newjerseynewsroom.com

BY PAULA SCHWARTZ

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Bill Murray walked the red carpet Saturday night at Alice Tully Hall for the New York premiere of “Hyde Park on Hudson,” in which he plays Franklin D. Roosevelt. He looked good in a black leather jacket, joked around with journalists and charmed everyone. The actor of “Stripes,” “Ghostbusters” and “Lost in Translation” is not the obvious choice to play the polio-stricken 32d president, that is until you consider how good he was in “Lost in Translation” and “Broken Flowers,” playing quiet, comic roles as isolated, damaged men.

The film looks at the personal side of FDR; he did a lot of smoking, drinking and seducing. The president was good at getting people, especially women, to do what he wanted. Murray does that convincingly in the film, often sealing the deal with a wink.

At the Q&A after the screening, Murray admitted that when director Roger Michell asked him to play Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his initial reaction was that “it was a ridiculous idea,” but then he read Tony Award-winning writer Richard’s Nelson’s script and thought, “I could do this. I could do this.”

Asked if he found it challenging to play someone with physical limitations, Murray quipped, “A lot of comedians can’t walk very well, so I was really standing on the shoulders of those people.”

As for prepping for the role, he said, “I tried to read as much as I could, and a lot of the words were big and long, but I just keep reading and trying to learn as much as I could.”

He added that he also prepared for the role by trying to proximate what it would be like to have polio, “so I could be accurate I wore the braces for several hours a day because you have to really deal with your fear of being able to go on from one day to the next. That’s what I took out of this, what this guy had. This guy had balls,” Murray said. “He had balls to be paralyzed and to not just be unable to walk, but to go on to be the Governor of New York, then to become President of the United States,” and finally a “political icon” whose face is “on a 10 cent piece.”

“Hyde Park on Hudson,” which is set in Hyde Park but was filmed in England, is about the love affair between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret “Daisy” Stuckley (Laura Linney), during a weekend in 1939 when King George VI (a very likeable Samuel West) and Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Coleman) visited FDR in Hyde Park. While they were on a serious diplomatic mission, the visit is a comic interlude; the Queen’s worried about a picnic Eleanor (Olivia Williams) is planning where hot dogs are on the menu, while the King’s concerned about his stuttering and both are mystified by all the women living under FDR’s roof. (He was also having an affair with his secretary Misty, played by Elizabeth Marvel).

At the afterparty at the swanky Stone Park Lounge in the Time Warner Center, guests included Bridget Moynahan, Gabourey Sidibe, Elizabeth Marvel, Carol Kane, screenwriter Richard Nelson, Michael Stuhlbarg, Juliet Mills, Fred Schepisi, Dan Hedaya, Natasha Lyonne, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams, Ari Graynor and Anjelica Huston, guests were served beef wellington patties and mini hot dogs.

Nelson, a 30-year resident of Rhinebeck, said Daisy’s story was well known to everyone in his village. When she died at age 100 in 1991, diary entries, notes and letters from FDR found under her bed in her Hudson Valley home were the inspiration for his screenplay, which began as a play.

Linney said she “had a great deal of affection” for her character. She went to Suckley’s home to see her home and what she surrounded herself with. “She would wake up every morning to this huge lithograph of FDR right across from her bed,” Linney said. “She was devoted to him, in some ways a very innocent way and in some ways a very deep adult way.” Stuckley was a self-effacing woman. “I don’t think I know anybody in the world like this, who needed no acknowledgement, no attention,” Linney said, “particularly today when everybody advertises everything they either experience or see, on twitter” or everywhere else.” She added, “Imagine with that sort of sensibility, what it must have been like to be that person every day. I think there’s a sweetness to it.”

The story takes place over “a moonlit weekend, rather like something out of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," with a full moon under which people behave in strange ways, transgressive ways,” Michell said. “What Richard’s done marvelously is take a personal glimpse, a peak at a seismic, historical event and concentrate it into a single bite from a giant sausage into a collusion of two and a half stories.”

One scene in the movie imagines FDR and the King swimming in a pool on the president’s grounds. Someone asked how Murray’s legs managed to look so thin and whether that was a special effect. “That was acting,” Murray said. “Those are my legs. That is the result of seven weeks of English food.”

Murray said the most vital part of finding his character was getting FDR’s voice and speech pattern right. “I played presidents in sketches before and never had a problem with that,” Murray deadpanned, but “to play this iconic president with this very specific speaking voice,” was another story and required a speaking coach.

As fore “The King’s Speech,” the 2010 Oscar-winning movie that focuses on George VI’s struggles with stuttering, the director admitted comparisons are inevitable between the films. “Obviously we were surprised and delighted by the success of “The King’s Speech,” he said. “After we’d been working on this for several years you can imagine how delighted we were,” adding, “don’t get me wrong. I think it’s a great film.” Instead of dropping his film, which he considered, they revised the screenplay. “In our original script there’s a lot more material about the king’s stuttering.” Michell said, “I’m hoping that ‘The King’s Speech’ will be kind of like a glorious, award-winning trailer for our film.”

“Hyde Park on Hudson” opens in theaters Dec. 7.