An unre­leased Bill Mur­ray sci-fi com­e­dy from 1984 has resurfaced

In April 2004, Bill Mur­ray was hon­oured by the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music with a career ret­ro­spec­tive for which he was asked to pick a sam­ple of his best-loved movies and a few per­son­al favourites. Sofia Cop­po­la warm­ly intro­duced Lost in Trans­la­tion, while Ghost­busters and the clown-based 1990 crime caper Quick Change screened adja­cent­ly. Mur­ray also insist­ed that BAM show anoth­er, less­er-known work, 1984’s Noth­ing Lasts For­ev­er. Eye­brows were raised. No one in the audi­ence that night knew quite what to expect; very few peo­ple had even so much as heard the film’s title before, let alone were famil­iar enough to place it in the Mur­ray canon. And with good rea­son: it had nev­er been shown pub­licly, its fate sealed 20 years ear­li­er when MGM decid­ed to shelve it indef­i­nite­ly fol­low­ing a dis­as­trous test screen­ing in Seattle.

Ini­tial­ly the odds were heav­i­ly stacked in the film’s favour. Noth­ing Lasts For­ev­er was writ­ten and direct­ed by a tal­ent­ed young SNL staffer named Tom Schiller, whose ambi­tious, genre-bend­ing script came approved by Lorne Michaels and SNL alum­ni Mur­ray, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, who joined the project as pro­duc­er and cast respec­tive­ly. Schiller already had a good feel for black com­e­dy, as seen in a series of pop­u­lar skits for SNL that includ­ed ​‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, in which Belushi, depict­ed as the last liv­ing ​‘Not Ready for Prime­time Play­er’, glee­ful­ly dances on the graves of his deceased cast mem­bers. Yet what was sup­posed to be Schiller’s break­through fea­ture end­ed up being the first nail in the cof­fin of a huge­ly promis­ing career.

Over the last decade or so, Noth­ing Lasts For­ev­er has built up a fer­vent cult fol­low­ing, but owing to ongo­ing legal com­pli­ca­tions which are far too dry and weari­some to get into here, it remains for the most part unseen, with no the­atri­cal or home video release in sight. Now, how­ev­er, the film has resur­faced, spark­ing a renewed inter­est in a for­got­ten mid-’80s curio hailed as a ​“lost comedic mas­ter­piece” by the New Yorker’s Richard Brody. On Sun­day 4 Decem­ber, London’s Prince Charles Cin­e­ma will host an extreme­ly rare 35mm screen­ing of the film with a Zach Gal­li­gan Q&A, Murray’s then 18-year-old co-star who is best known for play­ing Bil­ly Peltzer in Joe Dante’s Grem­lins movies.

We recent­ly reached out to Gal­li­gan to see if he could pro­vide any deep­er insight into the film. ​“I remem­ber the whole thing like it was yes­ter­day,” he beams with the kind of gid­dy exu­ber­ance that only comes when recall­ing an espe­cial­ly fond peri­od in one’s life. ​“It was my first expe­ri­ence on a movie set; I had just turned 18, still in high school – believe it or not I actu­al­ly got cred­it for doing it as my senior project – so it was a real­ly big deal for me. It would have been an even more incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence had John Belushi not just died. Lorne Michaels had cast John in a fair­ly decent part, and I was so excit­ed to be work­ing with him and the rest of the gang. Belushi was not just one of the ​‘Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers’ along with guys like Aykroyd and Mur­ray, he was one of their best friends.”

Today it’s easy to think of Aykroyd with­out think­ing of Belushi, but back in the ear­ly ​’80s it would have been impos­si­ble. They were the Blues Broth­ers, America’s dar­ing, dar­ling com­e­dy duo. Indeed, Gal­li­gan remem­bers how Belushi’s absence cast an under­stand­ably som­bre mood over the entire pro­duc­tion when film­ing began in April of ​’82, just a month after his death. ​“Here I am, this 18-year-old kid who thinks he’s going to be part of this Sat­ur­day Night Live par­ty, and real­ly it was more like a funeral.”

