GQ: Oh, sure, I remember. The soundtrack. The lunchboxes. The action figures.

MURRAY: Right. And it's still one of the biggest movies of all time. And ever since that story broke, everywhere I go people are like, "So are you gonna make that movie?" I was down in Austin at South by Southwest, and you go at it hard down there—fun but, man, you need to sleep for days afterwards. Anyhow, I got into it one night with a bunch of younger people who were like, Oh, I love Peter Venkman! I grew up with Peter Venkman! We got to talking, and the more we talked about it, the more I thought, Oh Christ, I should just do this thing.

GQ: A generation awaits, for sure. You weren't even supposed to play that role, right?

MURRAY: Yeah. Originally it was Belushi. Like a lot of my movies. [beat] God, John died, what was it, twenty-five years ago?

GQ: It was '82, right?

MURRAY: Yeah, I think it was '82. I dunno. That part of life is getting fuzzy.

GQ: I read that you wanted to play a ghost in the movie. That's kind of brilliant.

MURRAY: Well, I hadn't wanted to do the movie. They kept asking, and I kept saying no. So once upon a time I said, just joking: "If you kill me off in the first reel, then fine, I'll do it." And then supposedly they came up with an idea where they kill me off and I was a ghost in the movie. Kinda clever, really.

GQ: But has the Zombieland cameo stolen that gag?

MURRAY: [genuinely confused] But that was a zombie. Not a ghost.