An interesting article today from The A.V. Club on the philosophies of some of Bill Murray’s most famous characters, including Herman Blume from Rushmore.

The asceticism of Scrooged and Rushmore
As practiced by certain sects of Hinduism, Jainists, and even Christians who reject the ideas of “prosperity theology” (and actually, you know, listen to Jesus), asceticism involves a conscious abstaining from worldly pleasures in favor of focusing on one’s spiritual life. While he doesn’t end up wandering the desert in sackcloth eating only what may fall into his bowl, Murray does arrive at these basic tenets of asceticism in two of his most popular roles: In Scrooged, Murray’s Frank Cross is dedicated to success no matter the cost to his basic humanity, until a night of being tormented by spirits—who are really just manifestations of his own conscience—opens his eyes to the simpler joys of “putting a little love in your heart” and helping your fellow man. In Rushmore, Murray’s Herman Blume is a self-made tycoon with his own multimillion-dollar business and the lifestyle to match, yet he’s crippled by ennui, and despairing over the alienation he feels toward his family. Pursuit of a truer definition of love eventually tears his world apart—and wrecks him both financially and physically—but by movie’s end, Blume has undergone a total spiritual reawakening, and seems to have found happiness at last in his total unburdening.

Read the full article at The A.V. Club.

And for those who continue to see Mr. Fox over the holiday weekend for the first time (or second…or third) please stop by and leave us your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter.

 
via In Contention

Word today from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of twenty films eligible for an Oscar nomination in the Best Animated Film category. To see the full list of films, head on over to the AMPAS site. Only five films can receive a nomination, and prognosticators are betting Fox will be one of them.

Two more stories after the break.

 Paste Magazine has included The Royal Tenenbaums in its top ten of the decade list. It’s an interesting list worth checking with a lot of unusual choices, and features the Anderson produced The Squid and the Whale. To jump to Tenenbaums click here, or to start from the top, here. The film places even higher in the readers’ poll. The new print edition of Paste features Jason Schwartzman on the cover.

10. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Writer/Director: Wes Anderson
Writer: Owen Wilson
Stars: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Andrew Wilson, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Danny Glover, Bill Murray
Studio: Buena Vista PicturesWith his third movie, Wes Anderson let all his quirks run rampant: a storybook setting that is and is not New York, a uniform for each character and an obsession with childhood detritus. Rather than deflect the family’s conflicts (as Anderson’s critics claim), these elements only enhance its spiritual conundrums, making The Royal Tenenbaums Anderson’s most directorially confident and emotionally cathartic film—a bittersweet ode to regret, forgiveness and hard-won contentment.—Stephen Deusner

Finally, a small clip from Bill Murray’s recent apperance on The Late Show with David Letterman. There was a nice Mr. Fox bit later in the show that doesn’t appear to be online. If we find a full version we’ll let you know.

“Behind Mr. Fox: George Clooney as Mr. Fox”

More after the break…

“Behind Mr. Fox: Creating Mr. Fox’s World”

“Behind Mr. Fox: Capturing Mr. Fox’s World”

Bill on working with Wes: “It’s an adventure.”

Jason Schwartzman

On Fantastic Mr. Fox’s style: “You could have taken the script and changed a couple things and had actors in it.”

Interviews by Dave Poland from Movie City News’ The Hot Blog

Welcome to the Times London Rushmore Academy.

Our parent company* recently sat down with Bill Murray to discuss Mr. Fox, Ghostbusters 3, and his working relationship with Wes and other directors. Full story after the break.

You don’t meet Bill Murray. You spend some time in his presence, and then try to figure him out when he’s gone. For the 59-year-old screen legend, star of Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day and Lost in Translation, is a man of many faces, all of which inevitably return to that famous default deadpan of hangdog eyes, flaccid cheeks and slightly protruding lower lip.

Right now, for instance, in a wildly ornate London hotel suite, and dressed down in crumpled black shirt and grey trousers, he has slipped into Zen Master mode. “People can say what they want about civilisation, but really we are all animals,” he muses, beginning a lecture on the bestial heart of man that is inspired by his new movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox, but encompasses all human spirituality and his personal desire to be available, present and honest in his own life. “Which is basically not the situation for me most of the time!” he jokes.

He plops back into movie star mode and speaks fondly of Fantastic Mr Fox, a beguiling stop-frame animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic that is directed by Wes Anderson and stars George Clooney as the eponymous poultry-pilfering hero and Murray as his friend and lawyer, Badger. He calls the movie “charming” and says that it’s really a film about freedom, but he talks mostly about his relationship with 40-year-old Anderson, who first directed Murray in 1998’s Rushmore. “We’ve done five films together now and we look out for each other,” he says. “There is a great sense of trust and loyalty between us.”

