‘You’re Bill Groundhog-Day-Ghostbusting-Ass Murray’: ‘Mainstream’ Success, Star Agency and Cult Reinvention

Abstract

In 2005, while promoting the release of Broken Flowers in the UK, Bill Murray told the Times:

So, a while ago, I thought, I don’t really want to be a big movie star. I started taking these jobs where you don’t necessarily get paid a lot of money, but you work with people who are good and you do what you want to do. And I figured, well, maybe one of these is going to hit one day, and I’ll get whatever I need in terms of being noticed. (Anon. 2005)

By 2005, this was a familiar story; one that Murray began telling in support of his role in Rushmore (1998). On the Charlie Rose Show in January 1999 he said, ‘This was a movie where I didn’t really get paid, I just did it because I thought these guys were good and the chance that it might work […] I’ve taken these art movies, I call them, this last year or two, and they’ve been fun.’ To the New York Times he insisted, ‘I realized, after movies like Ghostbusters, that I shouldn’t give up even if the movie didn’t have a ride at Disney World. I realized I don’t need a blockbuster audience’ (Hirschberg 1999).