I had a few good days in San Francisco with a young lady in 1987 that I wouldn’t mind reliving again. And we could reach a lot of interesting places on the bike in a few hours. But my luck it would be a day in the middle of rebuilding my ElectraGlide waiting on parts that will be here “tomorrow”.
Possibly the point of all of this: What are you going to do today?
Quite frankly, I could go on in a single day for at least a lifetime’s worth. There’s a ton of stuff I’d love to do that I just don’t have the kind of time for I’d like to. If I didn’t have to work, didn’t have to do errands, didn’t have to go to the gym, if I could just have time to learn and practice things, I’d be happy for quite a while. For one, I have a lot of projects that I could get done that would work fine without bringing anything back. For instance, I could get a lot of musical composition and practice done.
I’d also take the time, like a few others have said, to catch up on some old music, movies, TV shows, listen to some books, etc. There’s a ton of stuff I’d still love to learn or just absorb that would take years as well.
And if I do get bored or lonely, unlike Phil, I have friends that I’m certain would work with me, even if they didn’t quite buy the story, where he had to spend pretty much the whole day convincing Rita.
And, really, I wouldn’t even need my favorite day, I could be reasonably happy with almost any day, assuming I’m not injured or sick or whatever. Wasn’t that kind of the point of the film, that he felt like he was trapped in hell, but eventually made the most of it and came to love the place?
Off topic, I know, but the two things I would have tried if I were Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day would have been:
a) On waking at 6am, skip breakfast, skip the festivities, just throw on clothes, grab a car, and drive. The morning’s going to be sunny and clear, so he has to have a few hours to get away in some direction (probably east, but whatever) before the storm hits. He should at least be able to get to another city.
b) Get a good afternoon nap, then stay up until 6am the next day. I can’t buy the notion that, given thousands of tries, he can’t pull a successful all-nighter even once.
Pretty much.
That was one of the cooler aspects of Repeaters, I think.
You’re right - for some reason I was sure the movie had come out in the late 80s. 1993 is already edging into the hallowed Years of Our Porn.
If it was one of the days at sea on the submarine, I likely wouldn’t even notice for a few days – that’s how similar some days were. Once I figured it out, though, I think suicide would start pretty quick. And suicide on a submarine (in a way that wouldn’t be horribly unpleasant) is probably harder than it sounds, though I think I could sneak the arms locker key away from the Weapons officer and get a gun.
If it were a day like today, living right outside of DC, I think I could find sufficient activities for hundreds of years. I could get to know every single museum intimately, read every book in every library and university (and the US Archives), talk to millions of people within a few hours drive, take the Acela to New York and Boston, see every show and movie around, play with every dog and cat in every animal shelter nearby, eat nearly every kind of food there is, etc.
How many people do you think will want to spend the day with a complete stranger?
With time, this would be pretty easy to solve. They may say “screw you!” the first time, but if you keep trying you’ll figure out an approach that works with any particular person. And you could always try the “high school english class” thing that Phil Connors did with the woman in the movie.
It you were a hot woman I can see it happening.
If you are actually Bill Murray I would hang out with you for a day.
If you are Phil Conners? There is nothing you can say. I got shit to do.
I don’t know – if a non-threatening stranger appears and tells me all sorts of strange facts about my life that a stranger shouldn’t know, I might spend some time with him to see what the hell is going on.
Or just rent a van and buy some duct tape. The lack of potential consequences opens a whole new realm of methods to resolve sticky issues like this.
First… I think the character moves to suicide so quickly because he’s not a very happy person in the first place. So I would think he gets there a lot more quickly than most people would.
As for myself… it’s hard to say how long I’d stay interested. Essentially, you’re limited to learning things because nothing else lasts.
One thing I know I’d spend time on is becoming the master player. Imagine being able to approach a woman with literally no consequences, plus the ability to replay the approach in as many ways as you feel like. I’d do the same kind of role-playing in a business/sales context. Those kinds of skills are pretty valuable in life and you’ll never get that kind of opportunity again. I don’t actually enjoy this kind of thing very much, so I’d probably have to space it out.
Other than that, I’d spend a lot of time reading.
It would be nice to learn some languages, especially Italian. I already know quite a bit of Spanish, so I’d finish that off.
I have done some basic programming in the past. If I could find the right resources locally, I could see working on my knowledge of that… but the one-day limitation would really put a cap on the kinds of things I could do. I’d never have a chance to develop anything of real complexity.
I’m going to Punxsutawney tomorrow. I’ll let you know.
I think you’d end up becoming completely unhinged. After learning a language, meeting everyone in town, etc., you’d probably hold up a liquor store to see how it feels and then just escalate from there to increasingly outrageous behavior.
I would spend every day searching for Andy MCdowell.
The thing is, we have no way of knowing how long it took him to get suicidal. We only saw a sampling of the days he lived through, so any solid number is just a guess. I started a thread years ago asking how many days he actually spent re-living, and the opinions went from a few years to thousands of years.
And over the years, my thread has been resurrected half a dozen times. 
I agree that we don’t know the total number of days/years/centuries. But I’m still sticking with my belief that the movie character would commit suicide more quickly than the average person. Whatever the average is, I’d predict half that for the movie character.
Get some Laska’s pizza and eat a few slices for me.
This. Worst of all, the inability to develop relationships with people. The futility would get to me pretty fast.
It might be the perfect setup for certain kinds of tests*, where you get a do-over every day. But it would be difficult to record the data accurately enough to run the stats later.
- Were I a single man, one type of test might be “Does she or doesn’t she?”