Kinematoscope

"Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today."

"That's right woodchuck-chuckers, it's GROUNDHOG DAY!"

The hilarious, seminal, mind-bending (gently, but still) 1993 classic comedy is today's subject on the countdown- it's funny: every time I approach a classic movie hesitantly, because what could I possibly have to say about a movie so ubiquitous and beloved, I find myself pondering deeper questions and writing even more than usual.

It bodes well for the future of the countdown, I would say. In any case, let's do this.

The Key Players:

Ivan Reitman's fame as a director (Caddyshack, National Lampoon's Vacation, Analyze This) is arguably equal to his fame as Egon from Ghostbusters one and two.

Bill Murray (whom we saw briefly once already) rose to national prominence as a wild man on "Saturday Night Live" and in Meatballs, Stripes, and Caddyshack. And he's had a resurgent decade on the strength of his world weary performances in Lost In Translation, Rushmore, and The Life Aquatic. But really, didn't that essential "Bill Murray" persona already exist in an earlier form in his 90s hits like Scrooged and Groundhog Day anyway? Arguably even his unprofessional parapsychologist in Ghostbusters used nihilistic humor to mark an inner sadness. There's a case to be made here, but we don't have the time or space.

Remember Andie McDowell? She used Steven Soderbergh's breakout hit Sex, Lies, and Videotape as a springboard to co-headlining a bunch of romantic comedies like Green Card and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Just as Murray can be seen embracing his age in an ironic way, she's a spokeperson for L'Oreal these days that would like you to know you can postpone it.

Chris Elliott and character actor Stephen Tobolowsky appear in support.



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The Story:

A sci-fi premise with none of the expository trappings you'd expect, Groundhog Day stars Murray as a vain, cranky Pittsburgh tv weatherman assigned to cover the Groundhog Day ceremonies in Puxatawney, PA for the fourth year in a row.

He drives out the night before with a wise-cracking cameraman (Elliott) and his new producer (McDowell), and wakes up a miserable day of well-beneath-his-taste small town pleasantries- he's even trapped in town for an extra night by a blizzard just out of town, the same blizzard he predicted would miss the area altogether.

He goes to bed, he wakes up to the same song ("I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher), same radio dj patter as above. He soon finds he's repeating Groundhog Day, all over again, but nobody else seems to remember doing it all before. Every time he goes to bed, he wakes up to the same clock, the same song, the same town, the same day.

The Artistry:

Groundhog Day started out as a very different kind of movie. In the first week of shooting, some of the most expensive scenes were produced- Murray's character, realizing that there were no consequences to any of his actions, gets his hair cut into a mohawk, and destroys his room at a bed and breakfast with a chainsaw, only to wake up and have everything restored.

Harold Ramis, after the production spent thousands on mohawk hairpieces, duplicates of destroyed props, and scenery restoration, took a look at the footage, decided 'nope', and tossed it out.

Instead, after the second time through the fateful day, a visibly shaken and confused Murray goes to bed, but breaks a pencil and puts it on the nightstand before falling asleep. 6:00 AM, and the pencil's whole again, and this quiet moment (in place of an over-the-top mohawk/chainsaw test) sets the character down a more existential path.

How do we tell the difference between things we want and things we need? If everything in our day to day routines was taken out of the equation, how would we choose to pass the time? What would give us purpose?

This is what Groundhog Day asks, or at least specifically asks Murray's Phil Connors. He first moves from confusion to a sort of glee at living without repurcussions (seducing a local woman, robbing a bank) to a single-minded pursuit of Rita, his kind-hearted producer.

The reasons for this are unclear, other than Rita being one of the constant presences in his "day" (no matter what he chooses to do, she'll at least seek him out to see why he blew off reporting the groundhog ceremony) and being totally early-90s-hot. A masterpiece of editing follows in which, bit by bit, he learns little things about her and treats her eventually to a "perfect" evening, but no matter how many times he orders her favorite drink, recites French poetry, and says cliche things about wanting children, he's usually met with a slap in the face.

Even with an eternity to smooth it out, trying too hard isn't the answer. A depression sets in, where Phil attempts many times to commit suicide (highlighted by the film's comic apex, the car chase with Phil the groundhog)- given the timing, it seems brought on by his inability to score Rita, but it's really the last vestige of a man with everything stripped away- even when it's funny, Murray's trademark hangdog expression is perfect for this sort of despair.

