February 1, 2025 • 17 mins
Happy Groundhog Day, everyone! The Bill Murray movie has been called "our generation's 'It's a Wonderful Life'," inspiring and making laugh people the world over. It was conceived and written by Daniel Rubin, who details his process in a very personal way here. Check out this sample, and to listen to the full Daniel Rubin interview, search EVERYBODY HAS A PODCAST WITH RUTH & RAY wherever you listen to podcasts.
iHEART: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-everybody-has-a-podcast-wi-137652858/
APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/everybody-has-a-podcast-with-ruth-and-ray/id1722783945
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/7MwfqZJ4s1al9GhyBvlbG0?si=7a06508fad374008
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/DoubleAsterisk
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, George Bailey was never born listeners. Thinking that many
of you may be missing the cheer of the Christmas
holiday by now, and maybe fans of all holidays, we
decided to release the rest of our interview with the
writer of the movie Groundhog Day, Daniel Rubin. You heard
a small portion of this in episode ten of George Bailey,
(00:21):
but the full conversation is like a masterclass. This is
a preview and you can listen to the whole thing
by searching. Everybody has a podcast with Ruth and Ray
in your podcast app and now here we go.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, happy Groundhog Day, everybody, and to Ray. By the
time that this comes out, I think it's gonna be
happy belated birthday. Your birthday is in two days, so
forty four baby?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
What for to Foh?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
All right, here we go.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Hi, Danny, how are you hey?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Such an honor. I'm sure you get this all the time,
but without meaning to be. It ended up being my
wife's and I kind of yearly movie that we watch
because we always get seasonal depression in January February, and
it's just been this thing that we turned to and
when we started dating thirteen years ago, we basically before
we knew we were going to be an item. We
(01:11):
from two different coasts, like watched and were on the
phone with each other doing Groundhog Day. And there are
lots of people who are diehard fans of movies. There's
a lot of people. I love pulp fiction, but I
wouldn't call myself devoted to it. There's a certain kind
of movie that people become devoted to in this way.
And I wonder how you've Can you talk about that
and how have you seen that? Like is there a
(01:33):
story you might tell me about how you felt that devotion?
Speaker 4 (01:36):
It's the story of my public life really. I mean,
ever since the movie came out, I've gotten letters and
people ask me to talk, and so I've had conversations
with you know, Nobel Laureates and to this.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Come of the Earth.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Everybody across the globe as a personal relationship with the movie.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
It's based on something they.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Need in their life or some way they have of
seeing the world, their worldview. So it's put into context
within every religion, every philosophy, various aspects of people's lives.
There's a way that when they watch this movie, they're
given a kind of a jolt that makes them feel optimistic,
(02:28):
optimistic about their future, optimistic about themselves, empowered and their
ability to make their lives better because all these things
are somehow in that movie, what would you do if
you were stuck in one place and every day was
exactly the same and nothing that he did mattered.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Now that sums it up for me.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
What fill the very basis of the way the film
works is it's only one day.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
So the early days were among the worst of Phil's life.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
He was so miserable, and the last days were among
the best of Phil's life. He was so fulfilled and
happy and falling in love and feeling a part of
a community.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And it's the same day.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
And the only difference is fil and people feel bad
and they say, well, this feels like an organic, honest experiment.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
This would be me.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
And I actually have the same power that Phil has
to change.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
The way I look at things. I don't know if
I can just turn it on and off, but it's
there somewhere.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
And I think that optimism is something that people love
to feel. I'm so proud to have been associated with
something that affects people as opposed to something that they
either have terrible things to say about or nothing to
say about. I'm always interested in what are the rules
to being a person?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Is like? When I was young, I was very tuned
into that.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I found the world confusing and I just wanted somebody
to tell me the way it's supposed to work for me.
I'm getting information about the world from television, and I
grew up in a Jewish home.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I also watched The Twilight.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Zone, and you're moving into a land of both shadow
and substance of things and ideas. You've just crossed over
into the Twilight Zone. I loved the kind of breaking
the rules of how the world works in order to
see something different. People living through situations that actually couldn't happen,
(04:32):
and yet they relate to us in some way, in
a very watchable way. And I always looked at the
movies I'm most interested in as entertainments. It's got this,
I laughed, I cried, you know, I thought a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he
isn't around, he leaves an awful hold, isn't he.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
I was most interested in information that said, Okay, what
are the limits? What are we all experiencing? What do
we actually know?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Without putting it through the filter of what everybody's been
telling me, which apparently had lots of contradictions.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
And so I think all of my work is focused
on that sort of thing. How do you be a
better person? What processes does a human go through? What
are influencing him? What does should a day consist for
a life?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I'm sure you've told the origin story of Groundog Day
many times, but I wonder if you might tell it
to me again, and the first idea that came on
Groundog Day, and then how it's sort of developed thereafter.
