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...

I was writing today about the choices we make as bloggers. Or, as people on the internet more generally. Papacharissi (2009) Calls it an "information game." But for the moment I cannot talk about that. I've been stuck on High Fidelity because I find a bit too much of myself in Rob Gordon (John Cusack). Tonight, I'm checking out the deleted scenes before I get into the film proper, and I just watched one that surprised me because who else plays Rob's father but Harold Ramis. And, I'm done. I mean, to loop back around like that. Andie MacDowell's real first name is Rosalie (my mother's name) and now Harold Ramis is playing the father of a guy named Rob (my name, you inattentive passerby). Everything loops back to Groundhog Day , eventually. Every movie is every other movie. I intended to talk about white male privilege today, I want to talk about punctum, but here I am talking about links back to Groundhog Day because every blog entry is the same, e...

I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over? Phil’s problem here: he thinks the day just happens to him. He doesn’t realize that while there may be a few elements here—the girl and, well, the sea otter lovin’—that aren’t things that would be on repeat. Just like the second snowman scene we see in Groundhog Day , when Phil tried to get that same girl again, he might come on just a little too strong, and she might not be interested. Or, his assumption that they might make like sea otters might be just the thing to make her unwilling. Phil, prior to being trapped in the time loop, where his choices are limited, apparently doesn’t understand free will. Phil assumes a repeating day to be the same thing again and again, even though by the time he tells the story above, it’s Day 3 and he’s already changed the way the day goes. He’...

Man, are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon. Watched Primer before Groundhog Day today. It’s a very low budget exploration into time travel and its consequences… except I don’t think it deals too well in actual (morally) bad consequences. It demonstrates a lot of the complexity Phil Connors might have to deal with, though, in repeating the same day if he wants things to seem normal. In Primer , Aaron (played by writer and director Shane Carruth) uses recordings of the original conversations through a certain day, for example, so that when he returns to that day he can keep one earbud in and follow the conversation how it is supposed to go. Tying back to yesterday’s entry about Run Lola Run , the way tiny differences can be a problem (or not) is demonstrated when Aaron has a conversation on a basketball court; he misses a shot in the resumption that he made previously, so the dialogue on the tape differs from the new reality. But, that doesn’t really lea...