Bill Murray- 'Garfield' Movie Was A Horrible Mistake, I Never Read the Script
Bill Murray said "Garfield" was mistake- the comedian and actor never read the script for the movie before signing on, and paid for it dearly. Murray revealed that he never had any intention of starring in what turned out to be a terrible film, but did because he mistook the director Joel Cohen, a relative unknown in 2004, for Joel Coen, the Academy Award-winning director responsible for hit movies like "The Big Lebowski," "O Brother Where Art Thou?" and "No Country for Old Men."
Bill Murray's thoughts on "Garfield" were revealed in an Ask Me Anything thread- AMA for short- on popular website Reddit. The 2004 comedy was widely panned by critics, but Murray said he didn't get past the first few pages of the script, and only realized his mistake when he started doing the movie.
"I only read a few pages of it, and I kind of wanted to do a cartoon movie, because I had looked at the screenplay and it said 'Joel Cohen' on it. And I wasn't thinking clearly, but it was spelled Cohen, not Coen," Murray wrote in the thread. "I love the Coen brothers movies. I think that Joel Coen is a wonderful comedic mind. So I didn't really bother to finish the script, I thought, 'he's great, I'll do it.'"
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Murray had such a difficult time fixing, rewriting and thinking of lines for the first 10 minutes that he asked to see the entire film. That did not go over well with the legendary "Ghostbusters" actor.
"And they showed me the rest of the movie, and there was just this long, 2 minute silence," he posted.
On Reddit Murray said he "probably cursed a little" after the viewing, but during a 2010 interview with GQ magazine, he was much more explicit.
"I kept saying, 'Who the hell cut this thing? Who did this? What the f--- was Coen thinking?' And then they explained it to me: It wasn't written by that Joel Coen," he said.
Murray tried his best on the film and helped make it a "big financial success," but his contract roped him into two-film deal. The second movie, "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties," was unsalvageable, the actor said.
"The second one was beyond rescue, there were too many crazy people involved with it," Murray said. "They made a movie after that second miscarriage, that went directly to video. So they sort of shot themselves in the foot, the kidneys, the liver and the pancreas on the second one."
Murray began his Internet tirade after one Reddit user asked if there would ever be a "Garfield 3."
