That’s the way he likes it, though, and it hasn’t stopped him from enjoying a lucrative and successful career.
Harrelson, meanwhile, was still in the embryonic stages of trying to distance himself from his breakthrough role on the sitcom Cheers, although he was doing a stellar job thanks to against-type and headline-grabbing turns in the likes of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers.
Stone would serve as a producer on Miloš Forman’s The People vs Larry Flynt, which earned Harrelson the first Academy Award nomination of his career. However, he wasn’t supposed to be the star after the Platoon director admitted Murray was the one he wanted. “But he wouldn’t return our calls,” he told The Independent. “He’s a recluse or something.”
His loss was Harrelson’s gain, with the actor delivering one of his best performances as the smut mogul. The downside is that many people weren’t happy with the film, and the criticism got to him in a major way. As a result, the actor decided that he’d had enough of Tinseltown for the time being and placed himself into exile for the better part of half a decade, having fallen out of love with the industry.
“I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to make a movie about Flynt,” he offered. “But then I started looking into it and realised I kind of liked the guy. He turns out to have more honesty and integrity than a lot of people I’ve met.” And yet, in another world, it would have been Murray.
In one of those cases of Hollywood happenstance that not even a screenwriter could concoct, The People vs Larry Flynt was released in December 1996. What cult classic comedy movie landed in cinemas less than five months previously? The Farrelly brothers’ Kingpin, which featured both Harrelson and Murray.
The pair hit it off during the production of the ten-pin caper, leaving Harrelson with no idea that in just a few months’ time, he’d win rave reviews for playing a character originally earmarked for his co-star that would generate such an intense and vocal blowback from certain quarters that it convinced him he needed to get out of town and reevaluate his next steps.
And to think, things could have turned out very differently had the Saturday Night Live legend bothered to answer his phone.
