Groundhog Day (film)

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Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day
Directed by	Harold Ramis
Produced by	Trevor Albert, Harold Ramis
Written by	Danny Rubin, Harold Ramis
Starring	Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott, Stephen Tobolowsky, Brian Doyle-Murray
Music by	George Fenton
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	February 12, 1993
Running time	101 min.
Language	English
Budget	$14,600,000
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Groundhog Day is a 1993 comedy film and box office hit starring Bill Murray as Phil Connors, an egocentric Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania TV weatherman who, dreading his hated annual assignment covering Groundhog Day (February 2) in Punxsutawney, finds himself repeating the day over and over. Andie MacDowell plays Rita, his new producer. Chris Elliott plays Larry, a station camera operator. The film was directed by Harold Ramis and written by Ramis and Danny Rubin.

This film is number 32 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". In Total Film's 1990s special issue, Groundhog Day was deemed the best film of 1993.

1 Plot
2 Theme
3 Influence
4 Development of the movie
5 Awards
6 Trivia
7 References
8 See also
9 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Phil Connors and his crew from the fictional Pittsburgh television station WPBH-TV travel to Punxsutawney (which, in real life, as in the movie, holds a major celebration for Groundhog Day) to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities with Punxsutawney Phil.

After the celebration concludes, a blizzard develops, closing the nearby roads and shutting down outside phone service, and forcing Phil and company to spend an extra day in Punxsutawney. Phil awakens the next morning, however, to find it is again February 2, and the day unfolds in exactly the same way, over and over again. Groundhog Day begins afresh for Connors each morning (starting with his waking up to the same song, Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe", on his alarm clock radio), but with his (and only his) memories of previous instances of the day intact. He finds himself trapped in a seemingly endless "time loop", reliving the same day in the same small town.

Initially, Connors takes advantage of his foreknowledge of the day's events and the information he is able to gather about the town's inhabitants, and the fact that his actions can have no long-term consequences. He creates an extravagant life for himself, robbing banks, seducing women, and indulging his every pleasure. However, his attempts to seduce Rita are met with repeated failure. He begins to tire, and then to despair of his existence. He commits suicide several times, but even death cannot stop the day from repeating. After he dies, the day goes on and he simply wakes up in the morning again. In one attempt he kills the groundhog along with himself, but even this will not stop the loop.

He opens his heart to Rita, and her advice helps him to gradually find a goal for his trapped life: as a benefactor to others. He cannot, in a single day, bring others to fulfill his needs but he can achieve self-improvement by educating himself on a daily basis. Though the film does not specify the number of repetitions, there is enough time for Connors to learn to play jazz piano, to speak French, to sculpt ice, and to memorize the life story of many people in the town. He also masters the art of flipping playing cards into an upturned hat, which he offhandedly suggests takes six months. Director Harold Ramis stated that the day repeats for about ten years, though the original script had February 2 repeating for thousands of years. The film depicts 33 definite repeats.

Eventually, Connors enhances his own human understanding which, in return, makes him an appreciated and loved man, eventually allowing him to find love and wake up on February 3.

[edit] Theme

The film explores existentialist themes (cf. Camus's essay The Myth of Sisyphus), showing how one's own choices influence and dictate one's future; in this respect, it parallels the life of George Bailey in Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. In contrast to Bailey, Connors gets to manipulate the variables, and then to see the many different outcomes, which seem to repeat countless times.

The philosophical concept of the eternal return, especially that posited by Friedrich Nietzsche, has also been cited as a inspiration for the film, though Connors' eventual redemption seemingly runs contrary to Nietzsche's outlook, where a goal of eternal recurrence is to make the best of what one has. However, Connors does learn essentially this lesson, so it is not entirely contradictory to Nietzsche.

Phil Connors committing one of his many suicides — "I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted and burned."

After realizing the day is repeating, Connors explores hedonism and debauchery. Though he first finds enormous pleasure in living a consequence-free existence, he passes into desperation and depression, and finally kidnaps Punxsutawney Phil in a bid to kill them both and end the cycle. His attempt is unsuccessful—his own death simply cuts the day short and repeats the process—but he attempts suicide many more times before succumbing to the sad realization that he is immortal, at least in the context of Groundhog Day.

Out of sheer boredom, Connors eventually begins to get to know the town he had previously dismissed as the inconsequential site of an irritating once-a-year broadcast. In the end, he helps the ill, rescues people, takes piano lessons, becomes an expert ice sculptor, and eventually learns to appreciate others. These experiences, and their consequences, allow Phil to like himself, to like others, and to be liked. As he becomes concerned with the lives of others, he is able to love, and is eventually able to win Rita's heart without trying to win it. In other words, he's a great guy; not because he says so, but because that is how others see him. With this, Connors finally awakens to a new day and a new life.

