Groundhog Day: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information and the show that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite these music, TV shows and more.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Are your two pad footed prognosticators of pedantry, your time loop trapped trivia chasers, your small Pennsylvania towns of small Pennsylvania details.

00:00:31
Speaker 1: I'm Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan run Talg And today, folks, we're talking about a film that's one of the greatest comedies of all time. Nay, no notes of any time. Well of guys films of all time. Yeah. It's almost a fairy tale about self improvement and rebirth. Yeah, a film that argues you can only escape the rut you find yourself in and seek happiness by letting go of your ego and serving others. Perhaps more importantly, it's a film that elevated an obscure, regional punchline of a hall into a national treasure. That's right, folks, we're talking about Groundhog Day. Whoo. I'm so excited. Yeah. Good. Not sure what we can add to the mountain of assessments. This film has received by minds far better than ours, so we'll just provide this illustrative anecdote. In twenty eighteen, the New York Museum of Modern Art debuted a series of films beginning with groundhog Day, that they chose after polling thirty five literary and religious scholars. The stumbling block where it's getting this project off the ground wasn't really for any reason that you would expect. It was held up because there was conflict between the literary and religious scholars polled because so many of them wanted to be the ones to write about Groundhog Day. I mean, I gotta ask you, did you pick up on all.

00:01:45
Speaker 3: The undertones of this movie when you watched it, presumably as a kid, because I absolutely did not know.

00:01:51
Speaker 1: In fact, I didn't watch this when I was a kid. This was like not one of our like weird family like Caddy Check for sure, Vacation Ghostbusters was the big one for me. But like, I don't think I came to this until I was like a teen and then and then I was like suspected that there was a lot going on under the hood, but no, not really until I was an adult was I was like, he's trapped in the Bardo, you know, like this all this all the philosophy and religious stuff that goes into it so well.

00:02:18
Speaker 3: I mean no, I mean there are movies like The Big Lebowski that I feel like, from the moment it was released, this whole mythology grew up and around it, and I remember books were written about it and just all this stuff and T shirts and it just became this thing that you were sort of, at least for people of our age, were supposed to sort of study. And that just wasn't the case for this movie at all to my knowledge. Until I literally went to film school and was instructed to study it. I had lumped it in with nineties comedies with maturing comedians like Steve Martin and Father of the Bride or Eddie Murphy and the Nutty Professor or some Dan Aykroyd thing. I just I didn't think of it as anything special other than just a good movie. And like I said, it really wasn't until I went to film school, but it was literally taught in screenwriting one oh one, and my professors just drilled it into our heads that this was a perfect movie, full stop. We had one early assignment in class where we were told to watch groundhog Day and just write out the dramatic beats, and then we brought into class the next day and discussed it.

00:03:19
Speaker 1: Because it had really occurred to me. It's such a clever illustration of the basic principles of drama, yeh, which you know is kind of not all that different from the old comedy rule of three. It's status quo is established, then the hero is taken outside of his comfort zone and undergoes a transformation, and then he returns at the end of the movie a changed person. And Groundhog Day is so clever because everything remains the same in this movie except the person. It's so great. Yeah, I mean, it's such a funny. It's like, what do you do in the hero's journey when, like, how does the hero's journey change when the hero does not go on a journey at all. It's so great.

00:03:57
Speaker 3: I know that I only have like four frames of reference for everything in my life, and I know I just read ahead and I got so mad that you did this, so I.

00:04:05
Speaker 1: Know, I'm sorry. Well give me a minute.

00:04:07
Speaker 3: I mean, I liken groundhog Day to the music of the Beach Boys.

00:04:12
Speaker 1: Hear me out, hear me out. It's something that we all sort of grew up with, and on the surface it seems kind of quaint and a little hoky, But then the more you look at it, you see how complex in borderline genius it is. And you also you start to pick up on the darkness and the sadness beneath it, you know, I mean, much like learning about the pain and darkness behind the music of the Beach Boys, like Brian Wilson's a bordered attempt to compose his teenage Symphony to God, which was this herculean task that nearly killed him. You learn about the making of groundhog Day and just the deep existential dread at its heart, and you know it was very nearly this insanely dark movie where Bill Murray was trapped in the small Pennsylvania town for ten thousand years, and then you get all the behind the scenes worries about how he was fighting with Harold Ramis, one of his best friends, and children and fighting with children. Yeah, just the number of people's sanity this movie cost. It's stick. I don't know.

00:05:11
Speaker 3: I just find it so fascinating, both as a piece of art and the story behind it.

00:05:15
Speaker 1: Well, from the convoluted writing process that involved firing and then rehiring the original writer to the real life pain animating Bill Murray's performance to his split from longtime collaborator Harold ramis precipitated by this film to whatever the hell groundhog punch is. Oh, here's everything you didn't know about groundhog Day. We should just start punching in the am, all right, that's rules, dude. Kenny Loge's fus Yeah, yes he does. I forget did you in give you him or messina? I always got him? And John Oh's confused. It's the mustache. I don't think anyone cares about poor John Oates. I know, not even Darrel at this point. It's just a little definiteatical say, definitely not Darrel.

00:06:12
Speaker 3: He's filled out a restraining order, right, but onto happier topics, Yeah, groundhog Day. Groundhog Day was written by a guy named Danny Rubin. After moving to la to pursue his screenwriting dreams, he found himself sitting in a theater in the early nineties waiting for a movie to start in the past the time, he pulled out his copy of Anne Rice's The Vampire lestat As one does. I guess and you know because vampires are immortal, if I recall correctly. He started mulling over the idea of immortality, and he went down various tangents that one would in what you describe as a winding, bong ripping discussion about the topic what you would do with your time if you are immortal, and how you would change over time if eternal life would then suddenly become boring or pointless, which I think is a topic that was discussed in the Robin Williams movie by Centennial Man.

00:07:07
Speaker 1: And also Highlander. Better movie, but in Highlander they solved it by cutting each other's heads off. So again, like I said, better movie, a better movie. Yeah.

00:07:18
Speaker 3: Danny Rubin the Rter thought about men living their lives in a state of perpetual adolescent arrested development, thinking, as he recalled in twenty ten, there are some people those arrest of development type men who can't really outgrow their adolescence. And I thought, well, maybe one lifetime isn't enough, Maybe you need more. Thus inspired, he started working an idea about a man slowly changing over the course of his eternal life, and as he fleshed out the concept, he soon realized that the idea wasn't very practical as a movie, solely because of the intricacies and expenses of both depicting historical events and then also imagining a future for the protagonist whose life extends over many, many centuries.

00:07:58
Speaker 1: Which that's why we'll never get Nick Cave's awesome pitch for Gladiator two, where Maximus goes to Hell, fights his way out of Hell, and then is like an eternal immortal soldier who we see him fighting through like every historically significant war. It was like Nick Cave literally wrote that as a screenplay. It's like flow, Oh, you wrote the screenplay. Yeah, that was his pitch for it. You can see it like float. He's written other stuff, but that actually got made. But that was like the coolest idea ever that we'll never see. I mean, it's so funny.

00:08:27
Speaker 3: I mean, you got like you think of the cigar chopping executive app immortality too expensive, immortality sounds expensive. Other influences on this nascent groundhog the idea for Danny almost a Danny Elfman for Danny Rubin include the short story Christmas every Day, which was written in eighteen ninety two by William Dean Howlas, which I'm not familiar with, and also the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, which we'll get to later. So he's thinking, Okay, like we said, immortality, Nah, it doesn't really translate to the big screen. So then he recalled the short story outline that he written two years earlier, but followed a man who woke up every morning to find out that he was trapped in the same day over and over again. And in what you describe as a genius marriage of convenience, Rubin stuck the two ideas together, which he felt solved two problems at once. By portraying eternity as a repeating cycle instead of a continuous progression of linear time, he eliminated the production costs of constantly changing settings throughout history, and he also believed that the repetitive structure would offer more dramatic and comedic possibilities. Because, as you note, comedy works in threes.

00:09:44
Speaker 1: What would your hell be being trapped in the same day or just being forced to live forever as time goes around you?

00:09:49
Speaker 3: Ooh, because I guess if you're forced to live forever, you have to say, I mean, I think about being in New York for almost twenty years and saying goodbye to both places that I've loved and people who've moved away.

00:10:01
Speaker 1: And how sad that's been. So I guess the city banks that have closed that you've missed, you know Whoopi Goldberg lives in New Jersey. Now I know it's been very hard for you you moved away, So I I guess that's pretty sad. But I guess it would be invigorating to see the changes and you you know, every day would be different as opposed to's just the mind dulling boredom of having every day being exactly the same. But at least you'd have the comfort. I'd choose the time loop. You choose the time loop. There's just fewer logistical problems because if you live forever, what do you got to You gotta like set up bank accounts to like keep falsifying documents to become your own son and your own air Like how do you you know? How do you how do you go to the DMV?

00:10:46
Speaker 3: Like when you know, do you get captured by like guys in white coats at Johns Hopkins once they realize that you're just not dying?

00:10:53
Speaker 1: And did they put you in like a little glass cage and study of yeah, like how do you like like if you get if you get like mortally injured, you know, but but you know you are still immortal, Like but you're like, well, I need to get my hand has been cut off or something like, I need to get this dealt with. And they go there and they like take your blood test and they're like, something's off here, and then the government comes for you. You know, if you're stuck in a time loop, at least you know, you know, I have twenty four hours to do whatever I want to do without Oh I hadn't thought about that, the consequence free element. Oh that's good. Yeah. Yeah, otherwise you'd wind up like the kid in Et, Like you'd be in like some like like clean room for the rest of your life. Probably. Yes, this is why we're screenwriters. Sound of bong water bubbling, Yeah, yeah, exactly. These are second bong rip ideas, though these are the first. Yeah, they are ideas. Yes, they are.

00:11:43
Speaker 3: So seeking a day to ensnare his hero and Danny Ruben initially wanted to set the film on February twenty ninth, which I think will be the day we end up dropping this episode. I didn't think about that. This owed to the comic possibilities of a leap year. What day would you would you have set this movie in?

00:12:03
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I feel like like the obvious answer to me in terms of mischief would be like Saint Patrick's Day or like some kind of a day that's wow for like public insanity, so you can just go around and get get away with a lot more. But April Fool's Day, does anyone like? Does any I don't know. I have a problem with people who take April fools Day seriously. Yeah, I would say, like Saint Patrick's Day, Maybe New Year's people were like reckless and ridiculous on New Year's you know that That kind of lends it a poignancy of being like, you know forever, you know for you're forever on the cusp of renewal. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Thanks. Not Groundhog Day too, Hog Harder, Groundhog Day two, after the Hog High, on the Hog before, That's that's our sad, That's our sad Link Letter trilogy, before Hog Set, after Hog Set, before Hog Rise.

00:13:11
Speaker 3: So Danny Ruboud considered putting this movie on leap year, leap Day, leap Day.

00:13:16
Speaker 1: What are we saying Calbary twenty ninth. You know what I mean. Come on, just keep with me, folks.

00:13:20
Speaker 3: But then when you looked at the calendar, he settled on the next nearest holiday, February second, Groundhog Day, which I've said, I've pronounced this Groundhog's Day my whole life. It was literally today when I realized that it was singular, So thank you for that. Ruben felt that Groundhog Day worked because well enough people were sort of vaguely aware of it. Like Arbor Day, few people knew that there was actually a whole festival around it in the small Pennsylvania town of punk Satawny, something that Reuben was acquainted with through a prior job he had writing for a local phone company.

