The 2005 Deadpan Comedy Movie Bill Murray Called ‘Perfect’

He is well known in Hollywood that Bill Murray has no agent. In 2019, Murray spoke with Indiewire On how his home phone rings and sounds, harassing him with job offers and potential cinema roles. He hated hearing his agent, preferring to answer the phone if he was a friend who was just calling to chat. He preferred his private life. Murray was sufficiently on demand to be able to create a number 1-800 that he would only distribute to a few key filmmakers or casting directors. He understood that there were various studios around Hollywood where some besieged trainees were ordered to “get Bill Murray on the phone!” Fortunately, these trainees had its number 1-800, which would direct the appellants to a system of computerized voice messages. Murray could then check the machine when he wanted it, choosing random requests.

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This is perhaps the reason why Murray tends to work with the same directors several times. Wes Anderson, for example, probably leaves messages all the time, and Murray is happy to meet with the filmmaker for another project. (Anderson and Murray made nine films together.)

It also seems very easy for Jim Jarmusch to get Murray care. Jarmusch, the famous laconic filmmaker, first collaborated with Murray on the anthology film “Coffee and Cigarettes” in 2003 (not to be confused with “Cigarettes & Coffee” by PT Anderson). In this film, Murray played a Fry Cook version of himself and was able to take a coffee klatch with the RZA and the GZA.

Jarmusch and Murray then re -registered in 2005 to make “broken flowers”, a piece of mood on an average age man looking for an adult son whom he has never met. In an episode of “Hot Ones”, “ Murray expressed his thought that the “broken flowers” are perfect, and he did not make a comedy as perfect as that. This is a daring affirmation, given the volume of incredible comedies that he has made in his career.

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Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers” were a slight success in the mid-2000s, independent films, earning more than $ 47 million at the box office with a budget of $ 10 million. In the film, Murray embodies Don Johnston, a retired computer magnate whose life has settled in a relaxed form of inactivity led by creatures. He was once an unbearable libertine and left a trace of former lovers in his wake, but now he is seated and watches films in his manor. Don’s girlfriend (Julie Delpy) breaks with him at the start of the film, but it is difficult to say if he is injured by the breakup or simply indifferent.

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The same day, Don receives a mysterious letter by post. It is a former lover of her who does not identify. She says that Don has a 19 -year -old son who could look for him. Don’s neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), makes an independent investigation and lets donate that it could come from one of the five women in his past. Don, in turn, leaves in a road trip to investigate and see if he can identify the woman with whom he had a son.

One of the women died. The second is Laura, a cupboard organizer played by Sharon Stone. The third is a real estate agent who has become a hippie named Dora, played by Francis Conroy. The fourth is an animal enthusiast played by Jessica Lange. And the fifth is a biker queen named Penny, represented by Tilda Swinton. “Broken Flowers” is played in episodes while Don visits each of his ex and, in his way without inspiration, asks questions to direct whether they have a child together or not. Unfortunately, none of its visits seem to be 100%final.

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“Broken Flowers” ends with Don meeting a young man (Mark Webber), living locally, who has only reached the city recently for an unpertified mission. Don begins to suspect that this young man is his son and takes him dinner. In an unusual emotional show, Don finally admits that to the young man that he can be his father. However, it panics the young man, and he fled the restaurant. While Don continues the first young man, he sees another The young man goes into a car … and the other young man is a lot to him. Indeed, the other young man is played by Homer Murray, Bill’s real son. The two locking eyes. The end.

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Here is what Murray had to say about the film during his “hot” appearance:

“I thought that the film” Broken Flowers “, that Jim Jarmusch realized, I did not think that I could do better than that. I thought it was somehow a perfect film. It really happened. So, everything I had to do, I knew how to do. And things that I had not done, I came like a performance.”

“Broken Flowers” concerns a man who reopened a soul whom he thought of having been nailed. Don has a mystery in front of him, but he does not seem particularly motivated. Don’s occasional approach, which Murray plays with perfection, first denies a kind of Olympian emotional distance, showing that Don may have lost the ability to care about others and does not even seem to be interested in himself.

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What distinguishes “broken flowers” is that Don, at a given moment along the way, seems to grow a soul. There is not a single cathartic moment when he transforms, but his conversations with old lovers let him look at himself in a way that he may not have realized that he was doing. Jarmusch obliges a distant character to become less distant by examining his own life platonically.

As mentioned, Jarmusch and Murray first worked together on “Coffee and Cigarettes”, a delightfully strange series of 11 short films on, finally, coffee and cigarettes. Some are flashy and ambitious, like the short in which Cate Blanchett plays a pair of identical cousins. Some are apparently invented on the fly, like when Iggy Pop and Tom await beards on the careers of the other (the jukebox has no Tom Waits songs on it, for example). The Billy Murray runs with the RZA and the GZA is surreal in that it also feels completely improvised. RZA and GZA seem disconcerted by the insistence of Murray to behave like a cook and are terrified when he takes their suggestion that he gargles with an oven cleaner.

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Murray also plays in “The Limits of Control” as the final target of an assassin, played by Isaach de Bankole. The character of Murray, credited only as “American”, is bitter and cook for the murderer. He lives in a building with the axiom “life is worth nothing” sporting the entrance. If the “broken flowers” consist in finding a piece of living humanity at the bottom of a long -term human being, then “the limits of control” concern the void of everything. Of course, the film is completely terrible, so it is difficult to say what it could be.

Murray and Jarmusch have since collaborated on the sleeping zombie film “The Dead Don Die”, where Murray played a cop. He and his partner, played by Adam Driver, lead and discuss the structure of the films, even going so far as to comment on the film in which they are currently. “The Dead Don Die” is not one of the best films in Jarmusch, but it’s funny in this Jarmusch path without wheelbases. The director is currently working on a film entitled “Father, mother, sister, brother”, who does not yet have a release date. Unfortunately, Murray is not in it. It can currently be seen in “The Friend”.

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