The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned from a Mythical Man, 2018.
Directed by Tommy Avallone.
Starring Tommy Avallone and Bill Murray.
SYNOPSIS:
This documentary explores various urban legends around Hollywood’s most elusive star.
If you’ve ever bothered to Google Bill Murray, you’ll probably be aware that he has a penchant for showing up in unexpected paces – be it at a college party, behind the bar in a Texas pub or in a couple’s wedding photoshoot. In this compact, low-fi documentary, director Tommy Avallone attempts to sift through the madcap stories and find the human truth at the centre, with uneven albeit entertaining results.
The infamous tall tales of Murray’s random engagements with his fans goes back far enough to largely predate online meme culture, yet of course, these stories of basic human interaction between movie star and Joe Public have taken on a far more legendary, even mythic status in recent years.
And in fairness, many of these happenings are a winning mix of surreal and hilarious; who wouldn’t be weirded out at seeing Murray doing the dishes at a college party or tending their local bar and handing out random drinks? Avallone does a fine job capturing the heightened strangeness of these scenarios, and even including footage of many of the most famed run-ins.
It is, however, a film that smacks somewhat of being a hagiography; there’s a lot of highfalutin chatter about Murray’s down-to-Earth behaviour serving as a lesson for humanity, imploring us all to take a more open-minded, inviting approach to interactions with our fellow man. This combined with Avallone’s over-gracious voice-over narration does sometimes make the film feel a little too fawning, with no consideration given to the darker aspects of Murray’s personal life or other potential implications of his drifter-like behaviour.
Things get back on track as Avallone digs, somewhat ironically, into how powerful the cult of celebrity can be, namely how “mere mortals” hold movie stars up on pedestals, and even through thoroughly mundane actions, they can give regular folk a totally unforgettable experience. On the flip side, given how isolating the Hollywood bubble can surely be at times, these hang-outs give Murray a chance to have something approaching a regular human connection and break down, as one interviewee puts it, “the Chinese wall of celebrity.”
The frame story of Avallone attempting to meet Murray ultimately isn’t terribly interesting, especially as it leads to an utterly anti-climactic finale, but to the filmmaker’s credit he doesn’t bloat this doc out with snoozy B-roll material or excessive waxing on how great Murray is. At just 70 minutes in length, it’s probably worth a sit if you’re especially fond of the subject, even if true insight is in fairly short supply.
Thoroughly low-stakes as documentaries go, but a just-charming-enough examination of celebrity packed with amusing anecdotes.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
