Blogus Groundhogus

“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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Many people over the years have observed that Groundhog Day is a very spiritual movie, and have interpreted Phil’s journey as being towards enlightenment.  

Very interesting.  I’ve just been reading a book about enlightenment.  

Michael Hutchison is a paraplegic living in Santa Fe who recounts in this book his own amazing story.   At one time he was a writer who specialized in mind-spirit searches, doing extensive research using sensory deprivation tanks and also on controlling brain waves using electroencephalograms and biofeedback.  Then there was a horrible fire that wiped out his past and his future.  Then there was a horrible accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down.  

Yikes.  

But Hutch (I’ve met him and can call him this) isn’t into self-pity.  In fact, somehow, through the drastic reduction of his life, he has actually achieved what he had been searching for in his research – enlightenment.     

In Groundhog Day, Phil’s life was similarly reduced – both geographically and temporally.   Like Phil, Hutch would wake up every day to the same day, to repetition and routine, and neither of them was able to escape the irreducible: their own existence. 

I have no reason to question Hutch’s sense of enlightenment, and maybe I even understand it better by having taken the journey with Phil.  

But I wonder about Phil’s enlightenment.   

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Did you see me on TV, or read any of the articles? Here’s one from the Santa Fe New Mexican:

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/A_show_of_solidarity_

That’s me, a member of the Writers Guild of America, West, walking a picket line – not in New York, not in L.A., but in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The New Mexico film industry is growing by leaps and bounds, thanks to the unwavering leadership of Governor Bill Richardson, and a supportive state legislature. Loans and subsidies are leading cost-conscious productions to our state, state of the art studio facilities have been and are being built, crews have been and are being trained, and the amazing New Mexico landscape has been clinching the deal. Productions are way up, and the state is raking in the cash.

I’ve heard that our state is third in U.S. film productions, after only LA and NY. Not bad.

Any NM writer hates to interfere with this momentum, as we all benefit. But there is a strike on, and we’re part of it.

Our merry band of isolated writers decided that it was wrong to sit this one out while the NM Film Office blithely asserted to the press that the writers’ strike isn’t affecting New Mexico. If the big studios profit by these New Mexico films, and if film production in the more populous writer-states of California and New York has become difficult to maintain when ringed by picket lines, why should we give the big studios an open door policy in the middle of our desert?

On Friday we took our message to Albuquerque, where a major film was

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In my first draft of Groundhog Day I made a bigger meal of Phil’s need to escape and his inability to do so.  I wanted to show Phil going to the absolute limit.  He wasn’t going to be stuck in Punxsutawney without absolutely convincing himself that there was no other option.   So he took every road out of town going in every possible direction, leaving at every possible time of day.  He walked.  He skied.  He stole a horse.  He stole a truck with a snowplow carrying a snowmobile.  All of this was shown in montage, suggesting endless repetitions and a desperate commitment by Phil.  

I kept going with it.  The idea of the blizzard being supernaturally confining hadn’t been born, yet.  Phil eventually got himself to a snowbound regional airport.  He stole a small airplane.  He taught himself how to fly, crash after crash after crash, until finally he went…

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I’ve heard it said that all writing is autobiographical.  This is interesting because it suggests that, no matter what I write, no matter how far I go in creativity or fantasy, I cannot escape myself.  It also suggests that anything I write can teach me something about myself, perhaps something that I didn’t know to begin with.

Assuming that all of this is true, I just had to ask: is Groundhog Day autobiographical?  

If so it gives me a new answer to the commonly asked question: how did you come up with the idea?  I could go into my usual explanation, which is kind of interesting and has many parts.  Or I could simply answer, “It really happened to me. I am Phil Connors!  I am Sparta!” 

I could say it literally happened to me – which it didn’t – or I could say I was fictionalizing a real experience I had, one of feeling stuck in a repetitive situation, which I didn’t, either.  No, if this story is autobiographical, it is subtly so.  It is resonant with my real life, just as it is with yours.  It is an invented fantasy which can reveal to me its connections if I look for them. 

But I didn’t have to look very far.

Phil’s journey only makes sense if one thing is true about Phil: he has to remember.  

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I was fourteen or fifteen, and staying with family friends in Illinois over winter break. I was staying in an attic that had been converted into a bedroom, and I was slipping under the covers when the strangest thing happened: my legs went half way down the bed and stopped. I couldn’t extend my legs all the way. I pushed and kicked at the sheet, but something was amiss. I wasn’t at this age an expert on much, but I knew how to get under covers and sleep in a bed. Until now.

I’d never heard of “short-sheeting.” If I had, I would have recognized the practical joke for what it was right away. But I had entered a zone of confusion. I carefully repeated the steps: slip under covers, extend legs. Slip under covers, extend legs. I’d done it thousands of times before. It was supposed to work. Each time the bed came up short. What the…?!

In Groundhog Day I had the delicious opportunity to play a joke on Phil Connors. I got to mess with his reality.

He reacted the way I did with the short-sheeting – he entered a zone of confusion. “Wait a second – this can’t be right.” (more…)

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