Of other directors, though, he is not so enamoured. Terminator Salvation’s McG (aka Joseph McGinty Nichol), for one, who directed Murray in Charlie’s Angels, recently claimed that Murray headbutted him on the Angels’ set during a creative dispute. “That’s bulls***! That’s complete crap!” says Murray, flushing slightly yet maintaining composure. “I don’t know why he made that story up. He has a very active imagination.” He pauses. The subject seems closed, but then a minor eruption. “No! He deserves to die,” he says, coldly staring, without breaking deadpan. “He should be pierced with a lance, not headbutted.”

On screen, strangely, Murray is like this too. The threat of sudden emotional violence is always lurking within. In his early movies, such as Meatballs and Caddyshack, he made this his shtick — witness his famously manic “It just doesn’t matter!” speech from the former movie, or the bursts of gopher-hatred in the latter. In later work, such as Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, though the performances are more restrained the threat is still there, simmering behind the impassive glare. Think of how he gleefully destroys schoolboy Jason Schwartzman’s bicycle in Rushmore, or how he humiliates Robert De Niro’s tremulous cop in the opening of Mad Dog and Glory with a genuinely terrifying stare and the viciously spat, “F*** off!”

Off camera Murray can seem intimidating and an entire genus of movie gossip has sprung up around his supposedly cruel behaviour on sets. Indeed, at a press conference for The Life Aquatic he was called a “bastard” by a former cameraman, who didn’t appreciate Murray’s on-set methods. While his spat with Lucy Liu on Charlie’s Angels has become part of Hollywood lore (he, allegedly, told her that she couldn’t act, while she, in return, allegedly, threw punches). “Look, I will dismiss you completely if you are unprofessional and working with me,” he says, defending a working practice that he admits is strict. “When our relationship is professional, and you’re not getting that done, forget it.”

He is, of course, enigmatic too and lives completely off the Hollywood grid. He has no agent or publicist and is contactable only through friends or a freephone answering service. It took Sophia Coppola, for example, seven months to track him down for Lost in Translation. He giggles at the thought and confesses that he gets insane messages on the answering service. Producers reading out entire scripts. Agents begging for work. “Endless crazy stuff.” He adds that “eliminating the agents probably saved me money, but mostly it stopped the irritation of just the endless phone calls and gibberish.”

Nonetheless, despite all this, and perhaps because of it, Murray is universally venerated as a screen demigod. He is worshipped by an entire generation of hipster directors, including Anderson, Coppola and Jim Jarmusch, who see in his features the deliciously modern combination of ironic distance and flat-out heartbreak.

Similarly, the normally suave George Clooney was reduced to a stuttering wreck when he first met Murray at the 2004 Venice Film Festival (“He’s the best comic actor in the world!” gushed Clooney). While the recent hit film Zombieland was built entirely around Murray-worship — that movie climaxes with hero Woody Harrelson standing in front of Murray in a Beverly Hills mansion and screaming with excitement, “Bill – f***ing – Murray!”

“I’ve really gotten a lot of attention in the past few years,” says Murray, with a who-would’ve-thunk-it shrug. “All of a sudden it’s like [points around the ostentatious hotel room décor], I’m getting treated like I dunno what. Handled with kid gloves.”

He says, naturally, that he doesn’t know where it began. He has theories that he started being funny because it made his strict Irish-American father Edward, a lumber salesman, laugh — he fell off the kitchen table doing a James Cagney impression, banged his head and noticed his father chuckling. He grew up in suburban Chicago among a family of nine children (six boys, three girls). He partially funded his high school education by working with his brothers as a caddy at a local golf club (his brother Brian would eventually write Caddyshack based on these experiences). Today, he says that growing up in a large family taught him tolerance, and to “understand a lot of human behaviour, up close”.

Murray studied medicine in Colorado, but left to pursue comedy with Chicago’s famous The Second City theatre group (two of his brothers were members). The story goes he left medicine because he was arrested for marijuana possession in college. The mere mention of it puts Murray on edge. “What is your question?” he says, coolly. If you hadn’t been arrested would you be a doctor now? “I just didn’t enjoy the people who were in pre-med,” he answers, explaining how money-obsessions among medical students turned his stomach. I tentatively joke that his answer has dodged the bullet nicely on the marijuana issue. He doesn’t reply, but instead fixes me a stare that is pure Mad Dog and Glory — the expletive isn’t there, but you can feel it.

