Bill Murray on Isle of Dogs: 'I mean who would have thought the politics of this movie would resonate with the politics of the world?'
The 'Lost in Translation' star lends his voice to Boss, a liver-spotted mutt and former baseball mascot, in Wes Anderson's stop-motion animation
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Your support makes all the difference.It’s basically impossible to write about Bill Murray without sounding like a goofy fanboy. There is the illustrious movie career where he just seems to work with the coolest directors and steals every movie he’s in. One such director is Wes Anderson, in whose Isle of Dogs – the wackiest animation featuring dogs you’re ever likely to see – Murray voices a character.
Then earlier this week he announced that he’s performing two concerts in the UK with Jan Volger, with whom he made last year’s New Worlds album featuring a mix of classical music, American standards and literary readings.
And then of course there is the internet career, of which he is a mere bystander, where everyone on social media just seems to post stories about how cool the onetime Ghostbuster is. Having a party, who you gonna call? The legend is that Murray is the world’s foremost party crasher.
The 67-year-old does not believe his own press, even though he does nothing to dispel the rumours that paint him as an oddball, a Hollywood eccentric. His adorers, of which there are many, buy Bill Murray phone cases, Bill Murray colouring books, and there a plethora of websites celebrating his greatness.
So how does it feel to be such a mythical figure, loved, indulged and adored by so many? When asked at the Berlin Film Festival about all the attention he receives, Murray says: “Well I don’t resent it. It feels kind of nice. At the same time you think, oh wait until they find out who I really am. It’s going to be bone-crushing. It’s sad for all the people who have stickers on their cars or whatever.”
Well Anderson has sussed out who Murray is, and he is very much a fan. When the absent director needed someone to pick up his Silver Bear for Best Director award at the Berlin Film Festival he sent in Murray. Who else? The actor stole the show, of course, with his great line: “I never thought that I’d go to work as a dog and come home with a bear.”
Murray is a hard man to get in touch with. He has no agent and doesn’t like talking on the phone. Many a director has talked about the trouble they’ve had tracking him down. In 2014 St Vincent director Theodore Melfi claimed he had to call a 1-800 number and then sat around hoping that the actor received it. He did. But it seems that you can text. He doesn’t even know if he has an answering machine anymore: “Hmm. I don’t know. I’m not sure. I don’t use anything much. I’m not as organised as I look.”
One person whose calls he always returns is Wes Anderson. It’s two decades since they first collaborated on quirky, deadpan comedy Rushmore, and this is their eighth movie together. Isle of Dogs is the second stop-motion animation. Murray lends his dulcet tones to Boss, a stout, liver-spotted mutt who is the former mascot of the Megasaki Dragons little league baseball team. That was before all the dogs in Japan were banished to Trash Island after an outbreak of dog flu threatens human lives. The film centres on a little boy, Atari, who goes in search of his dog Spots, unable to live without his canine best friend.
And it seems that Murray would not want to live without Anderson either. Despite his own self-professed disorganisation it’s a trait he admires in others: “Anderson has a very ordered mind and he sees that if things are ordered in a certain way he can just go to the next thing. Like if you go to his house, things are really put together. I mean that place is… there’s stacks and there’s things, but nothing is out of place. It’s all in place. And you think, is this an art installation or is this a home? But that’s the way he lives his life.”
He also adores Anderson’s determination. “He does not get deterred from what he wants to do. If he makes a plan he goes and does it. He executes.”
The actor is also better placed than anyone else to say how his creative friend has changed over the years. His response is that Anderson can still act like he is 11 years old: “These characters in Isle of Dogs live in this world of 11 year olds. I read an interesting thing by Henry Miller called I’m Turning 80 and he said the thing about turning 80 is that you’re 80, you have 80 years of experience. But I can still act like I’m 60. I know what that’s like. I still know what it’s like to act like I’m 35. So instead of losing touch with that, you can gain that experience. So in Wes’s case, and I don’t know how long ago it is since we made the first movie together, but he could already act like he was 11 but now he can also act like he’s 40.”
Isle of Dogs has been talked of as a metaphor and a response to the rise of Trump, despite the fact that the movie has been in the works for many years. Murray says: “It’s kind of a miraculous collision, a coincidence that these things are happening. It wasn’t intentional to be this political, I mean who would have thought the politics of this movie would resonate with the politics of the world, that the extremity of the Kobayashis trying to eradicate dogs would be such an allegory of what’s happening on the planet, in my country? So it’s a coincidence but I think that happens with real artists, they kind of feel something before it gets there.”
And who would have thought that Murray would have a record that was number one on the Billboard classical music charts. It’s a fact that seems to even astonish Murray himself and it’s clear that the experience is bringing him immense joy. “I met Jan Volger, who is from Berlin and a world famous cellist, and we became buddies. We have an orchestra. Well, we have four people, there is a violin, piano, cello and me and we tour around as an act and the show is fantastic. I’m just so lucky to be with these guys, I’m having a great time but they are spectacular and the show is huge.”
The show is a combination of music and recitals. Murray reads excerpts from Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn whilst the musicians play pieces from Ravel and Bach. As he so famously did in Lost in Translation, Murray also sings. It was Volger’s idea to twin the music with Murray’s performance and persona and it’s left Murray in an existential crisis. “But why am I more successful as an actor than a musician? I don’t know. Sometimes I think I could have been a rock’n’roll star.”
You already are, Mr Murray, you already are.
‘Isle of Dogs’ is out now. Bill Murray and Jan Vogler perform on 4 June at London’s Royal Festival Hall and 18 June at Edinburgh’s Festival Hall
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