Listen to the episode below, or subscribe to Siskoid Cinema on Apple or Spotify!
This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK!
- Visit our WEBSITE: https://fireandwaterpodcast.com/
- Like our FACEBOOK page: https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork
- Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts
- Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts as part of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK.
Credits:
Bonus clips: “Groundhog Day” by Harold Ramis, starring Richard Henzel, Rob Riley, Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Stephen Tobolowsky Angela Paton, and Chris Elliott; and “Clouds” by George Fenton.
Thanks for leaving a comment!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
There was a sync problem on the show, you may have to re-download it to get a fixed version.
Punish the early adopters!
I think I was the guy who said that about Groundhog Day having multiple parallel timelines/worlds. I was just needling you at that point. đ
If traveling THROUGH time physically isn’t part of your time travel head canon, I totally get where you are coming from. I haven’t seen Groundhog Day in years, but yes, he’s clearly living the same day over and over in the same reality, and suffering through it repeatedly, until he eventually learns and grows, and affects change in his own life and the community.
The theories are interesting, but while I do think some higher power wants Phil to change and grow, I don’t think anyone in the film is that higher power. Doesn’t seem to fit as best as I can remember.
Great discussion! I listened to DC Dave’s first episode of The Monitor Tapes, and thoroughly enjoyed that as well!
You needled me and I was poking fun at that, but the actual multiverse theory is one I found online.
Thanks Chris! I appreciate the listen, to both this episode and The Monitor Tapes!
Iâve listened 5 times, so when does Siskoid start to become a better person?
Great episode and a lively discussion. Iâd not heard those random theories and while itâs fun, theyâre all utter garbage.
DC Dave should do more podcasting.
On the 12,000th loop, Dave starts his own podcast.
Groundhog Day was the first movie that I shared with others (non nerds) who also enjoyed it! It has a balance of science fiction/fantasy + comedy + human interest (but doesnât overdo any of them) that most people enjoy.
There was a running storyline similar to this in the TV show The Magicians (think of it like Harry Potter goes to college and swears a lot) where there was a magic clock that would rewind time to give everyone another chance to beat the âbig badâ of the season. But, instead of a day, it was a semester. And they didnât know time was reset. And the person resetting time would make a random change to one of the main characters to see if they did better or worse. (They usually did worse.) Though, in later seasons, it just became âalternate dimensionsâ and a way to bring back dead characters or to have evil doppelgängers.
On second thought, maybe it was nothing like the movie?
Letâs restart the day. Forget I brought any of this up and listen to some Sonny & Cher.
I haven’t seen Triangle, so setting that aside, I like Groundhog Day next to least ahead of It’s a Wonderful Life. Given the quality of the movies so far, that’s a compliment. I’m also not saying that Trancers is an objectively better movie than either, just that I have a greater personal investment and sense of ownership that elevates it. I’ve committed a lot of time and effort to analyzing and podcasting on the Terminator franchise, but I’ll never bother to do a single show on purpose covering Groundhog Day.
Groundhog Day is maybe the next to most heartfelt and socially beneficial of the lot, and it does make me want to fall for Andi McDowell each time I see it. But she’s not a forever crush like Lea Thompson, admittedly more as Bev, which is why that’s the character I had original art drafted for to sign. I like Bill Murry, but I never idolized him like so many of my generation, or ever thought of him as exceptionally funny. I have definitely devoted more hours of my life to watching Michael J. Fox, put over the top by a few seasons of Spin City, and I also got Barry Bostwick to sign a piece (but not as his mayor character.) Groundhog Day is a really good film, but Back to the Future is a perfect film, with a huge cultural imprint, and one pretty good sequel that’s absolutely not III. I own Groundhog Day on a DVD I got probably 20 years ago but still haven’t watched, and BttF as a Blu-Ray set that I got last year, and will surely watch first.
