8. Meatballs (1979)
Tripper: Kids are starving in Africa and youre walking around with a sombrero full of peanuts. The thought of Bill Murray as a father-figure is a somewhat terrifying one, but his career began with the role of Tripper, a developmentally arrested summer camp worker. The role was written specifically for him by Ivan Reitman following his work on The National Lampoon Show and a mere handful of sketches on Saturday Night Live, and thus was born the Murray persona, defined by Richard Kelly in Sight and Sound, as the countercultural lord of misrule. It was a somewhat controversial decision to cast Murray given his lack of name appeal but Reitman stuck by his decision with almost disastrous conviction. He has recently admitted that when he first approached Murray for the role his response had been Id rather play baseball or golf this summer. Reitman continued his approaches of Murray before finally the day before shooting was set to begin he relented and agreed to star in a move that Reitman attributes to pity. It would be anecdotes like this that Murray would thrive off for the rest of his career and gives some credence to the assertion that Murray is simply playing himself in all of his films. For instance, compare Murrays complete apathy to the opening scene of Meatballs, in which he struggles to rise from his bed to perform the mornings radio duties, to way in which Reitman has characterised him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPEfxNbvcjo