

Groundhog Day: A Viewer's Guide
Groundhog Day: A Viewer's Guide
This is the probably the only outline that I’ve ever actually enjoyed creating. I made it for last year’s show and happily rediscovered it this week.
It’s a chronological account of Bill Murray’s — er, Phil Connors’s — psychological progression as he repeats Groundhog Day over and over and over. Think Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief with a dash of Buddhism and a large rodent driving angry.
Reading this a year later, it occurs to me that the last line — “We’ll rent first” — which I put under TRANSCENDENCE, is more accurately a first cousin of SELF-CENTERED SMARM, which starts the movie off. It’s less smarmy, clearly, but still a self-referential, winking sort of bet-hedging. But doesn’t this make intuitive sense? Where else should Groundhog Day end if not right back at the beginning?
Addenda and arguments are welcome.
- SELF-CENTERED SMARM
- Capable of speaking only in quips and barbs — and weather-speak
- To the B&B proprietor on Day 1: “Chance of departure 100%.”
- Ultimate hubris: “I MAKE the weather!”
- DISBELIEF
- The dawning realization that this day is the same as the last
- To the B&B proprietor on Day 2: “Chance of departure 80%. 75, 80%”
- On camera on Day 2: “Well, it’s groundhog Day… again.”
- “Well what if there isn’t a tomorrow? There wasn’t one today!”
- MISCHIEF
- Stealing money from the armored car
- One-night stands
- Driving on the railroad tracks
- To the police officer: “Is it too early for pancakes?”
- Going to the movie theater in costume w/ a hooker
- Jeopardy: “What is Lake Titicaca?” — and then swigging Jim Beam
- DESPAIR
- “I’ll give you a winter prediction: it’s going to be cold, it’s going to be gray, and it’s going to last you the rest of your life.”
- Suicide! By: car crash, electrocution, jumping off a building, stepping in front of a truck. Also being stabbed, shot, poisoned, and burned
- ACCEPTANCE — sort of
- He tells the truth to Rita: “I’m A god. Not THE God… I don’t think.”
- While she’s asleep he tells her he loves her. The next morning he begins:
- SELF-IMPROVEMENT
- Reading literature
- Playing piano
- Ice sculpting (!)
- ALTRUISM
- Trying to save the old man — which can’t be done. He’s not a God
- Saving the falling kid
- Changing the tire
- Heimlich on the
old manmayor- TRANSCENDENCE
- “No matter what happens tomorrow, or for the rest of my life, I’m happy now, because I love you.”
- “Something’s different… anything different is good!”
- “Let’s live here! (We’ll rent to start.)”