the groundhog day project

Yesterday , I watched Groundhog Day yet again, but I really didn't say much about the movie itself. To be fair, there isn't much to be said about Groundhog Day that I have not already said in one form or another. Still, it's the 25th anniversary of the film's release coming up, so I feel that I should say something. If you want a good story about me and this blog and the movie, and about the town of Woodstock, where they filmed most of the movie--and where every year around this time, they celebrate with their own Groundhog Days--check Michael Schulman's piece at The Believer , check my specific response to that piece and a personal message I got from screenwriter Danny Rubin, or just start reading with Day 1 and go from there. If you want to understand the holiday, check here or here . This week, The Federalist called the film, "a seemingly light and whimsical" comedy that "has had an interesting life." Author Robert Tracinski goes on t...

Let's work backward. Start with another 30th anniversary screening tonight--made it to the sold out 7:30 show this time and it was nice watching this movie with a crowd. Run back through the past week of viewings, seven times in seven days, keep going back three decades, a viewing now and then, not as many times as I've seen some movies but more than others. Back to 1985, February 15--the day The Breakfast Club was released into theaters. Keep on going to March 24, 1984, the Saturday on which Andrew Clark, Claire Standish, John Bender, Allison Reynolds and Brian Johnson sat down as strangers in Shermer High School's library and left as friends... perhaps to become strangers all over again come Monday. Go back further to... Actually, the screenplay draft I found has no date on it. It's not the shooting script. It still has Robin Robertson in it-- (March 25, 2015, Karen Leigh Hopkins tells The Hollywood Reporter about how she was cast as a gym teacher (character, ...

7:30 show of The Breakfast Club was sold out, which kind of made me wish even more I'd been there. But, we--my son and I--made it to the second show. I had gone with the high school movies this month because I knew this film would be in theaters, so I'm glad we didn't miss it. 10:30 show wasn't as crowded, but at least it wasn't empty. The "event" began with some slide beforehand with trivia (facts, not questions) about the movie and its stars. Some examples: Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall dated for a while after filming The Breakfast Club . Not that exciting, that one. Judd Nelson was a philosophy major at Haverford College. On the one hand, definitely more interesting. And, it gets even more interesting when you consider the phrasing. It doesn't say that he got a degree, just that he was a "philosophy major." He could have taken like one philosophy class, for all we know. Hughes' business partner's son attended ...