TORONTO–Thunder. Lightning. Ferocious gusts of wind slamming all that gorgeous festival signage to the ground.
Bill Murray Day at the Toronto International Film Festival ended just the way you knew it would, in a weird blaze of glory, with the force of an explosion in a gopher hole. (That would be in “Caddyshack,” a Murray tour-de-force from 1980).
A sudden storm cell broke over the hundreds of festival fans waiting in line for Bill Murray Day’s culminating event, a world premiere of the Weinstein Company’s “St. Vincent,” in which Mr. Murray plays a mean, drunken Vietnam vet with a soft spot for the kid next door, and, yes, a heart of gold.
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“The rain is a blessing from Bill Murray, so you should give thanks for that,” said Cameron Bailey, the Toronto festival’s artistic director, in one of the more bizarre pronouncements of the day.
It takes a lot to get Bill Murray fans ticked off — they tend to roll with his own mellower-than-thou persona. But even the Canadian fans, who are mellower than most, were roused to indignation when festival volunteers let slip that they were standing in the sudden cloudburst — most without umbrellas — because viewers of “The Drop,” which had just screened, were reluctant to leave the theater for a drenching outside.
“I’ll bet I could help clear it,” one very wet ticket-holder shouted, while standing in the rain a minute or two before “St. Vincent”‘s scheduled 9 p.m. screening.
Mr. Murray took the stage for a few seconds before the show. He wore a red sash and gold crown, and took a deep bow.
“I spoke to Bill Murray,” a Weinstein publicist had said, way back in the morning hours, as Bill Murray Day — with it’s various screenings and adulatory events — was just getting under way.
And what did he say?
“It’s Bill Murray Day!” Of course.