Bill Murray is a genius – that much we know. He’s also one of the funniest people ever, and one of my very first celebrity crushes (along with Eddie Murphy and Kermit the Frog). Bill Murray is a reclusive bastard. He only makes movies when he wants to make movies, and that’s a rare thing. Rarer still is actually getting Bill Murray to promote one of his films. Maybe he’ll do Letterman. Beyond that, not much. So it’s surprising that he granted a really extensive interview to GQ Magazine to promote a supporting part in his latest outing, an independent film called Get Low, which stars (in the lead role) Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek. Since I don’t want to waste any more space with my prattle, here are the highlights of Murray’s GQ piece (full GQ piece here).

You have a lot of lines in [Get Low] that get tons of laughs I doubt were on the page. It’s all in the rhythm, the delivery. How do you pitch something like that? How do you make something out of nothing?
I have developed a kind of different style over the years. I hate trying to re-create a tone or a pitch. Saying, “I want to make it sound like I made it sound the last time”? That’s insane, because the last time doesn’t exist. It’s only this time. And everything is going to be different this time. There’s only now. And I don’t think a director, as often as not, knows what is going to play funny anyway. As often as not, the right one is the one that they’re surprised by, so I don’t think that they have the right tone in their head. And I think that good actors always—or if you’re being good, anyway—you’re making it better than the script. That’s your f-cking job. It’s like, Okay, the script says this? Well, watch this. Let’s just roar a little bit. Let’s see how high we can go. But you asked how you get the comic pitch. Well, obviously a lot of it is rhythm. And as often as not, it’s the surprising rhythm. In life and in movies, you can usually guess what someone is going to say—you can actually hear it—before they say it. But if you undercut that just a little, it can make you fall off your chair. It’s small and simple like that. You’re always trying to get your distractions out of the way and be as calm as you can be [breathes in and out slowly], and emotion will just drive the machine. It will go through the machine without being interrupted, and it comes out in a rhythm that’s naturally funny. And that funny rhythm is either humorous or touching. It can be either one. But it’s always a surprise. I really don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth.

Is the third Ghostbusters movie happening? What’s the story with that?
It’s all a bunch of crock. It’s a crock. There was a story—and I gotta be careful here, I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. When I hurt someone’s feelings, I really want to hurt them. [laughs] Harold Ramis said, Oh, I’ve got these guys, they write on The Office, and they’re really funny. They’re going to write the next Ghostbusters. And they had just written this movie that he had directed.

Year One.
Year One. Well, I never went to see Year One, but people who did, including other Ghostbusters, said it was one of the worst things they had ever seen in their lives. So that dream just vaporized. That was gone. But it’s the studio that really wants this thing. It’s a franchise. It’s a franchise, and they made a whole lot of money on Ghostbusters.

Oh, sure, I remember. The soundtrack. The lunchboxes. The action figures.
Right. And it’s still one of the biggest movies of all time. And ever since that story broke, everywhere I go people are like, “So are you gonna make that movie?” I was down in Austin at South by Southwest, and you go at it hard down there—fun but, man, you need to sleep for days afterwards. Anyhow, I got into it one night with a bunch of younger people who were like, Oh, I love Peter Venkman! I grew up with Peter Venkman! We got to talking, and the more we talked about it, the more I thought, Oh Christ, I should just do this thing.

A generation awaits, for sure. You weren’t even supposed to play that role, right?
Yeah. Originally it was Belushi. Like a lot of my movies. [beat] God, John died, what was it, twenty-five years ago?

It was ’82, right?
Yeah, I think it was ’82. I dunno. That part of life is getting fuzzy.

I read that you wanted to play a ghost in the movie. That’s kind of brilliant.
Well, I hadn’t wanted to do the movie. They kept asking, and I kept saying no. So once upon a time I said, just joking: “If you kill me off in the first reel, then fine, I’ll do it.” And then supposedly they came up with an idea where they kill me off and I was a ghost in the movie. Kinda clever, really.

But has the Zombieland cameo stolen that gag?
[genuinely confused] But that was a zombie. Not a ghost.

Okay. Well, how about Garfield? Can you explain that to me? Did you just do it for the dough?
No! I didn’t make that for the dough! Well, not completely. I thought it would be kind of fun, because doing a voice is challenging, and I’d never done that. Plus, I looked at the script, and it said, “So-and-so and Joel Coen.” And I thought: Christ, well, I love those Coens! They’re funny. So I sorta read a few pages of it and thought, Yeah, I’d like to do that. I had these agents at the time, and I said, “What do they give you to do one of these things?” And they said, “Oh, they give you $50,000.” So I said, “Okay, well, I don’t even leave the f-ckin’ driveway for that kind of money.”

