Fr. Darrell tells me that sometimes he feels like he’s in the movie, Groundhog Day, because he does pretty much the same thing every day. I know what he means. I get up, take a shower, argue with my hair, decide if I’m going to wear make-up or not, argue with the clothes in my closet, get out to the car and head in. Once I’m in the office it seems like “same old, same old”. Honestly, the best part of my day most days is deciding what I’m going to do for lunch. Then it’s trying to stay awake until it’s time to go home and figure out what’s for supper. I truly enjoy going to the grocery every day and figuring out what’s for supper. But I hate leaving the office and going to the store. But once I do it I am so glad. The only thing better is to have food in the crockpot so that supper is ready when I get home. So, I get Fr. Darrell’s comparison to Groundhog Day. And it sparked my desire to rewatch it.
I love Bill Murray. He is hilarious.
In this movie, he’s a jerk. A typical jerk. He thinks he’s lovable. Everyone else things he’s a jerk. He plays a weatherman who is heading to Punxsutawney, PA for Groundhog Day. He is there to witness the groundhog seeing or not seeing his shadow.
The alarm goes off at 6AM with Sonny and Cher’s “I’ve Got You Babe”. After all kinds of non-niceties Phil heads to the court square where the groundhog predicts six more weeks of winter. On the way back to the city Phil and his crew get stuck in a blizzard and have to back to Punxsutawney. He continues to be obstinate.
The next morning the alarm goes off at the same time, everything is exactly the same. This is the way that Phil deals with it.
Initially – Day One: he seems shocked by the repetition. He asks about deja vu.
Day Two: It’s like the day before never happened. Phil becomes frantic and does not want to interact with anyone. He is a nervous wreck. He goes to the doctor and has x-rays. He sees a psychologist. He goes bowling with two guys from the diner. He tells them about his best day ever and wants to know why he can’t be stuck in that day. He says that he is a glass half-empty kind of guy. He asks what if there was no tomorrow? The guys say “Well that means no consequences. We could do whatever we wanted.” He comes back and says “I’m not going to live by their rules anymore. You make choices and you live with them.”
Day Three: Exileration! Phil slugs Ned, misses the water puddle, eats everything that is bad for him. He says “I don’t worry about anything anymore.” Rita is part of Phil’s crew. She’s a new segment producer. She has a lot of energy, a lot of ideas and doesn’t really like Phil. At some point in time Phil realizes that he is very interested in her and he spends, what he thinks is the rest of his life, trying to get close to her, trying to please her. She quotes Sir Walter Scott to him. He thinks that she thinks that he is egocentric.
Day Four: He takes advantage of getting to know everyone. He goes out on a date with Nancy Taylor but calls her Rita. He begins to know the routine of the day. He steals money from the Brinks truck.
Day Five: “Rita, if you only had one day to live what would you do?” She answers that she would have her career, love, marriage and children. She tells him that the perfect man for her is “He’s too humble to know how wonderful he is. He is intelligent, supportive, funny, romantic, courageous, has a good body, is kind, sensitive, gentle, not afraid to cry, plays an instrument, loves his mother, loves children and likes animals. Phil takes note.
Day Six: He asks Rita if he can buy her a drink? He notes what she orders.
Day Seven: He asks Rita if he can buy her a drink? He orders her drink and she’s surprised that he likes the same drink that she does. He makes a toast which mimics her toast from the day before: “I like to say a prayer and drink to world peace.” She asks if he ever has deja vu.
Day Eight: Rita tells Phil that she studied 19th century French poetry and he laughs out loud. Then another day he speaks to her in fluent French. They build a snowman and have a snowball fight with a bunch of kids. Rita falls in the snow so Phil goes down too and they are laughing. He goes in for a kiss but is interrupted. They are then dancing in the snow in the gazebo. But she gets weirded out and tells him “I can never love someone like you because you only love yourself.”
Day Nine: Phil seems frantic again.
For maybe 10 days straight he tries to get a kiss from Rita and gets slapped.
Day Twenty: Phil is totally depressed.
Day Twenty-One: Phil is too depressed to get out of bed. But when he does get out of bed he makes it to the Bed and Breakfast common room and watches Jeopardy. He amazes all of the senior citizens who are staying there because he knows all of the answers to all of the questions. Or vice versa.
Day Twenty-Two: Phil is hateful doing his life-remote back to the Pittsburgh television station.