How did it all come to you?
Speaker 4 (05:35):
There was someone in Chicago who was saying, are you
a Chicago writer? We want to represent you to the
studios in Hollywood, and I thought I could do that.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
I like movies, Maybe I'll write a movie.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
And I brainstorm that weekend and came up with all
these ideas so I could pitch them.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It started just as a brainstorm, and that was.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
A kind of a high concept idea. It was just
a guy repeating the same day over and over again.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
And I immediately thought assumed one of the rules, which
was that the main character remembers everything, but nobody else
does beyond that.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
The first thing I thought of, what a cool wait
to be able.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
To manipulate people because you know more than they do
about what they're thinking and what's going to happen, and
how fun that is. And I thought of the dating scene,
the pickup scene. Believe it or not, I studied nineteenth
century French poetry.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
You shop, you speak.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
French, and I said, that's a movie.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
I've never seen that before.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
It's a lot of fun, and I can exploit it
in all kinds of fun way.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
And so that was the first part. But that same
day that I came up with that, I came up
with that weekend.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
I came with a bunch up with a bunch of
other movie ideas. I'd never written a screenplay before for
a feature film, and I decided when they said thank
you very much and didn't call me back, I thought, well,
I've already come up with these ideas. Maybe writing a
movie is for me. So I picked one and I
wrote it, and that was my test model, and I
(07:31):
decided that was fun, but I don't think I can
sell this one.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
So I did another one, and that one I did sell.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
And all of a sudden, I'm in the writer's guild
and that one got set up, and so all of
a sudden, I'm a screenwriter and I go around.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Town with that script, and then my agent, who i'd
somehow acquired, said.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
You need to write something quickly because you want to
keep meeting these people and getting in the room with them.
And that's when I went to a movie theater alone
because my wife was I guess very pregnant at that
point or something, or with a little baby.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I can't remember exactly where it fell. And I brought
a book.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
With me since I went to the movie alone and
went a little early, and it was that Anne Rice,
one of the n Rice books, which I had waiting
for the next time I wanted to read a book,
and I, as I usually do, I start by sort
of looking at the cover and saying, right, why did
I buy this? Why am I interested? Okay, I see,
And then I was remembering when I liked about the
(08:39):
first of those vampire books, and it was that she
had basically invented a different definition for the rules of
being human. Vampires are just like humans, only a couple
of the rules are different.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
They eat blood. They can't only stay.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
Out at night, and they're immortal, and the immortal thing
kind of got my attention, and I was thinking about.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
That and was wondering what it would be like to
live forever, and as.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
With everything, especially in that period of time, I'm thinking,
how is that a movie?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Is that a movie? Do I have an idea here?
Speaker 4 (09:13):
And then thinking about immortal immortality, I was just thinking,
maybe people in order to grow up just need more
than one lifetime. It might take a longer amount of
time for some people.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
And I was thinking through this like.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
A human experiment, and realizing that the timeline was too long.
There's too much history that's happened, and making a movie
like that would be very cumbersome. And then I remembered
the other movie idea I had about a guy repeating the.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Same day over and over again, and.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
I thought, oh, we could have a story about eternity
that tells the story about somebody who's lived longer than
one lifetime and tell it all on the same day.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
And that way, I've finally had a movie.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
That was kind of about something other than a guy
picking up women, which was the only real idea that
I'd had before, And now it was about a human life,
and it was to me like the book Siddartha.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
It was young man's journey through life and what he learned.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
As you're explaining this, I'm where my mind is going.
Is I've really gotten to know well now the three
granddaughters and the only legit ip holders on Wonderful Life
of the original short story writer Philip van doren Stern.
He was a first time writer. He'd largely been on nonfiction,
and they said that he was really interested in ideas,
(10:44):
big ideas, knowledge things that could help people. But like
it was the idea part, and he kind of invented.
I'm sure there were precursors, but by and large he
invented the idea of the multiverse. That was the big idea.
