Groundhog Day
Short description
Groundhog Day follows Phil Connors, a dismissive television weatherman who travels with his producer, Rita, and cameraman, Larry, to the Pennsylvania town of Punxsutawney for its annual Groundhog Day broadcast. What should be a routine assignment turns strange when a snowstorm strands the crew and Phil wakes up to find the previous day starting over, again and again, with only him aware that anything has changed.
Harold Ramis directed and produced the film and co-wrote the screenplay with Danny Rubin. It was Ramis's fifth feature as director, arriving between Club Paradise and Multiplicity in a run that also includes Caddyshack and National Lampoon's Vacation. Bill Murray leads as Phil, with Andie MacDowell as Rita, Chris Elliott as Larry, and Stephen Tobolowsky, Brian Doyle-Murray and Marita Geraghty among the supporting cast. The film falls into comedy, drama, fantasy and romance, and runs 101 minutes.
Made for 15 million dollars, it returned roughly 71 million worldwide. Its reputation has grown over time: on IMDb it holds 8 out of 10 from about 735,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7.6 from a much smaller pool of around 9,000. That gap between the two audience samples is modest, and the critics' rating of 8 out of 10 from 144 reviews places professional opinion in line with the broad audience verdict rather than apart from it.
What's left behind the scenes
- Phil Connors lives February 2nd 34 times. In reality, the plot implies that there are many more of these days, but the film itself shows exactly 34 days. As Harold Ramis later admitted, the original script featured a figure of 10,000 years, but ultimately the duration of Groundhog Day amounted to about 10 years.
- The song Phil wakes up to every morning on February 2nd is "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher, a popular hit from August 1965.
- In one of the scenes where Phil watches as armored cars pull up to the bank to ultimately steal a bag of money, Phil's coat is open, but in the next scene it is neatly buttoned.
- Ramis claimed that almost every time he tried to explain the meaning of a scene to Murray, he would interrupt him and ask: “Just tell me—is Phil good or Phil bad?”
- At the 7th minute of the film, the protagonist is not wearing a scarf at all, and in the next scene the scarf is already visible sticking out from under his coat.
- The filming of the scene in which the irritated Phil smashes the alarm clock to pieces did not go as expected: the clock barely cracked from Murray's blow, so the crew had to deliver the final blow with a hammer. Despite this (and it made it into the film), they never stopped singing.
- The film is based on a story by Danny Rubin.
- Groundhog Day is most widely celebrated in the small town of Punxsutawney (Pennsylvania), with a population of only 6,700 people. The arrival of spring is judged by a groundhog named Phil, who emerges from his burrow for the first time after hibernation on this day. If his shadow is visible, winter will last six more weeks, but if it isn't, the arrival of spring is near.
- The catchy song "Weatherman," which frames the film, was co-written by Harold Ramis and George Fenton.
- The movie was not filmed in Punxsutawney, but in the town of Woodstock, Illinois. Meanwhile, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis visited the actual ceremony a year before the film's release, in 1992.
- The film's release, which grossed $70.9 million at the North American box office, significantly increased public interest in Groundhog Day and the associated ceremony. In particular, 35,000 people attended the celebration in 1997 (five times the population of the town itself).
- At the same time, the film "12:01 PM" was released, using the same plot device, which, according to the recollections of its screenwriter Richard Lupoff, resulted in 6 months of legal proceedings.
- Director Harold Ramis initially planned to cast Tom Hanks in the lead role, but later admitted that Tom was “too good” for the part.
- Originally, Phil Connors' misadventures were supposed to begin because he was cursed by a former girlfriend whom he had heartlessly abandoned. But as the script was refined, this plot twist was removed.
- The first draft of the script implied that Phil Connors was stuck in Groundhog Day from the very beginning of the film. Later, Harold Ramis decided to rewrite the script to make it easier for the audience to get involved in the plot twists.
- While learning to play the piano, Phil plays Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini." This romantic theme is also used in another fantastic film, "Somewhere in Time" (1980). Bill Murray performs the initial, tentative strikes on the keys himself during his very first lesson. Having no knowledge of musical notation, he picked up the melody by ear.
- During the filming of the movie, Bill Murray sustained a production injury. He was bitten by a groundhog twice.
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