the groundhog day project

The commentary track includes director Michel Gondry and writer Charlie Kaufman. It starts amusingly. Gondry describes the action on screen as Joel gets out of bed and Kaufman wonders if he's just going to narrate the whole thing. As I listen to them discuss when they thought they might film in Canada, I find myself also looking at the book, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The shooting Script . Gondry writes the introduction, and he's got some outlandish ideas that... well I'll let him tell you. It all started at a Brussels restaurant when my friend and artist Pierre Bismuth challenged me with this concept: "What if in your mail you find a kind of official card stipulating: 'We are acknowledging, Monsieur Gondry Michel, that Lisa Brook had you erased from her memory. Please don't try to reach her.' ... They point out how Clementine invades Joel's personal space on the train. Gondry suspects it was Jim Carrey and not Joel Barish who didn't...

There’s commentary playing. Moonstruck ‘s commentary, unfortunately, is three people (Cher, writer John Patrick Shanley and director Norman Jewison) recorded separately. It’s not a nice back-and-forth, though already, just a minute or so in, it seems like Jewison at least is responding specifically to what’s said in Shanley’s track. The Grand Ticino, a real restaurant, didn’t want to stop serving customers for filming. So the interior was a construct. Cher was nervous about being Italian, holding the accent for the entire film. Jewison guesses that Shanley writes quickly and doesn’t like rewrites. I get that. I write quickly and I hate rewriting things. Rewriting feels dishonest to me... Early title: The Bride and the Wolf . Shanley points out the practical nature of Loretta’s decision to marry a man she doesn’t love—Johnny. But, he says, life isn’t practical. It’s “a project” in which you end up dead. So, there’s no reason to live by common sense but rather something more visc...

The old couples are not real, but their stories are. Director Rob Reiner on the commentary mentions having filmed the real couples but they were not as “compelling” as their stories were. Writer Nora Ephron recounts the beginnings of the film—Reiner had the idea, divorced from Penny Marshall, and handed it over to Ephron to write it. He would end up meeting his next wife during the making of When Harry Met Sally —director of photography Barry Sonnenfeld would introduce them. Ephron wanted Sally’s (Meg Ryan’s) hair to get younger as she got older. Spitting at the window then saying he’ll roll it down—that came from and old bit involving Billy Crystal’s grandfather teaching him how to drive. Ephron orders food like Sally does—she did so at the lunches at which she and Reiner discussed relationships in putting together this story and she says it’s getting worse. Ordering coffee, in a very specific but polite way, from a stewardess once, Ephron was asked if she ever saw When Harry Me...

Original title: Scary Movie , Scream was never a comedy. Keeping it (relatively) simple today. Listening to the commentary track with Wes Craven (director) and Kevin Williamson (writer). Right away, Williamson brings up the self-referential nature of the movie, which is obviously a key feature of the film; in the reality of the film horror movies exist, slasher films exist. What works especially well in Scream , of course, is that the self-referential nature, even when funny, even when clever and cute about it, never really drops into self-parody. The movie is played straight. Tidbit: Craven got Barrymore to cry by reminding her of a news story she told him about regarding someone burning a dog. Tidbit: MPAA censored the amount, I guess (since the intestines are still there) of what we see of Casey’s boyfriend’s intestines hanging out. And, Casey’s intestines. I mentioned yesterday how Casey takes refuge behind the television. Craven doesn’t reference that but he does say the t...

I might lament that there's no new things to notice on the blu-ray. Visual things I mean. But a) that puts me in Phil's position in a way and b) that's crazy talk, there's always new things to notice. Regarding "b" I did notice that one thing the other night when I was actively searching, the chocolate wrapper on the table. And, just tonight I discovered a new thing not in the movie but on the disc. There are two sets of subtitles for English. The first is the old, plain one, words across the bottom of the screen. Second one, though--that's more fun, slightly different font it seems (hard to compare properly because I've got to cycle through 16 different subtitle settings to loop around and there's a pause between just the one English set and the other), and it's doing that thing where dialogue from a character on one side of the screen is positioned on that side of the screen. I almost worked at a place that did subtitles several years back ...

An aside before I get into what may amount to, well, not much. See, I'm going to listen to Harold Ramis' commentary track again, see if something new jumps out after watching the movie so many more times since I did it before . The aside: upon turning off the film last night, I turned on a rerun of Seinfeld on KDOC and it's "The Heart Attack," originally aired 25 April 1991. And, guess who was on the screen: none other than a pre-Ned Ryerson Stephen Tobolowsky. Didn't get to see much of the episode as it was nearly over, but I might watch it when I'm ready to write a whole entry about Tobolowsky. Today, it's Harold Ramis... I mentioned before that they picked Woodstock and not the actual Punxsutawney because it had the nice town center they wanted--the real Gobbler's Knob is in a wooded area outside of Punsxsutawney--but amusingly Ramis also goes as far as to say that this is what Punxsutawney was "supposed to look like." "Cheap...

Subtitle this one: Some interesting stuff from the commentary. That is, Harold Ramis’ commentary track from the 2002 Special Edition DVD. Directed in 1992, Ramis’ sixth collaboration with Bill Murray. (The previous five would be Meatballs , Caddyshack , Stripes , Ghostbusters , and Ghosbusters II .) Opening scene was a “reshoot” to give a little more setup. Remember, Rubin’s original screenplay started with the repetition already going. Ramis talks about the curse briefly, says it wasn’t needed. To quote Tip Top Cafe waitress Alice, “he’s right!” No explanation need apply. The song “Weatherman” was written for the film. Ramis wrote the lyrics along with George Fenton. Ramis never went to Pittsburgh. Second unit shot the aerials. The driving van aerial shot is of the actual drive up to Punxsutawney, but Punxsutawney had no “real town center” visual so they filmed in Woodstock, Illinois. Cool connection for me, since I was a History major as an undergrad—they show the courthouse ...