When Bill Murray Unexpectedly Adapted a W. Somerset Maugham Novel: The Razor’s Edge (1984)

In sum­mer of 1984, Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture was dom­i­nat­ed by Ghost­busters, a block­buster that com­bined sharp com­e­dy and spec­tac­u­lar visu­al effects on a scale — and in an unlike­ly har­mo­ny — movie­go­ers had nev­er seen before. Its great suc­cess advanced the careers of every­one involved, not least that of Bill Mur­ray. Hav­ing already been an ear­ly (if not imme­di­ate­ly beloved) Sat­ur­day Night Live cast mem­ber and giv­en much-praised per­for­mances in come­dies like Cad­dyshack, Stripes, and Toot­sie, he brought his famous­ly detached sen­si­bil­i­ty to the role of the ghost-bust­ing Dr. Peter Venkman and there­by became the most in-demand com­ic actor in Hol­ly­wood. When, less than six months lat­er, The Razor’s Edge opened with Mur­ray in the star­ring role, fans bought tick­ets in hopes of more laughs.

It’s not as if they had­n’t been warned. The Razor’s Edge was adapt­ed from a nov­el by W. Som­er­set Maugh­am, a pop­u­lar writer in his day, but hard­ly a straight­for­ward humorist. On the pro­mo­tion­al cir­cuit, Mur­ray stressed that this was “a seri­ous movie,” not a com­e­dy but a dra­ma. Nev­er­the­less, both crit­ics and audi­ences at the time had trou­ble accept­ing him in the role of Lar­ry Dar­rell, a once-light­heart­ed young man who comes back from World War I over­whelmed by the need to ven­ture back out into the world in search of the ulti­mate truths of exis­tence. Mur­ray was dri­ven to make the film (for which he took pay only as co-screen­writer) out of the deep iden­ti­fi­ca­tion he felt with the char­ac­ter, which can only have inten­si­fied the sting of its fail­ure.

That Lar­ry was a fel­low Chicagoan only explains part of the appeal. Mur­ray’s thir­ti­eth birth­day, the birth of his first child, and the death of friends like Doug Ken­ney and John Belushi (who’s indi­rect­ly eulo­gized in the film) had put him in a reflec­tive state of mind, while his grow­ing wealth and fame brought per­son­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal chal­lenges of their own. The prospect of exot­ic loca­tion shoots in Paris and the Himalayas, where Lar­ry’s peri­patet­ic seek­ing takes him, may have sweet­ened the deal. Revis­it­ed today, the result has plen­ty of mem­o­rable moments, some of them pos­sessed of gen­uine beau­ty and grandeur. Alas, the sto­ry Maugh­am tells in the nov­el, rich with the sub­tleties of mem­o­ry, per­cep­tion, and decep­tion, does­n’t sur­vive the Hol­ly­wood ten­den­cies toward over-com­pres­sion and lit­er­al-mind­ed­ness.

It must be said that some of the blame lies with Mur­ray him­self, whose goof­ball instincts clash against the nine­teen-twen­ties set­ting; as he lat­er admit­ted, he and direc­tor John Byrum were wrong to insist on a peri­od piece. (Just imag­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ties of Mur­ray play­ing a returned Viet­nam vet­er­an instead.) Regard­less, he con­tin­ued to fol­low his inner Lar­ry in the after­math, decamp­ing to Paris with his young fam­i­ly in order to live and learn far from the Amer­i­can scene he knew. It was there that he encoun­tered the teach­ings of the mys­tic G. I. Gur­d­ji­eff, whose influ­ence on Mur­ray’s per­sona we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. That marked anoth­er step along the path of expe­ri­ence that would lead him to play wis­er, sad­der, yet nev­er entire­ly unfun­ny char­ac­ters in pic­tures like Wes Ander­son­’s Rush­more and Sofia Cop­po­la’s Lost in Trans­la­tion — and, in so doing, win dra­mat­ic respectabil­i­ty after all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

The Zen of Bill Mur­ray: I Want to Be “Real­ly Here, Real­ly in It, Real­ly Alive in the Moment”

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

An Ani­mat­ed Bill Mur­ray on the Advan­tages & Dis­ad­van­tages of Fame

Bill Mur­ray, the Strug­gling New SNL Cast Mem­ber, Apol­o­gizes for Not Being Fun­ny (1977)

15 Great Films Adapt­ed from Equal­ly Great Nov­els

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.