Splash: At a Hotel Pool in Toronto

We’d like to thank Cindy for sharing the following story.

Doing work for the Toronto International Film Festival in the mid-90’s I had occasion to regularly cross paths with a lot of celebrities, so I wasn’t habitually star-struck around famous people as a rule.

Anyhow one sunny hot September (or late August) Sunday afternoon I was at an industry party. It was one of the more informal annual film festival events at a large private home. Guests ranged from local Toronto film people to one of the cast members of the TV show “Friends” which was big at the time. I wasn’t feeling well and while in the kitchen getting some ice water, I was unpleasantly groped in the process by a very rude, very drunk famous director.

I went outside to sit on one of the terraces outside and watched my husband and other partygoers some 20 yards away (many people were in a large, gorgeous pool) when someone came up next to me, sat down about 3 feet away, and I heard “Not goin’ in for a splash?”

I figured when I saw someone approach out of the corner of my eye that it was someone I knew well, since I was off by myself; I was still annoyed from the incident a few minutes previously, feeling crappy and my reflex sarcastic reply was “No. I’m on my period, and I don’t want any more unfortunate incidents today.”

I then looked over as I wound up my sentence, as I guess because subconsciously I realized that the male voice didn’t sound Canadian – yet sounded vaguely familiar. Especially in the pronunciation of the words ‘not’ and ‘splash’.

I immediately recognized Bill Murray. Barely a millisecond went by and he laughed and replied, “Well I guess that’s why they told the boys never to ask girls why they weren’t swimming back in 6th grade”.

We laughed about my ‘menstrual moment’ and chatted for about 15 minutes (I told him about the jerky director). Then when my husband and a couple of friends came over he graciously chatted with everyone for a few minutes more until he was pulled away by someone he knew who wanted to speak to him. What a great guy.