The movie so good it made Bill Murray want to retire: “God, I really can’t top that”
It’s definitely a first-world problem, but it must be a nightmare for an actor to give a performance they consider their best-ever in a movie they rank as the greatest of their career, only to find themselves caught in the midst of an existential crisis, the kind that almost forced Bill Murray into retirement.
Of course, big-name performers are highly paid for their efforts, so a hefty stack of cash no doubt helps soften the blow of getting back on the horse and going again, even if they know in their heart of hearts that they’ll never be able to beat their previous turn. The Saturday Night Live alum obviously didn’t quit the business, but he nonetheless gave it some serious thought.
Nobody would be surprised if Murray simply upped and vanished from Hollywood one day. After all, people have come to expect the unexpected from the idiosyncratic icon in all walks of life, and he also happens to be one of the hardest stars to even get a hold of in the first place, so if and when he does eventually call it quits, he’s more likely to slip into the ether than make a song and dance about it.
He’s got previous form for disappearing for long stretches anyway, with the Ghostbuster exiling himself after The Razor’s Edge flopped at the box office, and outside of voice-only performances and cameo appearances, he was completely absent from the big screen between 2015 and 2019, keeping himself busy by doing Bill Murray things, like showing up in the most random of places.
The Academy Award nominee must have been mightily impressed with his own work to think that it would never be dislodged as his finest hour in front of the cameras, and since he’s repeatedly called it the closest thing to cinematic perfection he’s ever achieved, that’s clearly how he felt about Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers.
There was early awards buzz surrounding his performance as Don Johnston, a retiree who made a fortune in computers. When his girlfriend leaves him, he decides to spend his time doing absolutely nothing, until a letter from a former flame claiming he has a son he didn’t know about sends him on a quest to figure out which one of his exes was the one who bore him the child he didn’t know he had.
It was a decent-sized hit in theatres, and despite receiving no nominations from any major awards bodies, Murray was adamant that he’d reached his pinnacle. “I thought, ‘God, I really can’t top that!” he told The Times. “I should think about stopping now.” If he did, he didn’t think about it for very long.
Several months after Broken Flowers had wrapped in early 2005, Murray made his return. In his defence, it didn’t require him to set foot on a film set, and he’s hardly been shy in revealing his reasons for stepping back into the recording booth for Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties after agreeing to star in the first one because he thought it was a Coen brothers flick.
It wouldn’t be until late 2006 that he returned to acting in person, and in an incredibly expected development, his first post-Broken Flowers role came in a Wes Anderson picture, with Murray playing The Businessman in The Darjeeling Limited.