At this rate, it looks like you’ll burn through the very best time travel movies inside the first year. A semantic argument can be made against it technically being a “time travel” movie, in the same way you can quibble about whether 28 Days Later is a zombie movie, but that’s just being pedantic. There isn’t a common term for movies that deal with aspects of altered time that don’t involve an actual time machine, and the show title doesn’t mention those specifics anyway. Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey. I’ll also shut down all this parallel universe nonsense. The movie is a fable or a parable, not science fiction. It’s plenty good, but also popular and well known, so it doesn’t need me extolling its virtues, and I don’t have the patience to interrogate something not built for that.
You know that I WANT to do more obscure films, but potential guests (and audiences, I guess) respond better or more quickly to mainstream successes. Who’d have thunk?
More on this. I think if I had a constant co-host on this show – and if it came out more frequently perhaps as well – I could pull a “Disaster Girls” and cover a great variety of TT films. Obviously, when you recruit guests, who is going to come out and lay a stake on 3ft Ball and Souls, or The Infinite Man?
I haven’t seen Run Lola Run is a while, whenever that comes up.
Great movie and podcast episode. I think it is at least 34 years and probably much more.
Remember in ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” when Mr. Mxyzptlk says he spent centuries doing good, then centuries doing nothing, then centuries being a pest, before finally deciding to do evil for centuries? I figure that Murray’s character may have gone through a similar trajectory trying anything to break the streak. Who is to say that we didn’t see the years he was a serial killer? Or just lied in bed all day from ennui? That is, until he decided to improve himself. I figure there is a lot we aren’t seeing.
For me, I always wondered why he didn’t just force himself to stay awake until the next day happened. Or do you think that happened but when he finally succumbed to sleep, he rebooted?
Anyways, great discussion. I never did a deep dive on the theories so they were new to me and fascinating.
Good question, I’ve thought about it often, but it didn’t come up. I think if you stay awake until 6, at 6 you wake up refreshed on 24 hours earlier.
“Groundhog Day” is the first movie I saw after I got my first car, which someone gave me in exchange for a cup of coffee from Dunkin Donuts (not a sponser). Just an ugly, beat up car that I loved because it was my first, so Groundhog Day, and my love of it, is all wrapped up in a bedrock memory.
I do love this film, and I’ve never given much more thought to the why it happens except that “the universe willed it”. And much like Melvin Udall in “As Good As It Gets”, or Ebenezer Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol”, Phil’s redemption doesn’t come easy. He can’t fake it. Manipulating Rita and orchestrating outcomes for his benefit, only digs him deeper into the loop.
Even trying to help the homeless man doesn’t work, regardless of how sincere he is with his efforts, it shows him he can’t force the day to bend to his will. And once he recognizes his powerlessness in this world, he starts to change. While the stages of grief have been stated as the framework for the film, I can’t help but also see an allegory to addiction recovery here too.
My favorite kind of film is one that has redemption for a self absorbed character. I mean, A Christmas Carol is my favorite story after all, and I’ll watch any version of that kind of theme . It’s also why I compare Phil Conners to Melvin Udall. And while Groundhog Day keeps it relatively light, and never hints at why Phil is the way he is, or why he deserves this opportunity to change, it never fails to warm my heart when he does.
And time loops are just awesome, so this movie ticks both boxes.
Thanks for the fun conversation about a beloved film.
Thanks for bringing me a whole new level of appreciation for this film. It never occured to me that Phil looped as many times as suggested I always assumed it was about a years worth groundhog day to groundhog day. But then I also thought there was more to the naming of Phil the same as the “Super long living” Groundhog Phil. So maybe I hadn’t paid as much attention as I should have.
Unfortunately I listened to the original release of this episode and thought how rude that the pair of you were talking over each other. So of course after that technical glitch was corrected I had to listen again! Thankfully unlike Phil the second time round was much better and you escaped the loop. Obviously both Siskoid and DC Dave are much better people than Phil. Maybe because one of you has a head start on the french “poetry” but I can’t believe that DC Dave has much ice sculpting experience – even if the last time you were talking film together was about about Ice (Hockey).
Thanks for a great episode about a great film.