Yesterday was former NYT film critic Elvis Mitchell's last class at Harvard. He didn't bring cupcakes for the class — he brought Bill Murray. Writes a student:

I'm auditing Elvis' Film Criticism class at Harvard (really less a class than an opportunity for Elvis to display his command of designer jackets and pop culture references). Instead of watching Bertolucci's The Conformist, as scheduled on the syllabus, we watched Quick Change... with director and star Bill Murray, apparently one of Elvis' buddies, joining us in person! I arrived late, and saw Elvis and Bill and the head teaching fellow leaving the building; after the (fairly horrible but entertaining) movie, we all sat around like the celebrity whores that we are for 20 minutes waiting for the three of them to get back from wherever they had gone. Seemed that wherever that was had involved lots of booze, since Bill seemed more than a little drunk...

... he diverted the response to every pseudo-serious question he was asked ("What draws you to certain roles?") into rambling stories about things like getting high with the Wutang Clan while filming Coffee and Cigarettes, and he put on a ridiculous bright yellow hat to impersonate Ron Howard. Bill was wry and hilarious and seemed like a really nice guy. He also made fun of film critics a lot... I think Elvis has better taste in movie star friends than in... girlfriends.

Writes another student:

Bill Murray joked around with the class, which had around 100 people in the room, and then trotted out to have lunch with elvis and his teaching assistant while the movie played. they came back at around 3 (the class is 1-4pm) and murray answered questions from elvis and the crowd, was generally hilarious, etc.. after class ended, murray hung around outside and chatted with students, taking photos with some of them. elvis said he'd asked his friend bill to come from new york for the day. quite a last stand for the newly jobless critic, who told anyone who would listen that everything that had been written about him wasn't true, except that he'd left the new york times, and that he was mystified by all the attention.