“I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster and drank piña coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over?”
At first director Harold Ramis wanted to cast Tom Hanks for the lead, but decided against it because Hanks was “too nice”. The movie’s idea came from The Gay Science, a book by Friedrich Nietzsche. In it Nietzsche describes a man who lives the same day over and over again. The original script was for Phil Connors to live February 2nd for about 10,000 years. Ramis later said Phil probably lived the same day for only 10 years. In the first version, writer Danny Rubin has Connors already trapped inside Groundhog Day from the start. We join him on a typical day, with the audience wondering how he knows everything before it happens. Ramis was not going to change this aspect of the script, but eventually did. Early drafts explained the cause of Phil Connors’ weird predicament came from a disaffected ex-lover named Stephanie who cast a spell on him to teach him a lesson. Originally, Phil was supposed to kill the groundhog in his lair, but his was changed because it was too similar to Caddyshack (1980). After the film’s success, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis were both invited to be honorary Grand Marshals at the Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsatawney, PA. The movie was actually filmed in Woodstock, Illinois, 45 miles from Murray’s home town of Wilmette. A plaque there reads “Bill Murray stepped here” on the curb where Phil continually steps in a puddle. Murray wanted the film to be more philosophical and Ramis wanted it to be more comedic. They argued throughout the production and have not spoken to each other since.
