When McG claimed that Bill Murray headbutted him: “My nose would have been obliterated”
Ever since his Saturday Night Live days, Bill Murray has never gone too long without becoming embroiled in a behind-the-scenes feud, but he’s got vastly differing opinions on what went down between himself and director McG on the set of Charlie’s Angels.
Although the filmmaker didn’t specify which production their alleged altercation went down, that’s the one and only time they’ve ever worked together, and the blockbuster remake of the popular TV series had already placed Murray under scrutiny for the way he’d treated star Lucy Liu. Not only does it match the facts, then, but the comedy legend had previous on the exact same set.
The man born Joseph McGinty Nichol was making his feature-length debut on Charlie’s Angels, which proved to be a very successful movie, if not a particularly good one. In the grand scheme of things, that inadvertently ended up becoming a recurring theme of the filmmaker’s entire career, which is littered with such duds as Terminator Salvation, This Means War, 3 Days to Kill, and Rim of the World.
That being said, McG seemed strangely proud of gaining a reputation for overseeing sets that regularly erupted into verbal or physical eviscerations, even if he wasn’t an active participant in Christian Bale’s foul-mouthed tirade aimed in the direction of Salvation cinematographer Shane Hurlbut.
“I’m reintroducing the fist fight to movie sets,” he told The Guardian. “I don’t think there’s been a film I’ve made where there hasn’t been some kind of physical fight.” A bizarre badge of honour to be wearing, but he was quick to admit that he found himself squarely in the centre of one before naming the culprit outright.
Revealing that he’d “been headbutted by an A-list star,” McG claimed that not only did the blow strike him “square in the head,” but “an inch closer and my nose would have been obliterated.” At first, he was reticent to name names, but then he almost instantly changed his mind and pointed his finger at Murray. Not that he outwardly held a grudge, though, writing it off as a by-product of cinema being “a passionate industry.”
When Murray caught wind of the accusations, he did a terrible job of outlining why he would never inflict grievous bodily harm upon a fellow industry professional. Blasting McG for how he “made that story up,” the Ghostbusters star attributed it to his “very active imagination” at first. Defending himself, the actor said that even though he didn’t headbutt the director, “he should be pierced with a lance” and “he deserves to die.”
In terms of denying allegations of sticking the nut in McG, saying he should be impaled and murdered for purportedly fabricating the entire thing may not have been the smartest way for Murray to protest his innocence.