And it’s not like you’re helping out an indie director by playing Garfield.
Exactly. He’s in 3,000 newspapers every day; he’s not hurtin’. Then this studio guy calls me up out of nowhere, and I had a nice conversation with him. No bullsh-t, no schmooze, none of that stuff. We just talked for a long time about the movie. And my agents called on Monday and said, “Well, they came back with another offer, and it was nowhere near $50,000.” And I said, “That’s more befitting of the work I expect to do!” So they went off and shot the movie, and I forgot all about it. Finally, I went out to L.A. to record my lines. And usually when you’re looping a movie, if it takes two days, that’s a lot. I don’t know if I should even tell this story, because it’s kind of mean. [beat] What the hell? It’s interesting. So I worked all day and kept going, “That’s the line? Well, I can’t say that.” And you sit there and go, What can I say that will make this funny? And make it make sense? And I worked. I was exhausted, soaked with sweat, and the lines got worse and worse. And I said, “Okay, you better show me the whole rest of the movie, so we can see what we’re dealing with.” So I sat down and watched the whole thing, and I kept saying, “Who the hell cut this thing? Who did this? What the f-ck was Coen thinking?” And then they explained it to me: It wasn’t written by that Joel Coen.

And the pieces fall into place.
[shakes head sadly] At least they had what’s-her-name. The mind reader, pretty girl, really curvy girl, body’s one in a million? What’s her name? Help me. You know who I mean.

Jennifer Love Hewitt?
Right! At least they had her in good-looking clothes. Best thing about the movie. But that’s all ugly. That’s inappropriate. That’s just… [laughs] That’s why, when they say, “Any regrets?” at the end of Zombieland, I say, “Well, maybe Garfield.”

Just out of curiosity, since you crossed paths way back in the day: Have you seen Community? What do you think of what Chevy Chase is doing?
I’m hoping it’s funny. It looks kind of funny. Chevy in life can really be funny. I don’t see him that often anymore, but in life he’s a hell of a lot more fun than I am—he’s always going; he really, really, really wants to make people laugh. But I haven’t watched it. What about the other show that has the girl from Saturday Night Live?

Parks and Recreation? That is the best comedy on TV right now, to my eyes.
That’s good. I want those things to work, but I’m out of touch. I have no idea. I never saw the original Office. I never saw this Office. I never even saw Clerks. Like I never saw, what’s-his-name, Larry David’s show.

Curb Your Enthusiasm?
No! The other one. With the other guy.

Seinfeld?
Seinfeld! I never saw Seinfeld.

Come on.
Really! I never saw Seinfeld until the final episode, and that’s the only one I saw. And it was terrible. I’m watching, thinking, “This isn’t funny at all. It’s terrible!”

So what the hell do you watch, then? Sports?
I watch sports, I watch movies, Current TV on the satellite—I kind of like that. Honestly, I’m just easily bored. C-SPAN can be really great. Like the night Obama won the election, C-SPAN was the greatest. There were no announcers, just Chicago. It was just that crowd in Grant Park, and it was just f-ckin’ jazz. You know, it was just wow. And that’s my town, you know? It was just: “Oh, my God, it’s gonna happen! [getting genuinely excited] It’s gonna happen!” You just saw the pictures of it, like, oh, there’s someone from the Northwest Side, there’s someone from the South Side, someone from the suburbs. It was the most truly American thing you’ve ever seen. [pause] Oh God, I get jazzed just thinkin’ about it. I don’t know anyone that wasn’t crying. It was just: Thank God this long national nightmare is over.

You haven’t spent a lot of time in LA? I would have thought that would have dragged you out there all the time.
No, no, no. Never. It just never took. It’s like the first day you check into a hotel in L.A. there’s a message under your door. The second day, there’s eleven messages under your door. The third day, there’s thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy messages. And I realized that they just want fresh blood. They. Just. Want. Fresh. Blood. You gotta get the hell out of there. And you really feel, if you live in New York, that you’re three hours ahead of them—I mean that literally. It’s like, Oh man, we gotta help these people! And the longer you stay there, the less ahead of them you get, and then you’re one of them. No way, man. Not for me.

Did you cross paths with John Hughes at all? Both of you are Chicago guys. He worked with some of your friends.
I don’t think I’d have known him if I bumped into him. I was kind of surprised they gave him a big thing at the Oscars. I mean, I remember Hal Ashby barely got mentioned, and this guy made half a dozen unbelievable movies. The Breakfast Club is really an American gem, though. An amazing film. As important as any of Marty [Scorsese]’s movies. It’s just a real f-ckin’ piece. And those kids were never better than that, and he let ’em roll. Dunno. Never met him. I guess he was famous for shooting 10 million feet of film. Steve Martin said to me once, “You’d hate him. He’d say, ‘Do this, where you stick something in your nose!’ ” That kind of stuff drives me nuts.

[From GQ]

There’s so much more in the whole piece that I didn’t have the space to include. He talks about his 800 number – the one that producers, writers and directors can call if they want to offer him a part, and Bill just says matter-of-factly: “Well, it’s what I finally went to. I have this phone number that they call and talk. And then I listen. I just sort of decide. It’s exhausting otherwise. I don’t want to have a relationship with someone if I’m not going to work with them. If you’re talking about business, let’s talk about business, but I don’t want to hang out and bullsh-t…. I don’t like to work. I only like working when I’m working.” There’s also Bill talking sh-t about Dan Ackroyd (“Danny is… Canadian.”). He also talks about how much he wants to direct again, and how he’s friends with a few of the older film critics and he hangs out with them in Venice! Also – now that we know Bill Murray is a fan of Jennifer Love Hewitt (or her body), should we give her a temporary pass? Yes, I think we should.

Bill Murray on April 27, 2010, June 26, 2010 & October 14, 2009. Credit: WENN.