Learning From Bill Murray


  • Help talented people out, and your efforts will be repaid. Although he was only paid a meager $9,000 to star in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, he also gave Anderson a check for $25,000 to film the final montage after the studio refused to finance it (Anderson never cashed the check). Despite earning next-to-nothing for the role, Rushmore was instrumental in launching Bill Murray’s second career as a more dramatic actor. 
  • Go out and get lost every once in a while. Bill Murray once got lost riding a motorcycle in the jungles of Bali, and instead of panicking, he was eventually found by Harold Ramis in at a village store, putting on an impromptu performance with cheering locals, despite the fact he didn’t know a damn word of Balinese.
  • Be spontaneous. Many people are aware of Murray’s penchant for popping in on random karaoke nights or doing dishes at other people’s house parties or crashing wedding photo shoots. But this is not a new thing, Murray has always been that way. Back in the day, before he was ever on Saturday Night Live, Murray used to go up to people on the streets of New York and yell, “Watch out, there’s a lobster loose, hot butter’s the only way to get it!” in the voice he’d later use in Caddyshack. 
  • Leave yourself open to magical moments. Murray tells a tale of being in a cab in Oakland and finding out his cab driver was a saxophone player. The driver, however, never got to practice because he drove 14 hours a day. So when Murray also found out the guy’s sax was in the trunk, he had him pull over, get out his horn, sit in the back, and play while Murray drove. “You know, that’s like two and two. It makes four,” Murray said. “Not only did he play all the way to Sausalito, which is a long ways, but we stopped and got barbecue. He was playing at what people would call a sketchy rib place in Oakland at like 2:15 in the morning. It’s like, ‘Relax, man. We’re cool here.’ He’s blowing the horn and the crowd’s like, ‘What the hell’s that crazy white dude playing that thing?’ And it was great. It made for a beautiful night. I think we’d all do that, if you saw that moment and you’re, as we say, available, you’d make the connection and you’d do it right.”
  • Stay relaxed and success will follow.“Someone told me some secrets early on about living. You have to remind yourself that you can do the very best you can when you’re very, very relaxed. No matter what it is, no matter what your job is, the more relaxed you are, the better you are. That’s sort of why I got into acting. I realized that the more fun I had, the better I did it, and I thought, Well, that’s a job I can be proud of. I’d be proud to have that job, if I had to go to work and say, ‘No matter what my condition or what my mood is, no matter how I feel about what’s going on in my life, if I can relax myself and enjoy what I’m doing and have fun with it, then I can do my job really well.’ And it’s changed my life, learning that. And it’s made me better at what I do. I’m not the greatest or anything. But I really enjoy what I do.”
  • Remember that you are you and no one else is. When asked, “What’s it like being you?” Murray responded with a guru-level reminder about the importance of being present..."I think if I’m gonna answer that question, because it is a hard question, I’d like to suggest that we all answer that question right now, while I’m talking. I’ll continue. Believe me, I won’t shut up. I have a microphone. But let’s all ask ourselves that question right now. What does it feel like to be you? What does it feel like to be you? Yeah. It feels good to be you, doesn’t it? It feels good, because there’s one thing that you are--you’re the only one that’s you, right?. So you’re the only one that’s you, and we get confused sometimes--or I do, I think everyone does--you try to compete. You think, Dammit, someone else is trying to be me. Someone else is trying to be me. But I don’t have to armor myself against those people; I don’t have to armor myself against that idea if I can really just relax and feel content in this way and this regard. If I can just feel, just think now: How much do you weigh? This is a thing I like to do with myself when I get lost and I get feeling funny. How much do you weigh? Think about how much each person here weighs and try to feel that weight in your seat right now, in your bottom right now. Parts in your feet and parts in your bum. Just try to feel your own weight, in your own seat, in your own feet. Okay? So if you can feel that weight in your body, if you can come back into the most personal identification, a very personal identification, which is: I am. This is me now. Here I am, right now. This is me now. Then you don’t feel like you have to leave, and be over there, or look over there. You don’t feel like you have to rush off and be somewhere. There’s just a wonderful sense of well-being that begins to circulate up and down, from your top to your bottom. Up and down from your top to your spine. And you feel something that makes you almost want to smile, that makes you want to feel good, that makes you want to feel like you could embrace yourself.

 

Comments

Post a Comment