Groundhog Day with Stephen Tobolowsky!

0:00 Welcome to Movie Life Crisis. Join us as we watch the best movies from 30 years ago. Columbia Pictures presents I'm gonna be having a problem. Bill Murray, I'm reliving the same day. Over and over. In a story about a weatherman who's living life. What? Like there's no tomorrow. Don't drive angry because there isn't. I am in a normal. I have been stabbed and shot and frozen electrocuted. You're God. I'm a God. Another D-God. Groundhog Day. Rated DG. At theaters Friday. Man.

0:41 Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day. Bangor. Oh yeah. Such a great movie. Dude. One of my all-time favorites. Movie Life Crisis Season 3. Episode 3. Groundhog Day. Literally one of my favorite movies ever. It is also very high up there for me. And it's shocking how many people haven't seen it. Yeah. We, my wife actually set up a movie screening of it in Nashville for my birthday, which is the day before Groundhog Day. And we had like, I don't know, 25 people come out. And at least five or six of them had not seen the movie before. And like everybody is, my friends are all in their 30s and 40s. I couldn't freaking believe that the thing that you've seen it. I'm shocked. Everyone was loving it. Everyone was freaking gaggle in and like having a blast.

1:22 And then we hung out afterwards and talked about it. I mean, officially it was the first movie life podcast episode movie screening. Yeah. Which was a rip-roaring good time that you missed. Yeah. But yeah, dude, it was incredible. Dude, as soon as she told me she was going to do that, I was like, he is going to lose his mind. That's going to be awesome. It's the coolest man. And seeing the movies and theaters, especially with other people. Like everyone's laughing and we're having popcorn. Like it was so much fun, man. I just want to be able to do like three or four movies a year that way. But even one a year would be awesome. I don't. That's what I don't understand. That's why, I mean, we talked about this before. But like the social aspect of watching a movie and everybody being scared at the same time or everybody laughing at the same time or everybody being shocked at the same time.

2:06 That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, it's because you can tell me because I've seen this movie. Like we did an interview with Stephen Tobelowski who plays Ned Ryerson and we'll play the highlights that interview here in a few minutes. We just got done with it. And we had an phenomenal time talking to him for like an hour. I don't believe. But I was telling him like this movie is the closest thing to a ritual that I have. I watched it every year the day after my birthday. But I haven't seen it in theaters. I saw it on the 20 year anniversary at the Belcourt and Nashville where we did the screening last week. So it's been 10 years since I saw it in theater. And it's so much different seeing it with everybody else there. Also seen it at the same time. Yeah. It's just not the same. And it's so awesome. That's.

2:46 Yeah. It's way more fun seeing it in the theater. Yeah. You miss something at home. You totally do. So a lot of stuff going on. An incredible movie that we really love. Our movie life crisis screens this movie at the Belcourt. Jeff and I get an hour with Stephen Tobelowski who plays Ned Ryerson. Just freaking a lot of stuff happening. Yeah. This is everything's coming up Millhouse. Everything's coming up Millhouse. Yeah. Yeah. We would sleep right on through to February 3rd if we were Phil Connors because we already are crushing life. We don't have to learn the piano. We can just move right on. I would like to learn piano. Can I have? I would too. But I think it would take me the whole 10,000 years. Yeah. That's a long time. Yeah. What else? I don't know, man.

3:26 Just give us just an opposite. Let's get this thing cooking. All right. Groundhog Day is a 1993 comedy drama directed by Harold Raimis. Bill Murray starts his Phil Connors, a weatherman covering the annual groundhog day event in Punks of Tony, Pennsylvania, who finds himself stuck in a time loop. Initially, Phil takes advantage of the situation and indulges in selfish behavior, but soon realizes his actions have no lasting impact. He then uses his knowledge of the day's events to improve himself and his relationships of those around him, including his producer Rita. Through repeating the same day, Phil learns to live life to the fullest, be kind to others and appreciate the beauty of each moment. Yeah.

4:06 Well, it's an upside. Yes. Do you know who's an upside that? I am DB. AI is going to take over our podcast, and we're not going to be able to do this. We're going to say, what would a chubby white guy think about Groundhog Day? And it would just list out all the things. It wrote that whole thing. I said a five-sentence synopsis of Groundhog Day, and that's what it gave me. Oh, man. That's awesome. So once AI takes a year in my jobs, we can really focus on the podcast, but by then it'll be better at the podcast, too. Yeah, it's going to be way, way better at the podcast. We can probably feed the AI, our podcast transcripts, which the AI will also transcript and go like, here's how we talk about movies, make an episode for us.

4:49 There's a movie that we don't want to watch. Just go like, just spit out an episode, and then there's the other AI that will mimic your voice. They will just do the whole thing. Yeah, that sounds great. Let's do that. I don't want to do that. This is the part that I like talking about the movies. Even if we're not recording this, I would still call you and say, let's talk about this movie and we would talk about it. So I'm actually a little upset. We didn't get a chance to talk to Stephen Tobelowski more about when a date with Tad Hamilton, because I really do love that movie. Yeah. Well, maybe we'll come back for that. Yeah, 2005, we'll have him back. All right, budget. This movie budget somewhere in the $14 million to $30 million range. Let's call it $20 million. It grossed $105 million. Number 10 on the year, 1993. But the story of this movie is not really the story of 1993 box office.

5:32 It's really about what it's done in the years since then. Now, 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, you know, they put in the frickin' library of Congress for significant contributions to the arts. It's all that stuff. Yeah. But it did do well in the year. It was released, you know, number 10 in the year. That's a big movie. It did well. But it didn't, I think, had people seen it how they see it now? Because even people like Ebert went back and changed his review of it. He went from three stars to four, and he was like, I was wrong. Yeah. So awards, you want to talk about awards? Yeah, go ahead. Hit me with the awards. All right.

6:12 So film critic Circle Awards in New York, it came runner up to Shindler's list, our last movie, for Best Screenplay. So I wrote that down. BAFTA Awards, it won Best Original Screenplay at the Saturn Awards, which apparently is really big. And I didn't realize how big it was, because I had never heard of it before doing this podcast. Andy McDowell won the award for Best Actress, but it also had a nominee nomination for Best Fantasy Film, Best Actor, Best Writing, Best Director, Best Costumes, American Comedy Awards, Murray and Chris Elliott were nominated for Funniest Actor in Supporting Actor, and Best Traumatic Presentation at the Hugo Awards, and at Lost to Jurassic Park.

6:54 So Jurassic Park's quite a bit more dramatic than this. So I could see how it could lose, but dude, that's really putting it up against some really great films. For the type of movie it is, I'm surprised it got that many knots. Yeah, I think this thing, I mean, it did pretty well in the moment, but even as well as it did in the moment, it is nothing to do with the cultural impact that it still has. But yeah, people knew about it right from the beginning. This wasn't like one that caught on later on video. It was good from the get-go, and it's still good now. Yeah, it's speaking of the cultural impact. Like, here's just a couple. It's ranked eight on AFI's 10 Greatest Films of Fantasy. Yeah, how many films are fantasy?

7:34 And this is number eight. Yeah, well, I mean, I think Star Wars and Tolkien are both fantasy. Right, that's what I'm saying. It's a pretty good stuff there. Right, right. The magazine voted it. One of the 50th greatest comedies of all time. I came in four for BBC 100 Best comedies of all time. The New Yorker was like, this is director Harold Ramos's masterpiece. This is best movie. Like, it's ridiculous how many people are like, you know, this is the best movie of the last 40 years. And I put it up against a wonderful life. Like, Jonah Goldberg said he puts this in the same categories. It's a wonderful life.

8:14 And it's one of the most timeless films and uplifting. And everybody should watch it all the time. And I was like, God, okay, done. Yeah, dude, literally. I mean, we were standing outside the theater waiting on the movie to start last week on February 2nd. And one of my buddies was like, when's the last time he saw this movie? I was like, February 2nd, last year. Yeah, watch it every year on Cravalk Day. All the time, every year. Yeah, sequels spin-offs and nothing. They've talked about making a sequel to this over the years. And actually, are they actually going to do it? There was a Groundhog Day musical. Nice. Where the music and lyrics were written by Tim mentioned, who I don't know if you know is ridiculously funny. Yes. Yeah, the whole thing's on YouTube.

8:54 I watched it. It's not the same as the movie, obviously. The lyrics are pretty funny, though. Like, it was pretty good. It was in 2016. And it was in the Old Vic in London. It didn't do great, but it did pretty good. And people still talk about it. Yeah, and honestly, Groundhog Day wasn't the first movie to do the kind of time loop thing. That's been around in science fiction for a long time, but I think it was the most popular movie to kind of ever make use of that. So anytime I see a movie that kind of does that, like, what's the time cruise movie? Edge of Tomorrow. Edge of Tomorrow. Or, like, Looper with Bruce Willis. I like that movie, too. Yeah, what's the one with... What's his name from Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Yeah, Palm Springs.

