Just How Many Days Does Bill Murray REALLY Spend Stuck Reliving GROUNDHOG DAY?
In case you didn’t know, today – February 2nd – is Groundhog Day. And to celebrate the momentous American holiday that inspired the bloody brilliant Bill Murray film of the same name, we’re going to answer one of the most asked questions in cinematic history.
Just how many days does Phil Connors spend trapped in the perpetual loop of Groundhog Day?
Okay, so director Harold Ramis has sort of already answered it on the DVD commentary of the film (10 years he reckoned) and then later, in response to several sites online running an article that came to an answer of just 8 years, 8 months, and 16 days, he offered the following (seemingly contradicting his own bloody answer in the process!):
I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and alloting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years…
Fair enough, Mr Ramis, but since when did I ever let something as trivial as the truth of the creator of something get in the way of a good opportunity to offer my own take? Anyway, I don’t agree with his estimate at all, as you’ll see below.
Now before I start, a small disclaimer – this article doesn’t take into account days in which Phil does nothing (like those days when all you want to do is lie in bed and play with yourself – which he inevitably will have done), so don’t go complaining that I haven’t factored them in. I actually have, though not explicitly, because my calculation inexplicitly accepts that Phil may have spent time learning some of his new skills on the same day. Don’t phone, it’s just for fun!
Right, so here goes:
The first stage is to work out how many separate days are shown on screen during the movie. So here’s a good old-fashioned list of them:
- Day 1: Groundhog Day
- Day 2: The first repetition
- Day 3: The fixed pencil
- Day 4: Punching Ned
- Day 5: Deceiving Nancy
- Day 6: Robbing the bank
- Day 7: Seeing Heidi 2 with a French Maid
- Days 8-12: Engineering the near-perfect date
- Day 13: The bad perfect date
- Days 14-21: One for every slap
- Day 22: “Phil you look terrible!”
- Day 23: Jeopardy
- Day 24: “This is pitiful!”
- Days 25-27: Breaking the alarm clock
- Day 28: Kidnapping Punxsutawney Phil
- Day 29-31: Phil’s suicides
- Day 32: I’m a God!
- Days 33- 35: First piano lessons
- Day 36: Sexually harassing Ned
- Day 37: Looking after the homeless man
- Day 38: The final Groundhog Day
So by my reckoning that’s 38 separate days shown in the movie. This is of course assuming that every separate thing listed above happens on separate days, which I think isn’t too much of a dangerous assumption, given that Phil is something of a quitter (case in point: multiple attempts at suicide).
Second, and far more difficult stage is to take things Phil says as indicators for other days we do not see.
I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned.
Electrocution we saw, see it’s up there in the list – but the other six account for an additional six days (again assuming they weren’t on the same day). Which brings the running total up to 44 days. But then that isn’t factoring the number of days of perpetuation that it would take to force a man who is already thoroughly depressed to attempt suicide – delicate matter, but since Phil is an entirely self-centred man, trapped in his own idea of hell, and surrounded by “hicks”, you’d have to wager that normal circumstances wouldn’t apply. If it were me, a month would be more than enough time to drive me to despair, and I’d say Phil Connors was at least as self-aware as I am, if not more given that he gives up “living by their rules” on day 3 – so let’s factor in 20 more days at this point.
That’s 64 days so far.
And then there’s the scene where Connors tells Rita exactly how long it would take to learn how to expertly throw playing cards into an upturned hat:
“Six months. Four to five hours a day, and you’d be an expert.”
So, that’s 6 months added to the 62 days, bringing the running total to 244 days (taking a month as 30 days).
The insightful quotes don’t stop there- next up is the scene in which Phil takes a companion in a French Maid outfit to see Heidi 2 at the local cinema, and teasingly says:
“It’s like I said: I love this film. I’ve seen it over 100 times.”
There’s another 100 days then – seriously, who would see the same film twice in the same day? Especially when its Heidi 2…
New total so far: 344 days
Add to that two full days of Jeopardy watching to be able to perfectly recite the answers (spread over some other days no doubt – but probably empty days, considering Phil’s mood at that point in the movie) and you have 346 days.
Then of course there’s the diner scene in which Phil explains to Rita that he is stuck reliving Groundhog Day, and uses his extensive knowledge of the other diners to prove his point – let’s give each person a day (ignoring Nancy, as she’s in the original 38 on-screen days), since he clearly knows a lot about them. So that’s a day each for Doris the waitress, Debbie & Fred, Phil the waiter, Gus the drunk ex-sailor, Tom the former coal miner and Alice the waitress, totalling 6 additional days, bringing us to 352 days.
