SydLexia.com - The Forums :: View topic - "Garfield" IS indeed Bill Murray's biggest regret

Gallery 2 · Posted: Jul 19 2010 08:28 pm

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/movie-talk-bill-murrays-garfield-good.html

Quote:

Why did the famously hard-to-track-down actor, who doesn't even have a manager or publicist, agree to lend his voice to a movie starring a CGI cat and relative unknown, Breckin Meyer? Well, as it turns out, as he explained in an interview with GQ, he really just wanted to work with a Coen brother.

"I looked at the ['Garfield'] script, and it said, 'So-and-so and Joel Coen.' And I thought...well, I love those Coens! They're funny," Murray says in the GQ article. "So I sorta read a few pages of it and thought, Yeah, I'd like to do that."

But as any film buff can probably tell you, the writer in question wasn't actually Joel Coen, the Coen Brother-writer of "The Big Lebowski" and "Fargo." The "Garfield" writer was Joel Cohen (with an "h"), a writer of not-very-Coen-esque movies "Cheaper by the Dozen," "Toy Story," and "Money Talks." Regardless, Bill Murray told GQ he was shocked when he discovered his error.

"So I sat down and watched the whole thing, and I kept saying, 'Who the hell cut this thing? Who did this? What ... was Coen thinking?' And then they explained it to me: It wasn't written by that Joel Coen."

His death scene in Zombieland has new meaning now.

Posted: Jul 19 2010 08:34 pm

As that article points out, he still signed on for the sequel for some reason.

Posted: Jul 19 2010 08:47 pm

im sure that the reason for it rhymes with money

Posted: Jul 19 2010 09:25 pm

Tim Curry was in the sequel, too.

Title: Alexz Aficionado Joined: May 21 2008 Posts: 2889

Haha

Well, "Garfield" was never a strong or memorable movie. No surprise there. His body of work is so big and precedes him that few people will ever remember he did it.

Posted: Jul 19 2010 11:46 pm

Seems like Garfield would have been slightly more tolerable if Garfield were real and just lip synced like a high tech The Adventures of Milo & Otis, instead of that orange CG abomination.

Posted: Jul 20 2010 12:14 am

Blackout wrote:

Seems like Garfield would have been slightly more tolerable if Garfield were real and just lip synced like a high tech The Adventures of Milo & Otis, instead of that orange CG abomination.

They did that for every other freakin' animal in the movie, but not Garfield himself.

And as the AVGN said, isn't it strange that Bill Murray voiced Garfield and played Peter Venkman in the Garfield and Ghostbusters movies, while the same voice actor who voiced the cartoon Garfield played the animated Venkman?

Posted: Jul 20 2010 01:07 am

They need to a dark a gritty Garfield reboot. Very serious and brooding.

Posted: Jul 20 2010 01:15 am

Andrew Man wrote:

They need to a dark a gritty Garfield reboot. Very serious and brooding.

Don't give them any ideas, if this happens I will hold you Andrew Man, fully responsible! Mad

Posted: Jul 20 2010 01:26 am

Blackout wrote:

Andrew Man wrote:

They need to a dark a gritty Garfield reboot. Very serious and brooding.

Don't give them any ideas, if this happens I will hold you Andrew Man, fully responsible! Mad

I'd probably watch that.

Posted: Jul 20 2010 07:45 am

Skinr wrote:

And as the AVGN said, isn't it strange that Bill Murray voiced Garfield and played Peter Venkman in the Garfield and Ghostbusters movies, while the same voice actor who voiced the cartoon Garfield played the animated Venkman?

They have very similar voices. For the longest time, I thought it was Bill Murray who did the cartoon Garfield.

Joined: Feb 24 2006 Posts: 2578

Skinr wrote:

And as the AVGN said, isn't it strange that Bill Murray voiced Garfield and played Peter Venkman in the Garfield and Ghostbusters movies, while the same voice actor who voiced the cartoon Garfield played the animated Venkman?

Strange? I kind of assumed that was one of the key reasons for casting Murray.

But in any case, yeah, whatever Bill. You still did the sequel. You couldn't have regretted it THAT much.

Posted: Jul 20 2010 11:45 am

I honestly have not seen either movie, and who knows if I ever will.

Posted: Jul 20 2010 02:54 pm

Andrew Man wrote:

They need to a dark a gritty Garfield reboot. Very serious and brooding.

If the did a movie based on the comic strips where they remove garfield's dialog and replace him with a regular cat, it may not be dark and brooding, but would certainly be depressing.

Posted: Jul 20 2010 09:45 pm

ah, gotta love Bill, why could Dan Akroyd have followed suit

Wizard Joined: Jun 12 2009 Posts: 4209

You know, as much as I love Garfield, this movie wasn't very memorable for me. I still enjoyed it, I guess that's all that matters.

Posted: Jul 20 2010 11:26 pm

I saw it on a cramped plane sitting in coach next to a fat bastard that was cramming me against my window seat, and it actually made the flight worse.

2010 SLF Tag Champ Joined: Jun 07 2006 Posts: 12294

jprime wrote:

Tim Curry was in the sequel, too.

you know what else he voiced?

Wizard Joined: Jun 12 2009 Posts: 4209

FNJ wrote:

jprime wrote:

Tim Curry was in the sequel, too.

you know what else he voiced?

Win.