Posted on 02/02/2018 7:38:49 AM PST by harpygoddess
Director Harold Ramis, in the DVD commentary, opined that it takes Murray's character about ten years of repeating Groundhog Day and then later, in response to several sites online linking to an article that came to an answer of just 8 years, 8 months, and 16 days, he offered the following:
"I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and allotting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years…"
Here's an amazingly detailed subsequent analysis that concluded it must have been at least 34 years, plus some additional interesting Groundhog Day links.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaviper.blogspot.com ...
Silly. It was one day.
I read an article about the whole concept and they suggested he may have been there for thousands of years.
I think any human being subjected to that would have gone stark raving nutters in far less than 1000 years.
This is one of my favorite movies since it first came out. Others have said they thought it was just a comedy when they were younger but came to view it differently as they aged.
Will see it again tonight on the big screen. It’s one of the best blu-ray transfers.
He did go nutters. He tried killing himself many times, too, but it never worked. Sonny and Cher were there the next day every time.
In the original script it had him reading a page a day from books in the library and by the end he had read them all.
Funny ... I replied to this thread just yesterday ... and the day before ... and the day before ... and the day before ...
He did. Do you recall how many times he killed himself? AND the Groundhog???
Best movie ever!
It was discussing the Hindu or Buddhist (IIRC) roots of the plot. The same article also suggested that if he had truly reached the pinnacle of whatever he was supposed to learn, he’d have no longer been interested in any sort of romantic involvement.
Arguably, he did.
Committed suicide at least four times that were shown, IIRC.
Got over it.
Needle nosed Ned!?
Bam!!!! Right in the nose....
Funniest scene ever!
Sorry to branch into the religious but GHD is actually a very Catholic movie, with Punxsutawney serving as a metaphor for purgatory.
The movie also reminds me of a passage from The Brother Karamazov, which I reproduce here (sorry for the length):
“[The Devil] "This legend is about paradise. There was, they say, a certain thinker and philospher here on your earth, who 'rejected all--laws, conscience faith, and, above all, the future life. He died and thought he'd go straight into darkness and death, but no--there was the future life before him. He was amazed and indignant. 'This,' he said, 'goes against my convictions.' So for that he was sentenced...I mean, you see, I beg your pardon, I'm repeating what I heard, it's just a legend...you see, he was sentenced to walk in darkness a quadrillion kilometers (we also use kilometers now), and once he finished that quadrillion, the doors of paradise would be open to him and he would be forgiven everything...Well, so this man sentenced to the quadrillion stood a while, looked, and then lay down across the road: 'I dont want to go, I refuse to go on principle!' Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked in the belly of a whale for three days and three nights--you'll get the character of this thinker lying in the road...He lay there for nearly a thousand years, and then got up and started walking."
"What an ass!" Ivan exclaimed, bursting into nervous laughter, still apparently trying hard to figure something out. "isn't it all the same whether he lies there forever or walks a quadrillion kilometers? It must be about a billion years' walk!"
"Much more, even. If we had a pencil and paper, we could work it out. But he arrived long ago, and this is where the anecdote begins."
"Arrived! But where did he get a billion years?"
"You keep thinking about our present earth! But our present earth may have repeated itself a billion times; it died out, lets say, got covered with ice, cracked, fell to pieces, broke down into its original components, again there were the waters above the firmament, then again a comet, again the sun, again the earth from the sun--all this development may already have been repeated an infinite number of times, and always in the same way, to the last detail. A most unspeakable bore...
"Go on, what happened when he arrived?"
"The moment the doors of paradise were opened and he went in, before he had even been there two seconds--and that by the watch--before he had been there two seconds, he exclaimed that for those two seconds it would be worth walking not just a quadrillion kilometers, but a quadrillion quadrillion, even raised to the quadrillionth power! In short, he sang 'Hosannah' and oversweetened it so much that some persons there, of a nobler cast of mind, did not even want to shake hands with him at first: he jumped over to the conservatives a bit too precipitously. The Russian character. I repeat: it's a legend.”
Ground hog day ad nausium..
Worst show I have watched.
“Punxsutawney serving as a metaphor for purgatory.”
Interesting concept. I’ll think about that when I watch it again.
“Funny ... I replied to this thread just yesterday ... and the day before ... and the day before ... and the day before ...”
And will until you get it right, Grasshopper. :)
Hey, I got you babe!
I like the song, but listening to it for thousands of mornings? No wonder he tried to kill himself a bunch of times.
For me it’s one year...No more....No less
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