And finally, in this section are the few odd bits and pieces mentioned on screen that would have taken some time, including sourcing a Rolls Royce and Cowboy outfit in small-town Punxsutawney and meeting his French maid companion, discovering the candy store, finding out that Rita likes Rocky Road, and generally learning everything there is to know about Rita. Conservatively, that’s going to be 100 extra days, most of which would be spent in Phil’s attempts to find out as much about Rita as possible to give her the perfect date.
Keeping up? We’re on 452 days already.
Next up, there’s the third stage of the operation – taking the things Phil achieves on screen that imply he has spent time learning new skills, and attempting to use educated guess work, and other reference points to work out how long each achievement might have taken. Armed only with Google, and a healthy curiosity, I set out on this part of the quest with incredible gusto. Then I had a lie-down and watched Hot Shots: Part Deux instead. But then I got back on it:
First there are the big two – learning how to make ice sculptures and how to play piano from scratch.
The ice sculpture business is pretty difficult to quantify, though you would assume that being in show business he has some interest or background in art, so even if he went in as an ice virgin, he might learn faster than another person. I’ll also assume he is self-taught, which is bound to take some time (top Ice Sculptors in London Eskimo Ice can only call themselves top of their game due to 25 years of experience), and portraiture’s got to be the most difficult style to master. In conjunction with that, Malcolm Gladwell has stated that it takes anyone 10,000 hours to become an expert at any one subject, and Phil is clealy an expert ice sculptor, since the ice sculpture is the one thing in Groundhog Day that is entirely quantifiable by what we can see on screen (playing one song well does not make anyone an expert pianist, and speaking one French poem perfectly likewise is not an indicator of expertise).
Broken down that is an hour a day for 27 years, but we know Phil by now, and we know that when he figures out that something gets him closer to fourth base with Rita, he’s likely to pursue it a little more rabidly than that. So I’m suggesting an average of 4 hours per day – based also on his willingness to stick to 4 or 5 hours of card flicking for six solid months, and the impending threat of frost bite over longer periods – which brings that to just under 7 years, based on him working for consecutive days for that whole time, or more likely 10 years sticking to a traditional 5 day a week working directive.
A giant leap to the next running total: 4102 days
And then there’s learning the piano. Again, you have to consider that 10,000 hours to become an expert – not that we know Phil is an actual expert, in the Mozart mould (took him 13 years to produce world class music after being “discovered” at the age of 4), because he isn’t composing or anything. So let’s call him an exceptional pianist – three quarters of the way to expert – so 7,000 practice hours. At the level he is clearly playing at at the end, he must have been putting in two or three hours of practice a day at least (any more and he would be in severe danger of carpal tunnel syndrome or tendinitis) though not every day (for the same medical reasons). That breaks down to about 7.5 years playing for between two and three hours a day every day. But I’ve already said I’m working on the basis that he sticks to the habit of five days on, two days off- so that makes it ten and a half years or there abouts (seems Harold Ramis was right about the ten year mark).
10.5 years= 3833 days
And a new running total of 7935
But then there are other things too – it is implied that Phil has learned French when he recites French poetry to Rita – but then, at this stage in the film, Phil has shown that he is more than willing to use deception to get into her knickers, so what’s to say that he didn’t simply spend a couple of days learning how to perfectly recite the one passage he picks to impress Rita. But that’s probably nit-picking, so let’s accept that he took lessons (given that Ramis himself also confirmed that Phil learned the language, and that the script confirms it below).
Rita: Believe it or not, I studied nineteenth-century French poetry.
Phil: [talks in French]
Rita: You speak French?
Phil: Oui.
So, taking into account the fact that America only has about 1.6million French speakers, and isn’t strictly speaking a Francophone nation, and the fact that Pennsylvania had no historical French settlement it would presumably have been more difficult for Phil to learn the language than it would somewhere with a large French speaking community. With that in mind and also the fact that Phil is an adult learner, and thus less susceptible to learning a second language quickly, a conservative estimate, based on the idea of him taking lessons everyday (he clearly really wants to impress Rita), it would have taken somewhere around 12 years to become completely fluent (though ex-pats living in Francophone countries sometimes state it takes longer even than that) bringing the running total to:
12,315 days
Not only does Phil learn things to woo Rita – he also became all selfless, as indicated by this quote from Felix’s Wife:
Dr. Connors. I want to thank you for fixing Felix’s back. He can even help around the house again.