The real beauty of Groudhog Day is in the final third, when Phil finds purpose by helping the townsfolk and learning various skills (ice-sculpting, classical and jazz piano) since he has the time. Even as he acknowledges his limits when he's unable to save the old homeless man, Phil learns that our lives are defined by the idle hours we pass with ourselves as well as our impact on the community around us, even one that doesn't remember you.

What makes the film a classic is that this Frank Capra-like life lesson is more or less a backdrop to hilarious scene after hilarious scene. The comic timing of the most depressing and uplifting elements of Groundhog Day prevent it from even approaching maudlin. One of my favorite examples is Phil's eloquent, expressive speech that capitvates the entire crowd by the last "day": the cut right into the middle of the scene elicits the biggest laugh from me, every time.

Murray's performance is of course integral to the film and well realized but McDowell has an important torch to carry as well. She has to be tolerant enough of Murray's crass persona in the beginning to sell falling for him later, and naive enough not to doubt his sudden (to her) transformation for too long. It helps that her character has just met Phil. Chris Elliott meanwhile plays a pretty good Chris Elliott, just like he does in guest appearance on every other sitcom in the last decade.

It's hard to really judge the cast- I know their parts so well and saw this movie first so long ago that they're nearly actual people in my mind. They exist in a Punxatawney that grows more familiar with each repetition, populated by the sort of regular, midwestern folk that I know well (at least cinematically).

Groundhog Day is an allegory for the filmmaking process as well. Take after take after take, all to find which one has the spirit, the feel that the picture needs. The editing determines the resulting product just as our decisions determine the outcomes of our days.

As mentioned up top, with the wrong choices, Groundhog Day could have become a much different film: a funny one, sure ("Oh that crazy Bill Murray!"), but more run-of-the-mill funny than deep-thinking funny.

If I have one, minor critique of the film it would be the too-obvious soundtrack choices, like Ray Charles' "You Don't Know Me" to the montage of Phil's failed attempts at Rita (because he, like, totally doesn't really know her, get it?), or "Weatherman" by Delbert McClinton.

Finally, I can't say enough about the decision not to explain the basic premise: apparently an early version of the screenplay had a gypsy curse or some such thing. Explaining it in any fashion would make the movie something else entirely- trying to ground it in any real-world or other-worldly phenomenon would make it cheaper somehow, and less universal.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

After an indeterminate amount of Groundhog Days (Ramis estimates as much as 40 years' worth), Phil appreciates life, wows the entire town and Rita on one especially fine day that culminates in Rita winning his company in a bachelor auction.

The next morning, the alarm goes off, and "I Got You Babe" plays...but it's a fakeout, as Rita shuts off the alarm and Phil freaks out.

It's a new day, and they run off in the snow to the tunes of "Almost Like Being In Love." Aw.

END SPOILERS

Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

"If you gotta shoot, aim high. I don't wanna hit the groundhog."

The real question here is where the F%&%^ is Ghostbusters, countdown voters? For all my meaningful bluster you just read, sometimes funny is just funny, too.

The Legacy:

This would win the BAFTA for best original screenplay, but go largely unrecognized otherwise. Today it's revered as one of the most spiritual films of our time by Buddhists and Catholics alike, already preserved in the NFR, and the title is instant shorthand for the time-loop concept, or any unpleasant, recurring situation (especially in the military, for some reason).

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

"There is no way that this winter is ever going to end, as long as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don't see any other way out. He's gotta be stopped....And I have to stop him."



Leftover Thoughts:

-Stephen Tobolowsky, AKA annoying insurance salesman Ned Ryerson, has an excellent podcast at Slashfilm- the episode where he reminsces about Groundhog Day was an immense help in writing this article.

-Question: didn't he ever try and stay up until six the next morning? I might not be yet in my middle age, but how hard is it to stay awake 24 hours if the very nature of TIME AND THE UNIVERSE is at stake? Just a thought. He probably would just instantly be back in bed at 6 on Groundhog Day again at that instant, anyway, since not even his death breaks the cycle.

-"I don't know, you're a producer: think of something!"

-"What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?"

-A good metaphor for how this film affects me is the look on the face of the dude on the stairs when Murray recites some Coleridge, kisses him on both cheeks, and departs with a pleasant "Ciao!"

-The day this is posting we're expecting -25 degree sind chills here in Milwaukee, which seems appropriate.


