Of Course Bill Murray Wore Two Watches at Once in Cannes (2024)

You might have seen Bill Murray wearing two watches at the Cannes Film Festival and thought to yourself, Oh, what a wacky guy, that Bill Murray. The practice of “double wristing” or “two timing”—wearing two watches at the same time, with one on each wrist—isn’t as crazy as it sounds. In fact, the practice is closely associated with plenty of famous and historical figures: U.S. Army General Norman Schwarzkopf set his pieces to the time in Saudi Arabia and EST during the Gulf War. (Similarly, Fidel Castro would stack two Rolexes on the same wrist: one set to local time and the other was rumored to track Moscow.)

Murray also follows a long line of Hollywood types who use their wrists to their fullest potential. Marlon Brando, Princess Diana, Johnny Depp, and even Justin Bieber are practitioners of the Schwarzkopf. Like his predecessors, Murray, in a far and distant land (the South of France), may also be trying to keep apace locally and back home.

Bill Murray’s Timex Easy Reader and Cartier Tank Solo

This is quite the combination from Murray—it’s like putting caviar on a Ritz cracker (which, perhaps not coincidentally, is a delicious combination). On one hand, he’s wearing a Timex Easy Reader, a simple watch that, as its name suggests, is also very legible. It costs $50 and is available practically everywhere watches are sold—a rarity in the world of celebrity timepieces. The other watch is a proper Hollywood piece: a Cartier Tank. While the two may appear to be from different worlds, they make a lot of sense together. The Cartier provides the luxury punch, but isn’t all that easy to get an exact time off. That’s where the Timex comes in. Form and function are divided across both wrists.

LeBron James’s Rolex Pearlmaster

The premiere of Space Jam 2 required a kid-friendly watch. This Pearlmaster, set with blue, green and yellow sapphires, comes in the familiar colors of Saturday morning cartoons. This is undeniably an amazing watch, but we do have one question: why not Kross Studios’ new $100,000 Space Jam watch that looks vaguely like a basketball?

Dave Chapelle’s Rolex Cosmograph Daytona

Chapelle vacillates between to-die-for luxury watches and a humble Apple Watch. Luckily, there was no need to count steps at the NBA Finals game between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Phoenix Suns, so Chapelle broke out one of his Rolex Daytonas. Chapelle has specific taste when it comes to his watches. Whether he’s browsing for high-end Rolex pieces or a much more wallet-friendly Shinola, he clearly needs to time something. His watch collection consists of this hugely in-demand Daytona, two aviation-inspired Breitlings, and Shinola’s Runwell Chrono. What they all have in common is a chronograph function. Hey, since the refs aren’t up for it, maybe Chapelle can time Giannis Antetokounmpo’s free throw routine.

Adrien Brody’s Chopard L.U.C Perpetual Chrono

Brody wore Chopard’s powerhouse L.U.C. to The French Dispatch screening. Combining a perpetual calendar—an advanced complication that keeps an accurate date until the year 2100—with a chronograph (stopwatch) function is a flex in the watch world. Chopard is one of the few brands—along with Patek Philippe, A. Lange & Söhne, and Vacheron Constantin—to pull off the feat. And as Brody’s watch shows, it’s not simple to pack all these features into a single watch. Chopard only got everything to fit by tacking subdials onto subdials, in the process creating the mythical sub-subdial.

Khris Middleton’s Hublot Classic Fusion

During his playoff run, Middleton has flipped back and forth between a Rolex Day-Date and this Classic Fusion. Those two timepieces represent two different flavors of classic timepieces. This Hublot was originally designed in the ‘80s ,when watches like the Royal Oak and Nautilus were beginning their ascent to icon status. This watch came out of the same environment when brands were searching for a healthy middle-ground between casual pieces and their luxury counterparts.