Blogus Groundhogus

Where do you end a screenplay?  How do you know it’s done?  

Here’s a perspective, as I have endings on my mind this week. 

It began with a call from my father, telling me that my brother – my younger brother – had just suffered a stroke. 

I know, right?  Scary stuff.  Is this an ending?

It was a solid blow to my head, the shock that this ending could even be possible.  I think my brother understandably felt the same way.

To jump to the ending of this story: he’s doing fine.  He’s already out of the hospital, and although he still has some sensory loss (miraculously, no motor loss) along half of his body, the fine doctors are declaring this an isolated cautionary stroke.   End of story.

Or is it?

We don’t really know, do we?  Will Mike fully recover?  Will he change his life in any way?  Will this incident mark a clear division for him, the ending to one thing (Mike’s immortal life) and the beginning of another (Mike’s mortal life)?  Or will he forget, and backslide, and have more isolated cautionary events just like this one?

Maybe the story isn’t over until he has completely recovered to his pre-stroke state. But when do you know the exact day and time of full recovery? Like a radioactive isotope, we may have to figure out the half-life of Mike’s numbness.

What if the day of my brother’s full recovery, the day we decide the story has fully ended, happens to be the same day as the unfortunate fishing accident (just for argument’s sake, Mike.  Just for argument’s sake.  I chose that one because I know you’re not likely to go fishing anyhow)?  That gives the ending a little punch, doesn’t it?  An ironic twist.  That’s a nice way to go, I suppose – especially if you’re a movie.

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Imagine this situation:

You are sitting on your front porch listening to the gentle sounds of the night, or having a pleasant conversation with your friend, or figuring something out on the guitar.   This is your situation.  If you don’t play the guitar, well, that explains why you’re trying so hard to figure something out.

Enter the party car.  You can hear the bass thumping from two blocks away.  As the car passes, slowly, you have to stop whatever you’re doing because the music is an assault that has driven away all of your other senses. Right now the only thing going on in the universe is the party car.  You see teenagers inside.  The windows are down, indicating not only their disinterest in your quiet little life, but an aggressive self-centeredness that may even be a sly invitation to join the party.

I don’t know about you, but more often than not my reaction in this situation is not particularly generous.  These people are acting like jerks (see “Chumps and Jerks“).  They’re driving recklessly, they have no sense of community, and their taste in music is – not mine.  They are selfish, loutish, ignorant social misfits, and the most bothersome thing of all, they really are having a better time right now than I am. 

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I’m going to say something provocative and see if my friend Paul can be provoked.

Paul is Paul Hannam, author of the just released blockbuster book The Magic of Groundhog Day. In the book Paul talks about such things as whether it is possible for people to break out of their unwanted repetitive patterns, and whether change is possible for the rest of us in the way it worked for Phil Connors.   

I have read the book and, to sum up (spoiler alert!!!):  yes. 

So, here is my provocative challenge to Paul:  Is one lifetime enough to change a repetitive pattern?  To be truly honest and to accurately follow the model suggested by Phil’s journey, a person may have to live longer than one lifetime in order to transform.

This may be a good time to inject one of the questions I often get from the movie’s fans:  how long was Phil stuck in time?  How many days?

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Can you feel it?  The Season is upon us.  We are one week away – G minus seven days.  Already my friends are nudging me – “It’s almost … you-know-what!” – the radio stations are calling – “We’re here with screenwriter Danny Rubin.  Danny, can you believe it’s been fifteen years since the movie came out?  Did you ever think we’d be here on the radio still talking about it after all this time?” – and, of course, it’s cold and snowy outside, but not the Christmas fun and frolic cold and snowy, but the mid-winter I’m sick of scraping ice off the windshield cold and snowy.  It is the Season of the Groundhog.

When I took my idea about a man stuck in time and set it in Punxsutawney PA on February 2^nd, I had no idea what a great gift I was giving myself.   I did have a vague idea that, if successful, the movie would play on TV every year on that date, making the script more attractive from a marketing point of view.  But the link between the movie and the holiday is so strong that the messages of optimism and empowerment delivered by the movie have conflated with the global human desire to gather together during the dark middle days of winter and bolster each others’ resolve to make it to spring.  Holiday-wise speaking, Groundhog Day became the perfect storm.

