“That story’s so crazy”: snail mail, Vicodin, grilled cheese, and the art of casting Bill Murray in your movie
Anyone who knows anything about Bill Murray is aware that finding him is always the hardest part of convincing him to sign on for a movie, and some filmmakers have it easier than others.
The Saturday Night Live veteran has confirmed that Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, and Jim Jarmusch are the only three directors who don’t have to jump through hoops to twist his arm and recruit him for their latest project, but for everyone else, it’s basically open season.
Murray has intentionally made himself one of the hardest people to reach in Hollywood, and it’s become an integral part of his eccentric mythology. Having written a script for his first feature in 15 years, which he also directed and co-produced, Ted Melfi knew he wanted the Ghostbusters icon for the leading role.
Of course, that’s easier said than done, but refusing to be denied, he set out on what can only be called an odyssey. “Oh god, that story’s so crazy,” Melfi recalled. “The nuts and bolts is that he has no agent and manager, as everyone knows. You just call the 1-800 number. And I left, I don’t know, a dozen messages.”
He’d call at least once a week, sometimes twice, and after failing to hear back from Murray, the filmmaker called his lawyer instead. The lawyer suggested he write “a snail mail letter to a post office box back in New York,” which he did. Two weeks after that, the actor called his lawyer, who then called Melfi, telling him to snail mail the script, too, which he did, this time to another PO box in Martha’s Vineyard.
Two weeks later, Murray called Melfi’s agent, told him he never received the screenplay, so he sent another one to an address in North Carolina. Finally, they spoke directly. “I don’t Google people,” the star informed his prospective director. “I don’t know who you are, what you do. Tell me about yourself.”
That conversation led to nothing for the next three weeks, until Murray called Melfi again, asking him to pick him up from a Los Angeles airport. The latter necked a Vicodin, and when the former got in the car, they stopped at the side of the road to eat some grilled cheese sandwiches, drove another three hours to the Pechanga Indian reservation in Riverside County, where Murray has a residence.
At long last, they can finally talk business, not that it was a long conversation. “He goes, ‘OK, we’re gonna do it. We’ll make the movie,'” but Melfi needed something else. “Could you tell someone other than me that this happened?” he asked. “No one is going to believe this story. I can’t possibly go to the studio and say, ‘Bill Murray said yes on the way to the Indian reservation in the back of a town car.'”
Finally, Melfi had landed his white whale, and all it took was a couple of months, countless phone calls, an airport pick-up, some grilled cheese, one Vicodin, and a fuck-tonne of perseverance. It was worth it in the end, though, with St Vincent becoming a sleeper hit at the box office and giving Murray the platform to deliver his best performance in years.
