Bill Murray — Legendary comedic actor and SNL alum known for Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, and Lost in Translation. A famously analog, hard-to-reach figure who chooses roles based on trust and relationships.
The gist
Bill Murray opens with the surreal story of how he first met Hunter S. Thompson during a near-fatal underwater escape stunt, then explores Thompson's writing, his Nixon footage, and playing him in Where the Buffalo Roam. The conversation moves through classic American cinema (Bullitt, Le Mans, McQueen), Murray's SNL and NewsRadio years with Phil Hartman, and his defense of John Belushi against Bob Woodward's book Wired. The back half turns reflective: Murray promotes three new films (The Phoenician Scheme, The Friend, Riff Raff), shares his golf-and-archery philosophy of staying present in your body, and he and Rogan have a long, civil debate about homelessness, mental health, and political tribalism. Throughout, both push the theme of finding common ground over division.
Big reveals
- Murray met Hunter S. Thompson when Thompson tied him to a lawn chair and lowered him underwater in a pool escape stunt that nearly killed him.
- Murray admits his email is still an AOL.com address and he only got a cell phone because his kids won't answer a phone call.
- Murray says reading five pages of Bob Woodward's 'Wired' about Belushi convinced him Nixon was probably framed too.
- Murray reveals Belushi let countless future stars (including himself) sleep on his couch and dragged the whole Second City crew to New York.
- Murray says Belushi was a light drinker (drunk on four beers) and the speedball that killed him may have been his first.
- Rogan recounts Tucker Carlson's theory that Watergate was an intelligence operation to remove Nixon for digging into the JFK assassination.
- Murray confesses a long-held objection to Tom Brokaw's 'The Greatest Generation' for excluding his own generation.
Things worth remembering
- The phrase 'tanned, rested and ready' (about Nixon) was coined by Murray's friend Dick Blasucci during a Hunter Thompson bit.
- Nixon once designed an actual football play and gave it to Redskins coach George Allen, who ran it and lost about 10 yards.
- Murray and Rogan blame the Nixon administration's sweeping Schedule I psychedelics act for derailing 1960s creativity and culture.
- 'The Rifleman' star Chuck Connors was a former Chicago Cubs baseball player.
- All the golf material in Caddyshack came from Murray's brother Brian's real caddying memories; Murray started as a 'shag boy' at age 10.
- A 'shag boy' was a live target who ran out and retrieved golf balls while bad golfers aimed at him.
- Elite archers seek a 'surprise shot' using a hinge or thumb release so they can't anticipate the recoil.
- Murray actually sank multiple pool balls in three shots during the Groundhog Day pool scene, but the cinematographer reset it anyway.
- As a young SNL cast member Murray lived on a credit card and a 'Skull's Angels' cab account, signing his name with no cash needed.