One of the delights of my first-hand experience of Ghog Day in Punxsutawney was the discovery of how light-hearted the whole thing is.  

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Every now and then people send me specific questions about screenwriting, about Ghog Day, and about my very private personal life. Glad to share. In fact, I’ve just started a place on the blog for questions and answers (see above: “ask Danny”; “ask Phil.”)   Have a party.

To kick off this new feature, here are a few questions recently submitted by a curious stranger: 

1. On the occasions you have polished scripts, do you tend to fiddle based on rules or instinct? 

Instinct.  But I’m aware that the studio gatekeepers have read McKee and Field et al and will look at my script through that lens.  So, I write with instinct, but part of my instinct is to write the kind of piece that these guys may actually be willing to make.  

We’ve all seen so many movies, certain rhythms are familiar to us, so even if you’re using nothing but instinct there’s a good chance it conforms to everybody’s rules anyway.

2. Has Groundhog Day “set you up for life”?  A dreadfully intrusive question which I have no right to ask. But I am so terribly curious… 

You are making me to laugh.  No.  It was a fine payday for a young writer and I continue to get lunch money every year from the sale of DVDs and such, but its greatest financial value to me was the many subsequent job opportunities it created.  The legendary million dollar script sales don’t seem to happen very often or to very many.  No such thing as “net profits”, either, so even with Ghog Day’s long success there are apparently no profits for me to share in.  You sure you wanna get into this business? Given that a person can’t count on selling a screenplay to make money, I hope you pick something to write that you personally enjoy working on, or what’s the point?  

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“Typically, I wake up in the morning and spread a couple of blankets out on the cliff’s side.  I have a cup of tea and watch the sun rise while meditating on the Giant Rock.”  Phil and I had just hiked to one of his favorite spots – a hidden canyon, where a great rock formation on the far side drew unavoidable focus.   Ancient petroglyphs confirmed that other people had found this spot of interest. 

Phil had carved a meditation cave out of the soft stone in the canyon wall across from the rock.  It was really cool.   

“So, that’s what you call it?”  I asked.  “ ‘The Giant Rock’? Does it have a name?”

“Just ‘Giant Rock,’ or ‘That Giant Rock.’”  Phil thought for a moment.  “I believe the Anasazi called it ‘Roger.’  Or some variant.  So I’m told.”

“Okay.  So you come here and gaze upon the rock…” 

“…formerly known as Roger.” 

“…and what do you think about?  What do you meditate on?”

“Nothing.” 

“Nothing?” 

“Nothing.” 

“You find a holy rock, gaze on it for hours, and you don’t even think about anything useful?  ‘Who am I?’  ‘What’s the point?’ Etcetera.” 

“Sometimes I learn more about a thing by thinking about nothing than by concentrating on the thing itself.  Really.  Once you know what nothing consists of, you can see what’s missing, right?  It’s all related to Edgeology.”

Edgeology. I instantly began to wonder how I would spell it.  

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I once wrote a screen adaptation – true story – of a novel written by Bill Maher.  Ben Stiller was the would-be director of the film.  The subject matter was Bill’s recollection of his first year as a stand-up comic.  Every part of this project was fantastic and, as I always do before embarking on a writing-for-hire cruise, I vowed not to fuck it up.   I would listen well, be aware, and be worthy.  I would bring this ship to port.  It was the voice of Dan Hedaya running through my head, asserting repeatedly (as he did in Joe versus the Volcano): “I know he can GET the job, but can he DO the job?”

My experience after Groundhog Day was that everybody kept hiring me to write another Groundhog Day.  That’s what they asked for.  And somehow these movies never materialized: the ship wasn’t getting to port.  I seemed to be getting something wrong.  Clearly nobody was asking me to write another trapped-in-time in Pennsylvania story, so what they were asking for, I assumed, was another innovative humanistic comedy with a surprising and unconventional structure.  Bad guess.  They in fact really did want another trapped-in-time comedy, or something similar.  It didn’t have to be in Pennsylvania, of course.  We could set this one in, say, Ohio.  Think outside the box, they told me.  

Be all that as it may have been, I was determined that my writing on this Bill Maher project would be as normal by Hollywood standards as it could possibly be, no matter how crazy they asked me to make it. The out-of-the-box strategy was not working well for me, even though that is exactly why I was being hired.  

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