The early comedy years seemed effortless, with Murray segueing from The Second City to TV’s Saturday Night Live to mainstream movie smashes. And then, in 1984, after shooting both Ghost Busters and the serious drama The Razor’s Edge, Murray fled the business for four years, moved to Paris with his wife and two sons, and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. Today, he says that it was a simple decision. “I knew that Ghostbusters was going to be the biggest thing that ever happened and that being in the United States, with that level of fame, would be destructive for me at that time,” he says. “I knew that if I went to another country I would be able to hold on to what I value in myself.”

His return to the top spot was gradual and punctuated with some failures (Larger Than Life, Ghostbusters II) and some modern classics (Groundhog Day, Kingpin). While his relaunch as the melancholic poster-boy for middle-aged ennui began in earnest with Anderson’s Rushmore.

He thought about retiring in 2005, he says, after he made the Jim Jarmusch’s romantic road movie Broken Flowers (“I thought, ‘God, I really can’t top that! I should think about stopping now’”). But these days he says that he is recommitted to his career. “I feel that right now I’m assembling the kind of passion that I used to have,” he says, adding, “I’m taking injections of ambition.” He then bursts out laughing at his own pretensions.

He will be 60 next year, but this doesn’t bother him (“I felt worse about turning 30″). His marriage to the costume designer Jennifer Butler, whom he met on the 1988 film Scrooged, ended last year in a demolition divorce — she was granted custody of their four children (all boys), given two homes and a $7 million payout. I wonder would he contemplate marriage again. The question hits him like a hammer blow and he throws his head back and slowly rubs his face with his hands. “I dunno,” he says, seemingly lost for words. “I dunno. I’m going to have to. I’m not really, um. Interested. You know?” He pauses and, looking suddenly fragile, whispers: “I don’t know if I’d ever get married again.”

We finish on the future and Ghostbusters III. The news that there is third movie on the way has been chewing up the internet for months. Typically, Murray, who is next up in Jim Jarmusch’s fantastically droll assassin’s tale The Limits of Control, is not entirely enthusiastic about the idea. “What they really want from us is just to open the movie and then get lost after introducing a new generation of ghostbusters, who can start the franchise all over again,” he says with a shrug. “I’ve heard the script idea, and part of it is good but, ye know, it’s going to be tough to start again.”

I wonder then, to top it all, with new improved career injections, with demigod status, franchise reboots and Zen-like awareness, is Murray actually, well, ye know, happy these days? Now?

“Hmm, hold on a second,” he says, eyes cast to the ceiling, bottom lip protruding, affecting the pose of a thinker. “I’m happy!” he finally says, while he beams with unbridled joy. He holds the pose for a nanosecond, but then lets it drop duly back, purposefully, like punctuation, to the inscrutable, enigmatic default of deadpan Murray.

Fantastic Mr Fox opens on Oct 23

Bill Murray’s Role call

Caddyshack (Harold Ramis, 1980)
Fresh from TV’s Saturday Night Live, Murray steals every scene as Carl Spackler, a demented groundkeeper at a country club who wages war against a single destructive gopher.

Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984)
The biggest blockbuster of the year, Ghost Busters married comedy and action, spawned a hit soundtrack, a theme park ride and would later inspire Men in Black. And it transformed Murray into a phenomenon.

Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
After a patchy time in the late 1980s/early 1990s, Murray returns to surer footing with this comedy classic from long-time collaborator Ramis. Murray plays a jaded TV weatherman who must make sense of his life while trapped for ever in one tedious day.

Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
Brief Encounter gets a 21st century update as drifting ships Murray (playing an actor) and Scarlett Johansson (a director’s wife) share a chaste affair in Tokyo. Murray’s portriat of a disillusioned A-lister is painfully poignant.

Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
Murray’s favourite performance is a portrait of another lonely man, this time the titter-inducingly named “Don Johnston”, who questions ex-girlfriends (Sharon Stone and Jessica Lange included) about the son he has never known.

*Kidding, obviously.

Watch our slideshow of the Fantastic Mr. Fox premiere in London

Includes photos from The Gap on Regent Street courtesy of jazzt. All photos copyright their respective owners.

Transcribed by iFlicks:

George and Wes – what was the appeal of Fantastic Mr Fox? Why did you want to work on a film, particularly a stop-motion animation, based on that book?

WA: Well, we all grew up with Roald Dahl’s writing. Fantastic Mr Fox was the first book I owned, so it made an impression upon me. I always wanted to adapt the book as stop-motion, using puppets with fur, because there’s something sort of magical about that.

GC: I just did it for the paycheck. The money. [Laughs] But it was also the chance to work with Wes, which really appealed to me.

George, in what ways do you identify with the character of Mr Fox? What did you think of him as a fox?

