Bill Murray was a hit as the voice of animated, comic-strip cat in Garfield, and now he’s returning to animation as a badger in pal Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Murray was OK with letting George Clooney take the lead role as the foxiest of the foxes. Parade.com’s Jeanne Wolf found out why Murray, who is not easily impressed, was pretty much blown away by his co-star.
What George is really like.
“George is probably the one person that’s living the movie star life really well and doing great at it. He’s an incredible force. It takes a while to get George because he’s a motor mouth and he really can talk. It’s sort of like you have to wade through a lot because he just talks and talks. He’s got a lot of energy and he tells stories. You hang out with George and there are a lot of stories. But he’s great. He steps up right out of the box and nails it. He gets way up there, so you’re like, ‘OK here we go.’”
As for becoming a badger.
“My little animal secrets must remain my little animal secrets. Channeling a badger just reminds you that we have all got a little critter in us. When cornered we can fight furiously and sometimes we burrow deep, deep, deep to get away from other people and be safe. I know none of this makes any sense to you right now, but if you ever play a badger you’ll understand.”
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Learning to be funny.
“Our father went to work and when he came home he was with us for the evening. We were very competitive for his attention and time. He had an extremely sophisticated sense of humor. He was really a tough laugh. So getting him to break-up was like a class in how to be funny. If you weren’t funny he was like, ‘OK, you can go do the dishes.’ It was just challenging.”
His first big failure.
“I had gotten the gig of being the innkeeper in the Christmas play at school. But because I misbehaved in class, they switched me to the choir, and I had to sing Christmas carols instead. Basically, I got fired as the innkeeper — so I guess you could say my early career was a bust.”
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When making films was about making it up.
“People didn’t take it so seriously back then. On those early movies, like Meatballs and Caddyshack, we used to improvise every scene. We’d go to work and say, ‘We can’t do this crap. What are we gonna do?’ And we’d just sit there in the trailer and drink coffee and come up with funny stuff. I loved it. But when I first started improvising at Second City, I was so bad that I walked off and didn’t come back for like two years.”
Don’t ask him to be funny when he’s not in the mood.
“We probably can all think of someone that’s on all the time. They usually make me sad when I see them. You just think, ‘My gosh, sedate this guy or just hit him with a brick. Something. Stop it!’ Trust me, you don’t want to be on all the time.”
He’s marching to the beat of his own drum.
“I think you get stuck when you try and meet other people’s expectations. I don’t know what everybody expects. As they say, you can’t please all the people all the time. So I find that the best thing to do is to please myself. If I’m happy with it, then a certain number of people seem to fall within Bill’s happiness range.”
Dealing with fame.
“I had success when I was fairly young, so that changed me a little bit. Fame affects you, but I hope it didn’t change me too much. People say, ‘Well, you’re supposed to change. Ideally, you know, you could use a little changing, Bill.’ Let’s keep our fingers crossed that I can keep on being me.”
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