9:34 Palm Springs. That was cool, man. Yeah, that was super cool. That's the most like Groundhog Day, but every one of those. Anytime there's a time loop movie, it's always like Groundhog Day meets alien explosions. Yeah, that's the edge of Tomorrow. Yeah. Which they're making a sequel to, by the way. And I'm very excited. When's that coming out? I'm ready. I don't know. I'm also ready. Is he gonna run? Yeah, I do. In the big middle. I saw last week that Tom Cruise's 50 plus movies, only five of them has he not run. Yeah, I could see that. He's a good runner. Likes to run. Do you remember winning where you first saw this movie? I'm 99% sure this was one of the ones. Because we had a copy of it, you know, how you get the VHS tape. It's got the sticker on it. This was one of the ones where the sticker was on it, and there was another sticker over it.

10:16 I probably recorded over an Olivia Newton John concert. My mom had. And it was one of those where it was like groundhog day. It was like numbered. Groundhog day was the first one. So I could always rewind it all the way and watch it from the beginning. The song in the middle, which is very poignant for what's happening in the movie, is that you don't know me by Ray Charles. Yeah. You and me. Dude, I used to love that. And my mom had this anthology on record that we used to clean the house to that was Ray Charles. And I was like, I can now have this on tape. And I can remember standing in front of the TV, holding the tape recorder up to the speaker so I could get that.

10:56 Even though it was going to have slaps in it, and I wasn't even going to have the whole, you know what I'm saying? Like I wasn't even going to have the whole song, but I get to the end of my dad's like, you know, I could just show you how to record the record. We have a record player with a tape. The fact that I could have it on, like that's what I remember is trying to get that song. Kids don't know the pain of trying to get a song that you didn't have when we were kids. They didn't really hold enough freaking boom box up to a TV speaker to try to catch a song while it's playing on a movie. And it's not a TV speaker on the TVs we have now. It's like a tiny little, I might as well have had a can with a string holding it up to the microphone. It was really tinny and that's fantastic.

11:36 Dude, the music in this movie is really good. I didn't have anything in my notes about it, but like there's some great songs in this. Dude, even the weatherman's song that they play in the beginning. It's kind of catchy. It's got that guy who kind of sounds like Kevin left that band up more than once. He's like, who is this band? It's like, that's the only thing they ever did. That's a great song. And Harold Raimis helped write the song. Yeah. Of course, baby wore me up on your weatherman. You can only play that so often. Yeah, he's already written the whole movie and directed it and cameo in it. Why not write the song too? Yeah, knocking it out. Like freaking the glorious song from whiteman can't jump that Ron Shelton wrote and directed the movie and it's like, let me write the song too. It's like, all right, dude. That's some other people make some shit. What? So when do you remember the first time you saw it?

12:17 I don't. I've seen this movie so many times. This movie in my brain has gotten kind of worn out. Yeah. I've watched it so many times. There's no chance I can go back to the first even dozen viewings. But I've always loved it. So do you think when you like Homer says every time I learn something new, it pushes something old out of my brain? Like that time I take that home when making course and I forgot how to drive? You're drunk. And how? I'm wondering that. Is it slowly going to be? Because like, we just talked to Steven Tablowski and that dude's remembering stuff from when he was five. Yeah. Dude, I definitely think there's a limited amount of space. That's why one of the things I like about the podcast, we talk about stuff from when I was a teenager and I would have never remembered it if we weren't talking about it, unlocks it.

12:59 So yeah. I mean, I think we probably didn't own this and I probably just, you know, even as a kid, I had my comfort movies. It's like, I went to Blockbuster. Nothing good came out. I didn't rent striking distance again. It's like, I'll just, I'll do Groundhog's Day again. I like that one. I'll just do Groundhog Day one more time. Ah, it's awesome. Yeah, man. Let's do ratings one to ten. How many chimney dogs? No sevens. So this one got an nostalgia bump for me. Because again, it's one of those comfort movies. The quote ability, it got a quote ability bump. It got a rewatchability bump. And the rest it kind of gets honestly because I thought it was well written, well thought out. It's still kind of a mystery. You don't know why they're in the time loop. It's funny as hell. Andy McDowell was kind of hot.

13:39 Like, great soundtrack. It literally checks all my boxes. And I wanted to give it a ten. But we all know how I feel about that. So I gave it a nine point five. All right. That's the most predictable thing. And all the history of the world. What? You, I'm sure gave it an eleven. I gave it a ten. A ten. A ten. A ten. Nice. Dude, I absolutely gave it a ten. Not that it's a perfect movie. There's definitely some stuff that I would have maybe done a little bit different. Yeah. I mean, when I, when I give a movie a ten, I'm going like, if it's on, if I'm at a hotel and I could click on the TV and Groundhog's day is on, done.

14:20 I don't need to pick up the controller again. You watch it even with ads. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Dude, I don't, yeah. Because again, we've talked about this. If you're watching something on TV, you feel like you're doing it with other people. Like other people are also watching this. Yeah. Yeah. Which is a very powerful movie. Motown Philly's on the radio. There's more than one person. Yeah. Dude, I'm gonna turn it up, I'm gonna turn it up real loud. Right. And not that I listen to the radio and probably never will again. But yes. But you'll be somewhere where somebody will have the radio on and you have control of it. Yeah. And you might hear a jam. Yeah. Dude, it's like a league of their own. I could improve it. I got some things I could improve it. It's such a fantastic movie and it's one of my all time favorites and it will absolutely get a ten. I don't know that I'll ever give a movie a ten.

15:02 Yeah. That's fine. I don't know. Speaking of which, since we're talking about Chimey Dogs, the tip top cafe, it was created for the film and it became an actual restaurant after that. Yeah. The tip top bistro. It's awesome how much. I mean, they do a Groundhog Day festival like at this in this town every year. We really should go there next year and drink and the screen the movie and do another podcast. Step in the puddle and step in the puddle. You can yell at me and watch that first step. It's a doozy. Yeah, except there's no puddle anymore. They freaking paved over that and put a plaque there and said, this is where Bill Murray stepped in the movie Groundhog Day. Yeah. That's so cool though. That's incredibly cool. It's like Illinois doing it right. You know, you know, I like stuff like that.

15:44 I'm taking the trip to Disney World. It's 14 stops because I got to see the largest bottle of yarn in the biggest orange gym sock and it's only 30 miles out of the way. We can see the world's biggest rocking chair. Everyone. Let's go. Yeah. Why not? How many times are you going to see that in your life? I'm good with zero. I'm fine with you. It's a fine number of times. I like it. It's the trip. It's the journey, man. It's not the destination. It is the journey, I guess. All right, before we start on our best, we're going to just put the actual best of the podcast, which is us talking with Steven Tobelowski, who is, I can't even believe he did it. It was the coolest thing, man. It's super nice of him to chat with us and he is smart and hilarious and really great at his job.

16:28 Wonderful storyteller. I'm going to read an intro just so we have it and then we're going to jump in some groundhog day stuff. I wrote out a thing. I'm professional and prepared. All right, people. Today we have a real treat and interview with actor, writer, director, podcaster, musician, Steven Tobelowski, Ned Ryerson and the flesh from Groundhog Day, which is obviously what we asked him to come on and talk about, but so much more than that. Steven has over 200 film and TV credits in a career spanning back to 1977. He was in space balls, Delmond Louise, basic instinct, Memento, and a movie that no one likes as much as Jeff and I do when a date with Tad Hamilton. I'm not joking. I love that movie. I miss Ron, just romcom with a killer ensemble cast.

17:12 TV credits from Seinfeld to California, the Goldbergs, Deadwood, Archer, Silicon Valley. That's just the shows that I like. There's like 100 more. He's been podcasting since 2009. He's written three books and he was in a band with Stevie Ray Vaughn. Steven, can you believe that that is the career of one person when I read it like that? No. No. And you left out all the diseases I've had, didn't even get into the medical stuff. I just, that seems like that's 10 lifetimes there in those like three paragraphs. Does it feel like 10 lifetimes? It feels like it feels like that sometimes more. You know, and also some of the things were epically great and some of them were horrifyingly terrible and they all have irony to attach to them which makes them seem oh, so much sweeter.

18:06 So you know, you look back at your life and you go like, oh, that didn't really matter, did it. And learning how to roll or skate. That was such a big deal at the time and you know, and now it doesn't really seem to be one of the big important things in my life. I feel the same way about quicksand watching a lot of bugs bunny cartoons. I thought that was going to be a problem and it's not, it's not a problem at all. Well, sorry, we could spend literally days talking to you about your career and our wives when kids would miss us, but it would be totally worth it. But your time is valuable. So I'm going to jump right into groundhog day and just ask you some questions about that. What was that audition process like? How'd that roll come to you? That was, I had an audition, I remember with Harold Ramos and I had just worked on the part kind of in my dining room with the dining room table was all I was working with.

