The James Gunn movie Bill Murray is obsessed with: “I thought he was fucking with me”
When you take a look at James Gunn‘s body of work, it’s honestly hard to figure out where he saw his career when he was starting out.
Of course, he’s in the big leagues now, having just directed the latest reboot of Superman, which not only became one of the most commercially successful movies of the year (to nobody’s surprise) but also earned critical acclaim for Gunn’s vision and approach. He definitely deserves the flowers for making audiences go back to the theatres for a superhero flick when it seems like the whole world is already irreversibly fatigued by the genre.
It’s clear that Gunn has come a long way from his first project, Tromeo and Juliet, which transplants Shakespeare’s material in contemporary Manhattan and just goes wild with its parody elements, displaying a sense of humour that underlines many of Gunn’s early works. Although his directorial efforts have now overshadowed the first half of his career, it’s these quirky screenwriting credits that demonstrated Gunn’s talents from the beginning.
Interestingly, that’s also what caught Bill Murray’s eye, who reportedly loved a movie Gunn worked on as a writer much more than anything he ever directed. If you’ve been trying to guess what that is since the moment you read the headline, try again, because even Gunn was shocked when Murray came to him and gushed about his writing.
In an interview where Gunn proudly boasted of his own “Bill Murray” story, he recalled an encounter where they were both at the same party and he was trying not to freak out because he idolised the Groundhog Day star. When you’ve had your start as a comedy writer, it’s only natural to be drawn to the comedic talents of someone like Murray.
Gunn remembered, “My Bill Murray story is once I was at a party and saw Bill and freaked out because he’s a hero. But you know, I’m cool, I don’t bother people like that… He saw me and came over and shook my hand. He knew who I was, which was weird and cool. And then he knelt on the floor beside me and rested his elbow on my knee, like, leaning on me, and he started waxing poetic about how much he loved my work on Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.”
Adding, “I thought he was fucking with me, but then I began hearing through other people how much he was talking up Scooby-Doo 2 around town and how much he loved the movie. Anyway, I hope he’s having a happy birthday.”
The Superman director had worked as a writer on both 2002’s Scooby Doo and the sequel that Bill Murray fell in love with. Both projects were hits at the box office while being panned by the critics, but as with many such cases, Gunn’s Scooby Doo flicks have now become cult classics after being rediscovered by younger generations who realised that the critics had sticks up their asses, as always, and that these were funny as fuck all along.
