XMAS IN A PIANO BAR
A Very Murray Christmas Debuts Friday, Netflix
TORONTO Bill Murray doesn’t do schmaltz.
But the Scrooged star does love the holidays, says screenwriter Mitch Glazer, who teamed up with his longtime pal for the Netflix-produced A Very Murray Christmas.
Consider the star-studded special a heartfelt ode to the season, delivered with the charismatic swagger of Murray’s Saturday Night Live alter ego Nick the Lounge Singer — without the cheese.
“He’s just never going to let something be false sentimental,” Glazer says in a recent phone call from Los Angeles.
“He has huge heart and he comes from a family of nine and he’s got six sons of his own, so Christmas is real to him in a noncommercial, non-sentimental way.”
Glazer says A Very Murray Christmas is the result of years of spitballing ideas for some kind of TV musical special.
It came together when he and Murray settled on a Christmas theme and their director pal Sofia Coppola suggested a piano bar scene at New York’s sumptuous Carlyle hotel.
Glazer was tasked with crafting the story: Murray is helming a live TV variety show but a massive snowstorm prevents any of the guests from arriving.
The trio came up with a festive musical set list and mused on their dream cast. Murray pulled out his phone and started calling in the cameos.
“The first two people that Bill called on his cellphone were George Clooney and Chris Rock and literally just before he gets a sentence deep into it, both of them were like, ‘We’re in. We’re coming.’ They just wanted to be a part of it,” says Glazer.
Other friends soon joined the party, including Murray’s SNL pal Paul Shaffer, his Scrooged costar (and New York Dolls frontman) David Johansen, Coppola’s cousin Jason Schwartzman, Arrested Development co-star Michael Cera, former SNL comic Maya Rudolph, Parks and Recreation alums Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones, and Coppola’s husband Thomas Mars and his band Phoenix.
Almost all put their vocal chops on display, including Clooney, who provides rousing backup on Albert King’s funk classic Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’.
“Not only is he singing but he’s doing a style of rhythm-and-blues singing that was popular and big in the ’70s as sung by Earth Wind & Fire,” Shaffer notes of the Gravity star, who appeared with Murray in The Monuments Men.
“I remember being in the house band of Saturday Night Live and trying to sing like that and there he is doing it. I don’t know where he pulled that out of, though. But he came up with that that day.”
Clooney, of course, showed up in a tux “and looked beautiful,” recalls Glazer.
“I don’t think he considers himself a great vocalist but he’s got a lot of style,” he chuckles.
There were other surprises, some of them oddly similar to the made-up premise of the fake holiday special.
Just as shooting took place the first week in March, two blizzards hit New York, dumping “snow halfway up the building” and helping to establish the mood on set, Glazer says.
The screenwriter says he would love to do it all again next year, and maybe again the year after that.
“Personally, Bill and I have talked about it and Sofia, we had such a good time doing it,” he says. “Andy Williams and Dean Martin did them every year. It was good fun. I would love to do another.”