Bill Murray in defense of comedy
CANNES (CP) – Putting it a little more elegantly than Rodney Dangerfield ever did, Bill Murray claims that comedy just does not get the respect it deserves.
“I’ve always felt that people who don’t think that comedians are actors are damaged — really damaged,” Murray said this week in a Cannes Film Festival interview.
The comic, who was nominated for a best actor Oscar for the oddly funny Lost In Translation, is here following the world premiere of Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, in which Murray plays a man looking for a lost son he might have had with a past lover. The movie is poignant and droll.
“If you’re a real true comedian, you can act,” Murray said. “Because it’s the ability to say a line straight. You have to be able to play straight to do comedy.”
You can see the prejudice in the results of the Academy Awards, Murray said.
“We always joke: you give me an affliction and I’ll give you an Oscar. You give me a fatal disease and I’ll get a prize for it. You give me a wig or a mask or a disfiguration, and I’ll make it work for you.
“To me that’s just the way it is. It doesn’t matter.”
As for comedies, Murray said: “When you laugh, you’re breaking some sort of tension. You’re untying a knot. Somehow, that’s not something that people take into their emotional bank … even though people value it.
“But it’s not something where people say: ‘I want to give you a prize.’ ”
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