How long does Bill Murray spend in Punxsutawney? 8 years, 8 months, and 16 days apparently…
Yeah, well that’s as much of a guess as any of the others here.
And in my post #80, the director himself, Harold Ramis, directly refutes that Wolf Gnarls reckoning. Again it’s here, and he says:
“I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and, alloting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years … People have way too much time on their hands. They could be learning to play the piano or speak French or sculpt ice.”
I agree with this, and I think they underplayed the moment when the loop finally ends. He re-adapts to normalcy much too quickly and easily, given what he’s been through. But the film’s supposed to have a happy ending, so you can understand the dramatic choice.
To be more realistic (but not necessarily better), the film should have had him screaming with fright the instant Rita spoke and stretched her arm across him.
My DVD’s Special Features also informs me of a couple of scenes that were cut or they decided not to film. One was Phil taking everyone back to his boarding house, and I mean everyone who’s in the movie, where he throws a wild party in which everyone trashes the entire place. I’m kind of glad they dropped that idea.
I received two emailed replies from Stephen Tobolowsky.
He went to Punxsutawney last year for Groundhog day, but has no idea whether the town has the logistic capability to handle a cast crew reunion. He has no idea of whether the cast/crew would be interested or able (because of other commitments) to do a reunion. And he says that the idea of Ned being in his own time loop is interesting, so it may be that he hasn’t heard that one before.
I will send him as gracious a reply as I am able.
Also, it now strikes me that having an event there in central Pennsylvania, on Groundhog day in the middle of winter, isn’t going to be appealing to anyone.
Why was I so positive that Tobolowsky had died last year? I wonder who I was thinking of?
Maybe because two years ago he broke his neck:
From IMDB:
Aha! That’s probably where I got my 10,000-years notion. I’d forgotten about that. But then, of course, Ramis later changed that to 30 or 40 years. I’m sticking with 10,000 years myself.
I thought Phil was just making a joke that he knew would go over Rita’s head. He’s been there for years and years already (how many is obviously open to debate) and knows everything about the town and its people. If he likes it enough to stay, he’d buy, not rent. Renting, in this context, implies that he might learn something about the town that would make him not want to stay there. Fat chance of that.
SFW also has one of the greatest soundtracks of that decade.
Its a MOVIE! you know the answer is going to be like a thousand years or something. But we will never know. Its a little thing movies do like what was in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction
Purple bladed lightsaber, jeez. Everyone knows that.
I know exactly what was in that suitcase. It was a MacGuffin.
A blogger does some calculating here: http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/features/just-how-many-days-does-bill-murray-really-spend-stuck-reliving-groundhog-day.php
He concludes the total is a shade under 34 years. I think some of his assumptions are faulty, but his approach is solid enough that I think his conclusion is in the right ballpark. Maybe it was 25 years, maybe it was 50, but it doesn’t seem to be 100 or 1,000.
I have nothing to add on the length of the loop, but want to say that Day 36, “Sexually harassing Ned”, was my favorite Day.
I’ve always felt that Phil’s line, “Let’s live here!” was too much like “He loved Big Brother.” It seems to indicate that his spirit has been broken by the ordeal. Imagine a guy in prison for 30 years. He does his time, he’s getting out, and… he doesn’t want to leave! He knows this world inside out and all the choices available to him on the outside are just too overwhelming.
The scene where he goes joyriding on the railroad tracks is the only scene that even hints at why he became just a sulky, mean bastard in the first place. Apparently his parents made him sit up straight, eat his vegetables and refrain from hitting his sister. Wow, that’s rough, dude. Maybe there’s more to it than that, but in any case we see that Phil is a guy who can hold on to resentment like nobody’s business. He’s clearly not stupid, but his bad attitude keeps him from making progress towards becoming a nicer person. He must “waste” a lot of time.
To *both *of them. That could be pretty damn cool.