19:00 And so I told Harold Ramos, excuse me, but this is going to be kind of broad. I think it could play in the Roman Colosseum and he says, well, it's fine. I'll read with you. And that's the first thing. Harold Ramos read the part of Phil Connors with me, he's reading Phil Connors. And later I remember at a charity event long after groundhog day, I said, like, why did you choose to read with me? And he said, well, because Stephen, I'm an actor as well as a director, I said, but you're the guy who can hire us. I mean, that was terrifying having to add off of you and it's like, oh my God, you know, and anyways, I'm really happy that, but I remember I was so over the top and I un-sipped his pants and sipped his pants and went down and tied his shoes.

19:53 Oh, well, I can't even have you doing Ned Ryerson all over my really, you know, abused him, but it was a lot of fun doing that. Yeah. And I ties into my next question a little bit, which is that a part of it is the casting as direction, the editing, the music, whatever, but it's, it's lightning in a bottle, right? Did you guys have any sense on the shoot that this movie would have the legs, would have the penetration of the culture that it ended up having? God, no. And in fact, Trevor Albert, our producer, who probably had his, you know, had a bigger overview than he would certainly had no idea. He called me up a month after the groundhog day had been released, called me up at home and said, Stephen, I think we may have a hit and I go, we do because his groundhog day, if you remember, got good reviews, but not great reviews.

20:40 I mean, it was like it was, they said, it's a good Bill Murray movie out of five stars. You know, we've got three and a half or four stars of one of, you know, and Trevor said, if, and I, he taught me about the movie business, he said, most people go to a movie the first week gets open. The second week traditionally is almost a 50% drop in people who go to the movie and then it goes down that way. He said, we had more people see it the second week, more people see it the third week than the second. He says, now it's the fourth week and we have more people than have seen it in every week. That means repeat viewings right off the bat and that means word of mouth.

21:23 We may have a hit, but we still at that point, their hits and their hits. You know, there's, it's not a hit like groundhog day had been a hit, which is like, it's an evergreen. It's like every year on groundhog day, people are going to be showing groundhog. It's the closest thing to a ritual that I have not being religious is watching groundhog day on groundhog day. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, when you put Harold Ramos and Bill Murray together, you're going to get probably something pretty good. But to me, as much as I enjoy stripes and stuff like that, it's like, I don't watch those every year. They don't, I don't, I mean, we finished groundhog day. We spent 30 minutes in the theater. This is a week ago talking about the movie, the philosophical underpinnings of the movie.

22:03 Yeah. Well, there was an alchemy that kind of happened during groundhog day that's never happened on any other film that I've been a part of or TV show I've ever been a part of. And that is, so Bill and I were shooting first day, we're shooting street scene and they're about there were in the original script about nine street scenes in the script. And I think it's been cut down to five, but there are about nine of net encounters in various incarnations in the script. So we were shooting all that kind of Ned stuff. And at the end of the first week, there was a huge set piece. It was Bill realizing he has no consequences. And it's him doing what Bill Murray does best in a movie, particularly at that era, him going nuts and having no consequences.

22:52 So it was Bill like spray painting the inside of his room at the end. Then next cut he's there with the chainsaw, chainsawing the furniture in half. Then he's in the bathroom, cutting his hair into a mohawk and anybody who knows anything about filming any time you spray paint something or cut something in half, you have to have doubles, triples, quadruples, you'll clean the walls, you have to start all over again, reset the room every time you do the shot. World Remus saw the footage at the end of that first week. And to mention something Alan Parker told me in Mississippi burning, he said the way all the studios are looking over your shoulder that first week to see how their money is being spent.

23:40 He says, so yeah, this is what we're shooting on Mississippi burning. Every church burning, every lynching, every gang torture, murder, rape, anything we could do that first week, we're filming that. And then we're going to do all the Franny McDormand talking scenes at the end of the movie. You know, we're going to do that at the end of the shoot. So this is the first week when studios are looking over their shoulders to see what Harold Remus is doing. So they get some Ned scenes, they get some Andy scenes in there and they get this huge comic nut scene with Bill going nuts. And Harold Remus said to Danny Rubin the writer, he said, we have to decide what kind of movie we're shooting.

24:23 What's the story we're telling? He says, is this a story about builds just having no consequences? He says, this is a story about man and how we used the time of our life. And Harold Remus took that footage and threw it away. Just a week, they're looking over his shoulder and threw it away. And he told Danny Rubin, he said, I am a practicing Buddhist. And we believe that it takes 10,000 years to perfect a human soul. And that is the story we're telling in Groundhog Day, the perfection of the human soul. And so that came into the movie kind of after we started shooting.

25:04 And a lot of rewrites started happening then. And it developed this rich kind of philosophical texture after that. That's the best part of it too, to me. Well, and that was some of the tension between Bill and Harold as well, right? Because Bill kind of wanted broad comedy and Harold was going, I want to tell the Buddhist story. I don't know anything about that. I all I know is that in every scene I had with Bill, he's one of the best actors I've ever worked with. He was in the moment every shot, every take. That's awesome. Did you, so did y'all film all of your shot? Like you said, it was nine times. Is it just one after another? It was even more amazing than that because Harold Ramos had not decided what the day of the movie would be because Groundhog Day, the day has to be repeated meteorologically.

25:56 So Bill and I had no schedule. We were on Will Notifies, which meant if it rained, we were called to the town square. Let's redo the street, first street scene in the, which was our longest scene. Redo. Let's do it in the rain. It's snowed. Let's redo it in the snow. In the gloom. Let's do it. It's sunshine. Let's do it. And so we were always running down to the town square. And I think that the propositional feeling of like you got to be ready at any second to jump down there and do the big scenes also helped give Groundhog Day kind of a bit of a jolt. I had a question about one of those scenes that is when Bill hugs net and propositions him.

26:37 I saw on a video or something that Harold had given Bill that note like go do something to him. Don't tell him what it is. Is that true? That was an improv. Yeah. See, I didn't hear that. No, that's just the other piece of the puzzle I knew Harold was behind this somehow, but I didn't know how people always assumed that Bill and I did a lot of improvisation. We did very little improvisation, except that scene, which wasn't in the script. So Harold Ramos had, Harold always believed, and this is something for young directors out there. Listen to Harold Ramos because he's a genius. Harold said comedy lives in the two shot, not in the singles two shots.

27:20 So Harold had already set up the cameras over our shoulders, over Bill shoulder, my shoulder, and just, he said, Stephen, meet here and Bill, meet you there. We had no idea what was, I had no idea what was going to happen. And Bill started that thing. And it's the only scene that we had in the movie that was improvised. And I had no idea what it was. And Bill's like, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I run off with the sick and Harold Ramos goes, cut print. And I said, do we have to do any? He says, we got it all, man. That's it. We're moving on. That's awesome. So that was it.

28:01 Yeah. You absolutely got it. That was such an incredible reaction by you as Ned and by you. Shame on them both. Oh, my God. It's incredible. And I actually did have a question about improv, so I'm guessing that a lot of the Ned stuff was on the page. I'm a right. Like, there wasn't that you didn't, that was not character embellishments. That was on the page. It was character embellishment, but it was on partly on the page, you know. And some of it was based on my insurance salesman, Dennis Sokel was our insurance guy. And you know, Dennis was this really kind of high energy kind of guy. So anyway, we have some whole premium life and you're going to really want that Stephen because now you're married, you have a child, you're going to need whole premium life.

28:49 That's really what you're going to need. So anyway, I kind of morphed a little bit of Dennis in there and I remember when the movie came out, I get a phone call from Dennis Sokel and go, Stephen, I just saw your movie Groundhog Day and I had no idea you were playing an insurance salesman. And I got to tell you, it's wonderful. Most of the time when I go to movies, people are making fun of insurance salesmen. But at least, you know, you at least made insurance salesmen look good. Honest portrait. And you didn't even do a ride along with him as an insurance to get into character. No, no, no. You know, we both Bill and I kind of I talked to Harold Ramos, I remember after the first take went remarkably good in the street.

29:36 And I remember I talked to him, I said, Harold, am I too broad? I mean, I feel I'm huge on this. And he said, Stephen, you know, the Schlamir and the Schlamazal in Jewish comment, the Schlamir is the guy who spills soup. The Schlamazal is the guy who gets the soup spilled on you are the Schlamir, Bill is the Schlamazal. Put another way in comedy, you have one guy who has to represent the world and one guy who represents the aberrant force in the world. Bill has to be the world in this, so he cannot be broad. You are the aberrant force, you do whatever you want to him, whatever you want.

