Interview with Sadie Katz from The Bill Murray Experience

Courtesy: Cinematic Red /

Film actress Sadie Katz got together with Hidden Remote to talk about her new project, a documentary, The Bill Murray Experience.

Sadie Katz was born and lives in Los Angeles, California. She made her first movie in 2005 in a short film called A Lot to Ask as Wendy. However, most of her movies have come from the scream queen version of the arts.

She is also a writer. Outside of the documentary, The Bill Murray Experience, she put together Scorned with fellow writer Mark Jones which came out in 2013. She is also in the process of writing a television movie, World Wide Man Tour which should be out later this year. Also, in 2018, there will be four new movies out she will be in.

Sadie talks about her trials with getting her own experience with Bill Murray and how she put the plans together to make it happen.

Hidden Remote: Hidden Remote: One of the things I found so great about The Bill Murray Experience was the fact that you’re stripped down as yourself to your very soul.

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Katz: Because I’m an actor, I play all these characters and it’s so crazy because I finally made a film where I am really felt like well, that’s Sadie. That’s me. Take it or leave it. It’s hard for me to watch certain parts. Even when we were editing.

When you rip your heart out to make it, there’s no hiding. I think that’s what people want in a documentary. We talked a lot about that when you’re editing you’re like, “Do we have to keep this part in?” But you have too. You have to keep it going, or why would someone watch it. This speaks to good people and good people hopefully will like the movie.

Hidden Remote: People that have a caring soul. It’s going to speak to them.

Katz: Bill Murray fans can be really cool, chill people. So I kept making that a rule. When I was making the film, I’m making this for people that are like me who are chill and cool and call themselves Bill Murray fans and hopefully that will translate.

Hidden Remote: Yes, I think it did. All the different people that were interviewed at the party; they’re all unique in their own way. I think that’s what everybody draws too. We go through 24-7 are whole lives and we all strive to gain something unique like the Bill Murray Experience.

Katz: Oh, I love that, you make me tear up. I became friends with people from the party for real like I still talk to them on Facebook. Jeremy Long, the one guy who sings the most brilliant song ever “Mother fcking Bill Murray” He is literally the coolest guy. You meet nice people. They’re not like people trying to say are you going to pay me more money. They’re just having a really nice time. It’s insane. It’s definitely insane.

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Hidden Remote: There’s a scene where Bill Murray gives an experience to guys getting an ice cream. You had just left that area and missed out. What are your feelings about that?

Katz: I know it sounds really crazy but when I watch that part in the film I feel so sad. I felt a little bit like they robbed me. It was just devastating.

When you’re doing something like this, where I started to feel like Bill Murray could come around the corner any second and this was happening everywhere I was going. Then maybe in my desperation, I had gotten really sick and lost a lot of weight because I was dealing with some stuff. I felt like I needed it so much, and let me have that feeling, like boy this would have been so wonderful. I wonder why they got that and I didn’t.

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It’s really tough when you’re in the middle of chasing a dream because there are some people who just don’t get it and it becomes this sort of crazy thing. Your heart is so out there that you hope people feel that they know that it is because you’re wanting it so bad. It becomes a universe thing of like, “When am I going to get rewarded by the universe” and that is a tough spot.

Hidden Remote: It is really tough. It makes you think that this will never happen, and to be that close, must have made you feel as though you have been robbed of your opportunity?

Katz: Yes, once I got to that point my friend had kind of said “This is really stupid. I don’t get why you need to do this.” Then the producer of film was not interested saying, “This is a waste of money.”

So you start to think like nothing’s going to happen for me and when you explain it to other people. I’m calling my aunt crying and saying that I didn’t meet Bill Murray at this thing, and she’s like, “Are you ok?”

People said you are really silly Sadie and need to stop doing this, but then I would meet someone and they’d be like you’re my mother f-king hero. So you see I’m supposed to do this. If I would have quit when it started, I think I would have just felt like that was a really bad period of my life. I don’t know what’s going on but I think a lot of people are chasing magic right now.

Hidden Remote: Have you ever put this kind of effort into other projects? If so, then can you describe what that may be?

Katz: I think as an actress. I do give 150 percent and I’m kind of a crazy actress as far as I play really crazy characters. But I always round them with my truth. Like in Wrong Turn 6 which I play an incestuous cannibal who wants to sleep with my brother to further our race. I try to play as authentically as possible because that to me is the only way I know to do something, but you know when you do that you just show up as an actor.

So no this is the equivalent of like getting a university degree in film or something. I really didn’t have a lot of help. I had Jeffrey Dean who did the music and Jim Towns who are the most involved. My executive producer Jim Griffith, who I dragged along for the ride and who now loves the film which is great but. I really have to keep reinvesting in the projects.