And then the idea could serve well, you could find
out what life, what the world would be like without you,
and therefore you could understand your impact. And I'm hearing
(11:06):
you you So you invented the idea of eternity, of
a repetition of a day and what someone could learn there,
And that was.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
The path that my mind followed.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
But I really was not pursuing the philosophical I'm interested
in those things, and I've certainly explored it much more
since the movie has come out. But at the time
I was seeing it as I was feeling it as
something that had resonance, but I was presenting it as
(11:37):
an entertainment. I wasn't trying I didn't have an agenda.
I wasn't trying to explain anything about the human condition
to anybody. I was probably reflecting a lot of my values,
but at the same time, it really was just trying
to be as organic to the idea as I could
make it. I was asking myself, if this really happened
(11:59):
to me, what it feel like, if it happened to anybody,
what would they go through?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
How would it unfold for them? What would their life
be like.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
I wasn't saying this is a redemption story and everybody
must follow this path. I was saying, human X going
through this would perhaps have this trajectory. I knew that
I had a choice of tone, and I could have
approached it as a David Lynch kind of a movie
and it would have been fun, but that would have
(12:31):
been a lot darker, you know, spend more time in
Phill's dark period of time, and.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Probably a little bit less producible because I was just
writing it on spec.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Who knows what people are looking for, but they don't
look for, you know, brave challenges. And mostly I was
a new father and I was happy that I now
had a new career, a new father and new town
and you know, I was optimistic and happy, and I
had no interest in digging into the darker aspects of
(13:05):
all of this. So it was a fun, playful kind
of entertainment movie, and that's how I approached it. And
I realized I could get that all on the same day,
with all the fun repetition.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Scenes, which to me were I had done some.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Comedy improv when I was in Chicago, and there was
an exercise called directed scene where the characters come out
as whatever characters they've defined, and then somebody yells, cut, no,
your character wouldn't do that.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
They would want only to eat.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Vegetarian food, and that person would only want to exercise
all the time, and you know, go through and then
they come back and redo the same scene, and we
have a certain expectation based on what we think we
know now, and that was always entertaining, and that really
was the basis of the entertainment idea behind Groundhog Day,
(14:02):
and I knew that the studio was going to want
a reason for the repetition, because these stories would go
your basic comedy thing.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Would go that way.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
It's a formula, and here's Phil, and here's the thing
that happened, and.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Now he's got to get out of it.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
And I realized any of those devices were totally arbitrary,
and it wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Matter which one I put in in order to tell.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
My story, except to the degree that it would become
a ploty story where Phil's entire emphasis is on how to.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Fix the clock of time, or how.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
To change the formula and the time machine, or you know,
ridiculous invented writerly things.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
And the thing that.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Made me so excited about the idea was that Phil's
situation is the same as ours. We're born and we
don't know what the rules are, and we have to
figure out what to do with each day, just like
he does, and that made it interesting and relatable, and
without any magic.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
That part would be just distracting.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You also chose to center. It could have been any
day and it would have probably worked very well, but
something would have been lost. How did you end up
deciding you wanted to do it on a holiday and
an obscure holiday. How'd a groundhog Day become the day?
Speaker 4 (15:28):
I had the idea a guy repeats the same day
over and over again.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
First question I asked, is does it have to be
a guy?
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Because I didn't want to assume, and I thought it
through and in the end I said, yeah, it does.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
And then the second question was what day it's got
to be a repeating day? What day? Which day would
he be repeating? Would it be a great day, would
it be a horrible day? Would it where does he live?
Is it in the summer, is it in the winter?
Speaker 4 (16:01):
Is it an anniversary of something that meant something to him?
This is the anniversary of my divorce, This is the
anniversary of you know, this is my birthday.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
This is All of.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
These things, by the way of since been made into movies,
and they're all good ideas because they each to take
their own little nuance of the character and the story.
