Gavin Edwards - The Tao of Bill Murray: Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing

Y ou are standing on a corner in New York City, waiting to cross the street. Lost in thought, you arent paying much attention to the world around you. Suddenly a man puts his hands over your eyes and says, Guess who?

Nobodys played this game with you since elementary school. It would be alarming, except that the voice is familiar. You cant quite place the speaker, but youre pretty sure hes a friend.

You whip around and see, much to your surpriseinternational film star Bill Murray. He is taller than you expected and his shirt is wrinkled. You sputter, groping for words, unable to process the unlikelihood of this situation. Bill grins, leans in close, and quietly says, No one will ever believe you.

Variations on this story began to circulate widely around 2010. Sometimes it happened in New York, sometimes in Austin, Texas, or Charleston, South Carolina. Sometimes Bill wasnt blindfolding people with his fingersinstead, he was stealing a french fry off somebodys plate or grabbing a handful of popcorn from a stranger at a movie theater. But the punch line was always the same, underscoring that this encounter was an eruption of surrealism on an otherwise ordinary day, meant to be enjoyed for a few flickering moments: No one will ever believe you.

For years, it was unclear whether this was something that Bill Murray actually did, as part of a personal campaign to make the world a better, odder place, or whether it was an urban legend that had grown large enough to have its own zip code. Asked point-blank about it in a magazine interview, Bill artfully managed not to unravel the mystery.

Ive heard about that from a lot of people, he said. A lot of people. I dont know what to say. Theres probably a really appropriate thing to say. Something exactly and just perfectly right. Bill considered the rhetorical tightrope he was walking, and then he smiled: But, by God, it sounds crazy, doesnt it? Just so crazy and unlikely and unusual?

In the seventies and eighties Bill starred in comedy blockbusters such as Ghostbusters, Caddyshack, and Groundhog Day. Just as his success as a wisecracking film star seemed to be dwindling, he reinvented himself with wry, world-weary performances in much-lauded movies like Rushmore and Lost in Translation. In recent years, however, his fame has seemed almost completely disconnected from his accomplishments as an actor: Bill Murray, according to popular belief, has become the man who will drop by your bachelor party to give a toast, come to your assistance when youre having engine trouble, or crash your party and then wash the dishes. One minute, you might be walking around your hometown with your fianc, taking engagement photosthe next minute, Bill Murray could be standing in front of you with his shirt over his head, rubbing his belly. If Bill Murray makes a surprise appearance in your own life, you know that no one will ever believe you.

But they should. All those things have happened to actual human beings. There is photographic evidence of Bill doing karaoke with strangers and crashing kickball games. Ive spoken with multiple people who had a real-life Bill encounter that ended with those infamous words, No one will ever believe you. When my friend golfer Dan McLaughlin ran into Bill at the annual Pebble Beach golf tournament, he asked Bill point-blank if that phrase was something he said. Oh yeah, all the time, Bill confirmed.