00:13:52
Speaker 1: Which does he mean like writing for phone books? I don't know, promo cop I don't know, dude. You used to be able to get all kinds of jobs writing in this country, That's okay, fair, Yes, yes, yes, print didn't used to be a dead medium.

00:14:05
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, I didn't realize until recently that they don't have fune books anymore either.

00:14:09
Speaker 1: We live in hell, but you know we got We're gonna get ai porn out of Sora or whatever, whatever, Yeah, you know whatever. That tweet was this week where a guy was like, imagine coming home and telling your AI that you want to watch Shrek too, but with Brad Pitt voicing Shrek and Travis Kelcey playing Donkey and like mister Beast pops in and like, you know, you see that tweet I did? Yeah, yeah, okay, I mean it kind of sounds like being in screenwriting school. Honestly, it's like, you want to sell a script, this is what you do? Sure, yeah, yeah, it's Groundhog Day but with were wolves. Yeah, that's mine kind of would. I had a great idea for a script last night, just called Jackie Chan Goes to Hell, where you have Jackie salt right, what happens? Tell me what happens? Jackie Chan is old and uh, you know, dies and goes to Hell as as you know, he could either be Dante's Dante's Hell or as Big Trouble. Old China told us Chinese people got a lot of Hell's, so you know, you basically just get your classic Jackie Chan stunts and fights and you know, high jinks, and he's gonna make some faces at some point and eventually he has to kill the Devil.

00:15:25
Speaker 3: So is it almost like Jackie chan in that Robin Williams movie yet the second misbegotten nineties Robin Williams movie reference of this episode, Is it like Jackie chan in What Dreams May Come?

00:15:35
Speaker 1: Yeah? I guess he's some purgatory Okay, yeah, but with more like fighting? Okay? Yeah? Will we fall down a thing with a bunch of light bulbs on it? He sure will? Okay, good, that's my only It's the only thing I wanted my contract. But Danny Rubin, uh, I guess more cynically, he landed on Groundhog Day because he remembered thinking it's a completely unexploited holiday. This is a quote. We can play the movie on TV every year like the Charlie Brown specials. What a Hustler. He likes to front later that he wasn't part of the Hollywood machine. But that is a Hollywood exec justification if I've ever heard one. Ironically, Danny Rubin had no further expectations for Groundhog Day besides being a calling card script. He had already sold a screenplay for the thriller Here No Evil, which was a negatively reviewed flop, which is only interesting in Restrospect because it starred Martin Sheen and Marley Maitlin, who'd reunite on the West Wing later. But his agent suggested that he write another screenplay just to grab attention and get him meetings, which is sort of a semi common practice for young screenwriters. I remember being told this a lot in school.

00:16:48
Speaker 3: A lot of genuinely good scripts don't get greenlit in Hollywood just for logistical reasons, like we were talking about earlier with Nick Cave's amazing Gladiator Too, the Immoral Gladiator script. I was often told when I would finish scripts for school that my scripts worked on paper, which was code for you know, be really hard to translate it to a visual medium without gargantuan costs. So a lot of young writers who haven't had their individuality beaten out of them would sometimes submit scripts that they sensed wouldn't really ever get made, but it was just to show off their unique voice and individuality, which would result in meetings for other projects that they would sometimes get assigned. I'm pretty sure there's a list of famous Ish screenwriters who got their big breaks this way by submitting calling card scripts. But I don't feel like putting it together and speaking like not feeling like it. Heigel tell us about the history of Groundhog Day all of that, so you know, Ricky Jervais voice like groundhogs in it. A cursory Internet search will turn up a bunch of articles claiming that groundhog Days descended from a European Christian holiday called candle Mass, which is true that occurs at the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and a lot of people will make the connection with that and a pagan holiday called Imbulk, which is I think Celtic, And so there's a lot of stuff on the Internet that's.

00:18:16
Speaker 1: Like, did you know what groundhog do? Is to send it from a pagan holiday. Candle Mouse's Christian roots come from the point in Jesus's life when Mary and Joseph presented him at the Temple of Jerusalem, and supposedly part of candle Mass Christian superstition lore was that if there were sunny skies that day, a stormy and cold second half of winter was in store for you, while cloudy skies on candle Mass signified approaching warm weather.

00:18:39
Speaker 3: This makes me feel a lot better because my whole life I was confused why the groundhog seeing its shadow meant six more weeks of winter because a shadow means it's sunny, and you would think that means that winter's easing up and you've got spring on the way. So I guess I still don't have an explanation, but I feel better knowing that it's ancient and therefore doesn't have to make sense.

00:19:00
Speaker 1: I mean, but if that's the first inconsistency you uncover in Christianity doing for the long hard road. So when this expanded into Europe, specifically Germany, that lore was broadened to include animals and their shadows. Various people will claim that they were using things like hedgehogs and also badgers, which is amazing. Can you imagine badger Day? That's just like a big feral badger. However, I did find at least one person, A Brandeis grad student in history, at her blog Tales of Times Forgotten, claims that this is all horsesh. She writes that while groundhog Day does originate from Candle Mass, there is little historical effort to suggest that Candle Mass had anything to do with Imbulk. In Bulk, she says, is only mentioned in Old Irish literature. In the tenth century AD, as opposed to candle Mass, which can be found in Old Latin texts as old as the fourth century AD. She continues, candle Mass was first celebrated by Christians living in the Roman Empire in late entiquity, whereas in Bulk has historically been celebrated by Gaelic speaking peoples in Ireland and Scotland, neither of which was part of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. It's hard to imagine why Christians and the Roman Empire would be copying a holiday from Gaelic speaking Pagans, from what they would have seen as the distant outskirts of the known world. So there's that. Now you get to ruin people's trivia when they say, do you know groundhol Day is actually descended from a pagan holiday holding, oh, which is just a great thing to feel I've been doing in my whole life. I'm clearly the picture of happiness. So you know, Sally Forth, my bitter young trivia pals. Anyway, when the Pennsylvania Dutch got their grubby little fingers into that corner of the world, a little pale, bony fingers, yeah, expanding candle Mass and the weather predicting animals to the Keystone State. They ran into the problem of not having badgers or hedgehogs around. One thing they did have, though, were groundhogs, so consequently the earliest mention of groundhog Day is a diary entry from February eighteen forty by a Welsh guy from Morgantown, PA, commenting on this weird thing his German neighbors were up to. It's re enacting the opening of The Lion King with a crownhog. Yeah, it was just like we I just like the idea of him like sort of peering his head out of his house. He's like, Yeah, the Lieberschnitzys are doing something really weird. The first reported news of the holiday was supposedly made by the Pucksatawni spirit of Punkstani, Pennsylvania in eighteen eighty six, with the holiday being made official the following year thanks to climber Freez, the paper's city editor. After the inaugural event, sightseers gathered around at the Yes that is what it's really called Gobbler's Knob for a feast made of various groundhog based dishes and something called groundhog punch. That last thing, which is made from vodka, milk and orange juice, was said to add seven years to Phil's life and was forcibly poured down the animal's throat once they caught him. It gets grosser. Don't worry. Groundhog was such a treat in Punk Satani at the time that the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that wood chuck steak was the quote gastronomical climax of a banquet held in honor of then Pennsylvania Governor Edward Stewart in nineteen oh nine. Gobblers notb isn't that a three six Mafia song? Well done? Wait, I have a question for you. Go on, you say the groundhogs that was made an official holiday by the editor of the Punk Satani Spirit newspaper. Yeah, and people latched onto it. Dude, there's whole society. There's like an official society. There's all the It's like the Masons. Man. Oh, we were editors of a much bigger outlet. Can we just create holidays? Well, you know, papers used to have power. We should have a holiday. You should make Badger Day. We should have a holiday, and we should make Bassard Day. Badger Day is every day of the year. In my heart, Incidentally, the rodents full title given to him in eighteen eighty six is punk Satanni, Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticator, and weather Profit Extraordinary. Funnily enough, a few states use their own groundhogs to celebrate the holiday rather than relying on Phil, including General bo Lee of Atlanta, Georgia, Sir Walter Wally from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Birmingham Bill from Birmingham, Alabama. How many of those groundhogs do we think are racist? Yeah, you're telling me. You know, his shadow doesn't count if he sees his shadow from underneath a burning cross, right. Oh wow. The National Climatic Data Center compared US national temperatures from nineteen eighty eight to twenty twelve to determine the accuracy of Phil's predictions, and that little idiot has an accuracy rate of thirty nine percent, or less than what he would get if you were just flipping a coin. However, that's better than a lot of people's batting averages in the major leagues. So maybe the sie they're actually doing something and he gets true he is not. Uh, perhaps we would do well to heed the suggestion of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals or PETA, who have called now at least twice to replace Phil with an animatronic groundhog for a cruelty free holiday that gives me PTSD to run down. Chuck E. Cheese is in my Massachusetts suburb. Who gives a shit? Just let him who cares? Nothing matters at this point, man, just make it a robot groundhog. It doesn't matter because then uh then old then old Uh you know, build a Blasio can kill as many of them as he wants, are yea, what happened? They just dropped it. Yeah it was in New York. I mean it must have been a Staten Island. Chuck. Come on right, Oh, we didn't mention Staten Island, Chuck. No, no, we didn't. This is about Pennsylvania. Staten Island. Staten Island's been living too well for far too long. I'm taking them to task. Yeah for the un for the unfamili Uh. Build de Blasio was doing this the same the Groundhog Day at Staten Island, which you know, their groundhog's name is Staten Island. Chuck, and the little bastard wriggled his way out. Old Bill's hands and fell and then died later. I didn't know he died. Yeah, requiem in terror packs and so forth. He's probably in hell, though he's in Staten Island. He's almost assuredly racist.

00:25:20
Speaker 3: I'm just imagining if he was used for some kind of like bizarre like monster signal. It's like left on somebody, like left on build a Blasio's doorstep, or is bad or something.

00:25:31
Speaker 1: Like the Teamsters Union leaves a dead dead groundhog. That'd probably the Landscapers Union, Big Phil Phil, Big Phil ratted on us. Now he digs with the groundhogs.

00:25:47
Speaker 3: We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. Back to the film ground Hog Day, Danny Rubin spent eight weeks working on the script. Seven of those eight weeks were making notes to define the rules and characters that inhabit this world, and only one week writing the script, which is devastating to me as somebody who's spent eight years plugging away to script. The whole time he was writing, he was struggling to figure out why the time loop had happened, and trying out all manner of technological magical and celestial options to why this happened, why this occurred. Ultimately, he considered the exact cause of the time loop immaterial and felt that the lack of explanation added to the stories themes, saying, none of us knows exactly how we got to be stuck here either.

00:26:53
Speaker 1: David Byrne voice, you may be asking yourself how did I get here? He's very frank. Again, this is such a small this is not my large land based rodent. But as I touched on, as I waxed poetically during the intro, the original draft was much much darker. For just one of many examples, it opened with Phil already Phil, the main character, not the ground hog, I imagine, already stuck in the time loop, and he was already predicting what the radio hosts would say after his alarm clock goes off, and that goes on to interactions with hotel guests that will culminate with him attacking a pedestrian outside. I think this opening is awesome.

00:27:38
Speaker 3: I think it's really intriguing because everyone watching is going to wonder why this guy just went out of his hotel or I guess Ben and Breakfast is to attack the guy in the street, and why does he know exactly what the radio hosts are gonna say? It's really intriguing, right, But studio executives felt that the audience would feel cheated if they didn't get to see Phil's reaction to discovering that he's caught in a time loop, which, as much as I hate this with the executives, makes a certain amount of sense. It's great to see this sort of slowly dawn on them.

