(Credits: Far Out / Harald Krichel)
Sun 20 April 2025 17:15, UK
As one of the first Saturday Night Live cast members to seamlessly transition from sketch comedy to the silver screen, Bill Murray wouldn’t have known that he was among the pioneers who helped establish one of Hollywood’s most productive pipelines.
John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Robert Downey Jr, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ben Stiller, Billy Crystal, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, and Kristen Wiig are just some of the names who’ve been fixtures of the show that went on to conquer the box office and win awards as actors, writers, and directors, even if the erstwhile Iron Man is the only one to claim an Academy Award.
For a lot of people, Murray deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Hollywood’s greatest-ever comedy stars, and it’s not without merit. His signature style of dry, deadpan, and acerbic sarcasm, not to mention his obvious eccentricities, has made him an icon to millions, but not everyone agrees.
History is littered with co-stars and colleagues who’ve endured a horrid time working with Murray, placing him in the position where one person can call him a beloved legend and be correct, but the same can be said of the next one who comes along and says he’s a spiteful prick.
Regardless of where he does – or doesn’t rank – among the most gifted comic performers in cinema history, Murray knows who his favourites are. Despite the litany of esteemed performers he’s shared the screen with over the last half a century, his preferred picks hail from much further in the past.
“I’m a Buster Keaton guy; he’s really physical,” the Oscar nominee shared in a Reddit AMA. “Chaplin is really beautiful and he’s really wonderful. But the stuff that Buster did? It’s ungodly how dangerous it was. The physical stuff he could do? Charlie could do the romantic, scamp thing. But Buster, his heart just flamed out through his eyes. He was something.”
While it sounds like he preferred Keaton’s daredevil and death-defying physicality to Chaplin’s broader, more slapsticky but pathos-laden stylings, he struggled to separate them. “To say that Charlie Chaplin isn’t physical is also absurd,” he pondered. “That’s god. The dinner roll dance? But Buster should get the same attention.”
Chaplin and Keaton have always come up as different parts of the same conversation, for obvious reasons. They were friends, two of Hollywood’s first genuine superstars, and they blazed a new trail for cinema as writers, producers, actors, and directors who obtained levels of creative freedom that were previously unheard of. They made countless pictures that stand the test of time, and they both fell on financial hard times.
Two icons from the same era who were equally transformative, but as far as Murray is concerned, there’s nothing between them.
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