groundhog day

Groundhog Day is coming up, and I hadn't thought about it except the movie Groundhog Day was on Comedy Central this evening.  I just finished watching, and I happened upon this discussion online somewhere regarding how many times Phil Connors must have repeated February 2nd.  It's all very rough estimating, but apparently the director said that in the final cut of the film, the production team assumed that Phil wakes up on Groundhog Day for about 10 years straight.  That's a long time.  Even worse, the original script was based upon the assumption that Phil relives February 2nd for approximately 10,000 years.

Of course, I never thought it was any longer than a month or two, and probably because I first saw it when I was little.  But knowing that Phil Connors could potentially have spent 10,000 years waking up to Sunny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" every single morning, I don't blame him for trying to kill himself multiple times.

I know this post is pretty specific, but bear with me.  Just imagine living the same day over and over and over.  That would be pretty frustrating, because any progress you made with the world surrounding you would be totally erased every day.  I'm surprised that Phil was able to reach a point where he could just be good for the sake of being good; that he could truly love Rita and be fine with her never knowing about the thousands of conversations they had enjoyed by the time Phil had escaped the time loop.

This is the thing that most puzzles me:  It's February 3rd.  At last, Phil wakes up and the first thing he hears is not "Don't forgetchyer booties, cuz it's cooold out there!"  After seemingly endless days when the basic assumption is that his actions will have no consequences, how could Phil ever go back to living a normal life?  And how could he not tell Rita or anyone else what had happened to him?  It's probably February 3rd that sets Phil over the edge, not Goundhog Day.