Groundhog Day: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (00:31):
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

(00:53):
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

(01:14):
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

(01:36):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (01:51):
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

(02:11):
trapped in the Bardo, you know, like this all this
all the philosophy and religious stuff that goes into it
so well.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
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

(02:39):
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

(03:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
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

(03:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
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.

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

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

Speaker 1 (04:12):
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,

(04:34):
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

(04:56):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (05:15):
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,

(05:44):
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

(06:05):
John Oates. I know, not even Darrel at this point.
It's just a little definiteatical say, definitely not Darrel.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
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

(06:33):
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

(06:54):
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.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
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

(07:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
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

(08:19):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
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

(08:47):
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,

(09:08):
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

(09:32):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (09:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
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

(10:23):
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

(10:44):
do you how do you go to the DMV?

Speaker 3 (10:46):
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?

Speaker 1 (10:53):
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,

(11:13):
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.

(11:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
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?

Speaker 1 (12:03):
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

(12:24):
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,

(12:44):
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.

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

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

Speaker 3 (13:20):
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

(13:41):
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.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (14:09):
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

(14:33):
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,

(14:54):
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

(15:16):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
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?

Speaker 1 (15:35):
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

(15:58):
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

(16:20):
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

(16:40):
and get him meetings, which is sort of a semi
common practice for young screenwriters. I remember being told this
a lot in school.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
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

(17:09):
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

(17:29):
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

(17:52):
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

(18:14):
so there's a lot of stuff on the Internet that's.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
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.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
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.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
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,

(19:20):
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

(19:41):
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

(20:03):
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

(20:27):
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

(20:47):
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

(21:08):
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

(21:32):
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

(21:53):
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

(22:15):
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,

(22:38):
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,

(22:58):
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,

(23:18):
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

(23:42):
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

(24:05):
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

(24:26):
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,

(24:46):
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,

(25:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right
back with more too much information in just a moment.

(26:08):
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,

(26:30):
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

(26:51):
got to be stuck here either.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
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

(27:16):
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.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
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

(27:59):
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.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
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.

(28:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
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

(28:56):
would be?

Speaker 1 (28:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
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.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
To begin with.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (29:41):
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

(30:03):
secretly agreed that even if it was films, they would
get rid of it in the edit, which is good.

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

Speaker 3 (30:12):
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

(30:36):
him to free himself only after realizing that he.

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

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

Speaker 1 (30:49):
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.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah it sucks.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
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.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (32:16):
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

(32:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
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,

(33:16):
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,

(33:37):
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

(33:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
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.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
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.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
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.

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

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

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Phil?

Speaker 3 (35:15):
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

(35:37):
never doctor to script?

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Has it completed? No?

Speaker 4 (35:40):
Me?

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

Speaker 3 (35:52):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (36:13):
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

(36:36):
whole predicament, which is ironic considering her book is called
on death and Dying and.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
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

(37:03):
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,

(37:24):
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.

(37:46):
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

(38:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
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

(38:40):
an elderly man out of a swimming pool. I wonder
how stripping naked forced him out of the swimming pool.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
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

(39:10):
to stop a truck delivering fish because later that day
at a restaurant a patron would choke on said fish,
which is really clever.

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

Speaker 3 (39:25):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (39:38):
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

(39:58):
end the time loop, which hilarious leap of logic, because
this was seen as too close to Bill Murray's character
in Caddy Shack.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
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

(40:46):
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.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
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.

(41:31):
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.

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

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

Speaker 1 (42:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
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.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
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

(42:51):
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

(43:13):
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,

(43:35):
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

(44:02):
friend phenomenon.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
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

(44:30):
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

(44:50):
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

(45:11):
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

(45:34):
doesn't say that, but I'm just guessing.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
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.

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

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

Speaker 3 (46:04):
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?

Speaker 1 (46:12):
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,

(46:34):
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

(46:56):
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

(47:18):
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

(47:40):
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.

(48:01):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (48:21):
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

(48:42):
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.

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

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

Speaker 3 (48:58):
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.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
I love this.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
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

(49:36):
adorable that that's where they met on a golf course,
which is fitting considering Caddy shack Raymis and.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
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

(50:04):
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.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
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

(50:43):
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,

(51:06):
It's a long week.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
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.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
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

(51:52):
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.

(52:13):
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.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (52:35):
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.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
Good for her. I interviewed her.

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

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Nice Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
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.

(53:14):
Bill Murray really liked her because she reminded him of
his first girlfriend that he had in the second grade.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
That's cute. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
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?

Speaker 1 (53:43):
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

(54:04):
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?

