the groundhog day project

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...

A week with Groundhog Day . Seven days in a row of this one film. Who would have thunk that I could survive it? I mean, the repetitive nature of the film itself should have made repeated viewing unbearable. But no. Remarkably, it was quite readily repeatable, this film about repetition. And, watching it these last seven days has been rather comforting, like coming home to an old friend. But, I am not done with that friend. I’m not even done with the final revision of the script for that friend. But, I will be soon. I said that there were nine tabs left, so let us just be systematic about this... Beware, six days ago, I said this: “Now, let us just do this systematically. I will try not to mention every little tab or highlight.” Today, I will mention every little tab... of the ones that are left. #10 ... because I skipped this one on the previous page of my printout - the girl who comes out of Mary’s house, i.e. the piano student Phil gets thrown out into the cold out of selfishn...

Groundhog Day is not a romantic comedy. And, it’s not just me who thinks so. Dowd and Pallotta (2000)—you know, my go to academic quality romantic comedy source—specifically excluded it from their coding. They explain: Our principle genre-relevant rule is that romance must be central to the story depicted in the film and not a secondary aspect... If the film is a mixed-genre effort—and adventure story, for example, in which two of the characters become romantically attached, such as was the case with Romancing the Stone [—I must interrupt this extended quotation to say that I love the movie Romancing the Stone and actually have it on the potential list of movies to watch for this blog at some point. Perhaps an adventure month, do a little Romancing the Stone , some Raiders of the Lost Ark and some... ah, there’s the rub. There aren’t a lot of adventure movies anymore. Maybe High Road to China , although I barely remember that from when I was a kid and maybe it doesn’t qualify....

I put out a request in the Day 365 party invite page on Facebook today. I want people to share their thoughts on Groundhog Day or the Groundhog Day Project and email them to me before that last day, so I can share them in the final entry. Here, I would like to invite strangers (or those I have met through this blog but that for geographic or whatever reason were not invited to the party) to share as well. So, email them to robertegblack@hotmail.com , and I will compile them and share on Day 365. My daughter, Saer, 11 1/2, immediately wanted to write something, and then the thing she was typing got rather lengthy, so I told her I would share it as its own thing. Saer, just now, as she was typing: "I can't believe you do this on a daily basis." Anyway, here is what she wrote: Being the daughter of the person who started “The Groundhog Day Project” I have seen the movie way too many times. I will admit, though, this is one of my favorite movies. I just don’t think I’...

Yesterday was Father’s Day, but I had people over and had to write about that . I had intended to write a companion piece to the Mother’s Day one. Today will have to do. Two things: First, Phil refers to the Old Man, Jedson O’Reilly as “father” and “dad” and “pop”—something that I have always found to be a bit, well, weird. Gilbey (2004) suggests that Phil’s use of “father” specifically, “with its religious connotations, is interesting here, though it doesn’t feature in Rubin’s first revision” (p. 74). (Note: I have never read Rubin’s first revision, just Rubin’s original and Ramis’ second revision. A quick Google search just now and I still cannot find that one online. However, I just found Ramis’ third revision, it is already printing, and I will read it soon. So, I got that going for me.) Me—I hear Phil call O’Reilly “dad” and it sounds to me like that moment in Back to the Future when Marty accidentally calls George in 1955 “dad” then awkwardly tries to cover it by calling ...

Briefly in class tonight we were talking about the "mean-world syndrome"—a part of George Gerbner's Cultivation Theory that tells us basically that the more we watch television, the gloomier our view of the world tends to be. Essentially, we watch TV shows or the news that includes say violence and murder and, while it's entirely unlikely for a lot of us to actually be exposed to such things in real life, we start to think it's more likely because, well, that's what we know . TV becomes reality. That got me to thinking about Groundhog Day because, well, everything gets me thinking about Groundhog Day . And, I wanted to say, basically, that Phil Connors, even pre-loop, is not a bad guy. I tend to think that fundamentally none of us are bad people. But, sometimes only certain actions of ours get a response, so those actions get repeated. And, we don't even need responses to be positive, we just need them to be . Phil's insults get more immediate resul...

There will be no math today, not even 1+1-- arguably, it is 2 --because that stuff is tiring and I'm guessing at least a few of you-- I would guess a percentage but that might be construed as math-- in fact, I'm wondering now if use of the term few was mathematical --and I wouldn't want to present even the mildest appearance of impropriety --found it boring. Or inane. Or, if you really know math, you might have been thinking in the back of your mind, who is this moron, thinks he can suddenly pretend expertise in math just because he's got expertise on Groundhog Day ? Who does he think he is? To you-- and I am not going to look up what percentage of the population is good at math, or calculate/construct a Venn diagram to find the overlap between the set of people who are good at math and the set of people who read this blog-- now, that was mathematical, so I must apologize --because that would be wrong --I should apologize... except if you've been p...

