The actor has little or nothing to do with these products and seems not to have brought legal action. People are strangely moved to make this stuff and others to purchase it.
Every actor/celebrity (indeed, every person in theory) has a right to control what others do with his name, image, and likeness - this is what the law calls the "right of publicity."
So you can't just paste a photo or drawing of a famous person onto mugs, etc. and sell them for profit.
That is, apparently, unless that person is Bill Murray. He certainly could act to stop this but he hasn't.
I guess this fits with his eccentric-oddball persona. Very odd, legally speaking, but a nice way to relate to the people. Don't know the first thing about the man personally but this is the kind of thing that makes me want to know someone who can be so engagingly goofy.
It's a smart business move, regardless of his reasons. If he were to sue, there wouldn't be a Bill Murray trend to write about in the Times.
The analogy to Che Guevara seems right. The image has taken on a life of its own, independent of the man. Che's image in the U.S. seems to represent a blank slate revolutionary.
A counter-analogy is MLK. Why are there so many Che shirts but no MLK shirts? In part because the King family will sue you for any use of his image or words without a subsequent payday. This has prevented MLK from being the omnipresent cultural presence he should be.
The MLK thing is amazing to me. We celebrate this person every year as a national event but unlike are presidents his speeches are under enforced copyright so nobody hears his famous thoughts or words. Even on his day people reference the I have a dream speech but nobody hears it or even references portions of it. It's a weird shadow of remembrance.
In a pinch, you can use a copyright-free version of the MLK speech. Sample:
> "I Have An Idea"
>
> I'm super happy to join with you today in what
> will go down as a noteworthy demonstration for
> freedom in the history of our nation. One hundred
> years ago, a great president --his statue is behind
> me-- signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Good
> stuff, that.
>
> I have an idea that one day we'll will rise up
> and live out: "We hold these truths to be
> self-evident, that all men are created equal."
>
> I have an idea today!
>
> Free finally! Free finally!
> Thank the Maker, we're free finally!
I don't think Bill Murray worries too much about "remaining relevant".
He's pretty much been in semi-retirement for some time now, as far I know, and doesn't seem to care if people notice him. Just my take - don't follow so closely.
Thinking about your legacy is "ridiculously ego-laden"? I'm having the trouble seeing how it's "ridiculous" to reflect, in the later part of your life, on what your contribution to the world may have been.
And this post is so empty of content that one questions whether it actually ever existed: like a fart in a hurricane.
Alright I agree, obfuscating lack of anything interesting to say with attempts at being poetic is pretty fun. That being said, I gather from the fact that you felt you had to post a comment that somewhere in the fog you somehow disagree with some part of my comment. I'd be interested in seeing your second try at expressing what your actual disagreement is.
It's not ridiculous for someone else, but in the context of Bill Murray, it is, at least if his persona matches his actual personality. He exemplifies someone who doesn't plan and doesn't scheme, but just treats people well and keeps calm and carries on.
Whether that's exactly his reasoning or not, there's no doubt that it's exactly the vibe that he gives off, and exactly why he is so beloved. People are attracted to the sense of existential authenticity that he exudes.
Well it does help that he probably has no need for any extra income.
If this were the same for some other person who sees that money is being possibly taken out of his pocket because of someone else using his likeness without his permission, and he isn't quite set for life money wise the reaction might be understandably quite different.
I'm sure he's rich, but he never earned the kind of money other A listers earned, the tens of millions per film. And many other actors seem to have an unquenchable desire for more.
His lack of an agent and the difficulty of getting him to agree to actually do a film suggests that money is not a motivator for him generally.
Oh he, or at least some agency representing him, does. Even though it's not clear why some business are targeted (small face-mug class) and not others (e.g etsy). But you might get a mail if you piggy back on the Bill Murray ride.
