Bill Murray on Why He Came Back for GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE and Why It Was So Physically Strenuous
Bill Murray is a staple of the Ghostbusters franchise. It was great to hear that he would be coming back for the upcoming film, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, but according to the star, it did take some convincing. Director and co-writer of the film Jason Reitman, who is the son of the original two films’ director, Ivan Reitman, has known Murray since Reitman was just a kid, so he really had to prove to Murray that he knew what he was doing.
In a recent interview and presentation at the 36th Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF), the highest honor, the Maltin Modern Master Award, was given to Murray, and he spoke about his career. When asked about being in every iteration of the Ghostbusters franchise, Murray sang the praises of the women who starred in the 2016 film. He said it was great to be a fly on the wall and watch that cast improvise. He went on to talk about the new film, saying:
“I remember him calling me and saying, ‘I’ve got an idea for another Ghostbusters. I’ve had this idea for years.’ I thought, ‘What the heck could that possibly be?’ I remember him when he was a kid. I remember his Bar Mitzvah. I was like, ‘What the heck? What does this kid know?’ But he had a really, really wonderful idea that he wrote with another wonderful guy that I got to work with, Gil Kenan, who made City of Ember. The two of them wrote a Ghostbusters movie that really brings it back to life. It really has the feel of the first one, more than the second one or the girls’ one. It has a different feel than two out of four.”
He went on to talk about how difficult the shoot for this film was, and the high hopes he has for it:
I think he’s really got something. It was hard. It was really hard. That’s why I think it’s gonna be good. We were just in it for a little while, but it was physically painful. Wearing those packs is extremely uncomfortable. We had batteries the size of batteries. They now have batteries the size of earrings. It’s still a really heavy thing to wear, all the time. The special effects in this one are a lot of wind and dirt in your face, and there was a lot of going down and getting back up. I was like, “What is this? What am I doing? These are like Bulgarian deadlifts, or a Russian kettlebell, getting up and down with this thing on my back.” It was very uncomfortable. Usually, when something has a very high misery quotient, something comes of that and some quality is produced that, if you can capture it and project it, comes on the screen and affects you. I think it comes out sometime in the fall. They’ve delayed it for a year or a year and a half, but I’m glad they did. It will be worth seeing.
We hope so! I love the footage we have seen so far, and I can’t wait to see Ghostbusters: Afterlife in theaters on November 11th.
via: Collider
