Third Row Center: "Bill Murray Stories" is a Great Doc on Not Taking Things So Seriously

The new Bill Murray documentary “The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned From a Mythical Man” on Netflix is worth a view, if for no other reason, it gives us some perspective. It’s all about not taking yourself too seriously, something that we lose sight of from time to time. Murray on the other hand appears to view life as one giant improv, which it is if you really break it down. You can choose to “yes and” life or you can “no, but” it and find yourself swimming upstream during a hurricane. He transforms the day-to-day of random people’s lives into something quite a bit more.

I’ve loved Bill Murray since the mid seventies, so much so I have a tendency to simply call him BM (okay, maybe not). When Stripes came to HBO, I remember recording the movie by sticking my cassette player up to the television. The reason I did this is that I heard about Stripes from older kids in the neighborhood who would act out parts and deliver dialogue leaving all of us who couldn’t see Rated R movies wanting more. When I was a kid, that was pretty much any kid under the age of 17.

Yes, that’s right, this was in the pre-VHS days and I only had the technology to record the audio, I would go through the funny parts of the movie and memorize them. I would learn the whole graduation scene, the scene about Old Yeller, etc. But above anything else, I loved the whole “roll with the punches, rise to moment” attitude of the Bill Murray character that he carried into many of his roles. I also loved the irreverence he had for things like the US Army, life in general, and General Barnicke. It’s like he was/is looking at the world and going “Listen ,we understand this whole thing called life is BS in a lot of ways, all I am asking is that you acknowledge in some way and we can move on.”

The documentary was meant to track down the truth about the “urban legends” concerning Murray as he enters random people’s lives. Only, in this day and age, urban legends can easily be verified. We are all carrying around cameras all the time. So, yes Virginia, there is a Bill Murray, and he does make house calls. The world is his stage, and we are the other players in it.

I was trying to think of a movie where I think the line was “I’d like to think of a world where someone like him was out living in it.” I imagine this line being delivered by Morgan Freeman. That thought kept going through my mind during the doc. This world would be a better place if we had more Bill Murrays in it. Random acts of kindness is one thing, but imagine if you could just light up a room by being you. Murray IS the random act of kindness.

What the doc shows is that Bill Murray adds to life without becoming the center of it, and that is an unusual dichotomy from a celebrity. He uses his celebrity for good by not only approaching it as a human given this laughable transient mantle of something called celebrity, but in a sense, raising those around him up to the same level as we perceive he is.

There was a great moment in the doc where at Comic Con a fan asked him point blank (well he tried to ask the question point blank but floundered) about if the stories were true about some of the encounters people had in the real world with him. I actually articulated the response before Murray did. “I have no idea what this kid is talking about.”

Sidebar: Anyone who know me knows that I am constantly joking. I imagine some of the things said behind my back besides my obvious size is “He never takes anything seriously.” or “He’s always looking for something funny to say.” Actually a lot of the time, I am restraining myself from saying things (I carry a sketch pad for a reason). More often than not I am choosing things not to say. Also there are times I make bad comedic decisions, usually C to D material at best. You get what you pay for.
At times I think is that people think I am insulting them when I search for the humor in things. I, like many of us, have grown up on a healthy diet of sitcoms and comedies, including the aforementioned Bill Murray movies. In the small-talk of life, I look for things, opportunities, and when opportunity meets timing, I pounce.

I recently said in a memory about Christmas that I thought it was interesting that Santa had an affinity for personal hygiene because we always got toothpaste and other bathroom supplies in our stockings as a kid. I wasn’t making fun of my mother, and I tear up as I say this, I loved that about her, and about my sister who carries on that tradition. At the same time, it is funny, isn’t it?

I have another friend that had a cow picture on the wall of her lovely home, and I love it because it’s both glorious and funny at the same time. Cows are funny, and in many ways, delicious. When I commented on how much I liked the picture, she thought I was making fun of it, and by proxy (I am speculating here) her. I don’t think I ever said this line, but I so wanted to “You should know that I do joke about a lot of things, I never make jokes about cow paintings.”

I love a good joke, but I also don’t like others taking it the wrong way. Still, it happens. But sometimes I just have to let things go. You can only do so much, plan ahead so often, and I can’t control what other people think or act, much as it would be nice to. I could finally get people to drive in a way where they don’t think they can sardine between me and the car in front of me. Where phones are turned off or silenced as soon as the movie (not the previews) start, and that conversation is for “after the movie, not during.

I am the same way though. I get touchy too. There are times when I don’t get the joke, where I am in the middle of another mode of thinking, possibly frazzled,, maybe still saturated with the troubles of the day, the worries of the coming months, and the sense of an impending “something” in my future.

What does this have to do with the Bill Murray documentary? I’ve loved the comedy of Bill Murray since he came to SNL. Also loved Tom Hanks earlier work where he adopts a similar persona (see Bachelor Party, Money Pit, and some of his earlier movies and you’ll get the idea). Bill Murray's approach to life is to not take things so seriously and to roll with whatever comes. He probably views it as a big adventure, and we get to share in this.

Now more than ever, we need to take our foot off the gas of taking things so seriously. 

I was happy to see that even the doc maker got it. Throughout it, he was trying to track Murray down and like that one kid at Comic Con, ask him if these stories about him were true. By the end of the doc, he wisely just got his picture with Bill Murray instead of pestering him for an interview. I cringe at thinking about the awkwardness of that moment, not for the actor/comedian, but for him.

The point of these situations is you have to roll with them without commenting on them. It’s like Arthur Dent who is told by Ford Prefect how to fly in Hitchhikers series. The trick is to miss the ground. That, and you must be careful not to have anyone around you to tell you that you can’t fly. You have to roll with it. You have  to live in the moment, you have the rest of your life to reflect on the surreality of it.