The only Wes Anderson movie Bill Murray refuses to watch: “Haven’t seen it, don’t tell him”
When cinephiles picture the greatest actor/director partnerships in their heads, a few candidates likely spring to mind. First, they may think of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, who have made six Oscar-bothering films together, or Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, who collaborated on eight gothic fairy tales. Of course, who could ever forget the mighty partnership between Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg, who were responsible for five action movie opuses that are the very definition of diminishing returns.
However, there is one partnership that has been going strong for 27 years and may fly under the radar, even though it shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. After all, Bill Murray has lent his deadpan brilliance to ten of Wes Anderson’s 12 movies, only missing out on Anderson’s first film, Bottle Rocket, and Asteroid City, because he was stricken with Covid when it was shot.
Murray was clearly taken with Anderson’s distinctly whimsical moviemaking style from the start. After all, it says everything that the notoriously elusive star has made it a habit to return to work anytime Anderson cooks up a kooky new adventure. No other director has ever engendered that kind of loyalty from Murray, whose stock-in-trade was always a frustrating ability to make life as awkward as possible for anyone who wants to work with him.
Fascinatingly, Murray claims that he was able to zero in on what made Anderson unique without even watching any of his work. Indeed, when the quirky auteur was courting Murray to star in Rushmore, his second film, his agents sent him multiple copies of Bottle Rocket, which Anderson made on a shoestring with the Brothers Wilson (Owen and Luke) in 1996. Still, because Murray is a wilfully difficult man, he refused to watch the movie, choosing to read the script instead. Amazingly, he “got” Anderson’s style from that screenplay alone.
“My agents kept sending me copies of Bottle Rocket, his first movie, and I never watched ’em,” Murray confessed to Cigar Aficionado in 2004. “Still haven’t seen it. Don’t tell him. But I read the script and it was obvious to me he knew what he wanted, and that sureness, that precision, would pull in the right kinds of people.”
Fast-forward 20 years, and Murray’s appearance on the Talking Pictures podcast revealed that he still hadn’t laid eyes on Bottle Rocket, even after acting in another seven Anderson films in that period. “I like to say that I have the largest collection of video cassettes of Bottle Rocket, the first movie,” Murray chuckled. “This is the guy. I’ve still never seen Bottle Rocket.”
Murray’s reluctance to watch the first film made by his most frequent collaborator is simultaneously bizarre and perfectly in keeping with what we know about him as a person. It’s probably futile to analyse the psychology behind it, or to ponder what it is about the film that has made Murray ignore it for almost 30 years. After all, it’s entirely possible that he’s just embraced the bit over the years. It wouldn’t be surprising if he purposely never watched Bottle Rocket, even though he might want to, simply because it’s funny that he hasn’t.
Whatever the case, one thing is certain about Murray and Anderson: they never want to make another movie without each other. “There was kind of one movie I wasn’t in,” Murray mused, “and then he said, ‘I don’t think I should do that again.’ And then, fortunately, I got in somehow at the end or something.”
Indeed, once he recovered from Covid, Murray turned up on the Asteroid City set in Spain. When Anderson couldn’t add him to the film, he created a new role for him to inhabit for a promotional trailer set within the movie’s world. So, there you have it: Murray will fly halfway around the world to shoot anything for an Anderson film, but he still won’t watch his debut flick. Go figure.
