Two of my favorite movies of all time are Bill Murray films, the classic Groundhog Day and the recent award-winning Lost in Translation. One of my favorite scenes of Lost in Translation is when Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are in a restaurant for breakfast. They were supposed to go out the night before but Bill declined to go and ended up in a one night stand which Scarlett discovers the next morning. They go out to breakfast anyway. Bill watches her while she pouts. Finally she sighs and in an effort to move this moment along, says "I just missed you last night" to which he replies "why, was there no one there to lavish attention on you?" He didn't need to move the moment along, he wasn't in it at all.
I bought myself the DVD, which I should have done years ago, and watched it again with the Director's Commentary, which was a most enjoyable experience. There's a wonderful scene in the diner in Groundhog Day, which reminded me of the scene in Lost in Translation that I liked so much. Bill Murray, in an effort to get Andie McDowell to fall in love with him, asks her all of her qualities in a perfect man and, as she lists them, responds "me, me, me again." She starts to get into it and ups the ante, saying "he wouldn't be afraid to cry in front of me" and Bill Murray looks at her with that snarky disdain and says "this is a man we're talking about?" Next, she says "he would change poopy diapers" and he sighs and asks "would he have to use the word poopy?" The attitude is the same as the lavishing attention remark -- I like you but there's a limit to how much of this girlie stuff I can take.
The Director's Commentary did not answer my number one question about the movie -- whether the bachelor auction at the end is purposely similar to the lunch auction in Oklahoma (another of the top 5). There are too many similarities for it not to be. Andie Mcdowell, to win him, turns over every penny she has, even though the bidding is running lower, just as Judd did to win the girl in the Oklahoma auction; the use of the phrase "two bits" and the auctioneer's admonition that he doesn't want to know what happens after they win.
Article comments