But for me, in all practicality, I knew this was
something I had to be solved very quick. I just
wanted to start writing because I had this explosion of
(16:38):
an idea. I needed to write something. I wanted to
write it, and I need to start writing.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
But which day? Which day? I opened the calendar.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
And I think when I came up with this idea
was the end of January.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
And I looked at.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
The calendar and the very first day of note I
came up with was Groundhog Day.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Okay, George Bailey was never born. Listeners, thank you for
listening to this preview. To hear the whole thing, search
right now in your podcast app for Everybody has a
podcast with Ruth and Ray and you'll find the full
Daniel Rubin episode. If you like it, consider subscribing to
Roots in my podcast. It comes out semi weekly. And
check out our catalog of great guests, including the people
(17:22):
we made George Bailey with, who were also behind Michael
Morris Fahrenheit nine to eleven and bowling for Columbine. We've
had Jimmy Stewart's daughter, the head of the National Urban League,
former mayor of New Orleans, true crime personality Collier Landry,
hit podcasters Ward Roberts of Hoo's Your Hysterics, and the
guys from the movie film podcast, someone from the team
(17:42):
of last year's documentary Oscar Winner, and we're just getting going.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Thank you
Hello, George Bailey was never born listeners. Thinking that many
of you may be missing the cheer of the Christmas
holiday by now, and maybe fans of all holidays, we
decided to release the rest of our interview with the
writer of the movie Groundhog Day, Daniel Rubin. You heard
a small portion of this in episode ten of George Bailey,
(00:21):
but the full conversation is like a masterclass. This is
a preview and you can listen to the whole thing
by searching. Everybody has a podcast with Ruth and Ray
in your podcast app and now here we go.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, happy Groundhog Day, everybody, and to Ray. By the
time that this comes out, I think it's gonna be
happy belated birthday. Your birthday is in two days, so
forty four baby?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
What for to Foh?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
All right, here we go.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Hi, Danny, how are you hey?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Such an honor. I'm sure you get this all the time,
but without meaning to be. It ended up being my
wife's and I kind of yearly movie that we watch
because we always get seasonal depression in January February, and
it's just been this thing that we turned to and
when we started dating thirteen years ago, we basically before
we knew we were going to be an item. We
(01:11):
from two different coasts, like watched and were on the
phone with each other doing Groundhog Day. And there are
lots of people who are diehard fans of movies. There's
a lot of people. I love pulp fiction, but I
wouldn't call myself devoted to it. There's a certain kind
of movie that people become devoted to in this way.
And I wonder how you've Can you talk about that
and how have you seen that? Like is there a
(01:33):
story you might tell me about how you felt that devotion?
Speaker 4 (01:36):
It's the story of my public life really. I mean,
ever since the movie came out, I've gotten letters and
people ask me to talk, and so I've had conversations
with you know, Nobel Laureates and to this.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Come of the Earth.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Everybody across the globe as a personal relationship with the movie.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
It's based on something they.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Need in their life or some way they have of
seeing the world, their worldview. So it's put into context
within every religion, every philosophy, various aspects of people's lives.
There's a way that when they watch this movie, they're
given a kind of a jolt that makes them feel optimistic,
(02:28):
optimistic about their future, optimistic about themselves, empowered and their
ability to make their lives better because all these things
are somehow in that movie, what would you do if
you were stuck in one place and every day was
exactly the same and nothing that he did mattered.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Now that sums it up for me.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
What fill the very basis of the way the film
works is it's only one day.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
So the early days were among the worst of Phil's life.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
He was so miserable, and the last days were among
the best of Phil's life. He was so fulfilled and
happy and falling in love and feeling a part of
a community.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And it's the same day.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
And the only difference is fil and people feel bad
and they say, well, this feels like an organic, honest experiment.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
This would be me.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
And I actually have the same power that Phil has
to change.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
The way I look at things. I don't know if
I can just turn it on and off, but it's
there somewhere.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
And I think that optimism is something that people love
to feel. I'm so proud to have been associated with
something that affects people as opposed to something that they
either have terrible things to say about or nothing to
say about. I'm always interested in what are the rules
to being a person?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Is like? When I was young, I was very tuned
into that.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I found the world confusing and I just wanted somebody
to tell me the way it's supposed to work for me.
I'm getting information about the world from television, and I
grew up in a Jewish home.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I also watched The Twilight.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Zone, and you're moving into a land of both shadow
and substance of things and ideas. You've just crossed over
into the Twilight Zone. I loved the kind of breaking
the rules of how the world works in order to
see something different. People living through situations that actually couldn't happen,
(04:32):
and yet they relate to us in some way, in
a very watchable way. And I always looked at the
movies I'm most interested in as entertainments. It's got this,
I laughed, I cried, you know, I thought a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he
isn't around, he leaves an awful hold, isn't he.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
I was most interested in information that said, Okay, what
are the limits? What are we all experiencing? What do
we actually know?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Without putting it through the filter of what everybody's been
telling me, which apparently had lots of contradictions.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
And so I think all of my work is focused
on that sort of thing. How do you be a
better person? What processes does a human go through? What
are influencing him? What does should a day consist for
a life?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I'm sure you've told the origin story of Groundog Day
many times, but I wonder if you might tell it
to me again, and the first idea that came on
Groundog Day, and then how it's sort of developed thereafter.