30:21 He nailed it too, because you killed it, I'm telling you. And it was great, man. Ned Ryerson is such a chaos agent in that movie, it's delightful, it's a great character. And it comes in at a very unique time in the script, which is so cool in terms of because you get the idea what the story is before you get the first Ned Ryerson. And so it's really kind of like a new act one, where you realize this Ned Ryerson is going to be an apparition that haunts Bill for the rest of eternity. You know, it's very cool the way it comes into the script, it's good stuff. One question I've always had about this movie, literally since I was a teenager, watch out for that first step.

31:04 It's a doozy. Did they reuse that same take of you or did you just do that exactly the same of a bunch of times? They didn't reuse anything. We re-shot everything and it's hilarious. When we did the water, again, that was another scene that we did in all sorts of weather conditions, because and Bill really hated that scene. It was so cold, I can't even tell you how cold it was. It was so cold that it couldn't snow. It couldn't snow. It was so cold. It was freezing. Below, I mean, your hands would just, so we all had these packets in our shoes, in our hands, in our hands.

31:50 They weren't like the deer hunters used, all this stuff to try to keep us alive. And Bill had to wrap his foot, first of all, in Saran wrap. And then he put this neoprene sleeve over the bottom of his leg where the skin divers used, then he covered it with socks, and then he covered it with his pants. And the instant, you know, he stepped in that water, which was a man-made puddle, and they sprinkled styrofoam, flax on top of it, so it would look like ice or snow. As soon as that shot was over, it was the torrent of expletives, as we call it. A virtual waterfall of every, every vicious expletive to our God in heaven and to Satan below.

32:35 And Bill was not happy in the, he, you know, hopped back into the room behind us, the storefront, and the ladies from costume and makeup had blow dryers on heavy, on super hot. And they were blow dry in his foot, so he would avoid amputation. That's awesome. Yeah. Every time. Every time. That's incredible. That spot in the street of Woodstock, Illinois, by the way, Stephen. They're now as a plaque with Bill's footprint in it. Yeah. And there's one on the building behind that says Ned's corner. There you go. That is absolutely incredible. Well, well, look, man, you've been very generous with your time, and I want to take up too much of it. You, you get for one more question, and then we'll, yeah, let's do, let's do another one.

33:19 Then I'm going to pick up that grand baby again. Do not blame you. We end every episode on these 30-year movies, asking the same five questions of each other. You know, is it worth watching? Who, would we recast it, you know, is it good for kids, you know, basically does it, does it work in the modern era? And I wanted to ask you one of those questions, which is, could we still make this movie? Would someone pitch and make a broad comedy like Groundhog Day? I think they could. And, of course, they'd have to have an amazing script, which Groundhog Day did. It wasn't just a rom-com, but rom-com was substance. And what you touch on, too, is fascinating, because I think one of the staying powers of Groundhog Day is that we shot it in the coldest place in the world, you know, in the winter.

34:04 And so we were wearing winter clothes and not spring or summer clothes. So the fashions were covered up. So it dizzy. So the hairstyles were covered, the big shoulder pads were gone. All you had were people wearing puffer vest and toboggan caps and scarves. So it looks the same as it does now. So yeah, you could do it now. Let's get a good script and get somebody who has, you know, kind of the magic, the bill and Andy did and all that. Harold Raimis, my God. Yeah, because Jeff and I are very eager for the return of broad comedies to the theaters. It seems like they go straight to Netflix or, you know what I'm saying, they're not, or they're, or they're pressed each TV. It's a different year. And when they shoot for Netflix, and when they shoot for television, the same shots are in it.

34:49 You know, they don't have the long shots. They don't have the vista shots. A lot of it is just two shots, close ups, every, it's television. I don't like, I want to be able to sit in there and laugh and eat popcorn. Watching Groundhog Day in the theater, man, last week, I can't tell you how much better and experience it is to have people laugh and read in popcorn. I was like, this is, I wish we could screen every podcast movie in the theater. It's incredible. The last time I saw Groundhog Day for real was at the Academy. And they were honoring Groundhog Day for, I guess, 25 years or something like that. And they brought several people who were in the show to be there and to answer questions and stuff on stage. So they had me there, they, they had to come. But they also had the little girl who was having piano lessons, who gets thrown out of piano lessons by Bill Murray.

35:34 And the entire audience of all these actors, producers, directors, when they introduced her, gave her a standing ovation. That's true. It was a grown woman, of course, and when they showed the movie and she came on screen, everybody started screaming and applauding. It was a wonderful experience. That's awesome. Amazing. Well, listen, man, thank you so much for your time. We have thoroughly enjoyed your work in this movie and when we did sneakers last year and it's been an absolute delight talking with you. Good talking to you guys. I really enjoyed Groundhog Day. It was a wonderful experience. All right, anyway, this movie that Jeff gave a nine and a half and I gave a 10, let's get into the best.

36:16 It's pretty much all best. I got almost nothing for worst. So I don't have anything for worst or much for worst either. Best scenes, my first best scene is Phil Bill Murray at the bar and then the car chase scene with Gus and Ralph. Oh, the bar at the, at the, at the bowling alley. Yes. Like, dude, I was in the Virgin Islands once I met a girl. We had lobster drink, penny coladas at sunset. We made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. I couldn't get that day over and over again. Oh, man. Like, from that point to then it's like, if we wanted to hit mailbox, we could have let Ralph drive. Yeah. He, uh, dude, man. And then, dude, he's freaking don't drive on the train tracks.

36:58 That's when I happen to agree with Phil. Yeah. And like, I'm betting he's going to swerve as he's freaking driving towards the train. Just seven great quotes in a two minute stretch and then he gets pulled over by the cop. And of course he's like, and some flap jacks is too early for flap, too early for flap jacks. Man. It's the first night that he figures out that living in the time loop is actually has some benefits, which is that he could do whatever he wants. And there's no consequences. Yeah. Because he goes to sleep in prison and he wakes up in his freaking hotel room to sunny and share. Right. Which leads me to my favorite best scene. And I hope that it's okay that I'm picking a scene that reoccurs over and over. Because the part where he talks to Miss Lancaster.

37:41 Miss Lancaster. Yeah. Do you ever have Deja Vu, Miss Lancaster? Why don't you? I don't think so. I don't think so. But I'll check in the kitchen. Dude. And when he's like, uh, did you see a tall gentleman with a, like, nightstick and hat? I was like, oh, god, did like state official? Yeah. I don't know. Like the way he mined nightstick, yeah, seared into my brain. I don't know why. Dude, every encounter with her and are you going to check out today, Mr. Connors? Chance of departure. 80%. 80%. And then he's like, 75, 80, 70, like that turn around like he's already starting to walk out of the door and he turns around and says, like, 75, 80, like you can tell it's, it's really good.

38:24 Dude, and that part, I mean, that to me is like, that's how genius the writing is. Because the, like that's a callback to the day before, which only he remembers, like they get in this big, long thing where like, he asks, she asks about the weather, just be nice. He's a weather man. So he launched into this whole thing. Well, that's going to accumulate up at high outs and we're going to get a little, and dude, and he does it freaking so perfectly. He's like, teens today, uh, 30s at later at night, chance of precipitation tomorrow. And did you want to talk about the weather or were you just making all of this moisture coming out of the South that's going to push off to the East, hit out too. So the next day, they don't have the weather conversation, and he goes like, chance of departure today, he's calling back to the day before, but only he was there. It's such a genius. Yeah.

39:04 Yeah. Cause she's like, you know, where you can check out chance of departure 100% and then the next day it's 80, seven, 75, 75, 80. Yeah. It's just, and this movie's so well written and so well acted and so well edited and so well shot and it's a fricking wall to wall jams. What about, uh, yo, mama, no hot water, oh, there wouldn't be today, okay, and he's like, all right, and she just walks off, oh man. One scene that that was happened in the bed and breakfast that didn't make my top three, but that was very close was the fricking Jeopardy scene. Oh, one with a finger like, he's like, swigging out of a bottle of jim bean. What is Teddy Caca?

39:45 And they're all clapping. He's freaking eyeball in the old people while drinking Jack Daniels or whatever while answering. And dude, cause he's like sitting in the freaking easy chair and they're all like looking at him. Like he's like drinking out of the bottle, he puts the bottle down and he turns and the guy's not even finished reading like, he's not, I like to back not even finished reading the question and he's like, what are the finger likes, like just staring right into the guy's eyes. So good. What's your next best scene? Uh, my next one, I think is Ned Ryerson all, all the scenes with, uh, Steven Topelowski, cause you mean the sidewalk scenes or every single that scene he was in in the movie? No, no, all those sidewalk scenes were a meeting every time.

