Bill Murray

High-Level Overview

Joe Rogan welcomes Bill Murray, who arrives openly admitting he has never heard the show and is not quite sure who Joe is, which sets the tone for a loose, wandering and very warm conversation. Murray tells how he met Hunter S. Thompson by nearly drowning in a Colorado hotel pool, recalls the chaos of playing Thompson on film while Thompson lived in his guest house, and mounts a heartfelt defense of John Belushi against the way Bob Woodward portrayed him. Along the way the two talk about 1960s culture and cars, Steve McQueen's quiet screen presence, old cowboy shows, Saturday Night Live and NewsRadio, Phil Hartman, Murray's three new films, and what golf and archery teach about keeping the mind inside the body.

The tone is playful and affectionate, with Murray handing out golf shirts and shorts mid-show and frequently losing names he then asks producer Jamie to look up, but it turns reflective and sometimes emotional when the talk moves to political division, the loss of shared purpose, and how cities should care for homeless people. The conversation drifts freely between storytelling, cultural nostalgia, sports psychology and a respectful back-and-forth about social problems.

The Discussion Explores:

• How Bill Murray met Hunter S. Thompson through a failed underwater escape act, and what it was like to play him on film
• Thompson's writing, especially the "high water mark" passage, and the 1960s anti-war movement's fading
• Political tribalism, constant election cycles, and why Murray prefers to start from what people can agree on
• Steve McQueen, Bullitt, old muscle cars and classic TV westerns
• Murray's new films and how he chooses projects through trusted directors
• Saturday Night Live, NewsRadio, Phil Hartman's professionalism and John Belushi's legacy
• Golf, archery and pool as practices in quieting the mind and staying in the body
• Homelessness, mental illness, bureaucracy and the search for bipartisan solutions

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

Meeting Hunter S. Thompson in a Hotel Pool

Murray explains that in the spring or summer of 1977, after his first real year on Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels asked him to drive his Volkswagen convertible back across the country. Murray took his time, stopping in Reno and then Aspen, where he stayed at the Jerome Hotel during the off season, when the locals had the bar and pool to themselves. There he fell in with a very funny stranger, and the two spent the night showing off for women. Murray boasted he could perform an underwater escape act, so he was tied to a lounge chair with socks and lowered into the pool, having asked to be placed at the six-foot end so he could stand up for air. Tied to a chair, he discovered he could not stand tall enough to reach the surface, and his new friend finally hauled the whole chair out of the water. Only the next day did he learn the man was Hunter S. Thompson.

Murray later played Thompson in a film, and he describes the weight of portraying a real person: an actor has to honor the whole life of the man, not just the 90 minutes on screen. "You've got to try to take in as much as you can so you're not lying." During the shoot Thompson lived in Murray's guest house, and they stayed up until shortly before dawn, leaving Murray about 90 minutes of sleep before the driver knocked. Murray constantly rewrote the script as he learned more, and he and Thompson co-wrote a scene about Thompson encountering Richard Nixon in a urinal, inspired by the real limousine ride in which Thompson was allowed to talk only about NFL football with Nixon.

The two also recall the documentary footage of Murray, Thompson and their friend Dick Lesucci shining a Hollywood searchlight outside the Chateau Marmont and asking passers-by about Nixon's comeback. Murray credits Lesucci with the line "He's tanned. He's rested. And he's ready.", which he still uses about himself. Rogan argues Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is one of the best books ever written about American politics, and he plays the famous passage from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas about the wave of the 1960s finally breaking. Murray is visibly moved, both by the writing and by how close Johnny Depp and Thompson became.

Tribalism and Starting From Agreement

The Nixon-football story leads Murray into a reflection on how, for about ten years, he has met people he needs to work with but cannot talk politics with, because it would derail everything. Some of these people, he says, have lived extraordinary lives and given enormous amounts to the world, and he argues that valuing that first is better than leading with political identity. Rogan agrees, saying Americans are too tribally divided and that elections every two and four years mean people never get a break from division, propaganda and stress, made worse by social media feeds full of the worst news in the world.

Murray reflects on what the 1960s movement got wrong, especially hostility toward soldiers, most of whom were drafted. He distinguishes the agents of division, ordinary people doing their jobs, from the architects who create the tribal world, and wonders how to reach the architects. Music, he suggests, once united everyone: soldiers in Vietnam and protesters at home listened to the same Jimi Hendrix. Rogan connects the end of that era to the Nixon administration's sweeping drug scheduling of psychedelics, which he believes was aimed at the anti-war and civil rights movements, and the two agree, half joking, that at least they can concur that cars stopped looking as good as they used to.

Cars, Steve McQueen and Quiet Acting

Rogan praises 1960s design, from his 1965 Corvette to the 1969 Boss 429, which he calls the pinnacle of muscle car design, and pulls up a modern Shelby Super Snake to prove some new cars still look great. Murray shares a possibly apocryphal story that the Ford Taurus was a composite of parts from other cars. The conversation turns to Bullitt, and Murray says that on his latest rewatch the car chase mattered less than the quiet moments: McQueen in the grocery store, dealing respectfully with people, his calm only cracking with the manipulative politician Chalmers.

Rogan adds that Le Mans opens with long stretches without dialogue, something films could do back then. Murray has been watching old westerns on satellite channels and admires McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive for how little he did on screen, always having a small piece of physical business, like his sawed-off rifle. They also recall The Rifleman's Chuck Connors, once a Chicago Cub, and Clayton Moore of The Lone Ranger, whom Murray once saw appear without the mask because of contract rules.

