I feel that if you really want an Oscar, you're in trouble. It's like wanting to be married - you'll take anybody. If you want the Oscar really badly, it becomes a naked desire and ambition. It becomes very unattractive.
Interpretation
Desiring recognition can lead to desperation, which may diminish one's appeal.
Bill Murray suggests that the intense desire for accolades, such as an Oscar, can manifest in a way that makes an individual appear desperate or unappealing. Just as wanting to be married can lead someone to accept any partner without discernment, craving an award can overshadow genuine talent and make the pursuit seem purely superficial and unattractive.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the pitfalls of ambition in the entertainment industry.
You know the theory of cell irritability? If you take an amoeba cell and poke it a thousand times, it will change and then re-form into its original shape. And then, the thousandth time you poke this amoeba, the cell will completely collapse and become nothing. That's kind of what it's like being famous. People say hi, how are you doing, and after the thousandth time, you just get angry; you really pop.
My first movie, I got nominated for a Canadian Oscar-for Meatballs. For MEATBALLS. And who am I up against? George C. Scott. So he wins the award and I stand up and go, 'That's it-let's get the hell outta here.'
There's definitely a lot of trash that comes with the prize of being famous. It's a nice gift, but there's a lot of wrapping and paper and junk to cut through. Back then, when a movie came out and people saw you on the street, their reaction was so supercharged that it was scary. It would frighten other people. It used to really rattle me. I mean, everybody would love to have their clothes torn off by a mob of girls, but being screamed at is different.
Like: 'Don't walk out there with one hand in your pocket unless there's somethin' in there you're going to bring out.' You gotta commit. You've gotta go out there and improvise and you've gotta be completely unafraid to die. You've got to be able to take a chance to die. And you have to die lots. You have to die all the time.
Friendship is so weird. You just pick a human you've met and you're like, 'Yep, I like this one,' and you just do stuff with them.
Golf was my first glimpse of comedy. I was a caddy when I was a kid. I was on the golf course rather than being in lessons, but I can play better now than I could then.
Playing in the playoffs is the best basketball in the world, and if you can learn under that pressure, succeed under that pressure, it gives you more confidence the next year.
As soon as I came to L.A., things immediately shifted for me. I was now actually here with the people who were making the decisions; I wasn't out in New York sending in tapes to L.A.
There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game and that is first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay and I never want to finish second again.
Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.
They'll forget all the rubbish when I've gone, and they'll remember the football. If only one person thinks I'm the best player in the world, that's good enough for me.
I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.
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