‘I’m not qualified to do anything else’
It’s been anything but a dog’s life, as Bill Murray tells Michele Manelis
You’ve worked with director Wes Anderson on all his films, excluding Bottle Rocket.
When did you realise you had a creative connection with each other?
I believed in him from the first time I read the Rushmore script. I went “Oh, well, this guy knows what he’s doing. This is great.” I immediately got very excited and relaxed at the same time.
You’re known by your peers to be very hard to reach. What’s the secret in getting in touch with you?
Well, if I told you then I’d have to, as they say, kill you.
What’s your favourite fake Bill Murray story?
I heard one from when I went to college that
I used to set fires to mattresses and then throw them out the windows. But that was another guy, that wasn’t me. But all the bad stories get attributed to me, of course.
What’s the biggest misconception about you?
That I’m very, very organised.
Since you’re in a movie about dogs, what’s your relationship with dogs?
We always had one in our house. We had Peppy and then we had Chevy. Our first was a shetland shepherd and then we had one called Liquorice who was just black. Then we had a terrier. Now I have a half-jack russell so he’s really smart as well as being very pleasant.
What’s his name? Tim Murray.
You’ve accomplished so much in your career. What’s your next step?
I really should be writing and I haven’t been. I can write. And if you can write, you must write.
What career would you have pursued if you hadn’t become an actor?
Well, I could tell you I’m not qualified to do anything else, that’s an easy one. Or I could tell you that actually I really like the job of acting and movie making.
Tell me about your band?
We have a little band called New Worlds and we’re playing concert halls all over the place and just knocking it out of the park. I’m playing with
Jan Vogler, Mira Wong and Vanessa Paradis. We have this orchestra and we’ve played a bunch of halls in Europe and we’re going to play some more. We played all over America, we played Carnegie Hall. The show is great. We read literature, poetry, they play all kinds of songs, I sing songs and it’s fun. I like expressing myself and it gives me the opportunity to remember myself. And when you do that — the job is fun. Your body is light, your mind is nimble, you’re connected and you’re good. We were number one on the classical charts for a pretty long time.
How much is music a part of your daily life?
I’m always listening to music and hearing it. You can hear it and it gets inside of your head. Some of the songs we play in the show get inside of you and I find myself singing them on the street. People think that’s kind of strange but they really get into you. Stephen Foster can get inside of you. And you start singing; Gershwin can get inside of you. You can start singing and you can start almost skip, run and jump. That’s why they’re made — to lift the burden. You’re also a huge baseball fan and a known devoted Chicago Cubs fan. What does baseball mean to you and how did it feel when the Chicago Cubs won the world championship?
Sports is really a family thing. Little league is a family thing, gymnastics is a family thing. Families all pull together to see this together. So that’s what it was, it was very emotional and pretty much everyone cried, which you don’t expect . . . I could cry now thinking about it.
There’s a restaurant in LA that says “Bill Murray Eats For Free”. Do you actually eat for free when you go?
When I get there I have no intention of paying. I will tip but I will not pay for the food.
Why do you think people love you so much? I don’t know. I’ve been very lucky and my career has really followed great, great people. I’ve been right behind someone who was really a trailblazer so that just broke the ice. John Belushi was a guy who really took a lot of us behind him, towed a lot of people through the ice and into the sea. And he really made a lot of things happen. My brother Brian, Harold Ramis, Joe Flaherty, people who are older than I and more courageous than I am. I don’t know if I could ever do what I’ve ended up doing without having these people in front of me.
What else do you think has helped you become a success?
I was well-educated. Second City was an extraordinary education. I saw all those people work and then Saturday Night Live was another extraordinary education. It’s really a great primary school and secondary school, and then you’re on your own. You’ve learned enough, you should be able to do it. And I’ve had a lot of good fortune, I’m not taking too much credit . . . at least publicly. Privately I’m taking all the credit. But publicly, the fact is without those people I wouldn’t be getting free hamburgers. There’d be no such thing as a free lunch for me.