Production on the film Being Mortal halted on April 18 after lead actor Bill Murray became the latest Hollywood target of on-set “inappropriate behavior” complaints.
The film, based on the 2014 best-selling non-fiction book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande and starring Murray, Aziz Ansari and Seth Rogen, is about assisted living and end-of-life care for elderly people.
The film “was halfway done before production was called off,” according to Deadline. It is Ansari’s directorial and screenwriting debut. According to the publication “[i]It is currently unknown how Murray’s involvement in the project will progress as the investigation remains active.”
Bill Murray (photo credit – Harald Krichel)
There are few specific details about the nature of the allegations against Murray. Fox Searchlight, the film company supporting the project, said in a letter that “[a]After reviewing the circumstances, it was decided that production cannot proceed at this time.” The publisher hoped to “resume production and [is] Cooperation with Aziz and [producer Youree Henley] to figure out that timing.”
The New York Times reported that the film company’s letter “contains no information as to the nature of the complaint or the individuals involved, but does include the person working on the production, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the details of the matter are known.” are confidential, said the film was shelved due to what Murray described only as “inappropriate conduct.” The nature of the complaint is unknown, as is the complainant – all of which was reported by an anonymous source! And that’s enough to destroy a career!
According to Yahoo! News, Being Mortal “was seen as a comeback vehicle for Ansari.” The comedian has also been the victim of #MeToo allegations in the past.
Murray, 71, has appeared in numerous comic comedies and other popular films since the late 1970s. According to NPR, the actor-comic has become “something of the likes of a folk hero,” with a “wry comedic style, something he’s honed with Chicago’s impromptu comedy troupe The Second City and The National Lampoon Radio Hour.” did before he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1977.”
Murray is most celebrated for his cast of memorable if sometimes off-putting characters in films such as Meatballs (1979), Caddyshack (1980), Ghostbusters (1984), Scrooged (1988 – a dark comic book version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol). , What about Bob? (1991), Groundhog Day (1993), Rushmore (1998), Lost in Translation (2003) and St. Vincent (2014), among many others.
Bill Murray in Rushmore (1998)
If anything, the unifying theme of many of Murray’s most famous roles has been “inappropriate behavior.”
The postponement of Being Mortal comes amid the ongoing #MeToo witch hunt in the media, with prominent actors, celebrities and other cultural figures being raked over the coals or worse for alleged “bad behavior” that often occurred decades ago.
The Puritan environment has done little good to the quality of the Society’s cultural output. In many cases this has resulted in a significant loss of culture as famous actors, composers, musicians and performers have been removed from projects and excluded from their fields.
The same week that Being Mortal ceased production, Netflix announced the firing of actor Frank Langella. The veteran actor was fired from the set of the streaming platform’s miniseries Fall of the House of Usher after allegedly telling an “inappropriate joke of a sexual nature,” according to entertainment publication TMZ.
At the same time, veteran film actor Johnny Depp’s ongoing defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard in Northern Virginia has exposed the often tangled and deeply dysfunctional relationships that persist among Hollywood’s “elite.” Heard’s 2018 Washington Post suggestion that Depp abused her led to his partial blacklisting.
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