Bill Murray, 54, was sitting on a couch during a Broken Flowers after-party at Manhattan’s Maritime Hotel. The date was Wednesday, 7.27.05. Jett and I were standing nearby. The Focus Features publicist had explicitly said “no photography” and yet some guy snapped Murray regardless. Murray immediately leapt up and over a coffee table to confront the renegade shutterbug with an outraged “what are you doing, man?”, etc.

I was quickly told I couldn’t write about the incident and I didn’t, but hey, it was 20 years ago.

Murray still isn’t taking shit from photographers.

The below snap was taken at Chelsea Cinemas on 7.27.05 by Hollywood Elsewhere.

Jim Jarmusch‘s Broken Flowers, which was well reviewed and wound up making decent coin ($47 million worldwide after costing $10 million to produce), had screened earlier that evening at the Chelsea Cinemas.

Murray played Don Johnston, an aging ladies’ man who’s fairly wealthy and semi-retired. The story’s about an ex-girlfriend having written Johnston a typewritten note (pink paper, pink envelope) that says he has a 19 year-old son.

HE review: “There’s a hangup, though: the girlfriend doesn’t identify herself. Johnston shows the letter to his next-door neighbor Winston (Jeffrey Wright), a guy with five kids and three jobs who fancies himself as a kind of internet sleuth. Winston asks Johnston to write down a list of ex-flames who might be the mysterious letter-writer. Murray comes up with the names of four women, and Winston finds their addresses and whatnot online. He urges Johnston to visit each and try to learn what he can.

“Johnston’s romantic history qualifies him as some kind of former Casanova. Of course, having had four ex-lovers during the mid ’80s is not especially hound-like. The Great Nookie Shutdown of the mid to late ’80s (caused by fear of AIDS) hadn’t quite kicked in in the early years of the Reagan administration, and single heteros were almost as frisky as they were in the ’70s.

“The ex-girlfriends are played by Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Frances Conroy and a nearly unrecognizable Tilda Swinton, covered in a black wig and heavy eye mascara.

“The film picks up steam once Murray/Johnston goes on the road and pays a visit to each ex, always offering a bouquet of flowers but saying and asking very little. For some reason, Johnston never puts his cards on the table and just says, ‘Did you write me a letter on pink paper that said I have a 19 year-old son?’ Instead, he hints and tippy-toes around and asks if they own a typewriter.

“What’s so bad about posing a straight question? A middle-aged man asking an ex-girlfriend whether he might have a son he never knew about…what’s so gauche or off-putting about that?

“What’s interesting and finally quite satisfying about Broken Flowers is how Jarmusch doesn’t feel obliged to answer each and every last question, either on the part of Johnston or the audience.

“Flowers has, of course, Jarmusch’s signature elements (minimalism, understatement, observings of cultural minutae), and a somewhat taciturn, occasionally hilarious lead performance by Murray.”