Mur­ray too was deeply affect­ed by the loss of his close pal and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor, his grief seem­ing­ly man­i­fest­ing in what Gal­li­gan describes as an uneasy on-set rela­tion­ship between him and his boy­hood hero. ​“The way that Bill and I inter­act­ed… how do I put this… I would describe Bill Mur­ray at that time, at least towards me, as delib­er­ate­ly insult­ing, con­de­scend­ing, dis­mis­sive, antag­o­nis­tic. He was clear­ly going through a dif­fi­cult time per­son­al­ly; I actu­al­ly just recent­ly spoke to an actor who had worked with him on Toot­sie, which Mur­ray was shoot­ing at the exact same time as Noth­ing Lasts For­ev­er, and they told me he was very dif­fi­cult to work with then as well.

“The expla­na­tion I’ve arrived at after all this time is, because we played neme­sis in the movie, he thought that I would be com­plete­ly in awe of him and so he behaved in a way which would coun­ter­act that. And it worked; I thought he was kind of a dick a lot of the time. But what he would then do is he would alter­nate between being real­ly dis­mis­sive and nasty to me, and being real­ly cheery and sun­ny and nice to me. He used to do this thing on SNL where he would dish out noo­gies, and every now and then we would be on set and he would give me a noo­gie. I remem­ber him once say­ing, ​‘Get out­ta here ya incan­des­cent knuck­le­head!’ To this day I don’t know what he meant by ​‘incan­des­cent’, but then that was Bill.

Despite Mur­ray blow­ing hot and cold for much of the film’s pro­duc­tion, Gal­li­gan cher­ish­es the mem­o­ry of their brief time togeth­er. He express­es only mild regret that they didn’t keep in touch, but then that’s nev­er real­ly been Bill Murray’s style; he famous­ly ditched his PR for an auto­mat­ed phone line, and even his old­est friends find it almost impos­si­ble to reach him. They did run into each oth­er once though, about a year after mak­ing Noth­ing Lasts For­ev­er. As Gal­li­gan tells it: ​“After I shot Grem­lins I went back to Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty in the fall of ​’83 for the first semes­ter of my sopho­more year. I’m walk­ing across the cam­pus and out of the cor­ner of my eye I spot this white hearse with what looks like Mur­ray and Aykroyd stood next to it in these strange grey out­fits with these big guns. There were all these police bar­ri­cades around it, and hun­dreds of kids watch­ing. So I wan­der over, I think what the hell, I know them, I’ll give it a shot. Most of the kids were clus­tered around the bar­ri­cades, and Mur­ray was doing his thing, per­form­ing for the crowd.

“After a while I plucked up the courage and I shout­ed, ​‘Hey! Dan­ny, Bil­ly!’ – because that’s how I knew them – and in the most Bill Mur­ray-ish way that you can imag­ine, Bill looks over at me and says, ​‘He-hey! It’s the kid. What are you doing here young man?’ So I duck under the bar­ri­cade and make my way over to the car, and Bill, Dan and I chat for around 10 or 15 min­utes. Even­tu­al­ly Ivan Reit­man comes over and goes, ​‘Okay guys, let’s get back to work,’ so we hug it out and say good­bye and I turn and start walk­ing away back towards the crowd. I’ll nev­er for­get the expres­sions on the oth­er kids’ faces when I looked up. I ducked back under the bar­ri­cade and I swear to God, the entire crowd part­ed and I just smiled and made my way to class. Some­times real life is just as good as the movies.”

Noth­ing Lasts For­ev­er is screen­ing at London’s Prince Charles Cin­e­ma on Sun­day 4 Decem­ber with a Zach Gal­li­gan Q&A. Book tick­ets at princecharlescin​e​ma​.com