Earlier this week I told you I watched ‘Groundhog Day’ (on Groundhog Day) and, well, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

I guess that’s as good a sign as any that it’s a good movie.

I also told you - you can go back and read what I wrote here - that I got caught up reading a lot about the movie and I might have to watch the movie again as a result.

That’s the nice thing about waiting 30-plus years to watch a movie - all of the takes have been taken and there’s a lot of material to sift through if you’re so inclined.

Since one of my goals this year is to learn new things (and then share some of what I learned with you), I guess this is as good a subject as any to share some of what I learned.

So here are a few of my big takeaways - mostly from Wikipedia, but also by clicking other links to verify and learn more - about ‘Groundhog Day’ that you might also find interesting (and, listen, there are going to be some spoilers here but as I mentioned on Monday, this movie came out in 1993. You’ve had your chance):

I guess the thing I learned that was closest to what I was wondering after watching the movie was that there were, indeed, a lot of days that Phil Connors (that’s the Bill Murray character, which is easier to write than ‘the Bill Murray character’, so I won’t write ‘the Bill Murray character’ anymore, just ‘Phil Connors’) repeated. There are different estimates. The original script proposal apparently had Connors guess it was 70 or 80 years (!) based on books he was reading. Harold Ramis (the actor/writer, who we established the other day is most certainly NOT a weatherman, nor has he ever been, thank you AI) initially estimated 30 - 40 years. Someone did the math based on the theory that you become an expert on something by doing it for 10,000 hours, and said it would take him 34 years to learn the piano/ice sculpting/what have you. When you consider he knew everyone in the diner, he died a number of ways that we didn’t see on camera, he learned everyone’s routines, he had numerous failed dates, etc, they did a good job of indicating a lot of time had passed
I hadn’t considered this but it’s the role that launched Bill Murray into some of the more serious work he did. The other actors up for the role included Tom Hanks and he turned it down because the characters he had done up to that point were likable and he didn’t think audiences would buy him in the role. I was thinking about this during the movie - as unlikeable as Bill Murray was supposed to be in the role, he was still pretty likable. He didn’t seem like the total jerk people in the movie thought him to be.
I was convinced the movie was filmed in Punxsutawney, but it was really a small town in Illinois called Woodstock. The real Punxsutawney didn’t have the facilities to house the crew, and there were other issues. Funny, too, they put a plaque at the spot of the pothole that Connors kept stepping in. That’s what’s pictured above.
The rift I alluded to in the first post was because Ramis wanted to lean into the comedy of the script, and Murray liked the philosophical side of it, and kind of teamed up with the writer to play that up.
The original script played with some of the reasons he might have been caught in this loop, like a curse from a jaded ex. They ended up, obviously, not specifying anything.
I was also impressed that a lot of what I read was a lot of what my daughters thought as they watched. They really nailed it. My final interpretation: He finally got the day right, helping all of those people the way he did. I guess it’s kind of a ‘use your time wisely’ lesson - he couldn't help the old man. But what could he do?
I kind of feel like I should see some other movies that use the loop trope, inspired by this one. I’m thinking of that Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti one that was on Netflix a few years ago - I feel like that was fairly well regarded. (I had no idea how to spell her name. Pretty unusual. And when I looked that up I saw the name of the movie - ‘Palm Springs.’)

I honestly thought all these years that ‘Groundhog Day’ was just a mindless comedy. I did not expect it to take me down this road and that it would have me thinking this much or investigating it so much more.

I guess the lesson here is that you don’t know where you might end up learning something new. We shall see what other surprises await us in 2025.