TALKING OUT LOUD.(Bill Murray)(Interview)

In the new movie "Lost in Translation," Bill Murray plays a dispirited movie star who goes to Tokyo to make a couple of million dollars by appearing in a TV commercial for Japanese whiskey. Shooting the movie last year took twenty-seven days, during which time Murray stayed in Tokyo's ultra-modern Park Hyatt, which was also used for many of the scenes in the movie. Murray's real struggles in his Park Hyatt room have made him curiously sensitive to hotel life. The other day, Murray and his "Lost in Translation" colleagues, including the director Sofia Coppola, arrived in Rome from the Venice Film Festival and checked in to the Hotel Eden. From there via telephone, in the middle of the night, he talked about his life in hotels.

"It's like Las Vegas in my room--no clocks," he said, in his slightly querulous, low-key manner. "I'm in Room tre- uno-sei." He yawned. "This is the day I start learning Italian. Buona sera. Grazie. All that. I'll be here for five months, making a movie with Wes Anderson. My wife and my six kids will join me here for Thanksgiving. Mi scusi. Riccardo, the room-service waiter, is at the door. (Mutterings, the sound of a door closing) I don't let Riccardo come into the room," he went on. "I never let anybody come into my room. I'm very neat. I take care of my room. In Japan, they were always trying to get into my room. They would call and leave messages: 'Can we come and clean up the room?' The messages started with the housekeeper, then the desk clerks, then the general manager. The DVD player wouldn't work, so they sent an engineer to fix it. Behind him was the hotel manager and a swat team of women with buckets. While the engineer fussed with the DVD, the swat team stared furtively at my room. The hotel manager pushed his way in, but I sort of shepherded him to the door. He was brokenhearted," Murray said sympathetically, and continued:

"I'm on the third floor. I could jump out if I had to. I can see trees--a cypress, two olive trees. I feel I could sing to somebody down there. I can unlatch and open the windows. I can ...