40:26 The Bing Bing again, like that, I, so I used to quote that way more than I do now. Yeah. But ever since I watched this again, like whatever day it was Tuesday, like the kids will ask me something in class and they're like, hey, is this right? I was supposed to do that. I was like, Bing, you got it, buddy. And they're like, um, okay, thanks and then just walk off like even when I was telling people, hey guys, we might get Steven Topelowski to come on the podcast. It's ridiculous. And like who's that again? I was like, he's the guy, please, Ned Ryerson. Like don't, don't say you don't remember him, cause he sure is heckfire, remember you. And they're like, what? I'm like, yeah, case Western high, buddy, case Western high, come on, buddy. Did the Whistling belly button trick senior year Bing, did your sister marry Kate a couple of times until you told me to shop Bing again?

41:12 Oh man, dude, I, all those scenes are incredible and, uh, and Steven just, I don't know how much of the interview we're going to edit, we had way more time than with him than we expected. We're not going to run the whole thing. So I may be repeating some of the stuff he actually talked about, but he said like they filmed all those back to back to back to back and in all the different weather conditions cause they, so much of the movie was outdoors, they didn't know what kind of weather they were going to have. So like if it was cold, they filmed, sunny, they filmed, it was raining, they filmed. So they just shot all of those scenes like him and Bill, yeah, right from the, right from the jump. And dude, yeah, we should leave that in there. That that part was so good. That was cool. Yeah. I never would have thought of that. So what's your second one? My second one is when Phil kidnaps Phil side of your eye side of your eye, dude, that's just, I've quoted that so many times.

41:56 Like Steven Tobelowski talked about him and Bill Murray made a freaking Super Bowl commercial two years ago for Jeep, like parodying that scene, but, but Phil Connors decided like he can't, he's not going to make it. He'll never get out of the time loop and it's the groundhog's fault and he freaking steals the car and he steals the groundhog and his brother Brian Doyle Murray and the cops and Chris Elliott and Annie McDowell all chase after him and dude, he's just, they're, dude, they're screeching around corners with the sirens on and like talking about like, oh, my God, he's really lost it and then it cuts to the truck and he's just like, calm as shit holding the groundhog just going like, just check your mirrors side of your eye side of your eye. That's pretty good. Don't drive angry. I don't drive angry.

42:36 That's pretty good for a quadrupad like he's just freaking chilling, having a good old time with the groundhog. Oh, man. I can't wait to teach Jake at a drive side of your eye side of your driving. I'm going to say it a thousand times. Uh, it's pretty good for a quadrupad and then also the button on that scene is one of my favorite quotes from the movie, which is when he freaking drives the truck into the quarry and it goes down like 200 feet lands on the top of the cab and gets smushed flat and Chris Elliott who's filming it is like, he might be all right and the freaking truck explodes and he's like, no, probably not now. Dude, I put that down as one of my quotes like how many times if we said that dude, that's one of my quotes too. I've said that so many times. Like we watch football people will get hurt and like he might be okay and then they'll show the replay and I'm like, ooh, probably not now, no, cats like we got it.

43:25 We got it. Chris Elliott, I mean, he, he had a really high batting average in this movie. He had a bunch of killer lines. Yeah. Look at Foxy tonight. It's just, it's so good to be selling cookies. Yeah. So that was my second scene, which is your second one is Ned Ryerson. Right. Ned Ryerson. My third is the montage in the middle, the, the him going through over and over and over trying to get, get down in his mind, all the things that Andy McDowell love so he could fix it. Yeah. When he's trying to trick her into having a perfect day by just doing it a million times. Right. And, and because he, because he starts to get really good at it, he gets all the way to the end of the night and he's like, he says it out loud.

44:11 He's like, whatever it is, like no white chocolate, no, no fudge. No fudge. Yeah. That's what it is. Back to the tune of one of my favorite Ray Charles songs. You don't know me that I can't not put that in there, man. That's, that's a great, that's a great scene. And also, man, like, and it ends with a little, like, quick cut montage of her slapping in a million times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And for whatever reason, my whole life, whenever I would see that scene, I would always think about video games, like you get, when you were little or you get stuck on a video game, you just keep playing the same level, it's like, well, I gotta do this exactly right. And then right here, I gotta jump. Yeah. And then like, you just do it a hundred times until you memorize every single movie of to make to get through that level. And that little scene is like a perfect film encapsulation of what that's like, playing video games.

44:54 Yeah, dude. And even he says it. He's like, maybe the real God's not, I'm nipping it, maybe he's just been around for so long. Yeah. He knows everything. Maybe just use his tricks. Yeah. That's fantastic. So what's your third? That's a great scene. Uh, my third is the kind of last, the kind of the last scene at the dance, the final kind of, uh, like penultimate scene in the third act, like Phil's actually a great guy. Like he's, dude, he's, he's at the, like, uh, any McDowell and Chris Elleator at the bar and Chris Elle, he's like trying to flirt with frickin' Nancy really badly. Yeah. And they walk in. It's like, oh, I think Phil's already in there and they go in and he's frickin' jammin' out on the piano. He's got sunglasses on. He's wearin' the frickin' button up collar shirt without the collar. Yeah.

45:35 And, and dude, and he's dancing with any McDowell and everyone's like, congratulations. Like, hey, man, thanks so much for fixing my back. It's like, I was gonna choke to death. You got his WrestleMania tickets, like you fixed my car tire. And she was like, what is happening? And he was like, I really don't know, honestly. Dude. He's like, thank you, Dr. Connors. And she was like, Dr. Connors. It's kind of a very title. It's the guy from the Motor Club. He's the fastest track in Jefferson County. Dude, now I can't think of his friggin' name. The guy that won the WrestleMania or got the WrestleMania tickets, uh, that was his first movie. Yeah. Michael Shannon. Michael Shannon, this, this first, uh, debut for cinematic, uh, movie and dude. And then she bids on him.

46:17 Yeah. For, for the, uh, a date with him. And that's, oh man. Great stuff. Yeah. But, I mean, I like that as the kind of a great ending to the movie because it's taken in whatever 10 years or 40 years or 10,000 years, but he actually has gone from being a totally self-involved, egocentric, shitty person to a genuinely great guy who plays at piano and like fixes people's backs and can, no CPR and catches kids coming out of catches kids. You've never thanked me. You've never thanked me. I'll see you tomorrow. Maybe. Maybe. Oh God. So I, it's the transformation, right? Like it's his character. It took him a lot longer because he was way shittier to begin with, but he became a great person. Yeah.

46:57 He tried to fake it for a while. It didn't work. And then he just actually did it. And they were talking like, like that thing, that sequence that he took, that's the, um, coupler, Ross model or whatever it's called, uh, the five stages of death and dying, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, bargaining, depression, acceptance, I think, as a way, because, but like, they, that's, that's kind of like what they used. I was reading. Yeah, the five stages of grief that he had to go through, that's like, I'm not actually getting out of here. I better just actually be a, use my time wisely. I'm going to cry forever. And when he's sitting there and he's like, gust of wind, dog barks, cue Doris, fix your brawny, like, Felix, yeah, like that's, God, it's so good, so good.

47:42 What's your, what's your third favorite scene? Did you get your third? Yeah, that's, so I got Ned Ryerson, Mrs. Lancaster and the montage. Oh, yes. I mean, it's hard, it is hard to pick scenes for this because so much of it is repeated, but, um, but it's funny, we didn't have any of the same ones. The repeated part and how it changes each time is part of the thing I like about it. Oh, yeah. Well, it's cool to see all the actors too because it takes a really good acting and really good directing and really good writing because they all come back and do the almost the same thing, but slightly different as the day is like one more day. Right. Yeah, that's what Stephen told us he was saying, like, you got to turn on the same foot, you got to raise your hand the same way, you get to point the same way. Yeah. And not only that, but like in the background, like the car has to, has to come through the background at the exact same time.

48:24 Textures have to be holding the bag in the same hand as they were. Right. There's so much stuff. There's a continuity expert on the thing that was pulling their hair out. I'm sure there was our quotes. That's the rest of my paper is just filled with quotes. Yeah. I have like four pages of quotes. I just, I'm just going to do the ones that, so this is what I'm going to do. Instead of giving you three that I tried to narrow down, all right, I want to do the ones that I quote the most still. Yeah. I have top three and then I have like seven bonus, bonus entry. Give me one of yours. My first one is when we already said is he might be okay and then they truck blows up. Yeah. No. Probably not now. Chris Elliott as Larry, the camera guy, after Phil Lacks Groundhog drives into the quarry.

49:08 Larry the camera guy. Even before he was a cable guy, he was a camera guy. When Rita asks him, do you ever have deja vu and he says, didn't you just ask me that? I do that once a month when somebody asked me that because you know, I'm interacting with two hundred eighteen year olds all the time and they learn about something like deja vu or somebody talks about it in one of their other classes and they start asking me and I say that and it never fails to not get nobody ever laughs ever. They don't get it. They don't understand the reference. No. They don't get it. I'm horribly wasted where I'm at.