00:28:04
Speaker 1: It's it's better for the darker movie that he wanted to make. It's not as good for like a family friendly, you know, technologically advanced efficient, you know, ninety minute three act comedy, Savior in media res, bullshit for film school. You know, this is the this is the big leagues. Can we beat that? We beat that out of you out here? He wants to open it in media res. I thought we paid her off already.

00:28:35
Speaker 3: It was like I was saying earlier, this movie is a masterpiece disguised as standard fair early nineties fantasy rom com. And that was very much not the movie that Danny Rubin wanted to make. And as much as I love the finished product, I wonder how good this movie might have been if they just leaned into it being truly weird, like if Michelle Gondry had directed this, how cool that would be?

00:28:56
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I mean they would have been a much different film and probably wouldn't have made as much money and still be lost in the hearts and minds of everyone. But man, I'd have liked it. Yeah.

00:29:09
Speaker 3: And when director Harold Ramis rewrote the script, which we'll talk about more in a moment, he added the opening for context with Phil at the TV studio doing the weather and kind of how he wound up in Punk Satani.

00:29:21
Speaker 1: To begin with.

00:29:22
Speaker 3: Initially, the studio wouldn't even greenlight the script without an explanation as to why Phil got stuck in this time loop, and so they came up with kind of not great explanations, ranging from an ex girlfriend's curse on Phil to a scientists malfunctioning machine.

00:29:38
Speaker 1: Ooh, I really don't like that one.

00:29:41
Speaker 3: The studio continued to push for having an explanation for the time loop all during production, but Harold Ramis and producer Trevor Albert settled on a classic movie making scam. They slated the quote explanation scene for the very end of the shooting schedule where it was virtually guaranteed to never get films because movies always run late, and they secretly agreed that even if it was films, they would get rid of it in the edit, which is good.

00:30:07
Speaker 1: I like the fact that there's no explanation for oh yeah, it makes it so much better. It's so cool. Yeah.

00:30:12
Speaker 3: Danny Rubin said that the comedy beats of the script were the easiest to imagine. He said one of the earliest scenes he wrote was about Phil using the time loop to have sex with women, and another being dedicated to seeing how far he could get outside the town of punk Satani before the clock reset and he was back in his bed at the Bed and Breakfast. Well, like I said earlier, Ruben's draft was much darker than the film ended up, focusing on Phil's loneliness and allowing him to free himself only after realizing that he.

00:30:39
Speaker 1: Could use his situation to better the lives of others.

00:30:43
Speaker 3: Interestingly, the passage of time in this early draft was marked explicitly with a really unique device.

00:30:49
Speaker 1: Phil tracks his days by reading one page of a book each day in the Bed and Breakfast library, and his low point comes when he runs out of books. She was there for a hell of a long time. Yeah, we'll get on that. We'll get to that, don't you folks worry.

00:31:06
Speaker 3: All the people who have calculated the potential amount of time he was in this time loop. Apparently in one of the early drafts, Phil was stuck in punk Satani for something like ten thousand years, So that's horrifying. The original ending of this early draft features kind of a I think, kind of a corny twist.

00:31:25
Speaker 1: Yeah it sucks.

00:31:25
Speaker 3: Phil confesses his love to the Annie McDowell character, who rejects his advances, which is hilarious because the whole movie she's been portrayed as this angel type figure. She rejects him because she's not ready to accept love, because she's trapped in her own time loop.

00:31:42
Speaker 1: I hate that. I hate that a lot. And also I think switched perspectives so that she would so this was when they still the voiceover in and so she would suddenly be narrating the movie, is what I read. Oh yeah, horrible.

00:31:55
Speaker 3: I mean that's almost interesting having a movie that's told for ninety five percent of it through the voiceover every one character, and then had the voiceover sweat. I've never heard of that being done. That's kind of cool in its own way. I mean, Danny Rubin, I guess he really liked to subvert. Yeah, he sure did traditionally. Yeah, sure sure did.

00:32:13
Speaker 1: So. Yeah, that twist ending a rare misstep for Danny Rubin.

00:32:16
Speaker 3: I also heard there's a version that was going to end with Bill Murray's character killing himself, only to wake up and discover that he was back in his own bed and the day still wasn't over, which I guess means he hadn't tried killing himself the entire movie up to that point, or the potential ten thousand years. He was stuck in that time loop, which I find hard to believe. But that would have been a cool ending if they hadn't burned that device earlier in the script and he jumped off a cliff or whatever after Anny McDowell rejected his advances, and then he just woke up back in the bed with the alarm clock going off, and then just see him open his eyes and just roll his eyes and then and like cut to black credits roll.

00:32:54
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. That's grim, which is good. It was just good. We like we like, Yeah, Yeah, the script was apparently shown to upwards of fifty producers, and it ultimately came to Harold Remis by his agent as he was about to embark on a phase of his career that could probably be termed redemption comedies like Multiplicity, Analyze This, and Bedazzled. You Know You Got Your men are stuck in various phases of idiocy in their life, and they get redeemed by the end and everyone rejoices. He liked Ruben's script, but reportedly said he didn't laugh once while reading it. Ooh yeah. Ruben had two offers for Groundhog Day, one from an indie studio with a lower budget where he would maintain creative control, or one with a higher budget from Ramis in Colombia. When he went with Ramis in Columbia, he lost some control over the script. Ramis added humor, cut the part where Rita gets stuck in her own loop, and eventually the studio just went and denied Ruben's option to turn in a third draft, and Ramis took the whole project over. He removed the character of Rita's boyfriend Max, he cut out Phil's narration. He cut every scene where Phil attempts to escape from Puck Satawani.

00:34:08
Speaker 3: Which I really like because it makes the story so much more claustrophobic. And I've heard it described evocatively as Phil goes from being a prisoner of the town to the god of the town, which is cool.

00:34:19
Speaker 1: It is. Ramis streamlined Reuben's script into a three act studio movie by boiling it down to a very clear arc. This is the worst day of Phil's life. What would make it even worse? Repeating it every day? That's so good, God, that's so good. That's so Harold Ramis too.

00:34:37
Speaker 3: The dialogue in the original version of Danny Rubin's script is a little on the nose. You can see earlier drafts of Groundhog Day online and there's one scene between Phil and Rita Anny McDowell's character in the Diner that reads as follows Phil's voiceover, me and Rita together was the most obvious thing in the world, Phil to Rita.

00:34:58
Speaker 1: Have you ever felt like you were really the same day over and over again? Rita like deja vu? Phil?

00:35:05
Speaker 3: More like deja deja deja Rita. So you think you've been here before, Phil nods, And how does this evening turn out?

00:35:14
Speaker 1: Phil?

00:35:15
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what I do know even in a day as long as this, even in a lifetime of endless repetition, there's still room for possibilities. It's just dead on for somebody who's so good at coming up with ingenious premises and great structures at dialogue is pretty horrendous. Why we have script doctors, says the guy who is never doctor to script?

00:35:39
Speaker 1: Has it completed? No?

00:35:40
Speaker 4: Me?

00:35:40
Speaker 1: Oh, who hasn't completed a script in fifteen years? Nice? Oh? No, ten years? Ten years? Sorry? Nice.

00:35:52
Speaker 3: Ultimately, Harold Ramis's rewrite turned this scene into Phil asking Rita to describe her dream man, which is great because if both the showcases the film character's deviousness, he's researching so that you can use that later. And also gave Bill Murray ample time.

00:36:07
Speaker 1: To act like a ledge because he's like, you know, everything she says like sounds like me, me, me, and me again.

00:36:13
Speaker 3: It's a great it's such a great way to twist that scene. I also read that Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin, or maybe just Danny Rubin use the famous five Stages of grief modeled from psychiatrist Elizabeth Koobler Ross's book on Death and Dying as a way to outline their script. I guess they wanted to show Phil going through the you know, Denier Anger, bargaining depression and acceptance of his whole predicament, which is ironic considering her book is called on death and Dying and.

00:36:40
Speaker 1: Phil can't die. Ramis's version attracted Bill Murray to the project, but the two immediately clashed over the film's tone, with Murray hoping to highlight the philosophical elements and Ramis winning the comedy foregrounded. The studio was happier with Ramis's draft, but they ultimately re hired Rubin to reassess the script and give notes. I kind of feel bad for for old Danny Rubes just getting kicked off and then brought back essentially. Well, I'll explain why Ramis was actually ultimately just using Rubin as a bulwark against Murray. He thought sending Ruben to work on the script with Murray would stop but Bill Murray from bombarding him with early morning phone calls about the character and the tone of the script. And then once when Ramis called to check on their progress, Murray asked Ruben to pretend he wasn't there. They call that foreshadowing and screenwriting school. Yeah, so imagine signing over your project, being denied the chance to turn into revision after someone else hacks it up, and then just being rehired to run interference for one of the world's biggest comedy stars because the director didn't want to deal with him anymore. Ultimately, Ruben and Murray didn't fare much better. Rubin found Murray's more laid back approach to writing frustrating, and the pair were still working on a script a month before filming began. They were hewing it closer to Ruben's original before. Ruben and Ramis then collaborated on another re right, working on individual sections alone and then editing each other's work before Ramis spent a final few days refining it himself. The process of writing this sounds like an absolute nightmare. It sure does, Bob all about the back and forth with all the egos and all like the rules of the world and everything.

00:38:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, but apparently Harold Ramis was turned off by what he viewed as Danny Rubin's earnest preachiness and sweet sentimental moments, and instead he made it a much more grouchy but funny script. Some scenes that were written but not film include Phil praying at a church, gambling, and a scene that Murray personally vetoed of Phil stripping naked to force an elderly man out of a swimming pool. I wonder how stripping naked forced him out of the swimming pool.

00:38:48
Speaker 1: Huh.

00:38:49
Speaker 3: They also cut a bunch of scenes where Phil goes to sort of ridiculous lengths to prevent tragedies in town, all in the name of making efficient use of his time as the town uberminsh It's just you know, he knows all the bad things that are gonna happen in town, and he can only be so many places at once, so he has to get creative. And one of these ways includes Phil putting a large rock in a road to stop a truck delivering fish because later that day at a restaurant a patron would choke on said fish, which is really clever.

00:39:19
Speaker 1: But pretty unwieldly. Yeah, it's a good thing that got cut.

00:39:25
Speaker 3: A large pain in the ass that was filmed but didn't make it in the finish movie included a breakdown where Phil gives himself a mohawk spray, paints his room, and destroys it with a chainsaw.

00:39:36
Speaker 1: They filmed this scene for three.

00:39:38
Speaker 3: Days before deciding to go with a much simpler scene of Bill Murray breaking a pencil on his nightstand, only to see it reappear hole the next morning, which basically conveyed the same message in a much simpler and less scenery chewing way. They also nixed the scene in which Phil kills the groundhog and its lair to try to end the time loop, which hilarious leap of logic, because this was seen as too close to Bill Murray's character in Caddy Shack.

00:40:07
Speaker 1: You know he was, you know, licensed to kill groundhogs. Was it groundhog or a gopher? I think it's a gopher in ground and I was a gopher. Okay, yeah, greasy grin gophers. Right, that's right, you're right, you're right, you're right. However, he did pay tribute to Caddy Shack.

00:40:25
Speaker 3: One of his first collaborations with Harold Ramis with his b the Hat line, in which he and Rita are playing cards and trying to throw them into the hat. That is a reference to Caddy Shack and it's famous exhortation to be the ball. Hilariously, given all this conflict with Bill Murray Harold Ramis like pretty much every director from nineteen eighty eight to two thousand and eight. Originally what died Tom Hanks to play the role of Phil, but he ultimately decided against it because Hanks was quote too nice, which I think is a lot of reasons.

