![BM: When I work, my first relationship with people is professional. There are people who want to be your friend right away. I say, “We’re not gonna be friends until we get this done. If we don’t get this done, we’re never going to be friends, because if we don’t get the job done, then the one thing we did together that we had to do together we failed.” People confuse friendship and relaxation. It’s incredibly important to be relaxed — you don’t have a chance if you’re not relaxed. So I try very hard to relax any kind of tension. But friendship is different. I read a great essay: Thoreau on friendship. I was staying over at my friend’s house and there it was on the bedside table, and I’m reading it and I’m thinking it’s an essay, so it’s gonna be like four pages. Well, it goes on and on and on and on — Thoreau was a guy who lived alone, so he just had to get it all out, you know? He just keeps saying, “You have to love what is best in that other person and only what’s best in that other person. That’s what you have to love” —
LINCOLN [from the top of the stairs]: Dad!
BM: What is it?
LINCOLN: The Cubs are beating the Cardinals 9-0.
BM: Nice.
Bill Murray, as interviewed by Esquire.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4j9ecJcIf1qzr2pro1_500.jpg)
BM: When I work, my first relationship with people is professional. There are people who want to be your friend right away. I say, “We’re not gonna be friends until we get this done. If we don’t get this done, we’re never going to be friends, because if we don’t get the job done, then the one thing we did together that we had to do together we failed.” People confuse friendship and relaxation. It’s incredibly important to be relaxed — you don’t have a chance if you’re not relaxed. So I try very hard to relax any kind of tension. But friendship is different. I read a great essay: Thoreau on friendship. I was staying over at my friend’s house and there it was on the bedside table, and I’m reading it and I’m thinking it’s an essay, so it’s gonna be like four pages. Well, it goes on and on and on and on — Thoreau was a guy who lived alone, so he just had to get it all out, you know? He just keeps saying, “You have to love what is best in that other person and only what’s best in that other person. That’s what you have to love” —
LINCOLN [from the top of the stairs]: Dad!
BM: What is it?
LINCOLN: The Cubs are beating the Cardinals 9-0.
BM: Nice.
Aside from being totally dressed in black, the Artistics were a fairly undistinguished band, save for their lead singer, one David Byrne. Here was a strange bastard, short black hair (remember when we all wore ponytails?) a thin small body with a strangely large head with a plastic face, whining out some garbled lyrics. Hmm.
RISD Press, 1976.
