I don’t really care about this movie, but it’s wild to pair this oral history with the NYT’s Interview with Bill Murray.
Frank Oz, who directed What About Bob, on the challenges on set:
Look, every set has a culture and a dynamic of its own, and there I have had difficulties. Those bad situations are cracking me up because they show our frailty as human beings and our imperfections … the egos and the fears, the insecurities when you get in a crucible that’s so pressurized. Making a movie like this, we’re talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars. We’re talking about stars believing that it better work, because the next paycheck won’t be good if it doesn’t. Richard Dreyfuss was not trying to be bad. Everybody believes they’re doing the best thing for the movie and they’re trying their very best. That doesn’t mean that what they’re doing is the best for the movie, but they honestly believe it.
Murray, in the Times:
You describe wanting to bring lightness, but there are a handful of rough stories about you on set. Winging a glass ashtray at Richard Dreyfuss’s head — You can tell that story as much as you like, but it’s never going to be true. I did fire a glass, but I threw it at the ceiling. We were in a townhouse on the set of “What About Bob?” and I did not fire it at anyone. I threw it up in a far corner of the townhouse, assuming it might break upon contact with the ceiling and the walls, but I didn’t throw it at anyone. If I’d thrown it at Dreyfuss, I’d have hit him.
Emphasis mine.