Bill Murray is an elusive dude. That much is clear. By now, the exploits people have to jump through in order to get Murray into a film are legendary. So it’s always fun to hear about pictures that the Ghostbusters star almost acted in.
Bill Murray surprised Howard Stern by actually showing up to do a radio interview on Sirius XM the other day, and gave a very candid, hour-long conversation about all things ranging from the George Clooney wedding to his latest picture, St. Vincent. Eventually, the two got around to Stern peppering Murray about roles that he was rumored to be up for, but never landed (for various reasons). This is always fascinating. Let’s run through them.
- Bill Murray says that there "was something about Rain Man," where he might have played Tom Cruise’s role.
- He shoots down the theory that he was up for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s part in Kindergarten Cop. "I don’t think so," Murray muses.
- Howard Stern asks him if he really was up for the Denzel Washington part in Philadelphia, to which Murray coyly replies, "You’re warm with that one. … I would’ve liked to have done that."
- And on the Tom Hanks front, Murray also admits that he had "Forrest Gump conversations."
Now THAT would have been a different movie!
This might just be scratching the surface. According to the Web site NotStarring.com, Murray was up for a slew of projects, from Bad Santa and Dogma to Splash and Toy Story. If they are to be believed. That has to be part of the reason why Ghostbusters 3 was taking so damn long to pull together. Murray only commits when he wants to commit, and so when he chooses a project, like St. Vincent, you have to believe that it’s pretty special.
The entire Bill Murray interview with Howard Stern is a great listen. You can hear it in full below:
And St. Vincent is in limited release as we speak.
