Credit: Far Out / Harald Krichel
Tue 15 September 2026 20:15, UK
With over half a century of experience under his belt and roles in some of the most popular and beloved comedies ever made, Bill Murray is hardly lacking when it comes to memorable scenes.
From his days as a Saturday Night Live sketch performer to the big-screen takeover that saw him secure iconic status with Meatballs, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Scrooged, Groundhog Day, What About Bob?, and many more besides, everyone has their favourite example of the ‘Murricane’ in full flow.
Whether it’s his more understated moments from Lost in Translation, or even Bob Harris’ treadmill mishap, the star has been stealing scenes for decades, so it must take something pretty special for the man himself to call a brief sequence the single greatest thing he’s ever been a part of onscreen.
‘Brief’ being the operative word, since the comedy favourite and polarising presence’s contributions last for roughly four or five seconds, but that was more than enough to sear it into his memory as the absolute pinnacle, with a lot of the credit admittedly being awarded to his co-star in the skit.
On the October 14, 1978, episode of Saturday Night Live, the late, great Jon Belushi played the title character in ‘Cliff Preston’, an ageing stuntman who isn’t quite cut out for the job anymore. It’s essentially a cameo, but being there was more than enough to make it a memory that would last a lifetime.
“I played this dumb actor in a sketch in which John Belushi was the star,” Murray recalled. “He was this famous stuntman, and I was the actor he was replacing. I do a scene where I’m about to fall off a fire escape, and they yell, ‘Cut!’, and Belushi comes in to fall something like, I don’t know, 18 inches. And he gets hurt. They have all these props, with his name on it and everything, and it’s just this tiny little fall.”
His sole contribution was being asked if he could make his way back to his trailer after his double’s injury, and his response of, “Yeah… I think I can,” is his only line. And yet, being there in the moment was so hilarious, and Murray was taking things so seriously, that he called it “the best thing I’ve ever done on TV.”
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
“It was just this one moment, but I was trying a new kind of acting at that point, going from this straight manic stuff I’d always done to something different, where I was messing with the timing a little, using my body in a different way,” he explained, not that audiences would have necessarily picked up on it, when all he had to work with were a handful of seconds and five syllables.
Either way, the Academy Award nominee reiterated that ‘Cliff Preston’ was “the best thing I’ve ever done,” doubling down and anointing it as the peak of his comedy exploits, which is awfully selfless of him, considering the entire sketch was built around Belushi, and not him.