Appropriate to his newfound appreciation for life, Connors' penultimate line of the movie, upon realizing that the curse is broken, is "Let's live here!" Even given a choice to escape the town he's been trapped in, he has found internal satisfaction and no longer feels a need to go anywhere else. On the other hand, since the last line is "We'll rent, to start," perhaps he can take his newfound understanding of life anywhere he and Rita go.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Influence

Groundhog Day is a tale of self-improvement, to look inside oneself and realize that the only satisfaction in life comes from turning outward and concerning oneself with others rather than concentrating solely on one's own wants and desires. Although it did not do exceptionally well in its original cinema release, the movie had a sort of second life on video and cable. Originally noted as an uplifting romantic comedy by critics, it has since entrenched itself as one of the great American films of the late twentieth century: The film is number thirty-four on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Funniest Movies, and Roger Ebert has revisited it in his "Great Movies" series. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the seventh greatest comedy film of all time. It is also currently number 171 of the Top 250 Movies of all time, as rated by members of the Internet Movie Database, with an 8.0 rating out of 10.

The phrase "Groundhog Day" has entered common use as a reference to an unpleasant situation that continually repeats, or seems to.

The term is also entering the real world lexicon as witnessed by the following comments from R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, on talks on the Israel/Lebanon conflict in August 2006. "We’d go home at 10 or 11 at night and say, ‘Tomorrow will be a better day.’ But the next day was Groundhog Day all over again."^[1]

The film's mild cult following has made it one of Murray's well-known roles; this is acknowledged by the actor in a recorded holiday greeting played on Air America Radio, in which the actor wishes the listener a "Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year, and Happy Groundhog Day."

[edit] Development of the movie

There are several differences between the original script for Groundhog Day, as written by Danny Rubin, and the film as it was actually released, due to changes made by the film's director Harold Ramis. In the original script the film began in the middle of the narrative, without explaining how Phil Connors had come to be constantly reliving Groundhog Day. However the filmmakers became concerned that the audience would feel cheated without seeing Phil's growing realization of the nature of the time loop. Rubin had also originally envisioned Andie MacDowell's Rita reliving Groundhog Day with Phil and wished to portray the pair as being stuck in the time loop for far longer than in the final film, possibly for thousands of years. Consequently, the love story within the film was less developed in the original script than in the final movie.

There was also a second draft script, which gave an explicit reason for the time loop—a voodoo spell cast by a woman who worked at the television station, who had been involved with Phil but whom he had rejected due to his superficial attitude—that did not appear in the final film.

"Ned's Corner" commemorative plaque, Woodstock Illinois

The location for most of the shooting of the film was not actually Punxsutawney but rather Woodstock, Illinois, which "just seemed right." The inhabitants of Woodstock helped in the film's production by bringing out heaters to warm the cast and crew in cold weather. Needless to say, some facts of the real-life celebration had to be adjusted. For example, in Punxsutawney, the actual Groundhog Day celebration location, Gobbler's Knob, is located in a rural area about 2 miles (3 km) east of town. In this film, however, the viewer is led to believe that the location is within the town's boundaries.

Some of the film was also shot in nearby Indiana, Pennsylvania.

[edit] Awards

British Comedy Awards 1993 (Comedy Film)
Saturn Award for Best Actress (Film) (Andie McDowell, for playing Rita)

[edit] Trivia

The Dismemberment Plan was a Washington D.C. based dance-punk band which derived its name from a stray phrase uttered by the insurance salesman in the movie, Ned Ryerson (played by character actor Stephen Tobolowsky).
Groundhog Day apparently inspired time loops in episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess ("Been There, Done That"), Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("Life Serial" Act III), Seven Days, "Pepper Ann", The X-Files ("Monday"), Stargate SG-1 ("Window of Opportunity") ^[2] and Charmed ("Deja Vu All Over Again"). It also serves as the inspiration for the current US TV miniseries, Day Break.
British comedy quiz show Shooting Stars once contained the question "Who was the star of Groundhog Day?", to which the contestant replied "Bill Murray". The host, Vic Reeves, then asked the question again, and the contestant answered it again, and this repeated with the contestant getting more and more irate until he eventually got the joke.
Although we do not know exactly how many times Phil relives Groundhog Day, in the scene where he is flipping cards into a hat, he remarks that it takes "6 months, 4 to 5 hours a day" to learn.
It was remade into an Italian version called E Gia Ieri with the action changed to a Mediterranean island. Instead of groundhogs, the protagonist is there to cover the migration of storks.
The poetry Rita quotes to Phil is from the sixth canto of The Lay of the Last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott, also known as Patriotism.
Since its release, the film has become a favorite of Buddhist, Christian and Jewish leaders alike because they see its themes of selflessness and rebirth as a reflection of their own spiritual messages. It has even been dubbed by some religious leaders as the "most spiritual film of all time."^{[citation needed]}
The French poem Phil quotes to Rita is La bourrée du célibataire by Jacques Brel.
Groundhog Day has been used by an economist to demonstrate the impossibility of the economics concepts of perfect information and perfect competition. Full text of article
Originally, Phil was supposed to be stuck in the same day for something like 10,000 years, but in the end, it was said by the director that he probably spends more like 10 years in the day.
In one episode of Legends of the Hidden Temple, (the Levatating Dog Leash of Nostradamus), Olmec announced that in the third Temple Game, one player from each team would hang on a rope with a ball between their feet, and they would have to meet their partner over and over and over again, to which Kirk Fogg replied "They have to meet 'em over and over and over again! This sounds like Groundhog Day."
In August 2003, Stephen Sondheim responded to a question about his next project that he was interested in something like a theme and variations - possibly a musical adaptation of Groundhog Day. ^[3] ^[4]