00:40:56
Speaker 1: Do you think Tom Hanks just had like a dedicated fax machine his in some wing of his house that was just getting scripts like twenty four to seven constantly. He had a separate door, but like you know, even at the script door.

00:41:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean Jesus Christ. Yeah, I mean he must have had a whole There must have been a I mean, his agent. There's no way one agent could keep up with that. But also it's funny how many movies Hanks was considered for but ultimately didn't get because they thought he was too nice. When we're talking about a few recently, I mean, I think Harry Well, I think he opted out of Harry because he thought he was too nice. But I feel like there were a few others we were talking about recently too. It's a fort and Twister too well, though wasn't because he was too nice, but uh, just to give you some sense of the tone that Danny Rubin thought this movie was gonna be He wanted Kevin Kleine to play the part of Phil, the male lead.

00:41:47
Speaker 1: I could see that, Yeah, I don't know. You couldn't. I don't think he could be. I don't know.

00:41:54
Speaker 3: I guess I just I'm so used to the character of Phil being this rumpled guy that yeah, Jill Murray plays.

00:42:01
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It would have made his sort of winning over of Andy less of a personal turnaround, you know, because Kevin Klein. Everyone falls in love with Kevin Klein, So yeah, he's too refined. Married Tony Kates. Yeah.

00:42:16
Speaker 3: Michael Keaton was also offered the role, but supposedly he didn't understand the script and passed, which he says he deeply regrets. Other possible leads were Chevy Chase, John Tavolta, and Steve Martin.

00:42:29
Speaker 1: What do you think about those? I think Chevy Chase and Steve Martin would have been amazing because they both have that genuine streak of malice, like I feel unsafe around both of those men, as is justified, well justified. That surprises me. Chevy definitely, but Steve Martin has a kind of unhinged like I mean he's like a tweet trans and automobiles, tweakly eyed older guy now, but like there's something about him that just has like this, Maybe just because I think of him as the dentist in in Little Shop of Horrors, but yeah, there's some kind of darkness there. I just and Chevy Chase obviously is perfect for the first part, but I don't think his acting chops or personality would enable him to make the turn and become likable as his real life did not enable him to. No Travolta, that would have been bizarre. No Travolta has neither chop. First of all, everyone is just inclined to see like because this would have been like kind of pudgy Trobolto, So everyone would have just inclined to see him as just like pitiable, like and he's not funny enough to like to do all the comic turns. No, that's a that's a miss Michael. I'm angry. Yes, that's why I'm angry. John Travolta gets serious. He was good in the movie where he was Michael of the Fallen Angel. That was pretty good. I'm talking about that movie that pisses me off. It's an awful movie. Okay, yeah, that movie sucks too, Amos Okay, Jordan, Buddy pal my friend phenomenon.

00:44:08
Speaker 3: But Harold Ramis decided on Bill Murray, and when Danny Rubin expressed doubts about Murray's ability to veer from unlikeability to sweet, Ramis assured him, don't worry. This is what Bill Murray can do. He can be that nasty and still make you like him. Co star Annie McDowell agreed later, saying Bill's a jerk, but he makes you laugh. I find it surprising that Deanie Rubin doubted Bill Murray's ability in this movie because the role was basically the exact same role that he played and scrooged, where he's this unlikable guy at a TV station who learns to become a better person through supernatural circumstances. Yeah, so that's surprising. Also, like, who are you first time screenwriter Danny Rubin to like get cast dispersions on one of the biggest comedians in the world, Bill Murray. Like, all right, Bud, I guess we'll take your notes, Danny. I'm getting at the out of my office. But continuing the through line of Bill Murray being a champ to everybody who he was not working directly with or who wasn't in Hollywood, the guy who played Ned Ryerson, who will talk to in a minute. Steven Tobolski recalled pointing out to Bill that the residents of the town where they were filming gathered to watch and they all looked hungry, at which point Bill Murray ran into a nearby bakery, bought them out of danishes, and tossed them into the crowd, presumably Frisbee style. It doesn't say that, but I'm just guessing.

00:45:36
Speaker 1: I have to imagine it. Yeah, Yeah, I mean there's talks about him like going out when they were shooting Ghostbusters and just like panning out like one hundred dollars bills to people on the street, just like he just he's he does genuinely seem to care about the little people. Yeah. Sure. And then there's the allegations.

00:45:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I have a hard time justifying. I mean, do we think Bill Murray is actually good person capital g.

00:46:00
Speaker 1: Good person or bad person? Do we side note?

00:46:04
Speaker 3: Do we think he does all these grand gestures of generosity to cover up some sense of inner guilt for bad things he has done?

00:46:12
Speaker 1: You know, maybe I love always a beloved guy. I don't know why, yeah, even going for sure, but I mean it's it's there are a lot of allegations about him, and you know, you you got to address those the same way you do any but anybody else that those are out about. I think that duality has been part of his brand for so long that maybe he kind of got away with a lot because people were like, Oh, Bill's just being Bill, you know, and that's maybe a little more sinister than than anything to build your build your brand around kind of just publicly being a dick to people and then you know, not actually having not ever making the the face turn and the final third of the movie I Love dan Akrod would refer to him as the Muracane Yeah, which I appreciate, is dan Akroyd doing. He's still hawking that help that vodka in the skull shaped bottle. That's one of like three facts I know about him that I hold due to my heart. He has web toes. Also, all right, shout, I'm stopping you right now, Jesus Christ, what are you? Quentin Tarantino quick thumbnail sketch of Harold Ramis and Bill Murray's collaborations in Spotlight Spotlight. In nineteen sixty nine, Harold Ramis was accepted into the Second City in improvisational Chicago sketch comedy troupe that would birth the careers of not just Bill Murray, but John Malushi, uh Dan Ackroyd, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Stephen Colbert, and everybody like the list goes on. Ramus credits an LSD trip, however, with realizing he didn't belong in a live performance situation and briefly left the theater, only to return and find that Belushi had taken his spot. And this sort of you know type cast Ramis into the straight man role that he would play for years. Meanwhile, Murray followed his brother Brian's path to Second City, but struggling to make ends meet in the realm of improvvisational comedy. To surprize of No One, Bill was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport at only twenty one years old with a whopping ten pounds of marijuana. Wow. The arrest is something he credits with re energizing his dedication to comedy and acting.

00:48:16
Speaker 3: Nah Tim Allen get busted for some phenomenal amount of coke that he was smuggling.

00:48:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he flipped on and then he rated out all his buds. Yeah. I don't know how he's I mean, presumably all those guys are dead now, but I don't know how he made that. Maybe the other way around. You will take this role in the sitcom or else we will, but no, I want to do something edgy and meaningful. That's that's interesting, being forced into a lifetime of network now because he got moving on. I'm not I'm not letting it. We don't know where that money went.

00:48:49
Speaker 3: You will take this terrible role that pays you way too much, and you will pay nine of that to us.

00:48:56
Speaker 1: Oh maybe it does longer. I don't know.

00:48:58
Speaker 3: I'm done thinking about too. That's a script right there. King of Comedy two, King Harder, got some unhinged oka. King of Comedy too Heavy lies the Crown. Okay, now you're onto something, now you're cooking. Yeah, here we go, Here we go.

00:49:15
Speaker 1: I love this.

00:49:15
Speaker 3: Bill Murray and Harold Ramis met when Bill Murray was a teen because Harold Rams he's six years older, and he was initially friends with Bill's older brother Brian Murray through Second City, who has a small part in Groundhog Day, and Brian took Ramis to meet his brother Bill at a local golf course where he ran the refreshment stand. It was this teenage job, which I just think is adorable that that's where they met on a golf course, which is fitting considering Caddy shack Raymis and.

00:49:42
Speaker 1: Murray stayed in each other's orbits for the next decade or so through National Lampoon, although Harold Ramis would decline Lorne Michael's offer during Lorne's wide poaching of the Second City to join what would become Saturday Night Live, Raymis and Murray's stars rose Concurrently, Harold Ramis drafted the script for National lamp Une's Animal House, which became a record breaking hit. While Bill Murray was coming up as one of SNL's featured stars working off a herald Ramis script, Ivan Wrightman picked Bill Murray to headline his film Meatballs. Have you ever seen that? I've never seen that. Yeah, it's fine, coren a legend.

00:50:17
Speaker 3: At least, no one was sure Bill Murray was actually going to play the lead in Meatballs until he actually showed up on the first day of.

00:50:23
Speaker 1: Filming, setting the tone for his life. Yeah, yeah, meat Balls was a hit, setting off one of the most successful pairings in film history. Ramus and Murray's hot streak would grow to include Caddy Shack Stripes, Ghostbusters and to a lesser extent, Ghostbusters two, and eventually Groundhog Day, their sixth collaboration. So that is the male lead for the movie. What about the female lead for the movie, role of Rita? That was an awful segue, Buddy, keep that in. I want folks to know how you're struggling. It will humanize you. Everyone listened to Jordan Dye on air. It's a Friday night, It's a long week.

00:51:09
Speaker 3: This boggles my mind to the point where I almost think it was somebody in a listical fifteen years ago writing it as a joke and it just got picked up in the listical echo chamber, and now it's taken his cannon. Apparently they were considering Tory Amos, the beloved singer, songwriter and pianist, for the role of.

00:51:29
Speaker 1: Rita, which is just I've never heard of her being considered for any other movies. I had no idea that she has any kind of acting background. I don't fully get it. Well, so it seems to stem from her being photographed by a British magazine that she is in a room with a bunch of scripts and Groundhog Days one of it can be seen in just one of them. Oh, and I think this was before the film had even I mean this was it was just like her in an office or something. So that's interesting. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean she was she would have been at her you know, sort of peak of fame at this point. They're always trying to break actresses in or musicians in acting. But I had no idea that she was, because she hasn't really acted much since, right, I don't think so, No, I'm pretty sure not.

00:52:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's so cool, though, I didn't realize that she was like a prodigy like she I think is still the youngest person to have ever been admitted to the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins.

00:52:31
Speaker 1: She was five. That's nice. Five.

00:52:35
Speaker 3: Then she was expelled at eleven, I think for playing rock and roll. I forget it was some like really puritanical reason, if I remember correctly.

00:52:42
Speaker 1: Good for her. I interviewed her.

00:52:44
Speaker 3: She was exactly as whimsical and supernatural seeming as you'd hope.

00:52:49
Speaker 1: Nice Yeah.

00:52:50
Speaker 3: Production considered auditioning comedians to play opposite Bill Murray, but they didn't want to have someone who was gonna be, you know, vying for laughs and mugging against the very mercurial, very improvisation of Bill Murray. And instead they saw somebody who would just be in a ceaseless torrent of warmth and intelligence in the form of Andy McDowell, who is great. Bill Murray really liked her because she reminded him of his first girlfriend that he had in the second grade.

00:53:20
Speaker 1: That's cute. Yeah.

00:53:22
Speaker 3: She chose to speak with her natural South Carolina accent for the film, which caused a minor rewrite to the line, oh, let's not spoil it when ned Ryerson, the annoying ned Ryerson proposes a three person celebration because her accent made the original word ruin difficult to understand? How would that be rendered in a Southern let's not ruin it?

