the groundhog day project

Phil Connors doesn’t speak French. While it might be reasonable to assume Phil does learn to play piano beyond the two songs we hear him play since this is at the point he is actually trying to better himself and affect the world around him in a positive way, the French bit is much earlier. It also comes from a bit in Rubin’s original screenplay, not with Rita but with “Tess Harper—Jefferson County Poetry Society.” Basically, it’s a clear example of Phil doing the same thing he does with Nancy in the movie; he makes stuff up to get what he wants. This is only Day 10 . He hasn’t gotten to the depression that arguably makes him realize he’s an actual human being like everyone else around him… I just realized, this also means he’s probably lying when he says, “Small town people are more real, more down-to-earth.” Later, he might actually believe it. But, at this point, each line is just a move to win over Rita. Anyway, in the original screenplay, Phil meets Tess like he meets Mary in ...

Insert a pretentious subtitle here, something about the representation of gender roles in Groundhog Day . Bill is just a waiter at the Tip Top Café. Well, he was in fictional 1993. He’d been working there for three years since he left Penn State. And, as the title above says, he was (and I suppose still is, presumably, if these fictional realities continue on even when we don’t invest further attention into them) gay. In Danny Rubin’s original script, Bill was supposed to deny being gay—Rubin thought that was funnier, but Harold Ramis changed it (according to Rubin, but the second revision by Ramis still has Bill say “I am not!”). “Having Bill deny the assertion could have been confusing” Rubin says, in a scene in which Phil is “trying to prove to Rita that he knows everything and everyone.” Rubin adds: But I think the real reason the line changed was political correctness. A gay man being outed against his will might be funny or it might be considered cruel. A gay man casually and...

So, let’s get this out of the way early on. The big question on everybody's lips—on their chapped lips—just how long is Phil stuck in Punxsutawney? This question has been posed and asked before—and director Harold Ramis even weighed in at least once. Back in 2009, Wolf Gnards put the total estimate at 3176 days, calculating that to 8 years, 8 months, 16 days. In 2011, Simon Gallagher over at whatculture puts the total at 12,395 days, that is 33 years, 350 days. Ramis suggested, in response to Wolf Gnards—and I really hope that is an actual guy’s name, because, hey, that would make the world more interesting—that “it had to be more like 30 or 40 years.” But, let’s get our own figure going. To start, how many days (February 2 only) do we see on screen? Gallagher puts the total (erroneously, I’d say) at 38 days, while Gnards says 36. I’d break it down as follows: Day 1 – the original Groundhog Day. Day 2 – the first repeat, ending with the pencil breaking. Day 3 – the day Phil ...

It’s day two. If I were Phil Connors, I’d be confused, and I’d probably be trying to review Groundhog Day again, and getting a little carried away with myself—did I really say I’d help my readers get a better grasp on the human condition? I might as well be calling myself “the talent.” As Larry would say in response: “prima donnas.” I guess I am one. But, I digress. As I was watching the movie again—the second time in two days, the third in the past week, as I went to an outdoor screening last Saturday in Old Town Pasadena—I wanted to write a review from scratch, pretend I hadn’t tried that yesterday. I thought that would be clever. But, I don’t need to be clever just yet. I don’t need any more of a gimmick than watching the movie every day. A few things did occur to me while watching the movie, this time. I already was thinking more about specific scenes, trying to figure out nuances I might not have seen before—the newsvan drives past the Alpine Theater where Heidi II is playin...