James Gunn's Wild Interaction With Bill Murray Is Completely Amazing

Bill Murray stories are like really successful improv careers. All of your friends in L.A. claim to have one, and so do around 70% of the ones in Chicago, but there never seems to be any evidence in their corner. Since the early days of the occasional Ghostbuster's supposed predilection for stealing pedestrians' fries and reminding them that nobody will ever believe them, Murray has been reported crashing the weddings of strangers, stopping in at otherwise unremarkable parties, and showing up at the World Series when — and this is where disbelief can only be stretched so far — the Cubs won.

Still, James Gunn has never lied to us before, so there's no reason not to buy his tale of a Bill Murray encounter, which the filmmaker shared on Twitter on September 21 in celebration of Murray's birthday. On its surface, the narrative has more than a few things in common with the average run-in with the star of "Lost in Translation," only this one features twice your daily allotment of "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed."

"My Bill Murray story," James Gunn started out, "is once I was at a party & saw Bill & freaked out because he's a hero." And he's right, Bill Murray is a hero. "But you know, I'm cool," he continued, and that's inescapably true as well. "I don't bother people like that. I'm just gonna sit on the couch & pretend like f***ing Bill 'Stripes' 'Ghostbusters' 'Groundhog Day' Murray isn't standing right there.

"But then he saw me & came over & shook my hand. He knew who I was, which was weird & cool. And then he knelt on the floor beside me & rested his elbow on my knee, like, leaning on me & he (started) waxing poetic about how much he loved my work on 'Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.'"

Imagine having made "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed." Then imagine that Bill Murray sat on the floor, looked up at you, and started talking about how great "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed" was. You'd come to a few conclusions. " I thought he was f***ing with me," Gunn went on, "but then I began hearing through other people how much he was talking up 'Scooby-Doo 2' around town & how much he loved the movie. Anyway," he concluded, "I hope he's having a happy birthday."

Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here, about accepting the compliments of the Bill Murrays in all of our lives at face value. Maybe there's no lesson here. Maybe James Gunn made the whole thing up because he wanted people to think that he'd met a celebrity and he forgot for a second that he makes movies for a living. Whatever the case, happy birthday, Bill Murray.