The sun is setting in Brooklyn — and security is going wild.
Bill Murray is on the loose.
And he has a scooter.
“We just wrapped for the day, and Bill said good night to everybody. There are a couple security guards that have cleared a path for Bill [to walk to his trailer],” recalls Melissa McCarthy, who was filming a scene alongside Murray last July for their new film, “St. Vincent,” out Friday.
“And out of the crowd, suddenly Bill is just flying down the street on a Razor. And he’s like, ‘Goodbye, everybody!’
“There’s a security guy that’s running after him and can’t keep up. I was like, ‘Where did the Razor come from?’
“But why not?” she tells The Post. “Why aren’t we all doing weird stuff like Bill?”
In recent years, 64-year-old Murray has become as legendary for his wonderfully “weird” performances off-screen as he has for his performances on it.
During the last five months alone, the “Lost in Translation” star has crashed a Charleston, S.C., bachelor party where he dispensed love advice; showed up at a Los Angeles fan’s “Bill Murray Ice Cream Social”; danced (surprisingly well) to Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What” at a suburban house party; collected tickets at a minor-league baseball game; and photobombed an engagement shoot.
Bride-to-be Ashley Donald and her then-fiance Erik Rogers were embracing for a professional photographer on a Charleston street back in June, when all of a sudden a crazy man jumped in front of them, lifting up his shirt while rubbing his belly.
The couple were aghast. “We were like, ‘Gross, what is this guy doing?’ ” says Donald, 33.
But then the man pulled down his shirt and exposed his movie-star smile.
“ ‘Oh, man, it’s Bill Murray!’ ” the couple cried, before asking him to jump in a shot.
For an actor who is famously difficult to get ahold of in Hollywood (Murray doesn’t have an agent, only an 800-number people can leave their messages on), he’s amazingly accessible to the Everyman.
At the suburban South Carolina house party he attended in September, not only did the former “Saturday Night Live” star bust some moves — he also bussed the table.
“After dinner, he got up and brought the dishes into the cleanup,” says chef Brett McKee, who cooked up supper for the party. “He’s about as down-to-earth as they come.”
People trade their Bill Murray stories like coveted baseball cards: the time he sang karaoke with a random group of New Yorkers for four hours in December 2010, or when he showed up at a Williamsburg hipster Halloween bash, beer in pocket, back in 2008.
Murray says he’s just going with the flow.
“Well, you know, I don’t have a plan,” says Murray, sporting a straw bucket hat, Hawaiian-print button-down, blazer and bright green tie at the “St. Vincent” premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater Monday night.
“I don’t have a plan and I don’t fit into anyone else’s plan. There are moments and sometimes a moment appears and you step in.”
Why aren’t we all doing weird stuff like Bill?
- Melissa McCarthy
The Charleston-based star — who honed his comedic chops on “SNL” and in films such as “Caddyshack” and “Groundhog Day” — is experiencing a renaissance right now. So much so that this year’s Toronto International Film Festival celebrated the actor with a retrospective, dubbed “Bill Murray Day.”
The festival’s lucky that Murray showed up.
Ted Melfi, writer and director of “St. Vincent,” tells The Post about one of the many times Murray went AWOL during filming, and he frantically rang his missing superstar.
A high-pitched female voice answered the call: “Bill’s at the sandwich shop. He found the best sandwich shop in The Bronx. Do you want him to bring you a sandwich? I’ll bring you a sandwich.”
It was, of course, Murray. And, as always, he was forgiven.
“He does it in such a way that it’s charming and brilliant and infectious,” Naomi Watts, Murray’s “St. Vincent” co-star says of his antics.
Watts tells The Post about the harrowing tale of Murray kidnapping her and taking her for a ride on a golf cart while filming at Belmont Park last summer.
“I just sort of went, ‘Yeah, I’ll get in the little buggy,’ and suddenly 10 minutes later we’re losing light, getting lost and everybody’s chasing us around the race track,” says Watts.
(In the film, Murray stars as Vincent, a drunken war vet tasked with caring for the 12-year-old son of his single neighbor, played by McCarthy. Watts’ sassy Russian prostitute is his love interest.)
“Wherever he goes, there’s a party trailing behind him, in the sense that he’s just Mr. Fun with a capital ‘F,’ ” says Watts.
Murray’s vanishing acts aren’t just about having fun, though.
During one search for his leading man, Melfi discovered Murray posing for pics and signing autographs at a nearby US Marines recruiting center.
“Bill Murray is like a man of the people. He is the ultimate human being,” Melfi says.
After a three-day shoot at the elderly home, Atria on Roslyn Harbor last August, Murray not only bought each of the residents a case of the finest Champagne, he also hosted a cocktail hour for them. In pure Bill Murray fashion, he served the drinks, too.
“I think people think of him as being kind of this wild and crazy guy, and he has that element to him, but he really has a deep streak of sweetness,” says Ivan Reitman, who directed Murray in flicks like “Meatballs” and “Ghostbusters.”
“He’s very concerned about people and never wants to be perceived as being a jerk . . . he’s just very sensitive, actually.”
One may even go so far as to say that Murray, just like his character Vincent, is a real-life living saint.
Jaeden Lieberher, who plays 12-year-old Oliver, certainly thinks so.
While filming a particularly difficult scene, Lieberher’s nerves were getting the best of him when Murray swooped in.
“Bill told me to come meditate with him. So in the middle of shooting, we took a seat in the auditorium, put our heads down and just closed our eyes and did it,” says Lieberher.
“Bill’s comforting.”
And enigmatic.
“I don’t think he wants to be easy to get,” says Reitman, who says Murray’s been like this since almost 40 years ago, when he showed up on the second day of shooting for “Meatballs” with no prior confirmation.
“I think he likes the idea of not being beholden to everyone . . . That’s his way of maintaining his own sanity.”
“And, he gets a little kick that people are a little unsure of him … and what they’re going to get around him.”
While attending Austin’s SXSW festival in March 2010, Murray showed up to the Shangri-La bar with the Wu-Tang Clan, then jumped behind the bar. No matter what someone ordered, Murray served them a shot of tequila.