Hang on, he fixed his back?! When exactly did he find the time to learn enough in the medical field to “fix” the back of a man so incapacitated that he couldn’t even help around the house?! Oh yeah, right, stuck in an infinite circle of time! Well, I wouldn’t think he had actually gone to Medical School (there isn’t one in Punxsutawney – and he’d just end up doing first-day induction over and over anyway) or the required four years post-graduate studying to become a chiropractor, but you have to wonder how long it would take an unqualified TV presenter to master chiropractory to that level – or at least enough to wing it (it’s a giant law-suit waiting to happen). This one has to be pure speculation – though I did find a useful, teach yourself chiropractory video, of 100 minutes, which you’d think Phil would have to watch at least five or six times to learn off by heart (a low number since he would have some familiarity with learning lines quickly). It’s probably also reasonable to suggest that Phil would have read up on the subject before attempting to administer off-the-cuff medical attention on a frail-looking elderly gentleman – say 20 days to be safe.
Adding the time it took to source the video (no more a suspension of belief required than his acquiring WWF tickets!), and the probable few times he practiced on Felix and it didn’t quite work out as planned (and assuming each failed attempt then spoiled his entire day), I’d say a very rough bare minimum estimate of 26 days to learn to fix Felix’s back.
So, so far that’s: 12,341 days
I’ve already stated (in the disclaimer above) that these periods of learning could overlap – but really, I’m not entirely sure they would: clearly, you couldn’t learn to play the piano after spending a few hours learning to sculpt ice (which would necessarily be a morning activity, given the lower temperatures and appropriate lighting). And further, given Phil’s professed dedication to each subject (his spending six months learning to throw cards into a hat proves an invaluable bench-mark), I don’t think it likely that he would learn each thing in one long, crammed period of time. You have to remember, at the stage he is learning piano and ice sculpting, he has seemingly abandoned his desire to leave Punxsutawney, and is revelling in the infinite possibilities for self-advancement. So there.
Anyway, ignoring for a minute the good that he does, Phil does himself some badness too. Chief among them naughty activities, he robs a security van outside the bank, thanks to a Rain Man style plan:
[sitting outside the local bank]
Phil: A gust of wind.
[a gust of wind blows]
Phil: A dog barks.
[a dog barks in the distance]
Phil: Cue the truck.
[an armored truck drives up]
Phil: Exit Herman; walk out into the bank.
[Herman gets out of the armored truck and walks into the bank]
Phil: Exit Felix, and stand there with a not-so-bright look on your face.
[Felix gets out of truck and stands there]
Phil: All right, Doris, come on. Hey, fix your bra, honey… That’s better.
[Doris walks up fixing her outfit]
Phil: [impersonating Doris] Felix.
[Doris says, "Felix"]
Phil: [impersonating Felix] How ya doin’ Doris?
[Felix asks Doris a question]
Phil: [impersonating Doris] Can I have a roll of quarters?
[Doris asks Felix for a roll of quarters]
Phil: [Phil stands up and begins to walk towards the armored car, counting to himself]
Phil: 10, 9, 8, car…
[a car drives in front of Phil]
Phil: …6, 5, quarters…
[roll of quarters breaks open, hitting the ground]
Phil: …3, 2…
[Phil reaches over Felix and takes a bag of money out of the back of the armored truck]
Herman: Felix, did I bring out two bags or one?
Felix: I dunno.
[scratches his head]
That impressive knowledge, perfect to the exact minute detail, seemingly implies an extended period of research, including failed attempts (presumably also including him being run over by the car), which could not have been feasibly shorter than six weeks in my opinion. And I’m the one with the keyboard here- so six more weeks it is:
Running total: 12,383 days
The final stage of this whole operation is breaking down what Phil achieves in his final Groundhog Day, and working out how long each soul-saving gesture would have taken, as follows:
- Saving a falling child - a day to hear about the accident, and find out where it happens, a couple more days to investigate, and maybe two more to get the timing perfectly off to a tee = 5 days
- Changing the old ladies’ tire - being in the right place, finding a tire and a jack = 1 day
- Saving Buster - discovering when and where Buster chokes, learning the Heimlich Manoeuvre = 2 days
- Getting a couple WWF tickets (entirely improbable but – one day to find out they enjoy WWF, one day to find out you can’t get WWF tickets within the same day – with a blizzard no less – and two full days to somehow source some tickets within the town itself = 4 days)
Total for those selfless acts: 12 days of hard work
Which brings us to a penultimate count of 12,395 days.
But then there is a final calculation to consider- the small matter of leap years, which add a 366th day to the calendar every four years. So that, Math Fans, is 8 extra days, leading to a massive final total of… drum roll please….
…12,403 days.
And written in more sensible terms that is…
33 years and 358 days
So if my math is right (probably ain’t) and obviously leap years make it difficult but it will mean something like;
407 months
1766 weeks
12,403 days
297, 672 hours
17, 860, 320 minutes
So next time you are asked… “Hey, just how many days does Bill Murray spend locked in Groundhog Day?” – The answer my friends, is, 12,403 days!!
