Bill Murray on the presidents–and ‘queens’–he’s met

MURRAY. “I prefer to be less available—because it’s more important to be available to yourself.” RUBEN V. NEPALES

LOS ANGELES—“Oh, I’ve met some queens in my life,” Bill Murray replied with his trademark faint smile when asked if he has met real-life kings, queens and presidents. In the wonderful, light gem of a film, “Hyde Park on Hudson,” Bill engagingly plays President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), who hosted the first-ever visit by a reigning British monarch to the US.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a king,” added Bill after his wisecrack. How about presidents? “I met Barack Obama last year at a basketball game,” answered the actor.

He regaled us with his story of meeting then US President Bill Clinton on a New York street despite the presence of burly Secret Service agents. “He had, like, 15 of them,” Bill recalled with a smile. “I knew I had to deal with them, because Clinton has been looking for me to play golf and I had not gotten around to it. I walked right toward him.  All these Secret Service agents were reaching for their six guns! They give you the body language that says, ‘Stop right there or die!’ I knew I couldn’t stop right there and die.”

“I knew I had to say hello to Clinton before he said hello to me,” Bill quipped. “So, I marched right through the agents and walked right into him. The agents went, ‘Oh, it’s Bill Murray—we can’t kill him.’ We just sat there and gabbed for 15 minutes. The secret-service guys were scowling.”

Comic touches

The visit of King George VI, or Bertie, and Queen Elizabeth to the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park on Hudson, in upstate NY is seen through the eyes of Daisy Suckley (played by Laura Linney), FDR’s lover. When Daisy, a neighbor and distant cousin of FDR, died, a small suitcase under her bed contained letters and diaries that revealed her affair with the 32nd president of the US.

“The script (by Richard Nelson) was inspired by the discovery of Suckley’s letters after her death,” Bill explained. “She lived to be 100. Their intimacy is fascinating. It seemed like all the other people were just acquaintances, and she was the only one he really knew, and the one he opened himself to.”

Bill did not go for a complete likeness. “I had a great makeup artist, Morag Ross,” he said. “I had a great tailor, who built those suits. Someone sticks a cigarette holder in your mouth, you have the correct hat, that make up with the melanoma (lesion) on the forehead and everything.”

He continued, “I looked so much like him that I immediately thought, ‘That’s enough of that!’ I don’t want to look and sound exactly like him. I didn’t want that to get in the way of telling the story.”

FDR, who was diagnosed with polio, was permanently paralyzed from waist down. He used a wheelchair in private, but made sure he was never seen in it in public. It is telling that the only photos available of FDR in his wheelchair were taken by Daisy.

Asked if he ever read Bob Woodward’s book on his late friend, “Wired: The Short Life & Fast Times of John Belushi,” Bill replied, “I only read about five pages of it. I realized that the story that Woodward was telling was being written by the outer circle. He was interviewing people who were in the next room or down the hall when everything was happening. They were the people he got to talk to.”

Bill stressed, “I didn’t speak to Woodward. I wouldn’t speak to Woodward. I had a sense that I didn’t want to speak about my friend to someone else. My relationship with my friend was mine. I’m glad I didn’t, because the book was like the savaging of a great man.”

Bill confirmed that he’s one of the few humans left who doesn’t have a cell phone, a fax machine, a Facebook account, and other accoutrements of the high-tech age. “I found that it’s easier to be hard to reach,” he maintained. “If everyone can reach you, everyone can reach you. We don’t really want that, do we? I found that, years ago, eliminating a whole lot of people from your life just made things easier. I’m not as organized as you.”

He admitted with that familiar bemused look, “I just can’t handle all the information—and all the requests. People just want to talk. If I talk to everyone, I’d get nothing done. So, I prefer to say, ‘I gotta go.’ I prefer to be less available—because it’s more important to be available to yourself!”

E-mail [email protected]. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.