25th anniversary of "Groundhog Day" - February 12th

"Still Am....Bill Murray".

How Bill Murray signed my Groundhog Day Blu-ray:

A few years ago there was this charity softball/whiffleball game happening out at Wrigley Field that had all these celebrities participate who are presumably from the Chicagoland area (George Wendt, Jenny McCarthy, Chris Chelios, Chris Farley's brother, Matthew Perry, etc.) and one of the celebrities participating in it was Bill Murray. My sister works at the University of Chicago and knew a co-worker there who had tickets to this game which included passes to a VIP party afterward. This co-worker couldn't go to the game and offered the tickets to my sister who accepted them.

So my sister tells me about the game and said that if I gave her something to sign she would make an effort to get it signed at the VIP party afterward by one of the celebrities. Well knowing that this was a VIP party, that Murray was participating, that Murray is a bit reclusive and doesn't often sign stuff in normal situations, etc., and that Murray's autograph was the only one that I really wanted, I figure I had a better-than-average chance to get something signed so I figured I'd go for broke. Since I learned about this game on short notice from my sister, I had to scramble out and see what I could find to possibly get signed by Bill and sure enough I found a Groundhog Day Blu-ray. Plus, since my sister and I are from Woodstock, IL, which is where Groundhog Day was filmed, I figured that would make for a good anecdote to tell Bill and increase my chances of it getting signed.

So the big day comes and my sister goes with the Blu-ray to the game and the VIP party afterward. The big moment comes where she meets Bill and makes her move. She asks him to sign the Blu-ray and he declines. Ouch. Needless to say she was bummed, but at least she made the attempt. We knew it may be a long shot, but at least she tried. So the party goes on and my sister gets to talking with one of Bill's brothers who also participated in the game (No, not Brian-Doyle Murray). Bill's brother notices the Blu-ray with my sister and asks about it. She explains what happened. Then Bill's brother is like "I can get that signed for you." My sister is like "Really?" And Bill's brother is like "Yeah, give me a few minutes and I'll be right back." So a few minutes go by and sure enough Bill's brother comes back and it's signed by Bill. Needless to say she was shocked.

My sister comes back home to my house and explained what happened and presented the Blu-ray to me which shocked me as well. I couldn't believe I got an autograph from Bill Murray. It's not often you see footage of Bill signing stuff for fans so this threw me for a loop. I kind of felt like this was on the level of getting Marlon Brando's autograph. So I have to give a lot of thanks to my sister, and especially to Bill's brother (don't remember the name of the brother, sorry), for getting this autograph for me which has been a prized possession of mine as a movie fan.