00:53:43
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, oh nice, hey, yaga woll you're better than You're better than chachipt from my accent. Thanks. Well, when it puts me out of a job, someday, I'll say, at least I could do a better Southern accent than this. They used to tell me I was better than you. Did I ever send you? I cloned my own voice by using those drafts. Yeah, that was pretty It was pretty great. Maybe you'll we'll splice that in here. Hey, guys, I generated my own voice through some voice cloning software. Does this sound anything like me?

00:54:16
Speaker 3: Speaking of annoying conversations that nobody wants to have? This brings us to He's a beloved I love them. I can't help but love them, Ned Ryerson.

00:54:24
Speaker 1: Ned Needle knows Ned, Ned Ryerson. You know, everybody knows Ned.

00:54:29
Speaker 3: He's played by Steven Tabolski, and he said that shooting the movie was sort of like being in it. Harold Ramis couldn't decide on the weather conditions for the background of Fill and Ned's encounters, so we shot their nine scenes together multiple times in differing conditions.

00:54:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:54:46
Speaker 3: I hadn't really thought about, you know, all the scenes that they repeat pretty much across the board. At least the outdoor ones had to be shot on exactly the same day for continuity reasons.

00:54:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's insane, man, especially trying to do it where they shot it, which will get.

00:55:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it's really insane, and just all the little challenging things about just even like the extras in the background having to match their movements over and over again, which.

00:55:10
Speaker 1: Is, you know, harder than you think.

00:55:11
Speaker 3: And I think there's some cinema sins video that shows that sometimes they are like actors in different places.

00:55:20
Speaker 1: I know should.

00:55:24
Speaker 3: During filming, Harold Ramis and screenwriter Danny Rubin wanted to add another ned Ryersons scene at the last minute, so Tabowski wrote up a scene in which ned Ryerson explains numerous insurance policies He's insurance salesman to Phil Connors, basically the interaction off of his own insurance guy, and supposedly the insurance guy later watched the movie and called Tobalski and thanked him for portraying insurance agents accurately rather than mocking them, which is funny because that was not my takeaway.

00:55:52
Speaker 1: Yes, I believe he assumed he had been knocking them.

00:55:57
Speaker 3: Seeven Tebowski's funny. He's this, you know, veteran character. He's got the TMI honorary prefix veteran character. Actor Steven Tavolski. Sure he tells the story of making the Jason Priestley comedy Calendar Girl with another guy named Kurt Fuller, who's a very similar character actor, and Kurt also auditioned for the role of Ned Ryerson and was openly talking about how he held the part all wrapped up and in the bag when they were making this other movie together. So when Tibolski's kept getting callbacks for this role, he kept it quiet on the set of this movie because he didn't want to make things awkward with his co star.

00:56:32
Speaker 1: And so when Kurt Fuller.

00:56:34
Speaker 3: Comes in one day all pissy that he didn't get the role at all, he learned to be passed over, Toboski kept his mouth shut. And then at the Groundhog Day premiere, Tobolski exits the theater and he sees Kurt Fuller was in attendance for some reason, staring him down. But Fuller apparently was gracious.

00:56:51
Speaker 1: He came up to him and said, well, you took my part from me, but at least he did a good job. And Tobowski, he's funny.

00:56:58
Speaker 3: He does a lot of talks in one man and monologues, and you can find clips of these on YouTube, and.

00:57:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're worth watching. They're cute.

00:57:05
Speaker 3: He tells the story about being an ancient Roman ruins in the south of France with his family on vacation, and he got recognized by the guy selling tickets. He said, this guy couldn't speak English, but he knew the word dead.

00:57:19
Speaker 1: As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more. Too much information after these messages. Ironically, given that the film catapulted punk Satawi, Pennsylvania to new levels of fame, the three month shoot actually took place in Woodstock, Illinois, fifty miles outside of Chicago, not far from where Ramis grew up, part of the reason he chose it. However, the continuity air showcased in the or I guess the cinema sin if you're based in ned Ryerson's scene where you can clearly see a sign in the background reading Woodstock Jewelers. They scouted over sixty towns for the location before settling on Woodstock, which even came equipped with the pothole that Phil steps in. I've seen conflicting explanations on this. Why'd you make me read it? Then? Well, no, I've seen some.

00:58:20
Speaker 3: People said that that was an actual pothole in town, and other people say that the production actually created what surely.

00:58:27
Speaker 1: Must be the most famous pothole in cinema. However, I do know that there's a plaque in town that reads Bill Murray stepped here on the sidewalk where that pothole is, which I think is great. The town of Woodstock is really adorable in the way that it leaned into Groundhog Day tourists, which is very much a thing. They sell sorts of merch like stuffed groundhogs, and there are fans of the movie who regularly get married on the bandstand in the center of town, which is cute. Question mark. I think I'll give it tone, I'll give it tongue. You know what, why not? Yeah? Why not let them have that? Yeah. Woodstock now capitalizes on its cinematic fame by having its own Groundhog Day with its own rodent, unimaginably named Woodstock Willie get your own thing. Production's choice backfired, however, when the people of Punk Satani, offended by this decision, didn't allow their sacred hog to be used for the film. Production had to breed a small you heard me, production had to breed a small family of the little bastards for their uses. While the film differs from irl Punk Satani in that the insanely named Gobbler's Knob is actually located in a wooded area on the city limits, not in the town center. Punk Satani did send their own representatives to ensure the accuracy of the actual ceremony. In later years, Ramis and Murray have both come to Pennsylvania to act as honorary grand marshals for the day's activities, so at least there are no long term grudges. It was probably helped by the Yeah. Well, this was probably helped by the fact that the movie boosted attendance for Punk Satani's Groundhog Day from around five thousand people to thirty five thousand people. According to Tom Dunkle, at one time, the president of the town's Groundhog Club, did you ever go? It's freezing in that part of the world, Why would you go? And then they just hold him up. They did the real whole Rigama role. And then what's there to do? Just get drunk? Sure eye stuffed animals. Sure they're made in Vietnam, Like, no one cares. I don't, I don't get it. We were probably befitting Illinois In March. Chunks of the shoot were conducted in temperatures as low as twenty degrees which left Bill Murray irritable and chapped. Being outside filming from up to twelve hours a day. Stephen Tobolowski recalled that for their scene, to prepare for having to repeatedly immerse his foot in a freezing puddle, Murray first wrapped his foot in saran wrap, then a layer of newprene, then two pairs of socks, then his shoe. As soon as the shot was finished, Toblowski explained, Bill walked off and then came the torrent of expletives until he was rushed into the building where there were three of the women from the costumes department with blow dryers. They ripped off his socks, and ripped off the neoprene, and ripped off the suran rap and started blow drying his foot with hot air so he wouldn't get frostbite and lose his foot. Meanwhile, Andy McDowell did actually get frostbite, and the weather was so cold at points that actors began having trouble articulating their words after a while because their tongues were so cold. I am the weather. The warming weather. Then the shooting progress presented new problems. Temperatures began to creep past eighty degrees and then production had to start bringing in fake snow to make it look like winter, but actors and extras had to continue to wear their winter garb in the heat of summer. The shifting skies and lighting conditions of the season were big problems, and as his own shorthand, because the film was shot out of sequence, Murray developed a quick guide for his own character, consistently repeatedly interrupting Harold Ramis's pre take instructions by just asking, just tell me good Phil or bad Phil. I mean, I think this was it was slightly mean spirited.

01:02:15
Speaker 3: It was like Harold Ramis trying to be a director and give him motivation and talk about the performance, and Bill Murrays just dismissed it.

01:02:22
Speaker 1: Just tell me good Fill or bad Phil. Yeah.

01:02:27
Speaker 3: Well, despite the prevalence of scenes shot in what is supposed to be the Tip Top Cafe, that is not a real place and was created specifically for the film. However, after the movie's success, a real restaurant named Tiptop Bistro opened, which then transitioned to the Jackie's Cookie Shop, Bellow's Gelateria, a Caribbean chicken place, and per your Google map search, a Takorea reads like the worst Joni Mitchell song ever.

01:02:52
Speaker 1: Hey paved tiptop cafe, put up a talk career I was.

01:03:01
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna say, most disingenuous laugh in all the music favorite.

01:03:07
Speaker 1: That's a soundboard. I want, Oh, okay, I don't want. I don't want. I do not want.

01:03:17
Speaker 3: For Phil's pastry gorging scene, Bill Murray was offered the use of the customary Hollywood spit bucket, which is a disgusting bit of out of frame movie magic for actors to spit screen.

01:03:28
Speaker 1: Used foods used food into.

01:03:31
Speaker 3: Instead of making themselves sick by actually imbibing in food take after take after take. Bill however, declined and actually ate most of what his character did, though he later admitted to getting sick after eating too much angel food cake. It's a story of Elizabeth Taylor's I think it was her third husband died in a plane crash while she was making Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Paul Newman and the director of the movie I forget his name.

01:03:59
Speaker 1: She stopped eating.

01:03:59
Speaker 3: She was so depressed, she just stopped eating, was losing all this weight, and to try to get her to eat, he kept asking for more and more takes of every scene where.

01:04:08
Speaker 1: She they were having dinner.

01:04:10
Speaker 3: I think it was a scene where she was like eating cake or something, and he kept asking for more and more and more takes.

01:04:15
Speaker 1: Is to try to get her to eat. Oh the things we do to women in Hollywood. Well, I think he was trying. He was worried about her. I think he was trying to or he was worried about his dailies. I didn't actually, I didn't think about that. And there in lines the difference.

01:04:32
Speaker 3: Yes, one of Groundhog Days Hallmark Easter eggs is on display in the diner scenes. You'll notice that all the clocks in the background of the diner are stopped, representing.

01:04:42
Speaker 1: Phil's whole stuck in time situation. It's all the noose, but it's effective. It's cool.

01:04:49
Speaker 3: There are also some time related errors in the film, though Bill Murray is actually the one who pointed them out. He said, even though it's sunny out when I wake up every day at six in the morning, in the real punks of Tawny, Pennsylvania, the sun didn't rise until seven twenty five on Groundhog Day, I guess we goofed.

01:05:07
Speaker 1: Cinema sins. Speaking of the wake up.

01:05:10
Speaker 3: Seeing the detail of Sonny and shares irrepressible. I Got you Babe greeting Phil on his Eternal Day was apparently in Danny Rubin's script from the beginning. Reubin would later say it was because of the song's unique reprise at the end. He's quoted as saying, if you listen to the recording at the very end that sort of winds down with a big.

01:05:29
Speaker 1: Slow do it with me A. I hate this song so much.

01:05:34
Speaker 3: I Got You Babe, and you think it's over, and then it creeps back in I Got you Babe, I Got you Babe, over and over again. I thought this repetition was perfect. The timing never worked out for them to use it in the movie that way, but I guess because it's a love song, and because even though it's catchy would drive you crazy after a while, it was always a good idea it is. It is the perfect song. It's hilarious, oh so annoying.

01:05:59
Speaker 1: Speaking of the other music in the film, Jordan, that's right.

01:06:02
Speaker 3: Another fun Bill fact hashtag bill Fax tweeted us folks. When Phil is learning the piano at his teacher's house, he stumbles over Rhapsody on a Theme by Pagnini by Sergei rochmaninoff.

