by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent
It’s a lucky thing for us Bill Murray, whose new movie St. Vincent even came with its own “Bill Murray Day” yesterday (Sept. 5) at the Toronto International Film Festival, dropped out of Jesuit college in his misspent youth to focus on being a comedian.
In Murray fashion, the unlucky thing for him was that he got busted for Marijuana not long afterwards. The Illinois-born funny man, who celebrates a birthday on Sept. 21, is all about subversion though.
So even his past and recent brushes with weed, alcohol, or whatever-a-hol, make up the totality of the mosaic of talent that is the man who early in life made pizzas and delivered cinder blocks for a living.
‘St. Vincent De Van Nuys,’ is the long title of this new Murray-starrer, homaging the unique suburban strangeness found in The Valley in California. Van Nuys used to be called “the porn capital of the world,” but safe sex and tax hikes have mostly forced the clandestine industry elsewhere now.
Melissa McCarthy plays the steamrolling single-mom-next-door, and her kid becomes the protege of broken-man/edler-babysitter Bill Murray. This is kind of the zenith of Murrayism, a take on an old man gone bad but not-so-bad; the grump we love to hate, that should net The Weinstein Co. many happy returns at the box office.
Without giving all the spoiler alerts, imagine how talent-packed Murray’s surrounding cast is, besides Melissa “Who-Can-Open-A-Movie” McCarthy: Naomi Watts as the “Russian hooker type,” Chris O’Dowd from Bridesmaids, Nate Corddry (brother of Jon Stewart Show genius Rob Corddry), even the gifted Terrence Howard (The Brave One).
Writer/Director Theodore Melfi had mostly done TV (Winding Roads) and short films before St. Vincent, so scoring top comedy stars is a boon for him. Especially the National Lampoon Guy God of Animal House, Caddyshack, and the man who could be a Ghostbuster but also play Scarlett Johansson’s platonic love interest in an incredibly bittersweet performance as an aging actor in Japan in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation.
This was a guy who was already famous on radio in 1975 with the National Lampoon on-air show with Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, and John Belushi - he was literally a famous voice before he became a face. Then "Saturday Night Live" to stardom, to the chameleon we know now.
Wait, isn’t that him in Grand Budapest Hotel? Also in Monuments Men? How about Hyde Park on Hudson as FDR, seriously? That’s also him in the enchanting pop-up-book-like movie from Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom, and in the elegant Fanastic Mr. Fox.
This older Murray is the Baskin-Robbins of actors, suddenly, 31 flavors. Certainly not the stuck-in-a-rut 80’s comedian you would have expected from the pigeon-hole decades run of comedies from Meatballs to Groundhog Day to Stripes.
Remarkably, he was also in Where the Buffalo Roam, Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange, and odd projects like Mad Dog & Glory.
Is there anything Bill Murray can’t do? Yes. He never bores us.
When you look at Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), it seems Murray made his foray into the land of charming quirkiness for good exactly a decade ago. Somehow he managed to redefine his Chicago/Second City inner self into a multi-faceted actor for the world of texting Millennials.
One could argue Wes Anderson, who directed him first in a role written for the actor in Rushmore (1998) then in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), three years before recasting Murray as lead in Life Aquatic, has had a hand in the Rebranding of Bill Murray.
But there is something so inherently anti-authority in this actor that this transition to Anderson vehicles is only one of the factors remaking Murray.
Whatever the cause, look for a flurry of nominations for Murray and this film to come.
Bill Murray Day will likely become an annual holiday in Canada, based on how he killed yesterday in Toronto.
And yes, it may be the Year of St. Vincent, too.
Just watch what happens on Oct. 24 after this movie opens wide.
Happy Birthday Bill Murray, of Bill Murray Day and many more!