How did it all come to you?
Speaker 4 (05:35):
There was someone in Chicago who was saying, are you
a Chicago writer? We want to represent you to the
studios in Hollywood, and I thought I could do that.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
I like movies, Maybe I'll write a movie.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
And I brainstorm that weekend and came up with all
these ideas so I could pitch them.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It started just as a brainstorm, and that was.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
A kind of a high concept idea. It was just
a guy repeating the same day over and over again.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
And I immediately thought assumed one of the rules, which
was that the main character remembers everything, but nobody else
does beyond that.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
The first thing I thought of, what a cool wait
to be able.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
To manipulate people because you know more than they do
about what they're thinking and what's going to happen, and
how fun that is. And I thought of the dating scene,
the pickup scene. Believe it or not, I studied nineteenth
century French poetry.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
You shop, you speak.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
French, and I said, that's a movie.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
I've never seen that before.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
It's a lot of fun, and I can exploit it
in all kinds of fun way.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
And so that was the first part. But that same
day that I came up with that, I came up
with that weekend.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
I came with a bunch up with a bunch of
other movie ideas. I'd never written a screenplay before for
a feature film, and I decided when they said thank
you very much and didn't call me back, I thought, well,
I've already come up with these ideas. Maybe writing a
movie is for me. So I picked one and I
wrote it, and that was my test model, and I
(07:31):
decided that was fun, but I don't think I can
sell this one.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
So I did another one, and that one I did sell.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
And all of a sudden, I'm in the writer's guild
and that one got set up, and so all of
a sudden, I'm a screenwriter and I go around.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Town with that script, and then my agent, who i'd
somehow acquired, said.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
You need to write something quickly because you want to
keep meeting these people and getting in the room with them.
And that's when I went to a movie theater alone
because my wife was I guess very pregnant at that
point or something, or with a little baby.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I can't remember exactly where it fell. And I brought
a book.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
With me since I went to the movie alone and
went a little early, and it was that Anne Rice,
one of the n Rice books, which I had waiting
for the next time I wanted to read a book,
and I, as I usually do, I start by sort
of looking at the cover and saying, right, why did
I buy this? Why am I interested? Okay, I see,
And then I was remembering when I liked about the
(08:39):
first of those vampire books, and it was that she
had basically invented a different definition for the rules of
being human. Vampires are just like humans, only a couple
of the rules are different.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
They eat blood. They can't only stay.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
Out at night, and they're immortal, and the immortal thing
kind of got my attention, and I was thinking about.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
That and was wondering what it would be like to
live forever, and as.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
With everything, especially in that period of time, I'm thinking,
how is that a movie?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Is that a movie? Do I have an idea here?
Speaker 4 (09:13):
And then thinking about immortal immortality, I was just thinking,
maybe people in order to grow up just need more
than one lifetime. It might take a longer amount of
time for some people.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
And I was thinking through this like.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
A human experiment, and realizing that the timeline was too long.
There's too much history that's happened, and making a movie
like that would be very cumbersome. And then I remembered
the other movie idea I had about a guy repeating the.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Same day over and over again, and.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
I thought, oh, we could have a story about eternity
that tells the story about somebody who's lived longer than
one lifetime and tell it all on the same day.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
And that way, I've finally had a movie.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
That was kind of about something other than a guy
picking up women, which was the only real idea that
I'd had before, And now it was about a human life,
and it was to me like the book Siddartha.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
It was young man's journey through life and what he learned.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
As you're explaining this, I'm where my mind is going.
Is I've really gotten to know well now the three
granddaughters and the only legit ip holders on Wonderful Life
of the original short story writer Philip van doren Stern.
He was a first time writer. He'd largely been on nonfiction,
and they said that he was really interested in ideas,
(10:44):
big ideas, knowledge things that could help people. But like
it was the idea part, and he kind of invented.
I'm sure there were precursors, but by and large he
invented the idea of the multiverse. That was the big idea.
And then the idea could serve well, you could find
out what life, what the world would be like without you,
and therefore you could understand your impact. And I'm hearing
(11:06):
you you So you invented the idea of eternity, of
a repetition of a day and what someone could learn there,
And that was.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
The path that my mind followed.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
But I really was not pursuing the philosophical I'm interested
in those things, and I've certainly explored it much more
since the movie has come out. But at the time
I was seeing it as I was feeling it as
something that had resonance, but I was presenting it as
(11:37):
an entertainment. I wasn't trying I didn't have an agenda.