Hidden Remote: During the film, you lost a lot. Friends, health, time and just so many other things. Was there any point did you feel that you may have gone too far in your quest?

Katz: No. I went to UCLA hospital for exhaustion. I kind of knew that I needed to relax a little bit. I was pretty heartbroken about my friends not being around. But I was partying and was really stressed out. I was like no, there is no quitting because I felt like I still had to finish my story whatever the story was.

I felt like that was that if I quit it would have hurt on a whole other level and I couldn’t fathom not finishing what I came out to do. I look back and I think that’s really crazy. I moved five times.

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I was really obsessed with finishing the documentary and meeting Bill Murray and I got really really hard to be back engaged to someone when you’re talking about Bill Murray. He didn’t really understand why it was so important to me which to me I was like, “If you don’t understand why this is important to me then we have nothing in common because we’re not the same person.”

Hidden Remote: Now with the balloons. There were a few scenes and you got up to about 200 balloons. I was curious where the balloons symbolic or what was the motivation behind them?

Katz: Well the original thing which we cut out because I couldn’t figure out how to fit it into the storyline and it didn’t need to be over-explained. I couldn’t make an event that I knew Bill was going to be at which was the first golf tournament because I got cast in Bulgaria to do my film. So I was like I will send Bill Murray flowers and let them know about my quest.

I was like I’m going to send 200 balloons, no, I think it was just 100. I’m going to send 100 balloons to Bill Murray because people have to figure out what to do with the balloons and everyone sees them and now it’s like a really good way to let the Murray family know when I was doing. I’m in love with balloons, and so I couldn’t think of something more magical.

Hidden Remote: I think that’s perfect.

Katz: So it felt like maybe I was Bill Murray. Here’s thing. If you’re the head of the party all the time and you’re kind of the one always doing things that nobody ever does for you. They’re waiting for you to do something crazy. It was kind of exciting for me to feel like maybe I was a giving him a little bit of magic too.

Hidden Remote: It’s almost like an experience from Bill Murray in a reverse way. While you are chasing the experience, he is giving you one in return.

Katz: I mean that’s kind of true with anyone when you have a clash. Even if it’s a change. like the famous thing people say when going out of the country when they come back they say “When I was in Europe.” But to you, you’re like, “Oh, they just spent a couple weeks in Europe. Why did they have to bring it up?” But to them, it’s doing something that they needed so badly. I think when you set out to do something like that you’re not really the same person. This did change me because my heart was invested.

Hidden Remote: Now looking back at The Bill Murray Experience what kind of person were you before the journey during the journey, and now after the journey?

Katz: I think before I was hopeful in a different way. I think when I started it I was kind of innocent. There’s the temptation to believe in magic where it feels like you’re entitled to it. During the filming, I was realizing that I had to work for magic and no one owes me anything, and maybe I needed to learn that.

You feel like you’re the difference of the ice cream guys. Why did the ice cream guys get that experience? I deserve that. You have to let that stuff go. Which is really important because sometimes I’m so goal-oriented. Just letting like OK this is what universe life is guiding me and I’m trying to manipulate it to be what I need to be. Rather than just saying this is what it is. I hope that’s what people get from the film. The journey is really important [as is keeping] our eyes open because if we just trust that whatever journey were on it’s the one we are supposed to be on that does a big wonder for us.

I’ve seen that film now 100 times and I’m kind of groaning that every time and other times I’m like “I forgot about that.” That was really important to me. That is weird, it’s like you’re watching certain time section of your life. It’s strange, it’s not a reality show, it’s a documentary that is saying, “This is who I was at this time.” [It’s] very humbling in a way.

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Hidden Remote: It must have been hard to even edit some of the stuff because it’s your own personal soul. Did you find there were several scenes like “I love this part of me but it doesn’t fit the movie, or it doesn’t make the movie continuously flow?”

Katz: There was one thing that I wish we kept in, but the lighting wasn’t quite right and it just it was hard to follow. In the editing, If it wasn’t in the exact quest it didn’t need to be in the movie. It would be really disciplined with that. But sometimes it goes like this. So, if this is a subtext of what’s going on, but at a certain point, you just have to say, “You know what. Let people draw their own conclusion.” There could be someone that says this chick is like a frivolous and ridiculous or somebody else really understands it.

Honestly, I could have had hours of PJ (Soles) and Joel (Murray) we had some really authentic sweet interviews with them. Because they’re just such nice human beings. It was hard to cut out what you wanted and didn’t. We had other Bill Murray family members but they didn’t really feel comfortable being on tape and I didn’t really want to abuse Bill and Joel’s family like that by taking advantage of the fact that they were giving me interviews. So there is stuff like that I could have done.

