the groundhog day project

Permit a sidetrack. Not that there's a clear throughline driving me this month. I wanted to revive this thing and I did, and I've mostly just been winging it. One day at a time. Life is good that way. Make plans, sure. But, it's each day that matters. Do the useful things, the productive things, but also find time for the fun things. Save Buster from choking and light a woman's cigarette... Not that I want to get into Groundhog Day references right now. King Arthur is today's film. And, what TV Tropes calls "Cast Calculus" (or more specifically, depending on how this goes, "The Five Man Band" or The Magnificent Seven Samurai"), and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy labels simply as "Seven Samurai." Specifically, because lately I think about way too much in terms of Dungeons and Dragons references (because D&D takes up far too much of my spare time), I noticed as I watched King Arthur last night that Arthur and his Knights p...

I’ve dealt with obituaries before in this blog— Jane Catherine Lotter , an author who wrote her own; Martin Manley , a sportswriter who planned and blogged about his suicide; and even Lucina Paquet Gabbard , who played a small part in Groundhog Day —so I thought it worth bringing up this bit from an obituary I saw online today: Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick born Jan 4, 1935 and died alone on Aug. 30, 2013. She is survived by her 6 of 8 children whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible. While she neglected and abused her small children, she refused to allow anyone else to care or show compassion towards them. When they became adults she stalked and tortured anyone they dared to love. Everyone she met, adult or child was tortured by her cruelty and exposure to violence, criminal activity, vulgarity, and hatred of the gentle or kind human spirit. It reminded me of Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead , in which a Speaker spends time with and interviews those wh...

Groundhog Day wasn’t the first exploration of the day-on-repeat phenomena, or its technical term per Star Trek : a temporal causality loop. Though, we shouldn’t confuse this with the causality loop of a “predestination paradox.” And, now that we’ve lost the non sci-fi fans, let’s discuss these loops as represented in a handful of relatively recent (one of these actually predates the release of, though not the writing of, Groundhog Day ) television shows. And, they are all genre shows. And, I watched all seven of these yesterday, declaring on Twitter that it was time loop day. Just to get the list out of the way (and there are more episodes like this left from other shows (and movies) so I may have to do this again sometime ), the seven episodes are: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - “Life Serial” Angel - “Time Bomb” Stargate SG-1 - “Window of Opportunity” Star Trek: The Next Generation - “Cause and Effect” The X-Files - “Monday” Supernatural - “Mystery Spot” Fringe - “White Tulip...

Groundhog Day is about life. Your life. My life. Life. Except, in one draft of the script, there was a reason for Phil’s plight. It wasn’t just the human condition. It involves a woman named Stephanie who Phil’s dated a few times and a book entitled 101 Curses, Spells and Enchantments You Can Do at Home . But, more on that for another day (after I’ve had a chance to read that “second revision” of the screenplay in more detail). In the version we see on screen, there is no first cause , just a situation out of control. It’s like an atheist's dream, the inherent meaningless of life in the face of a universe we cannot control. But, we do what we can. If all of this is just happening , then Phil Connors’ escape from the repetition has no logic to it. It’s like the hair dryer in that early episode of Quantum Leap ; Ziggy did some calculations but it’s all math that is far beyond any of us. So, the question is, given the way we take the film—put simply, Phil gets out because he learns...