Coming Up...

158. The Bourne Ultimatum

157. The Big Sleep

156. Ben-Hur

Greetings, my friends! Today we take a look into the past, for that is where you and are have spent the entirety of our lives: the past! Tim Burton gives the sympathetic biopic treatement to "worst director of all time" Edward D. Wood, Jr. with 1994's Ed Wood.

And if I take one thing away from this film, it's the idominitable nature of the human spirit, whether you're a closeted transvestite/movie director longing to be accepted, an aging screen legend/drug addict hoping to reclaim the spotlight, or just a film blogger/wannabe entertainment writer not able to keep up with watching three movies a week and writing about them analytically. No matter your dreams, just get them done whatever way you can.

The Key Players:

We once again visit with Tim Burton, director of previous countdown entry Big Fish, wherein I already wrote up his credentials. (sidenote: would you believe me if I told you that Tim Burton has only one Oscar nomination to his credit? Would you further believe if I told that that one nomination was for Corpse Bride in the Animated Film category?)

This is of course his second of approximately eight hundred billion collaborations with Johnny Depp, our nation's favorite pirate.

In support are:

Martin Landau ("Mission Impossible," "Space: 1999," North By Northwest)
Sarah Jessica Parker ("Sex and the City," Sex and the City: The Movie, the upcoming Sex and the City 2: The Quickening)
Patricia Arquette (the aptly-named show "Medium," Bringing Out The Dead, Flirting With Disaster)
Jeffrey Jones (forever known as the principal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off
And the legendary Bill Murrary (who I'm sure we'll get to later on other things*).

*NOTE: further inspection reveals the only other top 250 entrant will be Groundhog Day. WTF? What about Ghostbusters? Caddyshack? Any Wes Anderson movie? Lost in Translation? Sometimes you fail me, internet.



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The Story:

We open on a ramshackle 1948 playhouse, where an audience of a half dozen or so watches a play put on by our hero, Edward D. Wood, Jr. (Depp). He and the cast and crew, including his friend Bunny Breckenridge (Murray) and girlfriend Dolores Fuller (Parker), stay up to read the review in the paper- it's a scathing one, but Wood pleasantly notes that the costumes are called "realistic."

We then see that very little daunts Wood as he goes to work delivering plants on a movie studio lot- he stops by the film stock warehouse to view stock footage that will just linger in storage, unused and comments on what a shame that is. Then he overhears that a movie is being made about Christine Jorgensen, one of the first widely known transsexuals.

He talks his way into a meeting with the producer of the proposed film, George Weiss, by claiming that he's "specially qualified" to direct the project- this qualification turns out to be his secret life as a tranvestite, which he has never before revealed (Wood was heterosexual, but had a thing for angora fabric due to some latent "being raised a girl" related mother issues. No biggy.). Weiss shoos him out the door as an underqualified nut.

Wood is dejected, but a chance encounter turns everything around: he runs into the now elderly Bela Lugosi (of Dracula fame) outside of a funeral parlor (where Lugosi was trying out coffins, you know, like ya do). Befriending the aging star by offering him a ride home (and effusively praising his work), he returns to Weiss armed with a real live (if washed up) movie star for the project, and offers to write a script as well.

Weiss gives in, and since rights to Christine Jorgensen's story were never acquired for I Changed My Sex!, delivers an entirely new screenplay which is mostly a delirious mix of tranvestite sympathy with a bit of sex reassignment at the end (bookended by a vague and dramatic monologue from Lugosi) and is now titled Glen or Glenda.

The film is a flop, but Wood is only momentarily disheartened- he secures independent financing for his next film, Bride of the Atom, a horror movie starring a local wrestler of circus-like proportions. During the course of filming, he recasts Dolores's role on a misunderstanding, talks Lugosi into wrestling with a stolen octopus prop in a swamp at three A.M., befriends a cheesy TV psychic (Jones), and is forced to changed the title to Bride of the Monster by a meat packing tycoon who takes over financing (in addition to finding a major role for the tycoon's idiot son).

Dolores, who had tried but failed to take Wood's earlier revelation of his cross dressing in stride, leaves him at the wrap party, fed up with his circle and his lifestyle (Breckenridge, for example, openly talked about plans for a Mexican sex change operation). Lugosi also repeatedly calls Wood late at night in a drugged stupor, until forced to admit his problem and enter rehab.