01:06:13
Speaker 1: Paganini, you philistine. I'll keep that show. What a better musician you are than me, just a more well read one. In certain genres, perhaps Paganini's the guy Paganese really fascinating. He's like the one of the original like sold Is sold to the devil guys, because he was like constantly sick and like on the verge of dying and like a complete wastetroll on stage. But he was. He would do these insane showy bits of He always had this long black cloak and he would do these insane showy bits of you know, showmanship where his he would break one string on his violin at a time and finish an audience on on one string in his joint. He could he could be. He was like double jointed. They think he had more fan it's the same thing that Lincoln had. And so he could make these incredible stretches on violin and so his stuff, his compositions are so tough to play that they've all found like a second life is like Chopbusters for guitar. In fact, in the Paganinese Caprice, I think the eighteenth one is in the movie Crossroads. It's quoted at the end when it's like a recurring thing in the movie that Ralph Macchio's character is trying to learn how to play. And then in the climactic guitar fight between Steve Vi and Ralph Macchio, I think it's might be Ray Cooter, might be Eric Johnson, somebody plays Paganini's caprice and there so quick sidebar and Paganini did you just do that like off of the wow, proving my point I can't even say the guy's name.

01:07:48
Speaker 3: Well, that's all much more interesting than the hashtag Bill fact I had, which is that that's actually Bill Murray playing that song when he arrives at his piano lesson.

01:07:56
Speaker 1: Though Bill doesn't read sheet music, he learned most of it by ear. But he's quite a musical cat, you know. He's done performances backed by different musicians live. He has an album out with a cellist. I believe it, really, I know he was like he sings with like Yeah Clapton, Clapton, Danny Ruben and Harold Raimus deliberately omitted the many deaths that Phil describes in the film to keep things appropriate for all ages. Trying to explain what's happening to him to Rita, he states, I've been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned. These have been interpreted as nods to either Grigory Resputin, the famously insane whisperer, to the uh Sar Alexander, who was Nicholas sick? Nicholas, please excuse me, I don't care about Russian culture. S Yeah, except for Gregory Resputant, who, after being you know, granted too much access to the family and running rough shot over all of the women, was poisoned, stabbed, shot, castrated, and drowned and was probably still alive until right at the point when he drowned after being like wrapped in it. Didn't they like wrap him in a carpet too, just to make sure? Yeah? Or this girl to be seen as a reference to Ghostbusters too, or the main villain Vigo. The Carpathian is said to have died after being poisoned, shot, stabbed, hung, stretched, disembowed, drawn, and quartered. You got your pagan any moment I want to, I want to amend my It.

01:09:27
Speaker 3: Was actually Zary Nicholas the second and it was really his wife, Zariena Alexandria, who who looked to the mad the famous Mad Monk as a as a trusted advisor, and after he was killed, according to legend, his penis was cut off, and then I believe pickled. It was bought for eight thousand dollars and now resides in the Museum of Erotica in Saint Petersburg.

01:09:53
Speaker 1: And you have sent me a picture of it in the chat.

01:09:55
Speaker 3: No, I didn't know, as that's Bill Murray playing guitar with Eric Clapton, which is more offensive.

01:10:00
Speaker 1: Ah, no, that's much worse. Kids. It's because it's because your kid had hemophilia, right, yeah, yeah, man Russians. Despite the deaths being omitted, there was a bit of real life calamity that befell Murray from his Groundhog scene partners, specifically one of them, Scooter, who Murray claimed hated me from day one. In the scene where he abducts Phil and drives off with it, the animal bit him repeatedly through his leather glove, and Murray recalled an interview. I went to the doc and said, hey, I got bit back Groundhog. Should I get a rabies shot? He said, well, no, you mean, I'm not going to get it. Well, no, see, we don't know if groundhogs give rabies. And I'm like, because you don't know, you can't give me a shot. He said, that's right. And what if I get it? Then what he said, then we'll know, won't we. A comedian and character actor Paul ind Uh was the inspiration for one of groundhog Day's best bits. Yes. In one of Lynde's routines, he describes how he once drove through the San Fernando Valley while drunk, and after crashing into a mailbox, was pulled up on by the police, who held him at gunpoint. He leaned out his window and he said to them, I'll have a cheeseburger, hold the onions, and a large sprite. You gotta do it like it. I'll have a cheeseburger, hold the onions and a lart sprout. That's a good pull.

01:11:26
Speaker 3: Ind No, you got it's gonna quaver alart sprout sprite. Nah No, Now I'm now veering into Katherine Hepburn.

01:11:33
Speaker 1: Katherine Hepburn, He's a menace. A similar joke was also towed by Shecky Green, involving him driving his car into a Las Vegas fountain, thus fulfilling out long bygone comedians that Jordan is perfectly aware of. For I think he just died. Oh yeah he did. You just have a New Year's Eve? Shecky New Year ninety damn yeah it was time.

01:12:02
Speaker 3: Sadly, much of Bill Murray's time with Harold Ramis on Groundhog Day was affected by a messy divorce from his first wife. Bill poured himself into the role of Phil, which manifested in him annoying Ramis with all those early morning phone calls we talked about earlier during the script development and contributing new dynamic that ultimately led to their creative split. That difficulty carried into filming.

01:12:25
Speaker 1: At one point, when he was filming a scene in a car with Andy McDowell, Murray just, according to Ramis, took off for like fifteen minutes, which it doesn't Maybe it doesn't sound like much, but filmmaking when everything's planned like a military maneuver, that screws you up. Yeah, I mean, Jim Cameron freaked out it. Arnold Wurtzenegger for it on the set of True Lives, right.

01:12:49
Speaker 3: I was thinking about that, Yeah, Harold Ramis, said Bill would be quote irrationally mean and unavailable and was constantly late. Later would recall that he just told Bill just what we tell our chill. You don't have to throw tantrums to get what you want, just say what you want. As we touched on earlier, they clashed heads from the earliest days of the production. When it came to the tone of the movie. Danny Rubin would recall they were like two brothers who weren't getting along, and they were pretty far apart on what the movie was about. Bill wanted it to be more philosophical, and Harold kept reminding him that it was a comedy. There's one scene in the film that you'll never watch again the same way after knowing what we're about to tell you, so we're sorry. It's the scene where Phil is reading to Rita after she falls asleep. That actually happened to Bill Murray. His wife had fallen asleep on their wedding night after drinking too much champagne, and Murray read to her as she slept ouch.

01:13:44
Speaker 1: The relationship between Murray and Ramis and the rest of production got straight up toxic. In the scene where Phil gets into a snowball fight with a bunch of kids. Harold Ramis directed the kids to pelt Bill as hard as they possibly could with snowballs, and when Bill figured it out, he just started pelting them back. I think Ramis gave him like ice balls too. I think he gave him like he asked Andy McDowell to really slap him in one scene. And according to Harold Ramis's daughter Violet, one day on set, Harold finally lost his temper something he rarely did, and screamed it. Bill grabbed him by the collar and shoved him up against the wall. The two fell out after filming wrapped and didn't speak for like, what twenty years or something like that. Some friends theorized that Murray had come to resent Ramis for his role in helping Murray's star rise. Michael Shamberg, a Hollywood producer who knew Ramis since college and had let Bill Murray sleep on his couch at times, said, Bill owes everything to Harold, and he probably has a thimbleful of gratitude.

01:14:42
Speaker 3: None of this apparently stopped Harold Ramis from keeping the overcoat that Bill Murray wears in the film. Do you think he smelled it occasionally to remember his friend, And do you think that after Ramis died, Bill got it and then Bill smelled it to remember his friend. Because it had been at Ramis's house for so long, it probably smelled like Ramis.

01:15:01
Speaker 1: Do you think anyone smelled this coat? Is what I'm asking you. Stop looking at me like that. That's a balid question. You're in a dark place. No, I've got I've gotten into perfumes in the last couple of weeks as a way to trigger memories as a way of time travel. Did I tell you about this? I told you about this? Yeah, yeah, Yeah, you sure did, Bud. You just don't tell me you've gotten into taxidermy at any point, because then I'm really going to do a wellness check. Murray has to continually declined to speak about the feud, although Ramis has It's a huge hole in my life, he said, But there were so many pride issues about reaching out. Bill would give you his kidney if you needed it, but he wouldn't necessarily return your phone calls. A New Yorker reporter named Tad Friend, who was writing a piece about Ramis in two thousand and four, reached Murray after several attempts and told him he was what he was writing about, and that he wanted to interview Bill. Really. Murray responded and asked Fred to call him back in a week. When friend did, Murray said, I've thought about it and I don't have anything to say. Ramos had some really heartbreaking quotes that he gave to the av Club. I've had many dreams about Bill that were friends again. There was a great reunion feeling in those dreams. Bill was a strong man. He was a rock for us. You'd do a movie with Bill, big comedy in those early days, just knowing he could save the day no matter how bad the script was, that we'd find something through improvisation that was our alliance, kind of our big bond. I could help him be the best funny Bill Murray he could be, And I think he appreciated that then. And I don't know where that went, but it's there on film. So whatever happens between us in the future, at least we have those expressions. Man, that's so sad. It's really sad.

01:16:45
Speaker 3: Well, there's at least one grace note to this sad story. Brian Doyle, Murray, Bill's brother, convinced Bill to visit Ramis as he lay dying at his North Shore home in twenty fourteen, where Murray showed up with a police escort and donuts.

01:16:59
Speaker 1: Early morning.

01:17:01
Speaker 3: The two spoke of their beloved Chicago cubs and reportedly buried the hatchet.

01:17:06
Speaker 1: When Ramis died later that year, Murray's statement summed up their collaborations and added, simply here and just keep on this planet. God bless him.

01:17:15
Speaker 3: And then a week later, at the Oscars in twenty fourteen, while presenting Best Cinematography, Murray read the list of nominees before adding, oh, and we forgot one Harold Ramis for Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and groundhog Day, which is really sweet. For years, Bill Murray claimed to dislike groundhog Day, but in an interview after Ramis's death, is feeling apparently softened, he would describe it as an extraordinary movie and the execution was really good. Coming from the Murricane, this was high praise.

01:17:48
Speaker 1: I don't know if this anecdotical count as a palate cleanser, but regardless, here we go. Actor Michael Shannon of The Intense Bug Eyes. Do you ever tell you I say aled down in the subway one time? No, it was right after he'd been in the Super movie where he played General Zod, and it was just like me and him and a few other people in the car. I was riding like the middle of the day and we made eye contact nice and I like silently mouthed the words kneel before Zod did he react. He looked away in disgusted. Ah. I think it was like right after the movie had come out and was just getting panned. That's my celebrity story. Anyway, Shannon played the role of Fred in the film, and he was a big fan of Bill Murray, so he was realizing one of his dreams by working with him, and this was his first movie to boot. One day, he saw Bill listening to the Talking Heads on his boombox between takes and asked an obviously dumb in retrospect question about whether or not he liked the band. Murray then supposedly said something that made Shannon realize what a stupid question that had been. He said in an interview, So then I was crushed. I was devastated and I was moping around. One day, Harold Ramis during lunch asked me to come play pool with him because he liked to play pool during breaks. We were talking and he said, yeah, having fun and I said, yeah, but I feel really bad. I think I said something really stupid to mister Murray. I told him the story and I basically said, I don't think mister Murray likes me very much. And Harold said, no, no, no, no, don't worry about that. I'm sure you just caught him at a bad time or something. So when we were finally and I've been hanging around for two weeks, when we finally get to the reason I was actually there, which was to shoot the scene in the dance at the end. For most of the shoot, I had to be in the restaurant every time there was a scene there, even though ninety percent of the time the camera wasn't even pointed in my direction. They just wanted all the same people in the restaurant. Anyway, we finally get to the big dance scene and I'm really excited because I'm finally going to get to do some acting. And we're rehearsing, and Bill Murray Andy McDowell are going around to all the different people and they come to us and Harold comes up and he says, now, before we rehearse this scene, I want Bill to say something, and Bill turned to me and he was like, I like you, Mike, I'm not upset with you. I'm sorry if you thought I was upset with you. Harold Ramis had gone to Bill Murray and told him that he had hurt my feelings. It was really one of the strangest things that ever happened to me. I couldn't believe it. Mortified. I would be because the way that Bill Murray would deliver that you couldn't tell if he was being passive aggressive or not. Oh, I'm like hearing me hearing Bill Murray say I like you, I'm not mad at you, could be the most devastating thing that ever happened. That's so weird that, I mean, I guess that's the perfect I guess. Yeah, yeah, well I don't know. I it's a part of me that thinks he made it. They were just playing sick mind games. Yeah, you're right, you're right.