Hidden Remote: That reminded me of part of the film which I thought was really cool. Where you could have gone the more ‘stalker’ route, but you chose not too, for specific reasons. You could have done things the easy way, but that wasn’t what you wanted, and I admire that.

Katz: Thank you. I mean that was that whole thing a lot of people were calling me people I knew when I was doing was sending you like here’s Joel’s address. I know Bill has a house here, and he has one in Temecula. And I was like I don’t know?

Something seems wrong to sit in front of his house. I was like he’s still a man. He’s an actor and I don’t want to be the one to violate him in that way. I had a knowledge of where his kids played sports and things like that, and you can’t just go and do that.

Then you go, “why should we support this girl?” She’s not even keeping boundaries. I mean sneaking on to the set of Rock the Kasbah was tough too, but I did try and somebody let me in, and that was like a really fine line I’m walking.

Hidden Remote: Now directing it would be hard to say, Well I’m going to meet Sylvester Stallone or whoever-

Katz: That’s the problem. People have asked and I would rather do a doc on chasing you know… Giving you truffles or something, something fun or ridiculous investigating something else in a light-hearted way.

I don’t think there’s another actor that is as at the Bill Murray status. I mean who else is even that random in that way. I think that would kind of demean what I’m doing unless you know MTV gave me a billion dollars… I don’t want to lie.

I don’t think it would have that same feeling for me. I thought maybe it might be fun if could send someone else on the journey to meet their favorite actor. That might be fun but it wouldn’t have the same… I think I would be somebody else who is like, “Oh my god I need to meet Christopher Walken.”

I mean I’ve been to the Oscars before and I’ve been to the Grammys I’ve met all kinds of actors so it’s not like I’m a particularly star-struck person a dinner with tons of actors and stuff as I’m in L.A. I have friends in the industry, but Bill Murray’s is an enigma. I think the only person that might have given me that kind of feeling is Andy Kaufman.

Hidden Remote: Yes that’s a good one.

Katz: I mean who else has that kind of random feeling to them that you know what you were going to get from that. That’s the only one I can think of that I feel that way about. Would you want to meet Bill Murray, but who else would you want to meet, who else is even-

Hidden Remote: I always sort of would have like to meet Stallone, but he is not that kind of random like Andy Kaufman or Bill Murray. Your experience was completely random as well.

Katz: You didn’t grow up wanting to meet Bill Murray, you had unforeseen circumstances lead you that way, and that is authentically true. It really did happen that way. I would lay awake at night and go through the rabbit hole of the Internet.

When it really was like an aha moment because we kept me and we started the doc differently. I kept saying we couldn’t figure out how to get the doc going because it came from nowhere.

I wasn’t like a super Bill Murray fan. I mean, I love Bill Murray movies, but not in that way, and then finally we said screw it let’s just say the truth. That’s when it made sense and that kind of is what kept the whole edit going on in the film. I was like you know what we’re going to say the truth. For better or worse.

Hidden Remote: At what point do you think you had grown past the breakup comparable to the last scene of the doc?

Katz: I cried the whole way home from Florida. I was sitting with Dallas who is a producer. I said we’re out of money and that was as close as I can get, and it didn’t seem at that point it made any sense to let it go. I think I also let my relationship go. It was certainly a calling.

Then it was just hitting me so hard. I was watching a film and we had already had the animated bit, but we didn’t have the last animated bit. I called up my editor and I said you’re gonna hate me I want to change the ending. He said, “What the hell are you talking about you are not changing the ending.” I said the whole movie is my Bill Murray experience. We are watching it from the second it starts. That was my experience. This is my cartoon and that’s what’s so great about doing a documentary whether it’s your journey or not it writes itself for you.

It wasn’t just me finishing the film that helped me it was me needing to finish the journey and really figure out what it is about already after it had already won a film festival. It was honestly like the coolest experience because every time we see the ending I get really emotional. “Oh, my God, this is what it was about for me.” It revealed itself in a way that only maybe this film isn’t perfect for some people but for me, it was absolutely the message I wanted to get out there. You think you’re making the film but the film is telling you what the message is. It’s so crazy to me.

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Hidden Remote: Can you tell me what projects your now working on and where we can find you on social media?

Katz: I have some horror films coming out where you see a lot more of me. I am coming out in this film with Michael Pare called Mayday. Which is going to be a different kind of Sadie. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram is really the best thing. On Twitter, you can follow them Bill Murray Experience doc on Instagram as well. So please follow our journey. I kinda made a vow that I would share with people how the film does and the filmmakers and things should be really exciting and we’re getting a complete DOD cable release on Amazon and iTunes too. And then in March, it will come on DVD and Blu-Ray.

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