49:49 Yes. That's why we do the podcasts. Right. You can do those jokes here where people appreciate them. Nice. My next quote is another one that I've already done, which is when Phil is driving with the Groundhog and he just is saying, don't drive angry. Remember, check your mirrors side of your eye. Side of your eye. That's pretty good for a quadrupad. Yeah. Those are all quotes that he does in the truck that I freaking, I also have that. And do there's still so, there's still so, I mean, like we say in the outro of the podcast and remember, don't drive angry. Right. It's in the podcast. Yeah. That's how much we say it. Yeah.

50:29 It's ingrained in there. That was definitely one of mine. I don't know if you know, but the Groundhog bit him right after he said that, and they did it so badly that he had to get medical treatment for rabies just to make sure. That's awesome. That is awesome. The Groundhog had a name too. Like it was like Phil, the Groundhog played by like freaking Colleen, the Groundhog. Lassie. I don't know. I didn't see that. I also put side of your eye. Side of your eye. Don't drive angry. All right. What's your next one? My next one is because we're supposed to stand in the hallway and greet everybody when they come in. I almost always say, and I try to say just like him and I go, morning, off to see the Groundhog.

51:16 And they're like, what? Don't mess with me, poor chop. And one day is tonight. And I'm like, think it'll be an early spring. And they're like, what, Mr. Hall, what are you doing? Like, I bring it every time. I don't even think that would make that actor's list of favorite Groundhog Day quotes. No, it definitely wouldn't. But I use it so much, and that's why I put it in here. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. The other one I had is also from Chris Elliott, which is another one that I use a lot. When they're I being him and the freaking morgue, he was a really great guy. We are really, really liked him a lot. I tried to find a clip of it on YouTube, and I legit could not, and I'm so angry at it.

51:57 Oh, man, that's funny, I clip. Just because we really, really liked him a lot. Dude, when he did a fantastic job, he did a great job. And when they wanted to, you want to come to the Groundhog dinner? No, thanks. I had Groundhog for lunch. I've seen Larry E. Ah, like, dude, man, just everything with Larry, he was good. That's stuff. Dude, I don't know how this movie can be so, like, thought-provoking, and also be that jam-packed full of hilarious dialogue. Yeah. And we talked about this in other movies. What do you think makes it so portable? Is it because we like it so much, or it hits the funny bone that we think that stuff is funny?

52:42 Yeah, I don't know. Like, it's weird because it's not like comedy's universally. You can say something really funny, and someone who has a totally different set of experience than you might, or that has no real sense of humor might go like, I don't get it. But I mean, there are definitely people who are graded it. You know, like, like Harold Raimis is a great at comedy, Bill Murray is great at comedy. Mel Brooks is great at comedy, Adam Sandler is great at comedy, Mike Myers is great at comedy. Doesn't mean that everybody likes all of them. Like, my mom, the whole time I was growing up, thought that the Simpsons was so dumb. Yeah. And like, my brother and I never stopped watching it and never stopped quoting it. I have no stopped 30 years later. So I don't know, man. Yeah. For instance, Kat saw this movie twice in her whole life, hates hates it.

53:26 White had it fired a thousand sons. I'm talking to her about it this morning, like we're getting ready for work and talking about it. And I'm like, so when's the last time you saw it? I don't know. It's so stupid. I don't want to watch it. And I'm like, but what don't you like about it? Like, like, you really should watch it again. All right. I'll watch it again. So I'm going to make the whole family watch it. Oh, yeah. I'll make sure to tell you what they thought. I've made a bunch of people that I really like that have good senses of humor sit with me and watch the movie, I spy, which you and I both love and will and no one ever thinks it's funny. And I'm doubled over. Godaz! The fly has jacket. All right. Killer Rob's and ain't going to nobody at no dinner clock. Rip.

54:07 Ain't no party. Kelly Rob's ain't going to go in to another, eleven o'clock. Now, when you get up sit down, well, I got ice on it, that probably helps. Godaz! Godaz! The fly has jacket. You can hear a hard, much. Oh, man. What? I want to watch that movie now. I do that. If only this podcast makes it to 2000 or 2001 or 2002 or whenever that movie is because I love it so much. But I'm saying like, that movie should be universally beloved and lauded as a frickin touchstone of American comedy. And it's definitely not. No one likes it. But me and you and Will. Right. There's 11 people.

54:47 I don't know. I figure out what it is. I mean, I know you're like you said, it's just different types of comedy, like different people laugh at different things, but man, I just can't believe somebody wouldn't like this movie or think it's as funny as we do, like it's so good. I think the good news is that humor being subjective is going to be one thing that makes it hard for AI to take over for us because if everyone doesn't laugh at the same stuff, you can't program a computer to make consistently funny stuff. You can keep trying though and have it make really bad jokes over and over, which if you ask AI to make some jokes, it does make really bad jokes over and over. Yes, it does. All right. I got some bonus quotes. Some of them I've already frickin said.

55:27 Yeah. Do the thing. Tell me some more. I got a couple more too. Let's see. Oh, dude. This is one that I, it's not funny, but I just frickin love it when Phil's having his frickin meltdown while doing the groundhog recording and he's like starting to go off the deep in. Yeah. A thousand people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat. What a hype. Groundhog. They used to mean something in this town. They used to pull the hog out and they used to eat it. You're hypocrites. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Fantastic. Dude, that one never fails to make me laugh because when he says you're hypocrites, he looks away from the camera. He's like looking at the town. You're hypocrites. He's like, y'all. You're all the people. Ah, so great.

56:08 Speaking of that, I have on here because I do this, um, I mean, I'll do it very often. Because I'm not, this is not good. But when I count down, I'm like, all right, guys, look, I'm giving the ACT test. I'm like, oh, yeah, you got, you got, make sure you finish up. You have three, two, one, all right, put your pencils down and I do that. I count down. You do the middle finger. Larry, you shoot the bird on the, on the one. And then the only other one that I had that I, uh, I don't say a lot, but I think about all the time is like, uh, there's a snowing in space. Don't you have some lines you can keep over for celebrities or emergencies? I'm both. I'm both. I'm a celebrity in an emergency. Oh, man. Everything, the whole thing is so well-ring.

56:51 Uh, dude, I like the one where he says, uh, I'm a god. I'm a god. I'm an a god. I'm an a god. And then she goes, yeah, this is, trust me, you're not. This is 12 years of Catholic school talking. Uh, I, that hits home for me a little bit. So I, uh, I like that. Yeah, I think she got off the line. I had 13 years of Catholic school. Yeah, she did. The, the other thing is, uh, like when we're playing stuff, uh, like me and the kids are doing some stupid, trying to throw something and something. And he goes, like, you know, when they were throwing the cards, trying to stay awake, and he's like, be the hat, be the, be that, and you'd want to just like, catty shag when he's like, be the ball, like that whole thing. I do that all the time. I'll be like, all right, you got, CC, you got, you got to be the rag, be the rag, throw it and be it.

57:36 And she's like, okay, she has no one I'm talking about. The funny thing is that I, I don't say, be the hat, be the rag or whatever, but I say all the time. You got to want it. Got to want it. What's that? Where do we get that? Cause I do that all the time. That's from that same scene. Oh, yes, it is. Okay. Yeah, it's like, got to want it. But dude, like, if, if I'm playing golf, which I never do, cause it's terrible, uh, and someone is like, you got to want it. Got to want it. Got to want it. But dude, playing basketball, somebody shooting free throws and they missed like 300. I'm like, you got to want it. Got to be the ball. That's how Wolfie's like, uh, going to put his clothes in the hamper and he freaking misses 90% of the time. Like, come on buddy. You got to want it. Got to be, got to be the clothes. That's awesome. I want to do, do, do other people do that by the way, you think, like, bring up quotes in context to make them fit and it makes it sound like you said it or do people just yell out quotes.

58:23 I don't think anyone does that as much as you do that. Like, I know the quotes, but if, if I don't, if I'm not talking to someone that I think would also know the quotes, I don't use the quotes. I use the quotes just because I think it's going to be funnier. No, I love that about you, but I'm just saying like, I drop quotes with you and with my brother and with people like that are going to get the quotes, but I'm just talking that friggin civilians, normal people. I just talk to normal person and I don't drop a bunch of quotes on them that they're not going to know. Civilians. Like one of my buddies posted on Facebook the other day has been posting like Simpsons memes and he posted one about car holes and they just frickin typed in there and was like, he's running account for jeans operation out of his car hole. Car hole. Oh man. Cut that out. Those things give you a homework answer. I mean, give you cans of home man freaking what a great episode.

59:05 I forgot about that one. That's so good. All right. Characters. My number one character is Bill Murray. Yeah, absolutely. Phil Connors kills it. I think like Bill Murray was obviously a comedy legend at this point. He done SNL. He done Caddy Shack. He done stripes. Yeah. Everybody knew Bill Murray was one of the funniest people in the world, yeah, totally. But I think this is maybe the first time we see him do more than just like straight broad comedy. I actually got to play a character that had some depth that had some range that like had some pathos. And he even said, you know, this, I think the reporting is that the struggle between him and Harold Raimus during the filming was that he wanted this to be just straight comedy and Harold Raimus really wanted to get into the fills the fills off. Yeah.