01:20:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, it probably came out during an argument. You're making the whole cast feel shy. And you, guys, this person, damn movie, he loves you. He broke his heart. That's kind of nuts that he was. I mean, I guess that makes sense. But for continuity reasons. They just wanted everybody in the restaurant. But it's kind of nutsy he was hanging around. He had like four lines and was hanging around for two weeks. And also it's kind of cool Ramis to just like go play pool with a kind of a glorified extra. Basically, yeah, I like that. I've never heard anything but great things about Harold Ramis.

01:21:00
Speaker 1: Same.

01:21:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, now we're going to talk about the end of the movie, when Phil breaks the spell and wakes up with what I can only assume to be the love of his life. They shot twenty five takes of the closing scene when Phil wakes up next to Rita he's freed from his time loop, and I shot so many because no one was sure how the scene would actually play, and Bill actually refused to even shoot the scene at all, and t was decided whether or not Phil should be wearing pajamas. Apparently, the debate over the did they or didn't they Phil and Rita moment became a source of debate around the cast and crew to spell it out. They wasn't sure if he should be wearing just what he was wearing the night before, the clothes he was wearing the night before, or if they should be naked in loving embrace.

01:21:46
Speaker 1: I'm just watching you die, trying to get out over this bit of minor sexual arcana, like I see the flop sweat forming on your brow. The debate was whether or not the characters had sex finish reading.

01:22:03
Speaker 3: Harold Ramis ended up putting it to a vote among the cast and crew, which ended in a tie, and according to Stephen Tobolski aka Ned Ryerson, it was a young woman in the crew who broke the tie. As he told the story, one girl in the movie. It was her first film. She was the assistant set director. She raised her hand and said, he is absolutely wearing the clothes he wore the night before.

01:22:25
Speaker 1: If he's not wearing the clothes he wore the night before, it will ruin the movie. That's my vote. So Harold Ramis said, then that's what we're gonna do.

01:22:34
Speaker 3: I you know, I gotta say I hadn't considered the full impact of the film's ending until researching this episode. Danny Ruman describes it by saying that on February third, the day after Groundhog Day, Phil loses his superpowers and something I never really considered he may suffer disappointment that no day for the rest of his life will ever live up to his final perfect Groundhog Day. Stephen Tobolski aka ned Ryerson up the movies Catharsis very well. He said, the greatest gift for Phil is to become finite again. He's gonna die, he's going to age, time is going to go on, but now he is the keys to.

01:23:12
Speaker 1: Use his time. Well that's beautiful. Yeah, I really like that.

01:23:17
Speaker 3: So speaking of time, speaking of time, give us a brief history of time. There are thirty eight.

01:23:23
Speaker 1: Different days depicted in the movie, which couldn't possibly account for everything, even mentioned in different lines. The total amount of time Phil spent in the Loop isn't explained in the film, but on the DVD commentary, Ramis said that Phil lived that day for ten thousand years and then whirled it down to round ten. Give it ten. Yeah. Yeah. He's also said thirty or forty years. The ten thousand years thing comes from Buddhist doctrine claims that it takes that long for soul to evolve to the next level. Ramis married a Buddhist woman and obviously picked up on some of it. I said it's rounds, that's handy. Meanwhile, in an early draft of the script, Reuben said that it was really seventy or eighty years. Of course, this being the Internet age, fans have taken upon themselves to figure this out, with estimates ranging from eight years, eight months, and sixteen days to twelve years, four hundred and three days, or I guess thirteen years. And I don't know why that's written like that. I'm sorry, I don't I wasn't trying to foil you. I have no idea. Simon Gallier from WhatCulture dot Com ran a thorough investigation claiming that the time it would have taken for Phil to become a virtuoso pianist, fluent French speaker, and professional ife sculptor amid all his other escapades would have run nearly thirty four years. We watched thirty eight days. Another four hundred and fourteen days are mentioned, and Gallagher then used Malcolm Gladwell's ten thousand hours of mastery theory to tally the rest. In fact, it could have been longer, assuming that Phil spent a number of days simply lying in bed, steeping in existential anguish. Thirty four years yea, the Mash's our age. Yeah right. The Mash YouTube channel broke it down, thusly basing it an average learning curve, meaning that they assumed Phil has an average ability to acquire and retain knowledge, and also assuming that rather than a chief virtuosity in any of these things, he's just being really good at one thing, like memorizing one song really well, or memorizing French phrases really well. So they said, he's seen a movie one hundred times, took him six months to do how to throw cards. He lists the ways that he's died. They estimate how many days it would take to learn the timing of the events, so memorizing jeopardy, for example, committing the perfect crimes. There are various day counts with the and here's what it says. They conservatively estimate that getting to know Rito would take one thousand days, or under three years. So they put the grand total at four five hundred and seventy six days, or twelve years, six months, and eleven days, which puts you back into Harold Ramis's original timeframe. So yeah, let's see between twelve and thirty four years. Relatedly, the original cut of Groundhog Day was over three hours long, which obviously the filmmakers decided to trim down to a more manageable length in the edit.

01:26:17
Speaker 3: Yes, the version that was released was much shorter. And now we're gonna talk about the release of the film because.

01:26:23
Speaker 1: Say we like to call Getting That Hog Out. I you know, I feel really bad. You gave some really incredible section headings to this outline and I haven't read any of them. I feel as though I should go back hogs Well, that ends well for the ending segment, the hog will rise again. Hogging Out with Nick Cannon Those good Lords of Hogtown was very good. Check out my hog cast is probably my favorite for obvious reasons, like Hogger versus Hogger, like Kramer versus Kramer. That was good. That was good. I know when that hog line bling was good? Who at the is probably my favorite low hanging fruit, but I had to do it.

01:27:03
Speaker 3: Howg'spirations not the best, but I appreciate the theme no bad ideas and brainstorming.

01:27:09
Speaker 1: Yeah but okay, yeah, Getting that Hog Out.

01:27:12
Speaker 3: We're getting groundhog out into the world, getting Groundhog Day out in the world. Because Groundhog Day is only celebrated in the USA and Canada, which I didn't realize international countries had to translate the title differently because locals wouldn't know what the hell groundhog Day meant? Does anybody really know what groundhog Day means?

01:27:31
Speaker 1: In Sweden the.

01:27:32
Speaker 3: Movie translates to Monday the entire week, and although the film never clarified what day of the week it is, most fans speculate that it's Tuesday, the date of Groundhog Day. In nineteen ninety three, the German movie Well, wait a minute, it was the year before, which is really you know a movie came out in nineteen ninety three. If it was the year before, when people using their common sense would assume the movie was made, I think.

01:27:53
Speaker 1: Groundhog Day would have been on Monday that year. So it works. Swedes never get it wrong. Oh ii, kia, look at it. It's great.

01:28:02
Speaker 3: The German movie title is the Groundhog greets every Day. I would love to know how that set in German, probably in a foreboding, somewhat sinister fashion. And after the movie debuted this phrase, the groundhog greets every day became a humorous proverb for Germans, meaning something that is frequently repeated, particularly something irritating and awkward. I mean It's kind of like how in this country groundhog Days become an expression. Brazilians know the film as spell of Weather, and the French predictably took the most hardline existentialist route by calling it a day without end my favorite Sartrek book.

01:28:42
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:28:43
Speaker 3: Funnily enough, the film wasn't actually released on Groundhog Day in nineteen ninety three, an honor that you note instead went to Whole word Bound, a movie I saw with my father and cried during an experience that taught me about shame. Well, I mean, you did they do plan this stuff? So you have to wonder that was coming out? Was that Touchstone or Disney? They must have I think it was Disney.

01:29:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, so somebody must have figured, don't put your family film in against Disney's. When did it come out? Came out and like, do you know something, Nah, it came out a week after Groundhog Day. We came out like ten days or something afterwards.

01:29:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, the film was of course a hit because, as you mentioned and I echo, it's perfect. It grows nearly seventy one million dollars domestically and one hundred and five million dollars worldwide, which is many orders of magnitude passed its budget, though, as you know, that's a tricky stat since budget estimates range from fourteen point six million to thirty million. We do know the box office returns, though, and it made seventy point nine million domestically and one hundred and five million dollars worldwide. Pretty good, not bad, not bad. Critics loved it initially and continue to reappraisal of the movie. Roger Ebert wrote, groundhog Day is a film that finds its note and purpose so precisely that its genius may not be immediately noticeable. I said at the top, me and Ebert, it unfolds so inevitably, is so entertaining, so apparently effortless, that you have to stand back and slap yourself before you see how good it really is.

01:30:21
Speaker 1: Could not agree more.

01:30:23
Speaker 3: At the time, Hollywood had just come out of an arrow when it had been heavily criticized for sex and violence portrayed in mainstream blockbusters. So course, correcting to a broader family film was inevitable from both cultural and business standpoints, because as production costs rose, anything that appealed to a broader audience would make more money in both theaters and home rentals and purchases. By nineteen ninety three, the three all time highest grossing films in North America were Family Oriented et the Extraterrestrial Star Wars, which I don't know if the classify as family oriented but okay, and Home Alone.

01:30:57
Speaker 1: That's hilarious. It's self fund to me much money? Home Alone made? Yeah? Right.

01:31:02
Speaker 3: Columbia Pictures chairman Mark Canton said that pg's rated films were much more likely to make over one hundred million compared to adult oriented fare, so groundhog Day was rated PG, and the film's buzz seemed to position it as a potential sleeper success. Groundhog Day was one of many family films released in nineteen ninety three, including Free Willie, Last Action Hero, and the highly anticipated Jurassic Park, which will go on to become the highest grossing film.

01:31:25
Speaker 1: For a few years before Star Wars came back. Yet no less an authority than screenwriting legend William Goldman said in nineteen ninety three, I think groundhog Day is the one that will be of all the movies that came out this last year. It's the one that we'll be remembered in ten years. As we tostd on earlier Bill Murray was initially unhappy with the finished film. In a nineteen ninety three interview, he said that he wanted to focus on the comedy and the underlying theme of people repeating their lives out of fear of change, while Harold Ramis wanted to focus on the redeeming power of love. That we eventually conceded that Ramis had ultimately been right to do it he did.

01:32:01
Speaker 3: Janet Maslin in her interview, felt that the film was well balanced between sentimentality and nihilism, just like our podcast. But Bill Murray eventually came around on the film, as we mentioned earlier, also calling it probably the best work I've done, and probably the best work Harold will ever do. This kind of seems like an underheaded compliment else he was right, Yeah. Despite its a claiming cash flow, the film got a lot of negative attention, including from religious groups and spiritual gurus, which baffled Harold Ramis because he didn't think anyone would be taking this stuff that seriously. Critic Owen Glieberman also compared it unfavorably to Back to the Future, which he found more cleverly structured false no and Back in the Future. I think is probably if you forced me to choose my favorite movie, and I love this movie obviously, as I've said, no very different.