New Films and Choosing Projects

Murray runs through three films: Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme, shot in Berlin with Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera and Mia, Kate Winslet's daughter; The Friend, adapted by Scott McGehee and David Siegel from Sigrid Nunez's novel, starring Naomi Watts and an enormous dog whose meaning is part of the puzzle; and Riff Raff, a comedy with Jennifer Coolidge, Ed Harris, Pete Davidson, Lewis Pullman and Gabrielle Union that he urges people to see with ten friends. He jokes that the trailer gives away too much.

On choosing work, Murray says that when Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch or Sofia Coppola call, he simply says yes, because they know what he can do, look out for him and treat people well. Everyone else has to send a script, and he usually knows within five pages whether to keep reading. He describes Anderson productions as communal: "we all live in a quasi dormitory," with cast and crew taking over a small hotel and padding down to breakfast in slippers. Of Kingpin, he recalls roadside rock-throwing contests between takes to keep the energy up, adding, "if you don't have fun making a comedy you've just made a bad movie that's not funny."

SNL, Phil Hartman and Improv

Rogan, who worked with Phil Hartman on NewsRadio, remembers him as a wonderful friend and a consummate professional who hole-punched every script into a binder with tabs and notes. Murray jokes that he never trusted scripts that much, since SNL sketches were rewritten between Wednesday and Friday and unlearning lines is hard. Both note that Hartman made it late, around 37, was also a gifted illustrator who drew album covers, and had real modesty. Rogan explains that NewsRadio ended after Hartman was killed, despite Jon Lovitz stepping in.

Murray praises his brother Joel's touring Whose Line Is It Anyway? show, saying audience members brought on stage raise the energy because anything can happen, and that long-time improvisers become fearless. They also note that SNL's once-joked-about In Memoriam for jokes that can no longer be told would now be hours long.

Defending John Belushi

In the most pointed part of the conversation, Murray explains why he distrusts Bob Woodward. After reading about five pages of Wired, Woodward's book about Belushi, he felt the portrait of his friend was inaccurate and built on sources far outside Belushi's inner circle, which made him wonder what might have been done to Nixon. He jokes that the three most famous people from Wheaton, Illinois are Belushi, Red Grange and Woodward.

Murray says Belushi made careers possible, including his own: "He made people's career as possible. Mine would be one of them." Belushi broke into New York first and dragged the Second City crowd with him, let people sleep on his couch, and helped revive the blues, leading to venues like the House of Blues. Murray calls him "the best stage actor I ever saw" and says he was a light drinker whose fatal speedball was, to his knowledge, his first. He also remembers New York in the late 1970s, when he arrived at 26: a broke city with un-air-conditioned subways and a grittier Times Square, where suddenly having a credit card and a cab account felt like an education.

Golf, Archery and Staying in the Body

Murray started as a 10-year-old shag boy, standing in the practice range as golfers hit balls at him, then caddied, which earned Monday-morning play; his brother Brian's caddying memories became the golf material in Caddyshack. His handicap is about 12, once as low as seven, and dropping thanks to Every Shot Must Have a Purpose by Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott, former coaches of Annika Sorenstam. The book taught him to separate planning a shot from hitting it and to "pull the weeds out of your head" before each swing, with play itself being only minutes of a round.

A key practice is tossing a ball up and catching it between shots to keep attention physical. "Everything we are, everything we hope to be, everything we dream about, it's all within the skin." If you are already in your body, he says, you do not have to drag yourself back from space, and "if you're not in the body, good luck." Rogan connects this to archery and pool. He explains how elite target archers at the Lancaster and Vegas shoots use hinge releases to achieve a surprise shot, pulling with their back muscles so they cannot anticipate the recoil, and says the difficulty itself creates a "moving meditation aspect" that clears away every other worry. Murray adds that he learned pool drills from an expert for Groundhog Day.

Homelessness, Bureaucracy and Shared Purpose

Murray, recently in San Francisco, defends the city as resilient, having survived the beatniks, hippies, earthquakes and AIDS, and says homelessness is fundamentally a mental health problem rather than a political choice, tracing it to the closing of mental hospitals. Rogan agrees on mental illness and addiction but argues that allowing people to camp anywhere is a lack of real empathy, that California's large homelessness budgets create jobs with no incentive for results, and that funding should be tied to progress. Murray counters with an idea he heard: the people who can solve the problem are often inside the bureaucracy, so cutting blindly risks removing them. His suggestion is "let's not talk politics. Let's agree on what we can agree on."

Murray reflects on Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation and on how a real common enemy united people, and Rogan recalls New York after 9/11, when "every person on the street looked right in your eyes." Rogan argues that "the health of the community, it's dependent upon the health of the lowest members of the community," and describes Austin's pandemic efforts under Mayor Adler and Alan Graham's Loaves and Fishes community, where formerly homeless people live in small houses, learn crafts and sell their art with Graham living among them. Murray says they need to get him to San Francisco.

Conclusion

This is Bill Murray at his most characteristic: generous, digressive and funny, with sudden flashes of seriousness. The episode offers rare first-hand stories about Hunter S. Thompson and John Belushi, a clear case for loyalty to friends against careless reporting, and a practical philosophy of attention drawn from golf and archery: plan, then return fully to the body and simply hit the shot. Running beneath it all is Murray's plea to set politics aside long enough to agree on common problems, from a divided country to the people living on its streets, and a reminder that shared purpose, whether music in the 1960s or unity after 9/11, is what has brought people together before.

This is a summary of "Bill Murray" from The Joe Rogan Experience, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.