59:45 He wanted both. Yeah. Yeah. But in like 20 years later, Bill Murray's like, I think that's the best work I've ever done. I think it's the best work that Harold's ever done. And it kind of set the stage for the second half of his career where you got to do more like frickin weird stuff and Wes Anderson stuff, but he's been able to play character like loss and translation where you got to play characters who like weren't just like kind of cornballs. And even in those movies, though, the comedy, Bill Murray is still under all of that. And you can, you can tell they he's just a funny dude. Yeah, dude. He's always funny, but he's able to do more than that. And I think this is the first movie we saw him be able to do more than that. But he was so frickin genius for this, for this part. I love me some Bill Murray. And he's so believable, he's so believable as a dick early in the movie.

1:00:27 Right. He's curious. And then he's like, you know, you believe at the end that frickin any McDowell fell in love with him because he's awesome with piano and he's like frickin fixing people's backs and everyone loves him. People are morons. People like blood sausage. Listen here, do speaking of which, have you ever had a sweet vermouth on the rocks with the twists? When I went to see the 20th anniversary of Groundhog Day at the Belcourt here in Nashville, they always have a drink pairing with the midnight movies. And that's drink pairing was sweet vermouth on the rocks with the twist. You get it. I didn't order one because it was like $9, but I took a sip of some ones that I was there with. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. I don't like the face Bill Murray makes when he drinks that.

1:01:08 He fits it back in the proper face. Yeah. It's bad news. Yeah. All right. So you got Bill Murray is your first. Bill Murray. Yeah. My second is Andy McDowell. Nice. You know, my type. She was, she hit all that. She was mugging hot. I thought. And then I thought she played it really good. She like turned on her accent or something like she was like extra, I don't know, sounded southern or something. I really liked it. And just the way she played it, she didn't want to let him get too close. And then when she started to see all of the things about him, she, uh, she turned the corner. And I liked how she changed too. And it was good. Andy McDowell was in a couple of my favorite comedies growing up.

1:01:49 She's in this. She's in multiple movies that I've seen 25 times. She touched my baby Steve. And she touched my baby Steve. And I never loved her in those movies. I kind of thought like, man, she's kind of holding things back a little bit. And I think now that I'm older, I have a more appreciation for what she was doing, what she's doing in these movies, because I think that it's got to be really hard to be the straight person next to like, wacky Bill Murray, and she does such a good job of that. All of that stuff going on around her, like she grounds it so well with their performance. And I actually, so I really appreciate her as an actor now when I didn't, when I was young girls. God, Andy McDowell is such a fricking wet dish towel of an actor, you know, I'm like, she's doing it perfectly. She's keeping it like right here, well, they're doing crazy shit.

1:02:31 Dude, imagine having to keep a straight face while friggin Bill Murray and Chris Elliott go back and forth right there in the bar. Yeah. Or dude, when he takes the entire fricking cupcake and shoving his mouth with a cigarette in his other hand. What a friggin. My second character is Steven Tobolowski, Ned Ryerson. Oh man. He's my third. It's a genius performance by one of the finest character actors of my life. It's so spot on. It's so funny. It's so memorable. It's so, he's so perfectly plays the annoying persistent insurance agent. And when people quote stuff from this movie, a big chunk of it is his stuff. Dude, when I told people we're doing ground on day for the podcast, a lot of people were throwing Ned Ryerson quotes that.

1:03:16 Yeah, of course. Awesome man. His delivery is so fantastic that it's just, it's great. That's really good. And he talks about in our interview, which we may or may not play this part of, he was asking Harold Ramos if he was, if he was going too broad with it, if it wasn't like way too big of a performance and Harold Ramos is like, no, no, you're perfect. Yeah. That's the genius of Harold Ramos, because I can easily see how an actor might have felt like, man, this is really broad. And Harold is like, no, you're doing exactly what I want. Exactly. Like, don't do less of that. That's right where I want you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Steven Tobolowski is my third. Who's your third? My third is Chris Elliott. Oh, he's so good. Larry, the camera guy. But he's not like, I mean, you know, he's like the, whatever fifth lead of this movie or something.

1:03:57 Yeah. He's just got some, he's got some amazing quotes, some great deliveries. And he's in a lot of it. Yeah, he is. Like, he's sometimes is the straight man to, uh, to Bill Murray. And then sometimes he's cracking jokes. And he's, dude, he delivers it deadpan. Yeah. He was a really great guy. We really, really liked him a lot. Why would anybody still a crown hog? I could think of a couple of reasons. Perfect. Oh, man, like I don't, yeah, I don't get it out. People can be. Did he actually call himself the talent? Like, all it pretty with goddess like all of us on us. And dude, he does the freaking thing. He's like trying to hit on Nancy at the bar.

1:04:39 And he's like, oh, yeah, I'll go in there with you. And she turns leaves. Let me just drop a tip real quick. And he throws like three ones on the bar. And then as soon as she leaves, he goes and grabs back to the bar. Yeah. Oh, man. That stuff. And then he goes into the frickin the dance. And he's like trying to put his arm around or real casual like. And she just kind of flings it off. And he's just like sticks at this pocket. He just keeps dancing. Yeah. Yeah. He just had so much. He had so many moments where he's like, God, that guy's so funny. Yeah. Cause he's like talking to her. And he's like, yeah, people don't, people don't know what's involved. Like, it's an organ. I just point the camera. Yeah. There's a lot more to it. I'm an artist. Yeah. Larry was fantastic. That was a good choice. I just, I wish there was four because I would add him to. I like to add any McDowell in what she did.

1:05:19 Yeah. Dude, I'm glad that you recognized her. We need to figure out when we can get, I mean, Chris Elliott to come on the podcast. Yeah. It would be fun. Dude, frickin Kingpin. 1996. There's something about Mary. He's been in a bunch of great movies. All over it. Yeah. He's, he's good. Cool. You want to talk about writer directors? Yeah. The original writer, this was Danny Rubin. Yeah. He came up with the, the, he wrote this as a spec script and then shopped it around. I don't even think he was represented at the time. Yeah. It got picked up. Harold Raimis got attached to direct and the studio wanted to make some changes. So Harold Raimis did some rewrites and then actually I think he, he and Danny Rubin actually buttered heads over the kind of direction of it. Right. Because the script that Danny Rubin had originally shopped was pretty, um, like kind of art housey.

1:06:00 You know, like it started in the middle of the time loop. They never never got a guy there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he really wanted to keep, he didn't want to be like a formulaic romcom or just a broad comedy. But Harold Raimis was obligated to the studio to deliver that and they tried to, and honestly, man, they threaded the needle perfectly, but I could see why if you wrote this thing that you thought was really groundbreaking, uh, you wouldn't want anyone to be with it. Right. Yeah. Agreed. I mean, personally, it's like if I wrote something and Harold Raimis wants to make it funnier, I'm not going to say shit to him. Yeah. Let him let him do his thing. But, uh, yeah, but that's, you know, that's his, that's his thing. I'm sure that was his. Yeah. The first movie that he got credit for writing. So like he's probably been working on that forever. Yeah. And I mean, he got a bathtub for a best screenplay, you know, uh, speaking of Danny Rubin wrote a book in 2012 and the title of it is How to Write Groundhog Day.

1:06:49 That's awesome. I need to get that. I want to write Groundhog Day. He also wrote the Italian remake of Groundhog Day, by the way, nine, two, seven, four. Uh, Harold Raimis, I didn't even, I didn't even Wikipedia him because it's just like, dude, that's Egon Spangler. Yeah. That's friggin stripes. That's meatballs. Yeah, but you know that. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Can I just list off the movies? He directed. Yeah. Yeah, National Empence Vacation, Club Paradise Groundhog Day, Stewart Saves his family, multiplicity, analyze this, bedazzled, analyze that. Yeah, dude. Are you kidding? That's like, yeah, a wheelhouse of wonderful movies right through our entire childhood into our young adulthood that we quoted constantly.

1:07:34 Absolutely. And like, it was a great actor. Was a great hilarious actor who would drop into stuff for an episode or two or have a little cameo in a movie and you're like, dude, he's great. He's super funny. And they would just go off and like write or direct something incredible. He was the doctor in the movie with, uh, Uncle Jack, people who speak in metaphor should shampoo my crotch as good as it gets. As good as it gets. Yeah. Great, great shit. But he wrote animal house meatballs, stripes, ghostbusters back to school, armed and dangerous. Caddyshack too, ghostbusters too, like come on, man. That's ridiculous. I mean, he's a, he's a Titan. There's no, no question. I don't know.