01:32:53
Speaker 1: I hate that makes me mad. Get his ass, Yeah, get him Gliberman. Get Gliberman anyway. Sorry.

01:33:01
Speaker 3: Interestingly, after groundhog Day was released, several science fiction writers came forward and argued that the screenplay stole their idea. Richard Loupov claimed the Groundhog Day ripped off his short story twelve oh one PM. Well, Ken Grimwood charged that was actually based off of his story Replay, which I have never read.

01:33:21
Speaker 1: And this brings us to the curious case of the twenty fourteen movie The Edge of Tomorrow, also fantastic movie. Can't recommend it enough? Really, Yeah, it's awesome. Well you take this segment that I've never seen it. Oh, it's so good. It's all I have to tell you is you just get to watch Tom Cruise die over and over and over again. Yeah. It's subtitled like Live Die. That was what is originally supposed to be called, and the network's chickened out and retitled Edge of Tomorrow. It's basically groundhog Day, but as an alien invasion movie. And there's some funny nods that Tom Cruise's co star is named Rita. Both protagonists awake at six am with the line same Old, Same, and both main characters eventually pinched themselves at one point to prove that tomorrow has finally arrived. Was that intentional? A must? I mean it must have been intentional. Sure, I think there's another one. There's another one too. It's a it's a happy death day where there's a it's like a slasher film where there's a woman trapped in a groundhog Day scenario, but a serial killer is after her. It's just a durable premise that just keeps on giving. Danny Rubin was the first speaking of durable premises that keep on giving. On de nihilism. How's that for a segue? Now I liked it. I liked it. Okay, okay, thank you, thank you. I'm needy just like you. I just mask it better. Now we must arrive at some of the spiritual, religious, and philosophical underpinnings of groundhog Day. One precursor's good old Friedrich Nietzschez and his Gay Science, which is not his life's work but book he wrote, which tells the story of a man that lives the same day, over and over and over again. Writer Danny Rubin has said that it said that the beauty of the framework is that the beauty of the framework of his film is that every he seems to bring their own way of thinking and their own discipline to bear on the ideas within it, and would express that this is absolutely he would say that this is absolutely describing the essence of Nietzsche's philosophy. I think the movie shows that is the repetition of days itself, which pushes us forward in our own maturation as we start to encounter the same things over and over again. Ruben has also said they didn't actually set out to write a spiritual work, just one about how people get stuck in patterns that they can't free themselves from. Uh like you too once memorably did. That was a moment I thought it wasn't a pattern patterned in the scan, hard to rhyme pattern, flattern matter, batter, shatter, you got slant, you got to force it an irishman, I guess uh. Ruben called Groundhog Day a story about how to live whose life isn't a series of days, Who doesn't feel stuck from time to time? This is Crystallized, and the sad funny Bowling in which Phil acts two punk satani men if they understand what it's like to be stuck in a place where nothing they do matters. Yeah, man, that pretty much sums it up, one replies. Crowdlog Day has also been described as a love letter to psychotherapy, which I find interesting. And it can also be interpreted as a secular tale in which Phil's experiencing an existential crisis where primal self indulgence is no longer satisfying, causing him the fall onto a depression that he escapes by taking ownership of his own self improvement, and then he uses his improved persona to benevolently help others Again. Though everybody saw their own personal beliefs reflected in the film, Harold Ramis that he got calls from Buddhists, Jesuits, Jogi's all saying you must be one of us. This movie expresses our philosophy perfectly. Philosophers have compared it to the Greek mythological figure of Sissyphus, condemned to eternally roll a stone up a hill each day, only to have it roll back down, a concept that existentialist philosopher Albert Camu used as the framework for understanding the essential absurdity of existence and making your own happiness out of that. In his work The myth of Sisiphus, which ends with the struggle itself towards the heights, is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy hm.

01:37:13
Speaker 3: At one point in the movie, Phil suggests that he's killed himself enough times to no longer exist ego death. Yes, and according to Harold Ramis, at least it's at this point that Phil becomes ready to change. Buddhist leaders suggests that Phil could be interpreted as a body staffa someone who has reached the brink of Devana and returns to Earth to help others do the same. For Jews, Phil's escape from the timeline can be seen as a reward for finally learning to perform moral deeds or mitzvah, which I assume is related to mitzvah. Yeah, mitzwe means good deeds. And there's there's a scandal a while back because they've found out that the Hasidom in Brooklyn were buying and selling mitzvah.

01:37:57
Speaker 1: Online, like on eBay. I mean it's likes. Yeah. I mean one guy just being like, Oh, I've got so many mitzv Bros. I'll sell them to you. Then they did give me a good price. That's amazing. Yeah.

01:38:14
Speaker 3: In Christianity, Phil's journey can be interpreted as a form of resurrection or as Phil being trapped in purgatory until they can earn his place in heaven through selfless acts. One kabbalist analyzed the significance of the film's numerology and by the way, in.

01:38:30
Speaker 1: Case you were interesting. At least one economist has published a column claiming that Groundhog Day of the movie quote illustrates the importance of the mess Hayk paradigm as an alternative to equilibrium economics by illustrating the unreal nature of equilibrium. Theorizing addicts have also told Danny Rubin that the film helped them realize they were trapped in punk satanis of their own making, which is an outcome of the film.

01:38:53
Speaker 3: I hadn't considered the number of people that helped get clean and lives it presumably saved, which is amazing.

01:39:02
Speaker 1: Uh, offsetting that damn you wow, Okay, we're saving the most grim fact for last Groundhog Day passed into usage in the military for those repeatedly deployed to areas of conflict like Bosnia, Iraq or Afghanistan.

01:39:21
Speaker 3: Bill Clinton was heard to actually reference this during a speech to troops in the mid nineties.

01:39:27
Speaker 1: Oh God, that's grim, Fuck Clinton. Oh here's another good header. Hogs born back ceaselessly into the past. That's great. Danny Rubin actually seemed to fare the worst out of all the folks associated with Groundhog Day after the film success. Of course, he immediately started getting calls, but producer said pigeonholed him. They'd say, just write something normal and it'll come out, Danny Rubini, it'll be great, he told Vulture. But I didn't want to write something normal. It's messing with the premise and the structure that makes it exciting. Man Ruben had also eh Ruben had also moved his family to New Mexico BEFO for the film wrapped and resolutely refuse to play ball with the Hollywood system. His brother Michael tried to convince him to fly back for meetings, saying, they want to meet you for lunch at the IVY, and they want to think you're a totally fun guy. You get in the door because you wrote a hit movie, but they want to see you as a guy they can play with. Rubin responded, as I probably would by digging his heels in harder. He told Vulture, it would be like Goldie Hahn has a dysfunctional family. None of them get along, so they go camping and in the end they all learn to love each other. Typically, I would say, okay, I'm going to tell you your movie. He'd give them a well laid out three act structure film and a standard conclusion before then telling them, under no circumstances, am I going to write that movie? Speaking of being trapped in patterns, he then admitted it took me years to understand. That's why the business started disappearing. Ruben battled against this for years. He'd write scripts and sell them to like Universal Amblin Castle Rock, which is Rob Reiner's production company Mirrormax, but everyone wanted to rewrite them, and then when he refused, he'd be kicked off the project. People weren't responding to my stuff by making movies out of it. They were optioning it. But then there were the same arguments over and over. They were trying to make a movie that I said I was expressly not interested in making. Matthew Warkis, who directed the Groundhog Day musical that Ruben ultimately helped put together, said Danny's got every reason to have an antagonistic relationship with his beast, but ultimately it seems like Ruben has made peace with it. I was always thinking, I'm not a one hit wonder. I'm not a one hit wonder. But even if I am, okay, that's more than most people get every year. To celebrate the holiday, he and his wife in all of their friends over and they move the furniture and have a dance party. That's cute.

01:41:41
Speaker 3: One of Ruben's big returning to embrace his baby projects was a Groundhog Day musical, which first premiered in London in twenty sixteen, winning an Olivier Award and going on to be nominated for multiple Tony Awards after its Broadway debut a year later in twenty seventeen. He did this partly because he wanted to work, and partly because of musical version of the film wasn't covered by the rights he'd signed over to Columbia, and I loved that.

01:42:04
Speaker 1: Probably at this point needed some money Stephens.

01:42:08
Speaker 3: Sondheim expressed early interest, but ultimately it was realized by Matthew Warchus and oh, Tim Minchin is a great British Meadian.

01:42:17
Speaker 1: I thought that had perk you up. Yeah.

01:42:20
Speaker 3: They approached Danny Rubin in twenty twelve, fresh off the success of The Matilda Musical. The trio collaborated for a few years before producing the finished version, and while no one really expected Bill Murray to attend, he did and then went back the next day, which is mind blowing, and he had surprisingly positive things to say.

01:42:40
Speaker 1: The idea that we just have to try again, We just have to try again. It's such a beautiful, powerful idea. He even commended the show's cast and crew for their phenomenal efforts as actors. I can't respect enough how disciplined you are and how serving you are of the process, he told them. According to Rolling Stone.

01:43:00
Speaker 3: There's nothing worse than seeing someone that's out for themselves and you're all in it for each other. As far as a film sequel, Hanni McDowell told The Hollywood Reporter, people always say let's do groundhog Day again, which would be a hilarious name for a groundlock Day sequel. Actually groundlock Day again.

01:43:17
Speaker 1: True.

01:43:17
Speaker 3: First of all, Bill Murray's never going to do it, true, So you can forget that. I know him, He's not gonna do it.

01:43:23
Speaker 1: But in twenty twenty, Bill Murray and some of the other cast members reprise their role for a Super Bowl commercial. Funnily enough, the big Game also happened to fall on Groundhog Day. What better reason to bring the characters back than to advertise the GEEP Gladiator brings us nice full circle. We're talking about Gladiator too at the beginning of this. Cool like that. We'll saving it. We're saving it all right.

01:43:51
Speaker 3: The nearly two minute advertisement showcases the vehicle, while Bill Murray and the Groundhog enjoy a handful of humorous scenes together. They really did their due diligence for this ad. It was filmed in Woodstock, just like the original movie, and the video concludes with the line that echoes the movie have the Day of your life over and over and over again, because capitalism is the only thing that yields good things anymore.

01:44:18
Speaker 1: A writer named Desen Thompson once snarked Groundhog Day will never be designated a national treasure. Well, guessing what, buddy what? In two thousand and six it was Baby groundhog Day actually didn't receive any major rewards or even nominations at the time, but it's clearly won the long war in the hearts and minds of not just the public, but the official ivory towers of the film world, the American Film Institute, and the National Film Registry. So how fuck yeah, here's a perfect ending image for you. The cast reunited for the first time on the thirty first anniversary of the film and the tenth anniversary of Harold Ramis's death. They came together at the Harry Carey taper at Navy Peer as I Got You Babe played on the PA. When the local Groundhogs saw his shadow, Bill Murray threatened to go to town on the road with his cane. Well, folks, I don't know what there's left to say about a film so perfectly constructed and around a central concept that's so at once universal but deeply personal and heartfelt that every major philosophy and religion can claim it presents their doctrines. It teaches us that loving ourselves and engaging with our communities is the only way to break the change that we forge in life. It tells us to watch out for that last step. Perhaps the ultimate zen statement from this movie is the one to take with us. Something's changed and any change is good. Well said, folks, Thank you for listening. This has been too much information. I'm Alex Haigel and I'm Jordan roun Togg. We'll catch you next time. Too Much was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg. The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtogg and Alex Heigel.

01:46:12
Speaker 4: With original music by Seth Applebaum and a ghost punk orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.