Stars share support for Orlando
Bill Murray gets Twain Prize
Ringo Starr, who spreads a message of peace and love every year on his birthday in July, said he wants that message to hit home even harder this year in the wake of Sunday’s Orlando shooting.
Starr said in an interview Monday that he doesn’t understand the attack that left 49 victims dead and more than 50 hurt.
“I don’t understand that mindset that you could decide to injure and kill a lot of innocent people. I’m really not a supporter of wars either, but you can understand there’s two sides having a go at each other. But this is so random,” Starr told The Associated Press.
Starr says that’s why his message of peace and love is so important. At noon on July 7 — his 76th birthday — the former Beatle is asking everyone to take a moment to ask for peace and love.
He’s been holding the event since 2008. The idea started when someone asked Starr what he wanted for his birthday.
“And out of the blue I thought, ‘You know what would be great if everybody at noon on the 7th of July went ‘peace and love,’” he recalled. “Wherever you are — on the bus, down the mine, wherever — you could just go ‘peace and love.’ That would be ... a great gift to me.”
Adele dedicated her concert Sunday night in Belgium to victims of the shooting at a gay club in Orlando.
“I would like to start tonight by dedicating this entire show to everybody in Orlando at Pulse nightclub,” the British singer said in video footage from the concert at Antwerp’s Sportpaleis posted on YouTube. “The LGBTQA community, they’re like my soul mates since I was really young, so I’m really moved by it.”
Bill Murray, whose special blend of boyish enthusiasm and molasses-thick sarcasm has made him the most consistently successful comedian launched by “Saturday Night Live,” has been selected to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor later this year.
Murray, 65, will be honored Oct. 23 in a program that will be taped for television. Presenters will be announced later by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which typically recruits other comics to praise — and lightly roast — the recipient.
The Twain prize was created in 1998 and named for the Missouri-born satirist who wrote “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Past recipients have included Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Carol Burnett and Bob Newhart.
Murray first came to the public’s attention as an “SNL” cast member from 1977-1980. His film career took off with 1979’s “Meatballs,” followed by a string of memorable performances in “Stripes,” “Caddyshack” and “Ghostbusters.”