Speaker 3 (54:16):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (54:29):
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.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (55:00):
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.

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

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

Speaker 1 (55:20):
I know should.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
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

(55:44):
and thanked him for portraying insurance agents accurately rather than
mocking them, which is funny because that was not my takeaway.

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

Speaker 3 (55:57):
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

(56:18):
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.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
And so when Kurt Fuller.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
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.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
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.

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

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

Speaker 3 (57:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more.
Too much information after these messages. Ironically, given that the

(57:41):
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

(58:02):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (58:27):
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

(58:50):
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,

(59:11):
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

(59:36):
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

(59:58):
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?

(01:00:19):
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.

(01:00:40):
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.

(01:01:03):
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,

(01:01:26):
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

(01:01:49):
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.

(01:02:12):
I mean, I think this was it was slightly mean spirited.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
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,

(01:02:48):
a Takorea reads like the worst Joni Mitchell song ever.

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

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

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

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
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

(01:03:52):
was making Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Paul
Newman and the director of the movie I forget his name.

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

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:04:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
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

(01:05:55):
perfect song. It's hilarious, oh so annoying.

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

Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
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

(01:06:35):
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

(01:06:56):
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

(01:07:18):
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

(01:07:38):
Paganini did you just do that like off of the wow,
proving my point I can't even say the guy's name.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
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

(01:08:18):
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,

(01:08:40):
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

(01:09:04):
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,

(01:09:26):
I want to amend my It.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
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

(01:09:50):
Museum of Erotica in Saint Petersburg.

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

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

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
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,

(01:10:23):
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,

(01:10:45):
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

(01:11:06):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
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

(01:12:00):
was time.

Speaker 3 (01:12:02):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
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

(01:12:47):
the set of True Lives, right.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
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

(01:13:09):
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

(01:13:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
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

(01:14:07):
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

(01:14:29):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
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.

(01:15:21):
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

(01:15:45):
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

(01:16:05):
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

(01:16:26):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:16:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
Early morning.

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

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
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

(01:17:35):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
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

(01:18:08):
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

(01:18:28):
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.

(01:18:49):
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,

(01:19:10):
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

(01:19:30):
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

(01:19:52):
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

(01:20:13):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:20:29):
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

(01:20:52):
kind of a glorified extra. Basically, yeah, I like that.
I've never heard anything but great things about Harold Ramis.

Speaker 1 (01:21:00):
Same.

Speaker 3 (01:21:00):
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

(01:21:24):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:22:03):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:22:34):
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

(01:22:58):
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.

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

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

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
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

(01:23:45):
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

(01:24:06):
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

(01:24:30):
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

(01:24:52):
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,

(01:25:13):
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

(01:25:34):
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,

(01:25:56):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
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

(01:26:44):
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.

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

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

Speaker 3 (01:27:12):
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?

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

Speaker 3 (01:27:32):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:28:02):
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,

(01:28:22):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:28:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:43):
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

(01:29:05):
it was Disney.

Speaker 1 (01:29:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:29:20):
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

(01:29:43):
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

(01:30:06):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:30:23):
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

(01:30:46):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:31:02):
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

(01:31:24):
go on to become the highest grossing film.

Speaker 1 (01:31:25):
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

(01:31:47):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:32:01):
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

(01:32:21):
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

(01:32:46):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:33:01):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:33:21):
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.

(01:33:43):
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.

(01:34:05):
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.

(01:34:27):
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

(01:34:49):
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

(01:35:11):
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,

(01:35:33):
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

(01:35:54):
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,

(01:36:14):
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

(01:36:35):
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

(01:36:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:37:13):
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

(01:37:36):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:37:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:38:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:38:30):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (01:39:27):
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

(01:39:48):
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.

(01:40:10):
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

(01:40:32):
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,

(01:40:55):
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

(01:41:16):
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

(01:41:37):
dance party. That's cute.

Speaker 3 (01:41:41):
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

(01:42:02):
he'd signed over to Columbia, and I loved that.

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

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

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

Speaker 3 (01:42:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:42:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:43:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:43:17):
True.

Speaker 3 (01:43:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:43:23):
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.

(01:43:46):
We're talking about Gladiator too at the beginning of this.
Cool like that. We'll saving it. We're saving it all right.

Speaker 3 (01:43:51):
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

(01:44:12):
over again, because capitalism is the only thing that yields
good things anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:44:18):
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

(01:44:40):
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

(01:45:01):
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

(01:45:23):
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

(01:45:47):
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,

(01:46:09):
written and hosted by Jordan Runtogg and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 4 (01:46:12):
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
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Groundhog Day: Everything You Didn't Know