I REALLY have nothing to do at work.
I've been wandering around Wikipedia, learning tidbits about odds and ends, hoping to survive until quitting time. Like that Andre the Giant was possibly the biggest drunk of all time, sometimes downing more than a hundred beers in a single sitting. W. O. W.!
But to the point...I read the writeup on the movie, "Groundhog Day," with considerable interest. It is a movie that I found funny, unique, and compelling. How would any of us react to a situation where we were compelled to re-enact a single day of our lives until we got it absolutely perfect?
In any event, one of the unfathomable questions that came out of the film was: How long, exactly, was the Bill Murray character trapped in the "revolving door"?
The producers of the film estimate that about 20-25 separate days were shown in the film, but obviously they were given as a sampling, and many, many more days actually transpired between the first and the last Groundhog Day.
Aside from all of the wasted days that he spent just trying to get into Andie MacDowell's pants and indulging himself otherwise, there was sufficient time to, (a) become an accomplished pianist, (b) learn to speak French, more or less fluently, (c) learn to ice-sculpt, and (d) learn to flip playing cards into a hat with uncanny accuracy. Maybe these skills were developed in parallel, at the same time as he learned about various accidents that took place in Punxy on that day, and the personal information about everyone he encountered. Kudos to Bill Connor for making good use of the time (after trying in vain to off himself).
The film did not exactly follow the original screenplay. The revolving door came about because Connor was cursed by a disappointed date, and the story originally began with him already in the "revolving door." The Director didn't think this would work, so he added the beginning to put the story in context. The pivotal romantic angle was added, and in my opinion, the movie simply doesn't work without it.
Murray refused to shoot the final scene until it was decided what he would be wearing when he finally woke up on the day after Groundhog Day. It is an issue, oddly, that the screenplay did not address, and that nobody among the cast and crew had even considered. If he work up in pajamas or nude, then by implication he finished the previous evening with a Shot of Leg, but if he were still wearing his clothes, then the evening ended with them in each others' arms, but chaste.
The director put it to a vote, but the cast and crew voted evenly. Then one young female crew member said that unless he woke up in the same clothes that he went to bed in, the movie was a fraud (or words to that effect). So that's the way they shot the film. And it did work.
But what do you think about the time question? The screenwriter said, ten thousand years. The director at first said 8-10 years, but then later amended that to be 30-40 years, because it would take much longer than 10 years to get to the skill level he demonstrated on the piano/organ.
With 365 Groundhog Days equal to one "year," how many years do you think it would have taken to reach that final day, when he got it right?
I'd say 6-8 years.
Groundhog Day
Re: Groundhog Day
I'm not going to give it away, but not long ago a website did the math on this...
(I use wikipedia for boredom control too, like on long train rides. Thank Dog, for the random button!)
(I use wikipedia for boredom control too, like on long train rides. Thank Dog, for the random button!)
