Ranking Every Bill Murray Character In A Wes Anderson Movie

Since playing the role of industrialist Herman Blume in Rushmore, Bill Murray has appeared in every single one of Wes Anderson’s movies. Murray is as inextricably tied to Anderson’s filmmaking as planimetric staging. Most recently, he played Arthur Howitzer, Jr., the curmudgeonly editor of the titular magazine in The French Dispatch.

Murray’s characters in Anderson’s movies have ranged from headlining lead roles, like Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, to bit parts, like the businessman in the opening scene of The Darjeeling Limited.

9 Boss (Isle Of Dogs)

Anderson’s second stab at stop-motion animation, Isle of Dogs, tells an original story about dogs stranded in the ocean in a dystopian near-future. Out of the central pack of dogs, only Bryan Cranston’s Chief is developed as a real character. His friends – Jeff Goldblum’s Duke, Edward Norton’s Rex, Bob Balaban’s King, and Bill Murray’s Boss – are all underdeveloped.

If they weren’t played by unmistakable stars whose voices are familiar to audiences like Goldblum, Norton, Balaban, and Murray himself, these characters would be indistinguishable.

8 Mr. Bishop (Moonrise Kingdom)

The coming-of-age romance at the heart of Moonrise Kingdom sees Sam and Suzy running away so they can be together. Sam runs away from his Khaki Scout camp, while Suzy runs away from her overbearing parents – both lawyers, played by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand.

While Murray is dryly hilarious as usual, the role of Mr. Bishop is awfully similar to Raleigh St. Clair from The Royal Tenenbaums: a sad intellectual whose emotionally distant wife is cheating on him.

7 The Businessman (The Darjeeling Limited)

Arguably Anderson’s most underrated movie, The Darjeeling Limited beautifully captures the kind of strained communication shared by siblings as three brothers (Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrien Brody) go on a spiritual journey across India by train.

Bill Murray has a hilariously minor role in the opening scene as a businessman who misses the titular train. This brief cameo at the beginning of the movie subverted the expectation that Murray will play a major role in every Anderson film.

6 M. Ivan (The Grand Budapest Hotel)

After M. Gustave escapes from wrongful imprisonment in The Grand Budapest Hotel, he calls upon the services of the Society of the Crossed Keys. Bill Murray plays M. Ivan, the last in a long line of well-spoken hotel concierges who call each other to enlist help for M. Gustave, the one who actually drives out to pick him up.

Creating a fun on-screen dynamic with Ralph Fiennes within just a couple of minutes, Murray is one of many memorable bit players in the giant ensemble of this movie.

5 Clive Badger (Fantastic Mr. Fox)

In Anderson’s first foray into stop-motion animation, the Roald Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr. Fox, Murray provided the voice for Clive Badger, Mr. Fox’s lawyer.

Clive Badger is mainly used to facilitate the “cuss” gag – the characters in Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson’s first family-friendly movie, all use “cuss” in place of the director’s usual swear words – but this bit lands spectacularly with Murray bouncing off of George Clooney’s Mr. Fox.

4 Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (The French Dispatch)

Murray’s role in Anderson’s latest movie – Arthur Howitzer, Jr., the eccentric editor of the French Dispatch – only appears briefly on-screen, but he’s essentially the lead of the movie. His death forms the framing narrative.

Arthur is a classic Murray curmudgeon with perfectly timed deadpan quips like, “Don’t cry in my office,” and sage yet bluntly delivered wisdom like, “Try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose.”

3 Raleigh St. Clair (The Royal Tenenbaums)

Raleigh St. Clair, one of the most memorable non-Tenenbaum characters in The Royal Tenenbaums (along with Eli Cash and Pagoda), is not at all what audiences expect from a Bill Murray character.

Raleigh never has a wry remark up his sleeve and he spends the majority of his screen time wallowing in misery, but Murray plays against type beautifully. His turn as Raleigh is brilliantly subdued and understated.

2 Herman Blume (Rushmore)

The first character that Murray played for Anderson is still one of his best. Herman Blume in Anderson’s sophomore directorial effort Rushmore is a wealthy industrialist who gets into a bitter rivalry with a 15-year-old.

He shares hysterical chemistry with Jason Schwartzman’s Max Fischer – first as friends, then as enemies, and finally as friends again. Murray leans into the hilarity of situations like smacking a basketball out of a child’s hands, but also the nuanced ambiguity of lines like, “I’m a little bit lonely these days.”

1 Steve Zissou (The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou)

The title role in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is the perfect Bill Murray character. He’s a satirical version of Jacques Cousteau who carries a Glock, tangles with pirates, and steals all his equipment from a rival oceanographer.

Murray’s performance in The Life Aquatic combines the uniquely absurdist comic sensibility that he developed on SNL (and in broad comedies like Ghostbusters and Stripes) with the melancholic nuance that he’s brought to the quirky indie films of Sofia Coppola and Jim Jarmusch.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3458 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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