I wasn't trying to explain anything about the human condition
to anybody. I was probably reflecting a lot of my values,
but at the same time, it really was just trying
to be as organic to the idea as I could
make it. I was asking myself, if this really happened
(11:59):
to me, what it feel like, if it happened to anybody,
what would they go through?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
How would it unfold for them? What would their life
be like.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
I wasn't saying this is a redemption story and everybody
must follow this path. I was saying, human X going
through this would perhaps have this trajectory. I knew that
I had a choice of tone, and I could have
approached it as a David Lynch kind of a movie
and it would have been fun, but that would have
(12:31):
been a lot darker, you know, spend more time in
Phill's dark period of time, and.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Probably a little bit less producible because I was just
writing it on spec.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Who knows what people are looking for, but they don't
look for, you know, brave challenges. And mostly I was
a new father and I was happy that I now
had a new career, a new father and new town
and you know, I was optimistic and happy, and I
had no interest in digging into the darker aspects of
(13:05):
all of this. So it was a fun, playful kind
of entertainment movie, and that's how I approached it. And
I realized I could get that all on the same day,
with all the fun repetition.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Scenes, which to me were I had done some.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Comedy improv when I was in Chicago, and there was
an exercise called directed scene where the characters come out
as whatever characters they've defined, and then somebody yells, cut, no,
your character wouldn't do that.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
They would want only to eat.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Vegetarian food, and that person would only want to exercise
all the time, and you know, go through and then
they come back and redo the same scene, and we
have a certain expectation based on what we think we
know now, and that was always entertaining, and that really
was the basis of the entertainment idea behind Groundhog Day,
(14:02):
and I knew that the studio was going to want
a reason for the repetition, because these stories would go
your basic comedy thing.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Would go that way.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
It's a formula, and here's Phil, and here's the thing
that happened, and.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Now he's got to get out of it.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
And I realized any of those devices were totally arbitrary,
and it wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Matter which one I put in in order to tell.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
My story, except to the degree that it would become
a ploty story where Phil's entire emphasis is on how to.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Fix the clock of time, or how.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
To change the formula and the time machine, or you know,
ridiculous invented writerly things.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
And the thing that.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Made me so excited about the idea was that Phil's
situation is the same as ours. We're born and we
don't know what the rules are, and we have to
figure out what to do with each day, just like
he does, and that made it interesting and relatable, and
without any magic.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
That part would be just distracting.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You also chose to center. It could have been any
day and it would have probably worked very well, but
something would have been lost. How did you end up
deciding you wanted to do it on a holiday and
an obscure holiday. How'd a groundhog Day become the day?
Speaker 4 (15:28):
I had the idea a guy repeats the same day
over and over again.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
First question I asked, is does it have to be
a guy?
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Because I didn't want to assume, and I thought it
through and in the end I said, yeah, it does.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
And then the second question was what day it's got
to be a repeating day? What day? Which day would
he be repeating? Would it be a great day, would
it be a horrible day? Would it where does he live?
Is it in the summer, is it in the winter?
Speaker 4 (16:01):
Is it an anniversary of something that meant something to him?
This is the anniversary of my divorce, This is the
anniversary of you know, this is my birthday.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
This is All of.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
These things, by the way of since been made into movies,
and they're all good ideas because they each to take
their own little nuance of the character and the story.
But for me, in all practicality, I knew this was
something I had to be solved very quick. I just
wanted to start writing because I had this explosion of
(16:38):
an idea. I needed to write something. I wanted to
write it, and I need to start writing.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
But which day? Which day? I opened the calendar.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
And I think when I came up with this idea
was the end of January.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
And I looked at.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
The calendar and the very first day of note I
came up with was Groundhog Day.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Okay, George Bailey was never born. Listeners, thank you for
listening to this preview. To hear the whole thing, search
right now in your podcast app for Everybody has a
podcast with Ruth and Ray and you'll find the full
Daniel Rubin episode. If you like it, consider subscribing to
Roots in my podcast. It comes out semi weekly. And
check out our catalog of great guests, including the people
(17:22):
we made George Bailey with, who were also behind Michael
Morris Fahrenheit nine to eleven and bowling for Columbine. We've
had Jimmy Stewart's daughter, the head of the National Urban League,
former mayor of New Orleans, true crime personality Collier Landry,
hit podcasters Ward Roberts of Hoo's Your Hysterics, and the
guys from the movie film podcast, someone from the team
(17:42):
of last year's documentary Oscar Winner, and we're just getting going.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Thank you
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.