The Bill Murray Experience is a 2017 documentary about an actress who embarks on a year-long quest to have a magical experience with the iconic actor/comedian.
With a title like The Bill Murray Experience, you might think that you’re about to watch a film that is absolutely juiced by the antics of the long-favored film star. You’d be wrong, but that’s not reason to be worried. Actress turned director Sadie Katz instead keeps the camera tuned, properly, on herself and her near obsessive need to not just see Mr. Murray but be part of one of his now legendary ‘experiences’, where he seems to just show up at random places and sort of changes the lives of those he meets.
The idea of manufacturing such a thing seems like missing the point, but it no way deters her from her mission, pulling in a handful of her friends and a camera crew to spend a year with her as she devotes herself to making her dream come true. That means watching Katz talk for about an hour and fifteen minutes as she gives us a tour of her decent down the rabbit hole, mostly very amusing, and partially disturbing, as perhaps intended.
Some of you might recognize Katz’s name. She’s a busy TV and B-movie actress, perhaps most known for her lead role in Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort. She’s an hyperbolic ball of energy. Clearly, even as she jokes about her actions, she has attached much greater meaning to having such an encounter in an effort to maybe heal something deep within herself. And in that respect, this journey is both very funny and a little sad. That’s certainly part of the charm.
Along the way, Katz travels about trying to stage and plan her meeting, running into those who have been lucky enough to have enounters, including his own brother Joel Murray, himself an actor on television and the occasional film, and even P.J. Soles, who starred with Bill in Stripes and offers the movie’s single most revealing moment by pulling back the curtain on some genuine behind-the-scenes insights. Katz spends a lot of time promoting herself and her documentary, putting great effort in getting Bill to become aware what she’s doing, something we learn that he in fact is and perhaps, because so, is making it an experience all its own, playing a game of hide and seek.
Meanwhile, life catches up with Katz and along with some health issues, loses traction as her friends and her boyfriend go their separate ways, leaving her even more consumed by her zest to complete her quest. For a good portion of the film, it is only Katz on screen, chatting relentlessly about how she certainly must appear to the public, her voice often cracking as she seems to recognize her tilted state of mind, offering us a kind of dark look into fandom, one that truthfully treads a narrow line. That she’s a highly attractive woman – at one point wearing a revealing tomato red evening dress and carrying one hundred balloons – surely helps lessen the blow, but in truth, she always seems harmless and is almost impossibly disarming.
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What the film does in a less subtle way is offer a powerful observation of what is surely happening to more people than we might be comfortable admitting are out there, maybe not just for finding Murray, but any celebrity. She spends an evening with a group of equally enamored fans of Bill who have devoted themselves to celebrating his contributions to their lives (she learns that she is not alone – and maybe not even as obsessed as she thinks).
So what’s the takeaway? Well, having a Bill Murray experience for those that do is probably a pretty cool thing. What makes it special though is surely the spontaneity of it, the unexpected arrival and impact of one of entertainment’s most cherished personalities. Creating one is certainly, as Katz is slow to catch on, not the way to make it work, but that’s exactly part of the point. The Bill Murray Experience is a satisfying little film with a highly watchable Katz, making this a uniquely offbeat and quirky encounter.