i never said midnight

Today will be short, to make up for yesterday’s lengthy response to the IMDb goofs page. Think of it like Phil’s toaster morning (only less suicidal).

Ending a month of the Groundhog Day Project I realize I never spelled out explicit rules for what I’m doing. All I really said from the beginning was that “I will watch Groundhog Day every day, and I will explore its aspects and research into its tangents. I will run the film into the ground and, I hope, build it right back up again.” As for that running the film into the ground bit, one of my sisters said I was taking the fun out of the movie. On the one hand, I’m fine with that. I have to take away the fun to deconstruct the film entirely. But, it can still be fun again in the future. Hell, I still enjoy it. A couple mornings ago, I posted the following on the Facebook page:

I started today in a bad mood but you know what fixed it? watching Groundhog Day =]

On the one hand, that is a very good thing considering what I’m doing. On the other hand, it almost makes it seem like a drug, and only a month in now I need to watch Groundhog Day. It occurs to me that when this blog is done—although, maybe this blog is never going to end as long as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow—there may be some serious withdrawal. I might still feel the need to watch Groundhog Day and I might still come up with ideas to blog about…

(Maybe I’ll even throw up an extra blog entry on occasion, but don’t tell me that.)

…like, for example. I realize, as far as withdrawal goes, Phil’s got some serious problems coming into February 3rd. He probably doesn’t even remember how to interact properly with people anymore. Imagine the next time he meets a new person and can’t manipulate the conversation to his liking.

Anyway, the ground rules…

(Or, should they be groundhog rules?)

They are simple. Every day, I will watch Groundhog Day from beginning to end. I will not require that my eyes remain glued to the screen every second. I often start working on the blog entry during the movie, in fact. And, yesterday I actually had two copies of the movie running at once, which made it a little confusing to follow… well, it would have if I didn’t have the movie pretty much memorized at this point. I had my usual copy playing on the iPad and another copy playing on the desktop so I could get all those screencaps. I was jumping around in that one, so scenes were all out of order—

(It should be noted, that one idea I had was to cut all the “days” apart and reorder them, watch the movie a different order and see how it flows, but I don’t know when or if I’ll get to that. I’ve got a bunch of post-it notes here stuck to the bottom of my desktop monitor with topics for blog entries and I haven’t gotten to those yet. I haven’t gotten to profiles of various characters (aside from Phil who is profiled at least in part in just about every entry) and the various actors. I haven’t done an entry focused just on the original Phil voiceover or on my notes from Ryan Gilbey’s critique. There are many ideas, and new ones get in the way often. Like yesterday’s entry, for example—I didn’t plan that. I just happened to be looking at the goofs page and saw some things were wrong. Then, all the work happened yesterday—

(Basically, I printed the goofs page, cut the goofs apart and put them in chronological order as far as where they would fall during the movie, then watched the movie and checked on each one as it came, grabbing screencaps on the desktop as the iPad ran the film straight through.)

I’ve got another TV Time Loop Day (or two) planned, and I really need to do a Movie Time Loop Day—I mean, I dealt with 12:01 on its own (and will revisit it when I read the story) because of its possible direct connection with Groundhog Day, but there are other movies that involve time loops. There’s also one of my favorite novels, Replay by Ken Grimwood. There’s a lot more to be covered. I mean, there’s even a potential entry just about dancing in the movie… For example, is Rita’s dancing here the dorkiest dancing ever?

And, is Debbie’s dancing here awesome or just insane?

And, I won’t even get into the Gobbler’s Knob dancers yet. I will save them for a later blog.)

Anyway, I was talking about rules. I will watch the movie every day. But, there is an important point I want to make. This “day” thing is not necessarily from midnight to midnight. I mean, if Phil’s day is from 6:00am to 6:00am, I think that’s a good system for me. This occurred to me last night when I barely managed to get the goofs blog onto blogspot by midnight and didn’t get onto the Facebook page or Twitter until after. So, I would now like to officially say that the Groundhog Day Project operates from 6:00am to 6:00am. Especially when my grad school classes get going in a month, I think there may be more than a few late night entries.

The second rule of the Groundhog Day Project is that I will blog about the movie or something related to it every day as well. Similar timeframe applies. Now, I’ve had a request for a guest blog, and others beside myself are welcome to submit things. But, I will not let them stand alone, because there are only two rules here, and one is that I will write every day. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t include extensive comments or writings long enough to be their own entries, but I will respond to and comment on whatever they may have to say.

I’m not sure I need any other rules, per se.

Today’s reason to repeat a day forever: to not blog about Groundhog Day because rules a) are for losers and b) were made to be broken. Except, I’m enjoying this, so until my day starts repeating, or I find a comfortable ending, be it six months in or a year in or… well, let’s not spoil it. Until I am done, I will keep going, as redundant as that may sound.