Name: Aziz Ansari on His Lost Movie with Bill Murray
Uploaded: 2025-11-29T14:30:19.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Aziz Ansari on His Lost Movie with Bill Murray' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-29. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Aziz Ansari on His Lost Movie with Bill Murray' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-29. Transcript available.

Is there a movie that you'll never get to make, but you think it would be cool?
Like it's so ridiculous?
Has there ever been something like that?
Well, I mean, right now it's so hard to get any movie made.
They all feel like, oh man, I hope I can make this.
You know, I've got two movies that I, two other scripts that I've written.
I had this movie with Bill Murray that I was doing that got shut down.
I want to finish that.
Why? What happened?
Oh, well, uh, Bill Murray, uh, was part of this movie we did called Being
Mortal.
Being Mortal is a book by this gentleman named Atul Gawande.
It's all about like end of life issues.
It's about stuff, you know, uh, that people my age are dealing with with their
parents.
You know, maybe not all people might be older, but you know, they're getting
sick.
You got to put them in retirement homes and you got to figure all this, this
stuff out.
Very, you know, very interesting book.
And it's about very highly recommend this book.
Have you met Atul Gawande?
Yeah, yeah.
I had to talk to Atul to get rights to the book.
And when I decided to turn into script, he, um, he helped me.
And, um, yeah, there he is.
Very cool.
Very smart guy.
And, um, uh, so I thought, okay, this is like, the book is not a fiction book.
It's nonfiction.
But I was like, oh man, if you turn this into a story, there's things that are
funny, even
though it's dark, you know, like there's things that are funny about like, you
know, you have
to go like, take your parents to like all your mom or dad, you have to take
them to all these
different retirement homes.
And like they, you know, all these people in his book, they'd always be like, I
don't
want to be in here.
Everybody in here is old.
It's like, that's people's perspective.
It's kind of funny.
And, uh, and just like how out of depth you are talking to these doctors.
Doctors talk to you like, you know, you know, these super complicated things
are like, anyway,
so what do you want to do?
If you do this, you know, he might be paralyzed, but if you do this, you know,
you're like,
wait, what?
Yeah.
But if you do this, you might be able to do a backflip and you're like, well,
that's
a, that's a mixed bag.
It's, it's, it's so you're, you're, you're just immediately out of your depth.
But anyway, I read the story and read the book and, and you, you notice these
patterns,
like the parents are like, no, I'm fine.
I'm fine.
And then they like drive their car through the house or something.
And then you're like, oh, we got to take you to home, man.
You know, that kind of thing.
But that's really how it happens though for people.
It's really how it happens.
And I was like, well, if you did a story about this and the guy was Bill Murray,
that could
be really funny and really poignant.
Cause he, you know, I think about him in like lost in translation or broken
flowers.
And, and he's one of these, he's got this rare ability to be so funny, but so
grounded
and touching and sincere.
So I wrote the whole thing with him in mind.
And there was no like, oh, I'll get another guy.
It was like, this movie only works in my head.
If it's Bill Murray, I can't think of anybody else.
I wrote it and he's like famously the hardest guy.
To get ahold of, to be, you can't even get him.
Yeah.
I, I knew him a little bit socially.
I had his number.
I call him.
He answers the phone.
I said, Hey, I have a script that I wrote.
Uh, you know, I said, hello, whatever.
And we talked for a minute.
And I said, I was calling him because I wrote the script and, and I think he'd
be great.
And he's like, well, that's wonderful.
You know, mail it to my house.
Very old school.
He's like printing it out, sending it to my house.
So I sent it to him.
He calls me like a couple of weeks later.
He's like, yeah, I, I, I like this.
Can you send me the book?
I sent him the book.
He was really into the book as well.
And, um, we eventually set it up.
Seth Rogen plays his son.
Kiki Palmer is playing Seth's wife.
And, um, we shot for like three weeks.
And then, um, something happened on set where, uh, Bill was inappropriate with,
uh, someone,
uh, that was working on the film.
Oh, I remember something about that.
Yeah.
Um.
And was it real or was it fabricated?
Who knows?
Uh, I mean, something really happened.
Okay.
So something occurred and people felt their ways about it.
Right.
Yeah.
I don't want to get into it too much because it's not my story to tell.
So something happened on set and you had to shut the movie down.
Yeah.
He, he had a mask on, a COVID mask.
And, uh, this is from what I understand.
He had a COVID mask on and he was trying to be funny and he was kissing this
woman that he
was friends with, with the mask on trying to be funny.
But this woman didn't like this and was, was upset.
And, um, and eventually it turned into this whole thing and they shut the whole
movie down.
Oh.
Yeah.
There's the Wikipedia page.
Uh, but, uh, yes, this is what Bill said at the time.
I did something I thought was funny.
It wasn't taken that way.
The company, the movie studio wanted to do the right thing.
So they wanted to check it all out, investigate it.
So they stopped the production.
Yeah.
The, the, the whole, the whole movie shut down.
Um,
I'm sorry, I shared that 75, it wasn't 75%.
We shot like half of it, but anyway, I can't remember what, what, how we
started on this,
but that, um, yeah, I'd love to finish that at some point, you know, if we can,
because you know, it was, it was, uh, it was very special, but you know, it
must've been,
I mean, it's been heartbreaking for everybody.
It was, but it was one of those things that was so crazy.
I don't think I ever fully processed it.
I mean, you want to know something crazy?
I remember the week it happened.
I was getting married that summer and my friends had, uh, they wanted to plan
some sort of
bachelor party for you.
Not like a, I, I'm not like a, Hey, let's go to the strip club kind of guy.
They were like going to, we were going to go to a restaurant and go to the spa
or something
like that.
Like a very silly kind of thing.
Go to like a math-a-thon or something.
Yeah.
I'm calm.
What's a math-a-thon?
We just do a bunch of math?
Where people are doing math, yeah, aggressive people.
Is that a real thing or did you just make up that word?
I don't know, but I could see for some reason, I just think.
You think I'm, that's what I'm into?
No, I'm not into math-a-thons.
Wait, it's a real thing.
It's a fundraising event where you do math.