Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and the Change in Bill Murray

Back in the early 80s, Bill Murray(who had entered SNL in its SECOND season, as the "new guy" when Chevy and Belushi and Ackroyd and Gilda were 'original gangstas") surprised everybody by becoming the true breakout star from the 70s.

Belushi was dead by 1982. Chase struggled with his stardom(a lotta flops leavened by Fletch and the like), Ackroyd made big money pairing with FUNNIER co-stars(Belushi, Murphy from the 80's group, Murray)...but Bill Murray became a surprise superstar.

It started with a smallish cute teen-oriented 1979 summer camp movie called Meatballs, a little hit. Then Murray stole 1980's addyshack away from Chase(who was nonetheless, good too -- this was a hit for him), then Murray hit big all by himself with 1981's Stripes(though lesser-known Harold Ramis was a great comedy partner -- a secret weapon soon to reveal his true powers -- and John Candy was in there making HIS name),

In 1982, Murray took a "small role" in the Dustin Hoffman vehicle Tootsie. He proved both a great comedic foil to Hoffman and appeared throughout the movie, not quite stealing the film from Hoffman but pretty much stealing it from everybody else. Murray clearly had star power. Great line readings(he gets the FINAL reaction line of all the cast reacting to Hoffman's big reveal at the end, and his is the funniest.) And as one critic noted, "the key to Bill Murray, with his face and expressions, is he is instantly funny just standing there.

And then came the big one in 1984: Ghostbusters, a summer blockbuster that attracted kids and adults alike -- kids for the ghosts, adults for Murray's (often improvised) one-liners. There were four Ghostbusters -- Dan Ackroyd(struggling with the fact that while he was very funny in sketch TV, he wasn't very funny on screen), Harold Ramis(REALLY proving his hidden star power, even as he also had a career as a writer and director) and Ernie Hudson(entering the movie late but with great presence and his own one-liners -- but the star, the center of the Ghostbusters universe -- was clearly Bill Murray. Superstardom hit big.

And Murray did some funny things with his superstardom. He released a movie that he made Ghostbusters to get the greenlight for: a drama from a great novel -- The Razor's Edge -- that wasn't a hit at all.

And then Murray pretty much walked out of Hollywood and let his superstardom lose momentum.

There was no Murray star vehicle in 1985. No Murray star vehicle in 1986. No Murray star vehicle in 1987. And finally a Murray star vehicle at the very end of 1988 -- the hip Xmas season "Scrooged." But the momentum was surely slowed. (Murray did, in those fallow years, make two small appearances -- a hilarious cameo opposite Steve Martin in 1986's Little Shop of Horrors and an SNL hosting gig with an absolutely side-splitting bit as Hercules with a pot gut in an Italian dubbed epic. ("I find that muscle turns to fat," the dubbed and shirtless Murray opines.)

Murray followed "Scrooged in 1988 with Ghostbusters II in the summer of 1989. It made money, but it was swamped as "a big thing" by Batman and undercut by a new Indiana Jones. And it just wasn't as funny as the first one; even Murray's one liners(said, perhaps, by a comic no longer interested in scoring big points) weren't all that great.

Murray wasn't pleased with Ghostbusters II and began a two decade long stonewall effort by Murray to NEVER allow another Ghostbusters movie to be made.

Murray had veto power over ANYBODY making another Ghostbusters , so not only would HE not agree to appear in a sequel, he wouldn't let Dan Ackroyd(a co-creator of the Ghostbusters story) make another sequel. Murray's heart was in the right place, actually: the original Ghostbusters was a true one-of-a-kind blockbuster and a comedy classic for all ages. Why mess with that?

But over the years, these things happened:

ONE: Bill Murray reportedly became a badly behaving "difficult" kind of star. Mean to people. Bad in relationships with wives. Unsupportive of his former pals and co-stars.

TWO: After collaborating yet again with his pal Harold Ramis on the 90s classic "Groundhog Day"(surely a different project than Ghostbusters), Murray turned on Ramis and "never spoke to him again"...for YEARS.

THREE: Harold Ramis eventually died..Murray had reached out to him to reconcile before then, but once Ramis died...it seems that "mean Bill Murray had a change of heart." He appeared on the Oscars and paid Ramis tribute out of nowhere.

FOUR: Bill Murray seems to have softened. Maybe it was the Ramis thing. Maybe he becamse too aware of his(tabloid?) reputation as a jerk (he had insulted Lucy Liu on the set of "Charlie's Angels.")

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