Question of the Week – Groundhog Day
One of my favorite movies of all time is Groundhog Day, a 1993 comedy with Bill Murray. In the movie, if you haven’t seen it, Bill Murray wakes up every morning to the same day, literally. Every event from the previous day repeats itself and he is the only one that is aware this is happening. His character spent 10 years like this, reliving the same day. What would you do if tomorrow never came? If what you did today got erased every night and started over every morning? After reading some other people’s answers and thinking about it myself, here’s some of the things I would do:
- Read every book in the library and see every movie in the movie store
- Sit down with a different person each day, talk and learn their life stories
- Make it a goal to try to sneak in and ride every animal in the zoo
- Steal a plane and learn to fly…the hard way.
- Run up to random people each day and scream NOW WE KUNG-FU FIGHT!! and then start fighting them. I would make it a goal to defeat everyone in the city.
- Eat in every restaurant and try everything on the menu at least once.
- Learn piano
- Learn the lottery numbers, play them, win money, and walk around handing people thousands of dollars on the street and see what happens.
- Practice ways of witnessing to people without any fear of how they’ll react
- See how well talking things out with the different gangs in the city would go…
Ok, so that’s some of mine. What would you do on your Groundhog Day??
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I’d watch Groundhog Day everyday.
YESSSS!
You found it.
Now I’m going to waste my day playing with that! : )
Thank you!
Ok. First of all – I love Groundhog Day with my whole body. Its ironically one of the only movies I can watch over and over again without getting tired of it. My favorite bits are when he tries a dozen different ways to kill himself (spoiler alert for those of you who didn’t watch movies 15 years ago – your own fault) and when he tries to pick up Andie McDowell’s character over and over again. Priceless. I like to say a prayer and drink to world peace.
Secondly, as an obsessed fan of GD, I question your assertion that Bill Murray is stuck on the same day for 10 years. After seeing the movie a bazillion times, I always got the impression that it was a few months, MAYBE a year that he was stuck. Long enough to become good at the piano and memorize everyone’s story in town, but short enough to not age. Did I miss a quote in there somewhere about the time?
I love your list Zach. If I lived the same day over and over, I’d:
- eat my weight in chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, marshmallows, and mac n cheese
- hug a polar bear
- tell a couple of key people off
- buy a plane (on credit?) and go to a different city every day and eat their best food and see something unique to that place (can you fly anywhere in the world in 24 hrs? cause i’d like to see antartica and eat some penguin and see some ice)
- try out some drive-by / run-by kissing techniques (I feel that this is similar to your witnessing practice, Zach, just slightly more exciting and useful after you go back to normal life)
- see every film in the top 100 (I know you do that anyway, Zach, but some of us just don’t take the time)
- become amazing at an olympic sport, find a high level competition for that sport somewhere in the world on that day, and break onto the scene as an unknown and unmatched pro, creating mass confusion and hysteria in teenage athletes who’ve been training since infancy
- steal as many diamonds as possible within a 24 hour period, wearing them all at each successive heist (this might seem like it would tip off the jeweler, but I think it’ll just make them excited that you apparently have money and an obviously penchant for bright, shiny things)
- hot air balloon races where you’re barely hovering above the ground and being pulled by a dozen cocker spaniels
- did I mention cat farming yet?
Okay, as someone who has seen Groundhog Day and NOT been in total awe (sp?), I find the whole idea a little silly.
I think jumping out of planes and off buildings would be awesome, except that it could still hurt a lot if you weren’t killed instantly.
I also would make sure to eat whatever I wanted each day (not too much though, I already know the affects of buffets on me).
I like the lottery and giving money idea, but I don’t think it would be nearly as fun if it was erased the next day.
I think I’d try all kinds of bank robberies and break ins (it’s not morally wrong if it has no effect right?), just for fun.
That’s all I have energy for, I think I’d get insanely bored pretty quickly. I like that tomorrow comes and that we all move together, grow, learn, everything.
(maybe this is because I have a kid and I’m looking forward to watching her grow up)
Well, I can tell you one thing that I WOULDN’T want to do over and over … watch Blindness. My mom and I rented it today. I couldn’t finish watching the trash. I highly recommend to you and your readers to not ever see it! (Sorry to get a little oppresive on your light-hearted topic).
Megan: I totally agree about being able to watch it over and over, which is so ironic because basically the movie does that. Now, about the 10 years thing, I got that from the IMDB site http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/faq . I had always thought it was less time than that, but then when you think about the fact that he gets amazing at the piano AND ice scultpure, we’re talking about a good chunk of time here. I liked your olympic sport idea and your plane idea…I bet there’s lot of places you could get to and hang out in in 24 hours! Eat penguin?? Haha, you’re crazy.
Ariah: I’m sorry you weren’t in total awe of this movie, haha, but to each his own, right? I love how you said you would get totally bored of it really quickly. I think you’re right, it would probably drive anyone crazy after too long. That’s why we gotta plan out now what to do in case it happens, we can keep things interesting. Don’t worry, I think if you jump out of a plane or a tall building, you’ll die instantly. You bring up an interesting moral question about the bank robberies…is it still wrong if it all just reverts back to normal the next day? I’m kinda thinking yes, still wrong, haha.
Vickie: Wasn’t planning on it, and now I won’t start planning on it! Thanks for the public service announcement! I like your blog by the way!