When we grow up, we want to be Bill Murray. The actor's greatest role in the last part of his career has been playing himself, a Hollywood celebrity who refuses to play by anyone's rules but his own, whether it's refusing to have an agent or making impromptu appearances at random karoke parties or…doing something like this…
Last night Murray appeared on "Late Night With David Letterman" to promote "Hyde Park On Hudson" (opening today, our review) and of course, made an entrance the only way Bill Murray can. It's just a nice reminder that in a season where all the talent gunning for awards are prim and proper, Murray can have a laugh at the whole thing. But don't think that the actor is thumbing his nose at the industry that pays his bills. It's part of a larger and more earnest life philosophy that he discovered thanks to his older brother, and he shares the touching anecdote to David Itzkoff in the New York Times in a must read interview:
I spoke about the first time I went to Wrigley Field in Chicago, and I was a big Cubs fan, and I watched all the games on TV, but when I grew up, TV was in black and white. So when I was 7 years old, I was taken to my first Cubs games, and my brother Brian said, “Wait, Billy,” and he put his hands over my eyes, and he walked me up the stairs. And then he took his hands away. [He begins to get choked up.] And there was Wrigley Field, in green. There was this beautiful grass and this beautiful ivy. I’d only seen it in black and white. It was like I was a blind man made to see. It was something.
Watch Murray do the same in his own unique way below.