I need Groundhog Day tonight. Tonight I'm definitely a "glass is half empty kind of guy." But, that is secondary to something I just noticed: there is a piano at the bed and breakfast. When Phil does his little weatherman spiel for Mrs. Lancaster, you can see it in the background... and now that doesn't sound very important either. Sometimes you just have to feel unimportant yourself as well, I suppose. It's probably necessary. If you never felt useless, never felt powerless, never felt unimportant, then you would never do anything, would never change anything, and life would be very boring. I actually had a pretty good day. Slept in, watched some TV, went grocery shopping, built with LEGO blocks and watched a couple British comedies while doing so. Then went to play cards at my sister's house. Got home and, well, I don't know. Cats are annoying--one just had surgery, another keeps hissing at him. Kids were going to watch a movie with me then both lef...

Some random thoughts about Phil Connors: Maybe he spoke French already and he just had to get over his impulse to laugh in that restaurant scene. Maybe he already knew how to ice sculpt, he was just such a misanthrope he had never bothered to share his talent with anyone. Maybe his father really was a piano mover... not that that necessarily made Phil a great piano player. And maybe his "six months" of card throwing didn't even happen within the time loop but when he was a teenager and had mono. Just the other day... Oh man, how long ago was it that I rambled on about the use of that phrase, " the other day in TV shows? I think that was early on in this blog, back when I was still wide-eyed and innocent. But I digress. Just the other day, 24 April to be precise, Charles Murray at Fox News was describing some scenes from Groundhog Day that he says "illustrat[e] the unplanned and bumpy trajectory that Phil's thirty or forty years [referencing Rami...

Today's blog will necessarily be very short. Turns out there is no copy of Groundhog Day on my iPod anymore (gotta fix that when I get home). So, it is midnight already local time, though I don't know if I'm on local time just yet. And, I've got to write my blog and watch the movie, both on the iPad. I don't know that I have much to say tonight anyway. I was given a question from my friend Pablo (who I've mentioned before) as prompts. I forget the exact phrasing, unfortunately--and he should be asleep--but it was about what happens after we die. In terms of Groundhog Day , it's hard to say there's a particular answer. We see Phil die, of course, and there is life after death, of course, but the circumstances are special. What's most important about what comes after death in the film is not what comes from Phil--for we don't really know that he has any special knowledge from having died--but from what comes of the death of others within the f...

Thirty-three minutes into the film before I even open up a blank document to start writing tonight. I'm tired and I'm thoughtful tonight. Thinking about what I want from life, generally, and specifically, long-term and short. I was wondering last night what the worst thing I might do if I had the benefit of a time loop would be? I didn't come up with an answer because I wondered how long the time loop would have to keep going before I trusted it as the norm, before I knew, without a doubt the next morning would be the previous morning and no matter what I did no one would know about it but me... Of course, then there's the problem of me knowing about it. I don't believe in the existence of the human soul, but for lack of better terminology, I must say that even there were no consequences outside myself, my soul would be scarred by doing deliberately in a time loop the things I wouldn't do outside it. For the record, I don't mean stuff like Phil taking that...

This entry will be brief. Today during my downtime on campus, I ended up taking a short nap (not entirely on purpose) when I meant to be a) working on this blog or b) studying for my midterm tonight. Even after I woke up, I ended up watching the Bill Nye / Ken Ham debate online instead of studying in depth. Still, midterm went smoothly. For today's entry, I just wanted to note separately a few coincidences. The first one I have already mentioned. The girl who offered hot chocolate to those of us on the walking tour the second day, and who lives in "the piano teacher's house" is named Kate. The name I gave months ago to the "piano student" kicked out of that house: Kate/Katie. The second coincidence is just me enjoying connections I am able to invent. See, Phil hangs out at the bowling alley with Gus and Ralph... (A bit of an aside, this coming from Bob Hudgins on the Walking Tours . There were supposed to be bowling scenes. Phil was supposed to start out ...

It's been over a week since I wrote about the male characters as Phil's Jungian shadow . Though I had suggested I might deal with the female character in relation to anima the next day, I got sidetracked by that big roadtrip thing. As Benesh (2011) puts it, "the male characters represent archetypes of shadow, or disowned aspects of self; the female characters the anima, or contra sexual aspects of self" (p. 116). The female characters, Benesh tells us, "embody aspects of the anima archetype. Rita, in particular emerges as an anima figure, the anima being the bridge between consciousness and unconsciousness, and the path to one's self completion and wholeness" (ibid). I must admit, again, I don't know much about Jungian psychology. To be fair, I'm more interested in Benesh's use of Jung than Jung himself here, but since I liked picking on Benesh I thought I'd mention something I noticed when I was looking online for the chapter on anima...