the groundhog day project

With action movies, it's easy. With courtroom dramas. Even with romances. If--and if they had, this movie would have probably been quite forgettable--they had gone ahead and filmed the scenes with Stephanie DeCastro , maybe it would have been easier. But, what makes Phil's situation so hard is there is not clear victory to be had, no simple solution. Chasing after Rita is not dictated by some Fairy Godmother or Magic Mirror. Phil's situation is both entirely his own doing and entirely not. It's simple. It's complex. It's unsolvable. And, eventually, it solves itself. Like life. If you're lucky. If the social and cultural and political and ethnic and racial rolls go in your favor and circumstance doesn't set you as an example for everybody else. The thing is, however silly bullshit American Dream lines feel all too often-- you can accomplish anything if you just put your mind to it , you can be anything you want to be and all the similar lies we tell...

I've been obsessing over the Groundhog Day musical of late. I often obsess when I get a new musical to listen to, of course; this is not unique to Groundhog Day ; it's just the latest. And, I wanted to talk about it. I have not gotten to see it live yet, of course, because it's just in New York for now and I cannot afford to just fly off to New York whenever. As much as I'd like to. (And, as I was writing this, I just got a notification about Tim Minchin's tweet about the show being nominated for seven Tony Awards.) Thing is, I cannot cover all of it in one entry. Nor would I need to. Nor would I want to. This isn't a blog about stage musicals, after all. But, there are a few details that stand out. First: Nancy. I've written about Nancy many times, of course. I swear I spent an entire entry just on her once but I cannot for the life of me find that one. But, that's almost poetic in itself--that she is just a detail in other entries. That is Nancy...

"Everyone takes, everyone gives. Life is like that." - Siddhartha (p. 52) Davies (1995) tells us, "Through its small-town setting and its manipulation of time, [ Groundhog Day ] keeps the most discussed ills of nineties America (gang war in California, sex and violence in the movies) at a distance" (p. 226). In fact, those more serious topics don't even make it out of the opening scene, and the first one is just part of Phil's humorous weather report: Out in California, they’re gonna have some warm weather tomorrow… gang wars and some very overpriced real estate. Up in the Pacific Northwest, as you can see, they’re gonna have some very, very tall trees. It will be clear across the Rockies and the Great Plains, mostly. Sex and violence in the movies--that's a topic that has been with us as long as movies have been, and will still be until we turn as hedonistic as the latter days of the Roman Empire. Actually, then we'll probably still talk abo...

(Click on image to enlarge) Today’s reason to repeat a day forever: to refrain from using words when it is a) appropriate and b) more fun.

Larry only says around 330 words in Groundhog Day but I've seen comments from people online who love the character and who hate the character. Not a lot of lines. Not a lot there to go by in trying to figure out who Larry is. Even less to go by to answer a very specific question, one Phil asks Larry late in the film: does Larry have kids? On the morning Phil brings pastries and coffee, he says to Larry, "We never talk. Do you have kids?" Last night my daughter basically challenged me to answer that question. So, the first thing to do is figure out... What do we know about Larry? Larry works as a cameraman for a local station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He worked, presumably as a cameraman, in San Diego for at least five years--playing on the math, he could have covered "the swallows returning to Capistrano six years in a row" if he lived there for five years if the swallows were the very first and the very last thing he covered. Chris Elliott was born in...

I wrote about Larry's bar scene (and relationship chances) with Nancy way back on Day 32 . There isn't much dialogue to the exchange; it's mostly Larry... Larry: People just don’t understand what is involved in this. This is an art form. You know, I think that most people just think that I hold the camera and point it at stuff. There is a heck of a lot more to it than just that. Hey, would you be at all interested in seeing the inside of the van? Nancy: You know, I really have to get back to the party. Larry: Great idea. I think I’ll go with you. Let me just drop a tip here. And Larry puts maybe a dollar down and then quite deftly picks it right back up once Nancy isn't looking. Ryan Gilbey (2004) barely mentions this scene in his critique. "In the bar of the Pennsylvanian Hotel...," he writes, "Larry is trying, and failing, to seduce Nancy" (p. 76). The character of Larry is called "darkly funny" by Janet Maslin in The New York T...

Phil Connors can't get fat. He doesn't have to exercise. He can veg out and do nothing at all--hell, he does this at one point in the film, when we see him sitting around watching Jeopardy! with the old people at the bed and breakfast, a big bowl of popcorn in his lap, a bottle of booze close at hand. I thought of this tonight when my dinner options were limited. Let me explain two details. First, I've been a vegetarian for a bit more than a year now, so my options when out are fairly limited sometimes anyway. On the college campus, there aren't many meal options for a vegetarian. There are some good sides at a few places, but not much else. Second... or rather first and a half, just so you know, I didn't become a vegetarian for health reasons but I think it's had a positive effect on my health. Actual second, night classes, like those in the masters program, are scheduled 6:10 to 10:00 at my school. And food places on campus are all closed by 8:00, so teacher...

I think I said before that there’s only one scene Phil doesn’t (necessarily) experience directly in Groundhog Day . I realized recently that isn’t true. I think because of its place in the film, because by then I am (and you are) so invested in Phil’s journey that I didn’t notice this particular bit doesn’t involve him. I’m talking about the scene just before the banquet, a scene that involves Larry and Nancy mostly and then a little Rita. (That other scene Phil doesn’t necessarily experience would be the scene in the morgue, in case you forgot.) The scene isn’t long, just a few lines of dialogue—and that wedding portrait on the wall that was previously framed between Rita and Phil now framed between Nancy and Larry, but let’s not get into that… yet. We hear Larry talking as the camera pans along the bar, faces we don’t know from earlier in the film (and this detail might be important). “People just don’t understand what is involved in this,” he’s saying. “This is an art form.” He’...