Globes Flashback '04: Murray Picks a Good One
Bill Murray had been acting over a quarter of a century before he won his first Golden Globe, also receiving a coveted Oscar nomination that year. Nevertheless, as he fielded questions in the pressroom after winning the award, he took the spotlight off himself and turned it on the film.
Beginning his Saturday Night Live days in 1975, the actor and comedian had received his first Golden Globes nomination for Ghostbusters and received another down the line for Rushmore, but didn't grasp an award in his hand after an awards show until he found Lost in Translation in 2003--or rather, until it found him.
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"[Sofia Coppola] (writer, director) really contacted every person I know, and over the period of about a year...all my friends and acquaintances would say, 'There's a script coming your way from Sofia Coppola," he says after winning Best Actor at the 2004 Globes. "It got a big buildup, but it was O.K.; it's worked out really well. I like the movie a lot; it's my favorite movie."
When asked to isolate an aspect of the film industry that relates to the film's theme of "lost in translation," Murray focuses on the history of film and what it has to offer to present filmmakers.
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"I think what gets lost in the translation is that that's all material that we need to look at and the filmmakers need to know in order to bring film to modern audiences," he says. "That you have to know that stuff to see what's gone before; you have to know what they've done so you can take it and use those methods in telling stories to a modern age."
Coming from a filmmaking family, Sofia Coppola, daughter of renowned director Francis Ford Coppola, prevented the history of film from being lost in translation, which was what set Lost Translation apart from the rest of the year's films. The film also won Best Screenplay and Best Film at the Globes that year, which was more important to Murray than his own accolade.
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"I think it is really an award for the movie," then 53-year-old Murray says. "People like the movie a lot, so they had to say thank you 'cause it is good. But for me, it means I picked a good one; that's what it really does to me."