clear across the rockies and great plains

I'm not going to write about dreams again today, but I had to share one thing: my daughter had a dream involving Groundhog Day. She doesn't watch the movie every day like I do, of course, but she sees parts of it at least pretty regularly. Anyway, she's in a high school production of To Kill a Mockingbird as Scout--that's all the setup you need. In her dream, she discovers they're also doing a stage version of Groundhog Day and wants to try out for that. The role of Phil Connors, of course. But, then it turns out her rehearsal schedule for To Kill a Mockingbird is going to interfere with Groundhog Day so she can't play Phil. Instead, she's offered the consolation role (my phrasing) of Rita.

In other news, my recent trip to Utah allowed me to watch the movie (or part of it anyway) in three states beside California. Watched about half the movie in Nevada, the first third or so in Arizona, all of it in Utah. My upcoming trip to Woodstock will add Illinois to the list. Had I the time and the money, I would now set the goal of watching the movie in every state. My son suggests I count all the states I fly over--this after I said I'd also be watching the movie on the plane. As you know if you've been following this blog lately, I also "watched" the movie in the rental van three times on the Utah trip.

Actually, the bit about watching the movie in every state gives me an idea. A documentary in which I do just that, go to each state and host some free screenings of the film, interview people about the movie and what it means to them. In the process I could also cover the religious audience bit from my paper last fall, testing out the biases of audiences, and really I could just the make the world a little bit of a better place by sharing Groundhog Day with a whole lot of people.

But, not too many. I've already warned how that could end badly. Of course, I was just playing at debate when I wrote that entry. Really, if we could get everyone to appreciate the same film, that would probably go a long way toward getting everyone to get along.

And, after the first documentary with me in all 50 states, I could travel the world for a sequel. The documentary would be like a Matt Harding video, except instead of dancing in front of the peoples of the world I would sit down with them and watch Groundhog Day.

I'm not even sure it would require a translation. I've got the script pretty much memorized at this point so I can't objectively watch the movie without the sound (the closest approximation to the untranslated version for someone who didn't speak English that I could manage) and see if I can gauge what's going on without the dialogue. I still might watch it without sound again sometime. I mean on purpose. I have watched it when I couldn't hear it, back in the early days of the blog when I went camping and watched the film on my iPad while sitting around the campfire. Aside from the rental van viewings I watched a good chunk of the movie sitting outside in Utah and really couldn't see the screen because of the sunlight, so I turned the volume all the way up and just recited bits along with the movie while playing with some snow. I even suggested that when the movie got to the snowball scene (either incarnation, obviously) I would have to throw snowballs at the people with whom I was sharing the lunchbreak (i.e. three members of my team). They were dressed up for the competition, so I didn't do that. Well, I did at least one, and it was, as Phil might say, a humdinger.

And, I digress.

I was talking documentaries. Honestly, it could work. But, I know nothing about how one goes about doing that sort of thing, getting equipment, getting funding, and whatever else is involved. The structure seems like Super Size Me, Religulous or a Michael Moore film--there's got to be a subgenre name for those kinds of documentaries, but I don't know what it is. My conservative readers might be tempted to jump in with some political joke, since my three examples are a bit Left. And, so am I, of course. But, for the most part, I think I've done pretty well at keeping politics out of this blog. Plus, I couldn't think of any Right-skewed documentaries of the same type.

Today's reason to repeat a day forever: to see how many different places around the world that I could reach within that one day... Would the time loop obey time zones or would I just have 24 hours? If time zones apply, could I simply keep moving west and never move forward in time? Would I go backward in time like Superman? Would that make me now a Cinematic Christ-Figure if I documented that on film? Am I overthinking this?