What's interesting is how to cast Bill Murray for a movie. He doesn't have an agent, lawyer, personal phone number, or email address. Only a mythical anonymous 1-800 number where you leave a voicemail describing your script and hope he calls back. He's known to check his voicemail only once in a while..
He's also a nomad, so if he's interested, the script is sent through snail mail to his variable current location.
I think part of the fame is that he says things like "no one will ever believe you" to people whose events he shows up to, and doesn't self-publicize. People then go on to talk about it, and incredulity is sometimes met with proof in the form of photos of Murray holding a tequila bottle or whatnot. These little bits of truth make all the other legends (true or not) seem true, giving life to the legend.
I was a musician playing at the Beauty Bar in Austin during SXSW a few years ago. Bill Murray turned up to the party and jumped behind the bar. He asked me what I wanted and I asked for a whiskey coke. He came back over and said "Shot 'a tequila and a beer!" He handed me my drinks, winked at me and moved on. Just about every single person who saw him that night had a better night because he was there. That's a pretty interesting effect to have on people.
He does stuff like this all the time and the legends just grow from there.
A friend of mine was at a bar in the LES and Bill Murray got behind the bar and started serving people. No matter what you ordered he'd just make you a gin and tonic.
Another friend of mine was at Bembe in Brooklyn a few years back and Bill Murray came in, skipped the line out front, and came out a few minutes later with two bottles of water and just walked away. My friend asked him if he really went in to just get water and he said "Yes. Your friends will never believe you."
Both are friends I completely trust to not be lying, but Bill Murray was right. I don't believe them.
I've loved BM since Meatballs, but I thought this was an interesting point, "lost in the funny retellings is the melancholy reality of an older, divorced dad partying with 20-somethings." It made me wonder how I'd view my own father if he was doing things like this on a regular basis. Probably not too favorably.
Maybe let your father live his own life as he wants it and don't judge him?
(Ironically, that's a common advice people give to parents regarding their kids).
Besides do you know what's REAL melancholy for an "older, divorced dad"?
NOT partying at all, and not having people to love/care for them. Second worse, would be only having boring older people conversations and pass-times. If they can be that relevant that even 20th year olds are OK to hang around with them, more power to them.
What would be indeed be lame would be to TRY/WANT to party with younger people, and them rejecting you. Or partying with younger people but not being able to connect with another person out of "party" scenarios. Which I'd guess is not the case here.
That sort of reinforces his point. His dad, or most people's dad, would likely be that lame person trying to party with younger people, but failing because they aren't famous.
But Bill Murray is an entertainer by trade. His employer is a studio, but he performs for an audience. So he isn't really partying with them in any normal sense, he is dropping in on his clients in their environment and just being cool. This guy is just extremely cool, that's what makes it different, a level of cool only a handful of people can occupy at any point in history.
I've always loved Bill Murray's comedy. He's funny in a timeless way.
But my favorite story about him is how he calls Kelly Lynch's husband every time Roadhouse is on TV to tell him that she's having sex with Patrick Swayze. Apparently this has gone on for years.
I love that he'd do that to begin with, but that he'd do it for so long without any expectation that it would become public knowledge is awesome.
My favorite Bill Murray story is the time he was filming something and some fans asked for an autograph and instead Bill filmed a Wes Anderson style slo-mo walk with them.
But my favorite story about him is how he calls Kelly Lynch's husband every time Roadhouse is on TV to tell him that she's having sex with Patrick Swayze. Apparently this has gone on for years.
I'm going to have to Google this. If that's true, it's hilarious.
I'm not so sure his comedy is timeless. There are many, many comedians from earlier eras that one might have thought were timeless, but watching them today, they don't seem funny at all. WC Fields, for example.
W.C. Fields alcoholism and dislike of children isn't funny? I think that says more about your own sense of humor than any innate quality of his humor.
I absolutely adored his stuff when I first ran into it (admittedly around age 12), and the exchange in My Little Chickadee of, as he and another fellow sit down to play a card game, "Is this a game of chance?" "Not the way I play it, no" I to this day still find sublime.
