I've got a Bill Murray story... On Friday, June 4, 1976, 25-year-old Bill Murray joined his friend Steve Christiansen and a team from KVAL News as a camera operator on location at Ken Kesey's farm near Eugene, OR. The team (including newsman and future Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury) used two battery-powered video cameras to record video interviews and B-roll footage of Kesey and writers, poets, musicians, entertainers, and various hippies who were gathering for the "First and Last Annual Poetic Hoo-Haw" on Sunday, Jun 6th. Archival images and video capture Bill joking with the crew, Kesey, and beat-generation writer William S Burroughs (Naked Lunch). At one point, Bill asks Burroughs if he'd like to shoot some footage and then shows him how to operate the camera. 25 years before the GoPro camera was introduced, the portable camera packs used that day were large, heavy, and required two people to operate; one for the camera and the other to carry the pack and hold the microphone. Images of Bill with the equipment on his back are eerily similar to the Proton Pack that Bill would don for Ghostbusters eight years later. They spent the day exploring the farm, doing interviews, playing baseball, and using Kesey’s Kesey’s early-60s convertible to move an outhouse. After a day of filming, Bill and Steve rushed back to Steve's apartment to catch the fifth and final game of the 1976 NBA Playoffs between the Boston Celtics and the Phoenix Suns. In that game, a triple-overtime thriller, the Celtics edged out the Suns 128-126 in what is often referred to as The Greatest Game in NBA History.

Posted by venkmanatee at 2024-01-09 14:59:41 UTC