Days Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, and Twenty-Five: Phil destroys the alarm clock at 6AM when Sonny and Cher start signing “I’ve Got You Babe”.
Day Twenty-Six: Phil decides that the groundhog has to be stopped. He steals a truck with the groundhog in it. There is a huge police chase. He tells the groundhog “Don’t drive angry”. When he tells the groundhog that there is “no way out” he drives off into the quarry where the truck explodes in a fiery crash.
Day Twenty-Seven: Phil wakes up by saying “Nuts”. And rolls over and goes back to sleep. Then he goes to the breakfast area, grabs the toaster and throws it into the bathtub while he’s in there.
Day Twenty-Eight: Phil walks out in front of a truck.
Day Twenty-Nine: Phil jumps off of the bell tower. Rita and Larry (the camera guy) have to identify him in the morgue.
Day Thirty: Phil tells Rita “I’m a god”. She says that her “twelve years of Catholic schools talking tell him that he is not. Phil wants to introduce her to the life he’s been living. He tells her that maybe the real God is not omnipotent, maybe that God has just been around for a very long time. Rita comes back and tells him that she knows all about him. Phil says that her putting him down is not the worst part. He tells her that the worst part is that tomorrow she will have forgotten all about this conversation and will go back to thinking that he is a jerk. But she comes back and says “I think you’re the kindest, sweetest, prettiest person I’ve ever ever seen in my life.” Phil comes back and says “I don’t deserve someone like you but if I could I would serve you for the rest of my life.”
Day Thirty-One: Phil gives a homeless man all of his money. He takes coffee and donuts to the TV crew. He takes up reading and playing the piano.
Day Thirty-Two: Phil is joyful. He has a passion for the piano and ice sculpting.
Day Thirty-Three: Phil starts playing with people. He asks Rita if she can call in sick. He takes care of the homeless man and brings him out of the alley. The man ends up dying. The nurse tells him that the man was just old. She told him that people die every day. Phil says “not today”.
Day Thirty-Four: Phil feeds the homeless man. He finds him in the alley sooner and gives him CPR.
Day Thirty-Five: Phil has an audience at the festival. He gives a speech which is filmed by all of the TV crews there. He catches a kid falling out of a tree. He changes a tire for a carload of little old ladies. He performs the Heimlich maneuver on a man in a restaurant. Phil plays the piano at the festival dance. When Rita asks him about it he says “I’m versatile”. When someone asks him about all that he does he just says “same old, same old” and then he asks would you like the long version or the short one? There is a eligible bachelor auction. Phil is auctioned off, to Rita, for $339.88. She empties her checkbook for him. He then does some ice sculpting of Rita. She is amazed and he says “I know your face so well I could have done it with my eyes closed”. At the end of the night he says “No matter what happens tomorrow, I’m happy now.”
Day Thirty-Six: Phil wakes up and it is the next day. True, the alarm goes off with Sonny & Cher singing “I’ve Got You Babe”. But it is Rita who reaches over and turns the radio off. Phil is confused but then tells her that anything different is good. He asks her if she knows what today is. “Today is tomorrow.” He then tells her that yesterday was a very long day. But then he ends the movie by asking “Is there anything I can do for you today?”
I mentioned to a friend of mine that I watched the movie and took notes. He told me that there are YouTube videos where people have tried to figure out how many days are really in Groundhog Day and the consensus is over 1000. It would have taken him so long to learn French and learned the piano, etc. He does mention that it would take him six months of working 4 hours a day and he could be an expert. So it was obviously longer than the 36 days that I note. That’s just the number of times I watched him wake up in the movie.
What I think is so cool is that he doesn’t do the same thing every day. He doesn’t say the same thing although he knows exactly what someone is going to say. He tries different things. He interacts with different people. So, he doesn’t live the same day over and over again. He is the one who makes each day different.
So, we have that choice, don’t we? We can decide if we’re going to do the exact same thing every day. We can decide what our attitude will be or who we will interact with.
I remember when my daughter went to college and knew what she wanted to be but wanted to do so many other things. I told her something I had to learn for myself. I told her she didn’t have to do it all right now. I told her she would have plenty of life to do all the things she was interested in. At the time I listened to myself in amazement. How did I get to be so smart? I guess life had taught me something.
I love the last line of this movie, “Is there anything I can do for you today?” We ask that to people we love. Maybe we don’t ask that in words but maybe we ask that with our actions. I like that question. What can you do today for the people you love?