But things look up as the premiere of Bride of the Monster approaches: Wood attends with a new, cross-dressing-accepting girlfriend on his arm (Arquette), Lugosi, the psychic Criswell, Vampirella (the host of a local horror movie tvcast, and a direct precursor to Elvira), and the hulking star of the movie- it's as if the film had been buliding to this moment, where the purveyor of the odd is flanked at his finest moment by an All-American girl, a vampire and vapiress, a bow-tied psychic and a behemoth.

The film is roundly booed, and the gang are chased out of the theater by an unruly mob. But can the intrepid Edward D. Wood, Jr. dust himself off again for Grave Robbers From Outer Space?

The Artistry:

Burton was excited to make a film that didn't require storyboards and focus on character, and not to be critical, but it mostly shows. Shot in black and white (a decision that caused Paramount to back out of the project), Ed Wood mostly gets out of the way and lets Johnny Depp's performance, all 50's Casey Kasem style enthusiasm, take over the reins.

Which is fun enough, and some pretty great supporting performances buoy the film even higher- Landau's turn as an addled, egotistical Lugosi that bristles at the mere mention of Boris Karloff won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and Murray's quiet turn as well as Parker's shrill part are both fine work.

As a newcomer to Wood's work, I was a little befuddled with the opening homage to Plan 9 From Outer Space: Jeffrey Jones, in character as The Amazing Criswell, sits up out of a coffin and gives a wandering speech introducing the film, much like in Wood's infamous fail-tacular. But by the second Jones' monologue at the end, I was all for it.

It's just- who doesn't want to make movies? It looks like fun, even if it's frustrating. Depp portrays Wood as the kind of film-lover that didn't just move on after one take because he had limited time and budget- to him, each take was perfect, because he was living the dream, man!

I kept expecting a little more of a hammer to fall, given Wood's reputation as a spectacularly bad director, and found myself a little anxiously cautious early in the film, but that feeling ebbed as I realized it was nearly as much a labor of love as the films of its subject.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

Lugosi, after filming hardly one scene for Wood's next project, sadly passes away, leaving our hero with no star and no financing for his next project. He manages to convince his landlord's Baptist church to bankroll Grave Robbers From Outer Space telling them the way to make money for their intended film series on the 12 apostles is to first turn a profit on a film in a proven genre.

He gets his girlfriend's rather tall chiropractor to stand in for the majority of Lugosi's role (with his arm over his face), gets the now-unemployed Vampirella to take a part, and proceeds to start filming an over-the-top mashup of space invaders, vampires, and shoddy productions values, with cardboard tombstones and flying saucers with clearly visible strings.

As the Baptist change the title (to Plan 9 From Outer Space, grave robbing being morally uncouth) and insist on casting and plot changes, Wood becomes frustrated and storms to a nearby bar in a huff (and in drag). There he has a chance run-in with none other than his idol, Orson Welles! Welles, over a drink, sympathizes with tales of studio interference, and tells Wood not to compromize his vision for anything. Wood returns to set, demands to have things his way, and end the movie by driving off to marry his girlfriend after a triumphant screening of Plan 9.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Oh man, I know it might be because I have a huge soft spot for movies about making movies (I was even thinking about making a list until the Onion A.V. Club freaking posted this on Monday), but I say higher.

The Legacy:

Rick Baker won an Oscar for his makeup, in addition to Landau taking every other Supporting actor award under the sun that year. Commercially Ed Wood was a bomb befitting its subject material, but critical acclaim has preserved it in memory.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

"Well...somebody misplaced the octopus motor, so, when you get in there and fight with him: shake his legs around- looks like he's killin' ya! Okay!"



Leftover Thoughts:

-"Really? Worst film you ever saw? Well, my next one will be better!... Hello?"

-Fun fact: Martin Landau's daughter Juliet Landau, who has a minor part in this film, is much like Lugosi most famous for playing a vampire: Drusilla on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

-Actual tagline for this film: Movies were his passion. Women were his inspiration. Angora sweaters were his weakness.

-I was pretty proud that not only did I know it was Vincent D'Onofrio playing Orson Welles, but also that his voice was dubbed over by Maurice LaMarche (The Brain from "Pinky and The Brain").

Coming Up...

Thursday, September 17th: Letters From Iwo Jima

Friday, September 18th: The Lost Weekend Yeah, that's right, three days in a row! Boom!