MARRAKECH, Morocco — Recently, Bill Murray has been singing. A lot. It’s always been something of a shtick for the comedic actor, a long running joke since his portrayal of Nick the Lounge Singer on “Saturday Night Live.” And in “Rock the Kasbah,” which came out in the US earlier this year, he belts out Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.”“I got to sing in New Orleans with these great musicians,” Murray said about a recent experience, during a press conference at the Marrakech International Film Festival, where he was being awarded. “That’s when I really went, ‘wow.’ All of a sudden this voice came out of me. I found I could actually hold notes. I was amazed how well I could sing.”Murray puts his voice prominently on display in “A Very Murray Christmas,” which premiered on Netflix on December 4. (“You stream it, or … I don’t know what you do,” he said when trying to explain what how to use Netflix.) A throwback to a television tradition that pretty much doesn’t exist any longer — when was the last time something as strange and beautiful as David Bowie and Bing Crosby appeared on television? — the Christmas special, directed by Sofia Coppola, is brisk and lighthearted and intended to please.“Sofia had an idea that she would like me to sing someplace, like Chet Baker in a club,” Murray said. That idea morphed into Murray, playing himself, stranded at the Carlyle hotel in New York City during a snowstorm. Worried that nobody will show up, he and the staff — including cameos from Maya Rudolph, Jason Schwartzman, Rashida Jones, former New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, and the singer Jenny Lewis — congregate near the bar and, accompanied by musician and former “Late Show with David Letterman” band leader Paul Schaffer, start to summon the spirit of Christmas through song.“When you don’t have the Christmas spirit, it’s a rough feeling,” Murray said. “I’ve experienced it, and that’s sort of what I was trying to do [with this show]. The singing — those are real, powerful singers. And the Christmas songs, they take you some place.”Coppola, who was also present at the festival, is clearly enjoying the loose format of “A Very Murray Christmas.” The lack of a sustained narrative and the ensemble cast allow her to move more freely with her camera. At times, it brings to mind a Robert Altman film, where it feels like the filmmakers happened to stumble upon the scene and are catching moments at random. While Murray is clearly the focus, he’s more like a host, stepping in from time to time but allowing others to take the stage. Rudolph is particularly excellent at channeling Darlene Love on “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)” (which also acts as a nod to Shafer and his previous gig with Letterman, which made an annual tradition of having Love perform the song near the holidays), and Jason Schwartzman and Rashida Jones duet on Todd Rundgren’s “I Saw the Light” is cute, despite not really being a Christmas song. But it’s Murray and the rest of the cast singing “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues that is the emotional centerpiece.The end of the show veers slightly, jumping to a fantasy sequence featuring George Clooney and Miley Cyrus that is funny but loses some of the heartwarming, collective joy of the first three quarters. But for its intended purpose, it works. At the press conference, Murray said he wants to do more shows like “A Very Murray Christmas,” having clearly enjoyed the process, but has nothing planned for the immediate future. “I’m not organized. I don’t have any kind of master plan,” he said.When pressed for a more specific explanation, he offered this: “It’s the same thing as my laundry, the clothes I wear. There’s not a lot of choosing going on, it’s what’s clean and on the top.”
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