Murray Joke “Lost in Translation”
Bill Murray’s funny. Even when he’s not.
On Sunday, the Lost in Translation star opened his Golden Globes acceptance speech by saying, in trademark deadpan, that he’d recently canned his agents and suffered the loss of his personal trainer. He got a big laugh.
Except he wasn’t kidding.
Murray is apparently an ex-client of Creative Artists Agency–the Hollywood powerhouse–after having severed ties with agents Jessica Tuchinsky and Rick Kurtzman.
And, according to the blogs The Blueprint and Gawker.com, Murray is an ex-client of the late Raphael Picaud, the founder of Body Maxx, a celeb-catering gym in West Hollywood, California. Picaud died last year.
Murray’s New York business office confirmed that Murray “fired” his agents. (“That was the facts,” a rep said.) It could not confirm whether the Saturday Night Live alum was a pupil of Picaud’s. (Neither could Body Maxx–the current owner was said to be out of the country; Picaud’s official biography lists Kelly Lynch, Estelle Getty and Jeff Goldbum amongst his more famous pupils.)
Kurtzman was said to be traveling and unreachable. A message left with Tuchinsky’s office was not returned Wednesday.
Murray, 53, won the Globe for Best Actor, Musical or Comedy, for a playing an out-of-sorts Hollywood star in Lost in Translation. On Tuesday, he picked up an Academy Award nomination–his first–for Best Actor.
Murray prefaced his Globe remarks by telling the black-tie Beverly Hilton audience, “You can all relax.”
“I fired my agents a couple months ago,” he continued. “My trainer, my physical trainer, killed himself.”
At that point, Murray segued into a real joke: “I would thank the people at Universal and Focus [the studios behind Lost in Translation], except there’s so many people trying to take credit for this I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
Of course, maybe that wasn’t a joke, either.
Categories