We haven’t done a Rank ‘em in ages, so I figure before the insanity of awards season starts, we better sneak another one in. Very few people shaped my humor as a child as much as Bill Murray did (to this day, Ghostbusters is probably the movie that makes me laugh more consistently than any other) and really, he’s the type of guy that most guys would like to be. I’m really looking forward to his upcoming Get Low), which will be another dramatic turn for the man, perhaps chasing another chance at an Oscar. Rank ‘em any way you’d like: the quality of the movie itself, his performances, whatever pleases you. For me, I’m ranking the movies by how much enjoyment I get out of watching them.
10. Where the Buffalo Roam
9. What About Bob?
8. Lost in Translation
7. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
6. Caddyshack
5. The Royal Tenenbaums
4. Rushmore
3. Ed Wood
2. Groundhog Day
1. Ghostbusters
What about yourselves?
Great list! I would be hard pressed to rank them; but, some additional ones that would make my list are Kingpin and his voice work in Garfield.
Holy Sweet Mother of God. No love for QUICK CHANGE? That is one of my favourite Bill Murray Performances, although I certainly concur on GHOSTBUSTERS being at the top of that list for pure Murray-Ness. He is way better in Rushmore than Royal Tenenbaums. and I’d push his Ed Wood performances (sort of a phoned in one there) down the list.
Scrooged would be near the top as well for me.
And be prepared to add GET LOW to the list after everyone gets a chance to see the classic -and awesomely fresh- Bill Murray supporting performance in that one.
In this case, I wasn’t ranking necessarily how great of a performance it was though, rather how much enjoyment I got out of the performance and the movie. And for someone that saw Ed Wood as a kid, it was so strange and hilarious to see Murray so out of character. Plus, the movie is just one of my personal favorites in general.
I wanted to put Scrooged on there as well as Broken Flowers and Quick Change and even Stripes, which has an awesome first act, but this is no easy list to throw together when you’re talking about someone like Murray.
Rank ‘em shouldn’t necessarily be just a top ten. Rank ‘em should be a ranking of all of the given subject’s body of work.
So go ahead and add those movies beyond the top ten.
10. Ghostbusters II
9. What About Bob?
8. The Royal Tenebaums
7. Stripes
6. Lost in Translation
5. Kingpin
4. The Life Aquatic
3. Groundhog Day
2. Caddyshack
1. Ghostbusters
I thought about putting Charlie’s Angels on there just to see if anyone would notice, but I didn’t want people to potentially think I was serious, so I thought better of it.
Don’t you tell me what to do with my Rank ‘em. It was hard enough sorting the first ten, I’m not going to attempt to sort out anymore. I don’t have to take this abuse from you, I’ve got hundreds of people dying to abuse me.
As for others, they can rank as many as they want. I just wanted to talk about Bill Murray.
Ooh, I love/hate these lists. Love them because they’re a great way to highlight the best of a particular artist’s career, and hate because they more often than remind me of how many movies I haven’t seen, lol.
Definitely need to catch up on the works of Bill Murray, I thought I’d seen a lot of his stuff, but looking at his IMDb entry, I’ve missed quite a bit too. Of the stuff I have seen:
1. Lost in Translation
2. Groundhog Day
3. Broken Flowers
4. Tootsie
5. What About Bob?
Not a Wes Anderson fan at all, so I’m not going to rank those even though I’ve seen nearly all of them. Somehow. Even though I realized early on how much I didn’t like his style. Hmmm …
I’ve definitely seen more, but not recently enough to rank them. Gotta check out Ed Wood again, haven’t seen that one since film school, and my tastes have changed radically since then. I’ve seen Caddyshack twice, and I respect it for it’s quotability, but I just can’t get into it. It’s such a “guy” movie. And though I’m embarrassed to admit it, I haven’t seen Ghostbusters since I was five. :S
Can we do Steve Martin next? I’m planning on catching up on him with the recent Oscar hosting announcement and I’m just about to start reading his bio…
Bill Murray chimes in on Ghostbusters three and slams his old pal Harold Ramis in a recent GQ interview:
“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. 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.
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.”
He then goes on to talk about how why he did GARFIELD:
“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. …
Then this studio guy calls me up out of nowhere, and I had a nice conversation with him. No bullshit, no schmooze, none of that stuff. We just talked for a long time about the movie. … 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 fuck was Coen thinking?” And then they explained it to me: It wasn’t written by that Joel Coen.”
http://www.gq.com/entertainment/celebrities/201008/bill-murray-dan-fierman-gq-interview?currentPage=1