GC: What I thought of him…as a fox? [Laughs] Well, he’s an optimist, which was really fun to play. I had a lot of fun on the film, working with such a great cast. I didn’t enjoy working with Bill, though. There was a lot of hatred there at first. We’re okay now, though.

The father-son relationship between Mr Fox and Ash is very central to the movie – did that make you feel broody at all?

GC: Broody? That’s a word we don’t understand in America!

You’re in a few films this festival, and you seem to be playing irresponsible characters who then become more responsible. Do you think that’s why you get repeated questions about marriage and children?

GC: That’s a really good question! There’s a real heavy swing on that one. I don’t have an answer for it, though. I mean, I love kids.

BM: Maybe you could adopt?

GC: Yeah, I’ll adopt some kids. I’ll adopt some of Brad Pitt’s. He owes me a couple anyway. [Laughs]

The choice to use stop-motion animation, was that in anyway influenced by its origins, in the films of Czech director Ji?í Trnka? Were you trying to use the medium as a means of political subversion?

[In steps Bill Murray.]

BM: Wow, thank you! That’s the question we’ve all been waiting for. That’s the reason we flew here today! [Laughter] You go get ‘em, Wes…

WA: Well, yeah, we were influenced by old stop-motion films. But politically, I suppose he’s sort of a Robin Hood figure. A kind of communist -

BM: – but also British. Very British. [Laughter]

What do you think the moral lesson of the film is?

GC: Stealing is good. It honours thievery. Theft is a good thing. [Laughs] Ok, let me try again… [Clears throat] Well, we were all about just trying to be true to your animal nature… Is that better?

Would you work on an animated film again?

GC: Yeah, it was great fun. Doing the voices, we just got to muck around for a few weeks and have a good time. But Wes, he was working on it for 1 ½ years, so you really need to ask him!

WA: It’s a very slow process. But I did find that the voices made such a difference. They really helped to create the characters.

What was the highlight of working on the project for each of you?

WW: It was just a lot of fun to work on – I’ve done voice work before with The Simpsons and stuff, but usually in feature films you don’t record with the rest of the cast. Here, we were all alongside each other on a farmhouse having great fun actually doing stuff. You know, where we were running, we actually ran. And when we were hiding behind bushes, we actually hid behind bushes.

JS: I just loved the chance to work with people I really admire. It’s a pleasure to work with them, but also just to take a step back and look at them too, like George. Not just for those obvious reasons, but yeah, I liked to watch them. I know that sounds really strange… [Laughter]

JC: Do I even still have a line in the film? Oh, I do? Well, I put a lot of feeling and preparation into that one line, and I just hope you can feel the pain and effort that went into it… [Laughter]

Felicity Dahl said that Roald Dahl, just in the weeks before his book got published, would get really stressed and angry, worrying that it might be his last book. Can you identify with that?

BM: Well, I was with Felicity just the other day, and she made me feel exactly the same way… [Laughter]

GC: This is your last film?

BM: Yes. Good bye! But yeah, she really makes you feel the fear. Whatever went on in that house between them two stays in that house, you know. The important thing is that he’s safe now – he’s dead! Seriously, Felicity is a lovely person. If I got remarried, I would definitely consider her.

Roald Dahl used to like to scare children. Did you aim to do that with the film?

WA: Well, yeah, I remember his books scared me as a child. In the film, the characters are in constant danger – Mr Fox gets his tail shot off – and if they’re not in danger of getting hurt, they’re in danger of getting killed. It’s exactly the same in the book. We tried not to make it more or less dark, but to keep the film as dark as the book.

How American do you feel the film is, given that it’s based on a British novel?

WA: Well, Noah Baumbach and I, who co-wrote the script, are both American. And we feel we write better dialogue for Americans than for English people; it’s more natural to us. So we made all the animals American, and kept the humans, the farmers, British.

BM: Because they’re the bad guys. [Laughter]

Bill, you do a lot of improvisation – does the animation process help or hinder that?

BM: Well, ultimately, you try to be yourself whatever you’re playing, be it a badger, or a doctor, or a housewife. But pretty much the worser the script, the more improv you end up doing. The best people in the film, for me, though, were Eric and Wally, over there. Their perfomances were incredible. But none of that would have been possible without George, who created such a great character for us to all maypole around.

How did you find yourself connecting with your character? How did you channel the badger?

BM: Channeling the badger?! Well, erm, we all have little critters inside us, don’t we? But my little animal secrets will remain my little animal secrets! I mean, we all burrow deep, deep, deep down to be safe or to get away from other people… This doesn’t really make any sense to you, does it? Look, you know what, if you haven’t played a badger, we can’t have this conversation. [Laughter]