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38 _ TEMPUS-MAGAZINE.COM / SPRING 2016 My Thoughts Life Elevated Photo: Getty Images BILL MURRAY IS ONE OF THE MOST LEGENDARY ECCENTRICS IN HOLLYWOOD. He doesn't have an agent. He maintains a private phone number that only a select few people can access. Directors often wait months before he will commit to a project, and even Sofia Coppola wasn't sure he would show up in Tokyo only days before they were scheduled to begin filming 2004's Lost in Translation, a film that earned several Oscar nominations including one for Murray as Best Actor. He is famous for having shown up on David Letterman's late night talk show in a variety of ludicrous outfits while passing out $100 dollar bills to homeless people in New York. He crashes karaoke par- ties wherever he finds them. He can be prickly with fellow actors on the sets of his films when he feels they take themselves too seriously. On Groundhog Day, he hired a deaf assistant who communicated with sign language to act as an intermediary with director and good friend Harold Ramis while on set. These are the many faces of Bill Murray. Though he tries to give the impression that his chameleonic personality is borderline curmudgeon, the truth is that his absurdist outlook on life is what compels him to behave as if he exists in an alternate universe of his own making. There's a charming Zen ennui to his oddball manner that allows him to seduce audiences with a mere wink and slightly lascivious smile. We're irresistibly drawn into joining him on his existential road trip where all the fun is in getting there even though the destination is unknown and ultimately unimportant. Murray grew up in Chicago as the middle child of nine siblings in a traditional Irish Catholic family. His mother, Lucille, who worked for a hospital supply company, died in 1998. His father, Edward, a lumber salesman, was just forty-six when he died of complications from diabetes. He developed his comic skills while part of Chicago's fabled Second City comedy troupe before Saturday Night Live gave him massive popular appeal while working alongside fellow comic greats John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, and others. Ghostbusters was the film that eventually turned him into a Hollywood superstar, and he's never looked back. Murray currently splits his time between Charleston, South Carolina, and New York City. He has been married and divorced twice and has six children. He shares a few words on comedy, kids, and the universe according to Bill. Ghostbusters paid for my children's college education, which means that they were able to flunk out much earlier than they would have if they had to pay their own way. Working with that group were all just people you'd love to be trapped with for a couple months. Really, true hilarity all the time. You could feel free to try anything you wanted to do and perform for each other. And when you do that, it's a gas. If you're a real true comedian, you can act. Because it's the ability to say a line straight that enables you to do comedy properly. It's usually the irony and the contradiction that makes a line funny, and you're acting being serious when the intent is to make people laugh. Every good comedian is, by definition, an actor. People forget that when you laugh, you're breaking some sort of tension. You're untying a knot. I don't think melancholy is a bad thing, you know. It's sort of an adult emotion that you get when you realize that the way you see the world and the way you want it to be isn't necessarily the way it is—you know? It's a space in between the ideal and the reality; that's where the real sufering is. I came from a giant family. You know what that's like? Our house was a wreck, a constant claustrophobic mess. I like being with my children and making sure their lives are happy and that I can be there for them and help them find what they're looking for. That's really satisfying for me. I learned while I was at Second City that there's a lot of honor and nobility in being able to turn down work. You don't have to take the dog food commercial if you don't want to. If people want me to do a film, they have to work a little harder to reach me, but usually they find a way. I carry a cell phone even these days, although I don't always answer it. I text my kids and sometimes they text me back. You've got to be able to take a chance to die. And you have to die lots. You have to die all the time. You're goin' out there with just a whisper of an idea. The fear will make you clench up. That's the fear of dying. When you start and the first few lines don't grab and people are going like, "What's this? I'm Bill Murray not laughing and I'm not interested," then you just put your arms out like this and open way up and that allows your stuf to go out. Otherwise it's just stuck inside you. I decided I wanted to live my life and see what happens, and at the same time to take on jobs that don't necessarily pay the huge amounts of money you can earn by making certain kinds of films but which let you work with interesting directors like Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch and with talented people who want to do the kind of work you like doing. I see a lot of the beauty and good things that are out there. I'm not miserable and moping around the house all day worrying about man's battle against a dark universe. But I think we have to fight a bit to come up with the right answers and see the light that's out there and have some faith in the world. It's hard, though. We all have a responsibility to help an old lady cross the street when it's cold and snowy outside or to help out a guy on a street corner who's just looking for a little help to buy himself a cofee or a sandwich. I have a soft spot for people who have to struggle in life. I was there once.