> At one time there really was a man known as "the World's Greatest Authority." I ran across him in trying to nail down one of the many silly questions that kept coming at me from odd sources. Like this: Set your terminal to "research." Punch parameters in succession "North American culture," "English-speaking," "mid-twentieth century," "comedians,", "the World's Greatest Authority." The answer you can expect is "Professor Irwin Corey." You'll find his routines timeless humor.
I did not find this to be true. Then again, many at the time were also perplexed about his humor.
I like lots of things that Bill Murray's done, but that isn't really funny at all. I doubt it would have been funny 40 years ago either.
Humor is subjective, so my opinion really doesn't matter.
I think there are definitely comedic styles/routine/jokes/whatever that might end up being timeless, but there are a lot of things that will become less humorous over time. Half of the sitcoms I grew up watching in the 80's and early 90's don't seem funny at all anymore.
Never managed to get on the HIMYM bandwagon so I can't comment on that until I get around to finally watching it.
As far as Seinfeld, I've noticed that people my age who grew up with the show in school and college consider it timeless but a lot of younger people don't see the big deal. Not so much that it's not funny (it is) or that it's dated (cultural references and cordless home phones are just window dressing), but that so many subsequent shows have been influenced by Seinfeld that it doesn't seem very new or original to a 17-year-old who just saw a few reruns for the first time.
It's sort of like how people will talk about The Beatles being overrated because people still refer to their relevance when they were still putting out albums, not how their work relates to current rock music. When the Beatles got huge it was relevant as much for the time and place as it was the actual music. But if you're a young listener today and you hear the Beatles at the same time as you hear later artists who were influenced by the Beatles, they don't seem like a big deal.
That's the problem with "timelessness" and something like pop culture that's always changing and building upon itself (not to mention how it favors novelty). It seems like there will always be cultural "enthusiasts" in any medium who appreciate the influence a given artist has on the popular culture but just the same, I find that same general "popular" audience loses sight of what made something big. And since the nature of pop culture is to mirror and cater to "the masses", on some level, that's who really determines relevance.
I'd agree on the music part. Timeless is something that stays unique, that will never be replicated. The Beatles have been successfully copied and mass-marketed, and are no longer really timeless. "Smells Like Teen Spirit", I would argue, is timeless, in that none of the imitators ever really pinned it down. Kids still hear it and it resonates with them. I would pin Queen as timeless as well, nobody has managed to really get that formula right again, but it still appeals today. Comedy can rarely be 'timeless', because its SO easy to steal a routine or a persona that made a previous comedian beloved, and thus dilute it.
Me neither. As I was reading the article I at first assumed the story was a spoof. The St. Murray candle picture is hilarious in its own right. There is something about his exasperated resignation that is akin to the suffering of catholic saints.
As I read more I came to understand that the public, including BM himself, have appropriated his persona and are doing mash-ups with it. Very nice.
In much modern Western popular music, authenticity is a huge component: we expect musicians to write and perform their own music and to have the lyrics be honest and at least somewhat autobiographical.
This makes listeners feel they have a connection to who the musician actually is.
Actors, by the very core of their occupation, don't have that level of immediate authenticity.
Plus, while films and television can be affecting and emotionally moving, you typically sit down, watch them for an hour or five, and move on. Music permeates our daily lives and by its nature can get tied up in all sorts of complex emotions and memories.
There are movies that have affected me profoundly but I'd have to watch them again in the right circumstances and mood to even hope to be similarly affected a second or third time. But there are songs and albums that I'd argue will always get an emotional reaction from me barring some weird scenario where I had to listen to them on repeat for days until they were worn out.
It's almost as if allowing people to be flawed in their personal life is at least as reasonable as turning everything celebrity-related into the segment of the jerry springer show where audience members moralize for applause.
Is there a history apart from the allegations in the divorce filing of his ex-wife?
