Video: Bill Murray Delivers His Best Lead Performance In A Decade For Reddit

Ben Yakas

Published Oct 23, 2015

Modified Oct 23, 2015

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Bill Murray has a new movie, Rock The Kasbah, out this week. It is, by critical consensus, absolutely terrible. Will Leitch said in his review that it might be the worst movie of Murray's career, a statement which made me stop and realize there hasn't been a truly great Murray-led film in a decade.

Sure, Murray has been charming in smaller supporting roles (Zombieland, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Get Low), and he's always charming IRL (especially when he's celebrating himself or rumored to be dating people he's probably not dating). But he's also been in a shocking amount of stinkers (Aloha, Passion Play, Hyde Park On Hudson, and *shudders* A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III) that, taken as a whole, really put into perspective how much Murray has turned into a Manic Pixie Dream Comedy Grandfather in real life, to the detriment of his on-screen work. The fact that it's become more interesting to read Bill Murray Stories than see actual Bill Murray movies is very disheartening.

Putting that aside, Murray remains unfathomably charming in his everyday interactions and schemes, and he really steps up his charm game when it comes to Reddit—last year he had (possibly) the greatest Reddit celebrity AMA of all time, opening up about his relationship with his former deaf/mute assistant and revealing his infatuation with pickles, among other things. Murray had yet another classic Reddit AMA yesterday, but the highlight this time wasn't his typically sincere and hilarious answers to the readers.

It is the video below of him answering the ultimate Reddit question: "Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?" Make no mistake: this is the best Bill Murray lead performance since Broken Flowers. It is his best comedic performance since Kingpin. I was on the edge of my seat the entire video.

Check out the rest of the excellent new Reddit AMA here. We've picked out some highlights below:

On The Best Party He's Crashed: Well, we crashed a famous party called the subway party to celebrate the premiere of Tommy, in the 70s. It was Gilda Radner, Belushi, Harold Ramis, Joe Flaherty, Brian Doyle Murray, and we were all plus 1, probably. It was biggest party ever in NYC at the time. You couldn't get into this party. It was an inner circle thing. It was at an enclosed subway stop, it was a roar. It was a scream. If you made an airport movie with everyone on the plane is a celebrity, it was like that times 10. We were doing a show in the restaurant cabaret, the guys catering were the same guys who gave us left over french fries, we went into the backdoor to the subway with everyone. Everyone saying hi, hello. And we felt like we didn't belong at all. It was so fantastic. I have compassion when people say dumb stuff to me. I said to Andy Warhol "I love the soup can" and he looked at me like "You don't belong here." What a time that was.
The Worst Thing About Being Bill Murray: The worst thing about it, they're one in the same: You wish you could walk down the street and look at things and watch things uninterrupted. The shock of being recognized brings you out of this place where you're just trying to take it in. Its an obligation and you're reminded you have to show up. It's a coin with two sides. As much as I don't like the one side, the other side is what might save me.
The One Role That Got Away: The only role i wanted I didn't get, the Year Of Living Dangerously by Peter Weir, I wasn't a big shot. Mel Gibson lived in Australia. I'd been to Indonesia and I thought I understood that movie. When I saw it, I was like, damn! That was the only one I wanted I didn't get. Peter Weir is...something else.
The Reality Show He'd Be On: Flavor Of Love. The idea that he had some of the most, would I consider maybe not the most desirable women in the world, they were really nutty. I mean really crazy. I'd think The Amazing Race. It was like a show I watched in Paris, similar to that. One episode I saw, they had to fight their way to the top of a hotel in Singapore, and answer impossible questions. I used to watch it just to see people completely fall apart. They would try to answer, and it would kill them. But The Amazing Race looks like a lot of fun. You get to go to a bunch of places. It calls on all your skills. I tell people, if you want to get married, travel around the world first. Cause then you get to know people better. Its a test of wills to travel. I think The Amazing Race would be fun.