The movie Bill Murray was tricked into making: “They got us under false pretences”
One of the most famous Bill Murray stories is how he agreed to voice the title character in 2004’s Garfield because he mistakenly thought that screenwriter Joel Cohen was one of the Coen brothers, which doesn’t explain why he returned for the sequel.
Then again, since he reportedly earned a $6 million salary for voicing the lasagne-devouring feline the first time around, that probably answers the question. It’s become an integral part of Murray’s mythology, but it wasn’t even the first time he’d been hoodwinked into making a movie.
Everybody knows that the hardest part of getting the star to join an ensemble isn’t the quality of the script, the reputation of the director, the shooting schedule, locations, or any of the other bells and whistles that come with a Hollywood production; it’s trying to track him down to make an offer.
Despite being a household name and a fixture of the screen for almost half a century, Murray remains one of Hollywood’s most elusive figures, which is just the way he likes it. If he doesn’t want to do something, he’ll simply disappear off the face of the earth, so nobody knows how to find him and ask.
As was expected of a smash hit that became the highest-grossing comedy in cinema history and launched a merchandising empire, Columbia Pictures was eager to get a Ghostbusters sequel off the ground as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for the suits in the boardroom, its top-billed name needed convincing.
Murray spent years avoiding the prospect of strapping Peter Venkman’s proton pack to his back and battling against ghosts, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night, because if he did make a second Ghostbusters, he wanted to ensure he was returning because of the script, not the payday. He thought he’d found them both when he read a script that he genuinely liked, but, from the way he tells it, it was all a ruse.
“I thought that the only reason anyone would want another one was just to make money,” he explained. “And I was probably the most reluctant. Someone outfoxed me anyway.” The actor reunited with his co-stars, who “hadn’t been together in a room since the movie came out,” and he had a great time, thanks in no small part to being “pitched a story idea that was really great.” Suddenly, his reluctance had disappeared, with Murray thinking to himself, “Holy cow, we could make that work.”
At long last, he was officially on board for Ghostbusters II, only to discover when he arrived on set that the story that convinced him to sign on wasn’t the one being used. “They got us in the sequel under false pretences,” he grumbled. “Harold had this great idea, but by the time we got to shooting it, I showed up on set and went, ‘What the hell is this? What is this thing? But we were already shooting it, so we had to figure out how to make it work.”
They didn’t make it work, since the follow-up was a pale shadow of its illustrious predecessor, making significantly less money at the box office and faring exponentially worse among critics and fans. Murray was handsomely paid for his troubles, even though the rug had been pulled from under him.