It's possible that with no further reports, the public are discounting those as legal posturing, to strengthen her negotiating position against a pretty solid pre-nup.
I've never been party to the divorce process in any way. I was not aware that "quotes from a divorce filing... can and usually do contain pretty much anything the person filing it wants to say, with no obligation to prove any of it to even the low standard required in civil proceedings much less the reasonable doubt standard required under criminal law."
This is very interesting to me, as I've seen quotes from divorce filings used as evidence in wrongdoing (online, not in a court). I wonder where the experience for "as anyone knows" comes from. Is this your personal experience and/or that of your friends talking?
Just sincerely wondering. It's good to know things like this.
Personal experience reading filings. In most states (and certainly in California), there's no need to prove any particular or even general allegation in a filing. It's basically a license to rant about your soon-to-be ex. Most people aren't dumb enough to pay lawyers extra to spout off; they just want the divorce. But as you can imagine, giving people who are hurt, bitter, and angry about a failed relationship a venue to publicly berate their partner does often enough lead to all manner of nastiness. This isn't new, either; it's been going on for as long as there's been divorce. It makes for mildly entertaining reading, but one can't really take any of it as fact.
Civil filings in general [0] have no required proof: they are simply the places where the contentions which will be at issue later in the process (where they generally will need to be proven) are laid out. This is just the basics of the legal process and what a filing is by definition; they precede and frame the part of the process in which proof is involved.
[0] Criminal filings are somewhat more complex, and differ between cases proceeding on indictment vs. those on information.
I liked your comment for the most part, slandering people on the internet is way too easy. On the other hand, it really defeats the purpose to say it's part of a "misguided pseudo-feminist agenda". The men you're voicing concern for, do you think they benefit more from a gender-centric discussion?
I would agree with you in this way: Misguided pseudo-activists using slander are a problem on the Internet, on both ends of the political spectrum and of any gender.
No, I don't. My comments apply to any and all crimes; however, this particular crime and that particular agenda seem to be especially popular with the slanderists right now.
No one should get away with abusing anyone else. Yet, this term (domestic violence) has been coined as a man's thing. It also neglects mental abuse that are very destructive. If you search Google, you'll find plenty of links re-enforcing this view (eg. men need to be told to stop doing it, we need raise money for women who are impacted, etc).
There is no doubt that there's an agenda behind this particular term. Unless there's a very good reason, nothing should be attributed to one gender, yet, it happens all the time.
I did manage to find this link about the incidents with Bill Murray in question. I suggest you read these articles as they paint somewhat of a different picture.
Here is one quote "The police report continues, 'I then had the complainant meet me at the police station to talk with the juveniles. They informed me that their mother had been drinking heavily and had (become) physical with them.'"
The issue here isn't whether it's true, but why it has not tarnished his image. A lot of images have been tarnished by rumors or allegations, whether based or baseless, so why is the case of Murray different?
Maybe the alleged incident was not credible/juicy enough? It's not like a security camera caught Murray smacking around his wife in a hotel lobby or a picture of his wife with a black eye leaked. Anecdotally, I live in Charleston where Murray/his ex wife live. Some years back a coworker was dating a girl who was a 911 dispatcher, and apparently his wife was well known to the dispatchers for making spurious calls on Bill. So my guess would be all the celebrity gossip rags probably didn't have anything good enough to run with.
Every actor/celebrity (indeed, every person in theory) has a right to control what others do with his name, image, and likeness - this is what the law calls the "right of publicity."
So you can't just paste a photo or drawing of a famous person onto mugs, etc. and sell them for profit.
That is, apparently, unless that person is Bill Murray. He certainly could act to stop this but he hasn't.
I guess this fits with his eccentric-oddball persona. Very odd, legally speaking, but a nice way to relate to the people. Don't know the first thing about the man personally but this is the kind of thing that makes me want to know someone who can be so engagingly goofy.