1:08:15 What else? You got any other good? I think I have a couple more good that I want to mention. Yeah, go ahead, man. It's one. Let me go. Not deep gut. Tom Melonovich is the guy that tells him you're wearing that, uh, precipitation on your head. That guy, that stage trooper was the guy in rookie of the year later this year. Nice. That hits the home run or that strikes out trying to hit the home run, the big guy, he does, or whatever his name was. That's him playing that, that part. And then the last thing, the last thing is, um, the winning bid for Phil Connors was $339.88. Uh, an amount that appears to be arbitrary.

1:08:56 But if the decimal is dropped, that means it's 33,98 days. And that works out precisely to 93 years and 43 days minus a minute. So from January 1st, 1900, not counting leap days, 93 years and 43 days ends on February 12, 1993, the day groundhog day was released in theaters. That's weird. That is awesome. I think that's total bullshit, but I still like that math. Oh, also, I put this in here and I forgot about it. The last time it's February 2nd and, uh, Phil has been like, uh, ice sculpting and he turns and kisses her and it starts to snow and he like pulls back just a little bit.

1:09:43 Um, like when I saw that, like he was looking at the snow and I was like, wow, I don't remember why would he then I realized like it maybe didn't snow the last time that happened. And that's for shadowing that the loop's broken. And he's, because he, he like gets a, he feels different. It's like, uh, it's a wonderful life when the snow starts to fall. Yeah. It shows George that he's back in reality. So like, that's pretty cool. I didn't really have any worse for this. I thought that maybe there'd be some like jokes that would be inappropriate, but honestly, there was. I think I even noticed any unless you don't like, uh, making fun of groundhogs, uh, other than that. Yeah. I think every joke that you told this movie, you can still tell.

1:10:24 And it's definitely still funny because I just laughed my ass off about it like six days ago. Yeah. And again, when we send it out loud. Yeah. And again, 20 minutes ago, when we imitated repeated the quotes, yeah, I don't have any worse either. And old tech, honestly, uh, Steven Tobelowski said it like the movie shot and winter. They're all wearing like winter clothes. There's not really even any dated fashion. It's before the era of cell phones. So it's not like anyone's holding an old cell phone. It's just like there's no phones in this movie. Right. I get actually, there's no really old tech, honestly, except he's talking on a payphone. Timeless. Timeless, man. Yeah. Even the, um, the alarm clock, that alarm clock just got re-released. The exact one, the Panasonic RX 293 wavehumper, like that, like they re-released that exact one at the 20 year thing and you can still find him.

1:11:16 So five questions. Yeah. Five questions. Is it okay for kids? What age? Dude, don't you think this is for everybody? Uh, absolutely do. Like I can't, I couldn't, I didn't see anything that I wouldn't show CC. Yeah. She's five. But I think all ages. Yeah. Uh, would this movie get made if it were pitched now? Uh, my answer was they kind of already did remake it in 2020 with Andy Samberg. They called it Palm Springs. Yeah. And that one they showed why it happened and I liked the fact that they didn't show why it happened in Groundhog Day. Yeah. And that was a big point of contention. The theater like was insisting that they show why it happened and like, Harold Ramos and Danny Reuben fought back against it. Yeah. And I'm glad they did. That was a great choice. I think not knowing is way better.

1:11:58 Way better. But yeah, that's a really similar movie. And Steven, to Alaska, you just told us that he thinks you totally could reboot this if you had a great script. Right. And I'm going to defer to him on that because he's been doing it for a long time. Way, long time. Yeah. So you would do a movie over a TV show? I would hope so, man. Don't you think? It would get imagine freaking 10 seasons of the same day that would never, that would never fly. It's got to be a movie. I didn't do any recasts. I don't want, I don't, I really like all the people in this. I really do too. And I don't want to redo it, but I did a little bit of recasting because I think the person I got for Phil Connors is Jason Siegel.

1:12:39 Oh, man. Good call. Because he's kind of, he can be kind of grumpy and kind of dickish because he's also really funny. Yeah. I like him. Good call. I thought Annie McDowell's part, I looked around for a little bit. I was trying to find like actions with curly hair and I finally just settled on Margaret quality. I don't know who that is. Do you know who that is? She was in a TV show called The Made, starring alongside Annie McDowell. She's Annie McDowell's daughter. In real life? Yeah. Oh, shit. In real life. In the show and in real life. In the show. Oh, yeah. Wait. I've seen this chick before. She was in the movie with Brad Pitt in the Hollywood movie, wouldn't she? Yeah. That's the chick in that. Yeah. Once upon a time.

1:13:19 Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. So I thought that'd be fun. She's like 28. I think she could, she could probably do it. She's a good actor. Yeah. Totally. Uh, the montage that I like so much. Pump it around. Yeah, that would fit perfect. I wanted to work into our podcast at some point, just like maybe as our sign off, like we in the house, you know, kick it cut close, help me out, and add it up together, add it up together. Eagles of the BB posse. Yeah. We in the house, you know, kick it. What's the extra B stand for? BB B. What's that extra B for? Type out. Oh, man, I, um, can I blend Bobby Brown in Simpsons quotes and some, and make it in work in his podcast?

1:14:04 I don't, my thing is, I make fun of the kids for having bad hip hop Tourette's. And I just realized we have the same problem. It's just not the hip hop that we, it's the hip hop we listen to. I can easily see listening back to fricking the hump it around record. Why my parents thought that was terrible when we went out dude, I listened to good enough the other day. Oh, Bobby, what are we doing, buddy? Uh, yeah, that's, that's super filthy. That is not kid appropriate while we're listening to that. It was fantastic. Can you still watch and enjoy this movie in 2023, uh, I mean, obviously, it's one of my favorite movies ever. Yeah, a thousand times. Yes. Cool. So what else? Nothing else. I think that's it.

1:14:45 We may release the full Steven Tobelowski interview on Patreon. Um, if you guys should listen to that, it's your, if you are on Patreon or if you want to support us, our lowest tier is five bucks a month, we do bonus movies from different years. So I think we're talking about doing the 89 Tim Burton Batman for our first Patreon movie of the year. Yeah. And I think we'll probably also set up like Apple and Buzzsprout both have the way to do paid bonus content. So I think whatever the Patreon content is, I might just duplicate to those places. So anywhere that you want to subscribe, yeah, dude, I'm telling you, even if you do it just for the Steven Tobelowski interview that dudes got tons of stories and he's such a good story teller. Yeah, he's fantastic. So good. Yeah, he's, uh, he went deep on all kind of stuff and he friggin, it was awesome to talk to. But yeah, we'll have some bonus movies coming on Patreon, we'll probably put the full Tobelowski interview up there.

1:15:28 And we'll, I'm going to try to do another in person podcast movie here in Nashville, maybe Jurassic Park the summer, if I can get that set up. So we've got some cool stuff coming. We're going to try to get some more interviews and some more fun guests and, but, you know, a lot of just Jeff and I doing the same old stuff. Yeah, man. And what's, you know, the next movie, right? And he's a proposal. Yes. Is that frickin, uh, Woody Harrelson, uh, Demi Moore, Michael Douglas, uh, Robert, no, Robert Redford. My favorite. Don't have it seen. Sort of set in a room with him and talk. Uh, I haven't seen that movie in so long, so yeah, I think I've only seen it a couple of times. So I think this will be a good rewatch. Uh, that's, it's a pretty big movie for the year.

1:16:08 So like that's, that's totally was. But yeah, I mean, you know, just, just wrapping it up and this is, this is such an incredible movie. It was so cool to talk to Steven. It was so cool to see it in person. Yeah. And I'm honestly so grateful to be able to go back in these, watch these movies and talk about them with my closest and oldest and chubbiest friend and, uh, and then put it out there for people to listen to who then afterwards will say that they listened and enjoyed it. It's friggin. Yeah. It's my favorite thing to do. And, uh, this, this is easily my favorite thing to do and I look forward to it every other week. Yeah. So even though the, the hard part, and I don't even have the hard part, you have the hard part, but even the hard part of like watching it and writing up notes and coming up with stuff to say, I do that.

1:16:49 It's so much fun. It's an absolute blast. And I'm, I'm just really thrilled that we're able to keep doing this and have it so much fun. And I'm excited that we're going to be able to maybe do more stuff this year, maybe get some more video stuff going, maybe get some more patreon stuff going, but, uh, just continue it for it can have an absolute blast with these movies talking to each other. Absolutely. So thank you all for listening. Yeah. Uh, we'll see you in two weeks for indecent proposal. Groundhog day. You can find, uh, have a 4k blue right in my house if anybody wants to come over. The, uh, it was like $3.99 all the places I was looking. So nice. All right. All right, cool. Hi, Candillas. Don't drive angry. Side of your eye. Side of your eye.

1:17:30 Thanks for listening to Movie Life Crisis. Please subscribe, rate and review, and remember, don't drive angry.