pop culture institutions: who’s yours?

I was speaking with a friend of mine a few weeks ago and stumbled upon this:Now what that is, is a shot of a t-shirt of many of Bill Murray’s countless classic characters. Sweet alliteration.

Then last week I was watching AMC and it was a Bill Murray-a-thon featuring the Ghostbusters movies, Caddyshack, and Stripes. In each of these movies, all from early in his career, he creates an unforgettable character and he’s gone on to do so countless times in other films. Starting with some of the most classic comedy characters and moving onto smaller character dramas more recently like Lost in Translation and Broken Flowers (BOTH excellent by the way). He’s been in a ton of films and his filmography now spans multiple genres and the quality of his films doesn’t fade with time. Part of this is due to Harold Ramis, but his track record alone speaks for itself. I’d have to pick Groundhog Day as my personal favorite because I think it does one thing really well that very few have ever done. At its core it’s a romantic comedy told from the man’s perspective and it sneakily does this so you don’t even notice until you want nothing more than he and Andie MacDowell to be together even if it has to happen all over each day. Sneaky.Murray has been around for 30 years now, since Meatballs. And in that time he’s put an indelible mark on Hollywood. His characters and image started as a goofball, but over time he’s cultivated an entire other side, which is being revealed currently through his role in smarter comedies, dramedies, and dramas. His transformation has been nothing short of legendary and I hope he continues to wow us with his chops. So I think the t-shirt above is TOTALLY awesome and befitting of an institution like Bill Murray.

Who do you think deserves their own version of this shirt? And for that matter, who can actually fill one out!? Well I can, just saying, if you’re looking for a gift for PR, this isn’t a bad choice.