That’s a far shout from that 8 years figure bandied about in that article mentioned above – and even further away from the 10,000 years that were supposedly mentioned in the initial drafts of the film. I can only thank my lucky stars I didn’t have to go to those lengths!
All that effort to find out that Harold Ramis was pretty much right in the first sodding place. It’s alright though, man’s a goddamn genius.
For anyone who wants to check all of this, I really don’t suggest watching Groundhog Day in this manner. It’s not the best way to enjoy what is essentially a light-hearted comedy whose metaphysical concerns are supposed to be enjoyed in fun, and not worked out mathematically. Normal people should be happy to just watch, and accept that Phil Connors is stuck repeating his one day endlessly over and over until he finds himself- but then, I don’t think I’m normal.
HAPPY GROUNDHOG DAY
P.S. You can follow me on Twitter @SiTheMovieGuy. Get following!
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143 Comments
Awesome!
I think 10,000 years is a much more satisfying amount of time. Certainly well over a century passed. The specific things you mention are intended to be merely emblematic of his journey. Recall when he looks at the old man chart in the hospital. The clear implication is that he has self-trained himself to be the equivalent of a doctor. One other point that movie buffs can related to. Who could see “Heidi 2″ over a hundred times? Well, likely someone who has not had to suffer through it for ten years. So, suffering through Heidi 2 once every 10 years just for something to do brings us to a thousand years alone.
If the amount of time he spent repeating the day is within reach of a human lifetime, then I suppose we have some obligation to try to achieve his level of unselfishness within our our own lifetime. If he were there for 1,000 years (which I prefer) then it lets me off the hook and I can continue being self-absorbed.
The fact that anyone (let alone multiple people) have sat down and gone thru the trouble of figuring this out amazes me. I only wish I had done it I enjoy doing trivial stuff for no other reason than sheer boredom. Having said that I don’t think that the movie covered everything he did while stuck in his infinite loop and thus the total should be adjusted to factor in the possibility of him learning multiple languages, studying the entire city to know when and where everything happened (certainly something I would do to pass the time) I.e. Being able to perform inthe same way as the armored car robbery in every situation around town, learning nearly infinite random talents, reading all the books in the library or bookstore in town (seen reading multiple books at diner), and lastly learning as much as he could about every person in the town not just the diners. This warrants adding an unknown amount of days and as I don’t feel like it I’m not going to calculate this right now.
Also not to nitpick or anything but how many days you think it took for him to realize and react to the woman needing a light for her cigarette after saving the mayor from choking?
I could think was Bill Murray’s character didn’t have to worry about carpal tunnel.
I sure as heckfire remember you!
:)
I play piano. sometimes I have played for 8 hours, still enjoying. no carpel tunnel problems, ever. the hand rests naturally on the keys. pro classical players practice at least
8 hours per day. also, Bill is playing basic blues = not as difficult as classical. I would
estimate one year, if he had any talent at all. the whole article is of course basically a joke, and its accuracy could vary hugely either way. as the author admits.
See, that’s just it, though. Phil never had to worry about carpal tunnel or any of that. Every day he wakes up, his body is back the way it was since he fell asleep on February 1st. He even says that he doesn’t have to worry about getting fat or getting lung cancer. So he can do all that without worrying about waking up the next day with a sore wrist, a hangover, or what not.
Thank you Sir.
This is amazing, really impressed! I was talking to my girlfriend about the number of days in Groundhog Day when we watched it the other day, now I have an idea!
Excellent, fastidious work, but how many days did you spend watching Groundhog Day? : )
Cheers Ed, and thank you Cellulord!
Believe it or not I watched it only once before the article. Admittedly I nearly wore out the rewind function though.
If there was one of those “guess the size” competitions for the number of days Bill Murray spent reliving Groundhog day, you’ll be in a chance of winning!
And no badly designed pie chart in sight ;)
I wouldn’t mind spend 33 years stuck with Andie McDowell.
She is a handsome woman.
You have too much TIME on your hands. AHAHAHAHAHAHAH see what I did there? AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Seriously though, great effort, this was a very fascinating read.
Thanks Braeden- I find every comment can be made more entertaining thanks to the addition of slightly worrying manic laughter!
Good work! I remember watching this movie around the 15th time back in the 90s and realizing it must have been years for him. That always made me feel a little sad because Groundhog Day had essentially become his life, and as increasingly knowledgeable and friendly as he was becoming, it meant he was becoming further detached psychologically from all other people. This figure you gave makes sense, but also means he lived his entire life over again in a day to the world, in or around his 80s he finally gets a little happiness and mediocrity in the end. What a great film. Definitely one of Saint Murray’s finest miracles.
Wow. Truly excellent work and worthy of the name of the website.
I have to be a jerk, though, and point out one possible flaw in your calculations. You adjust the amount of time it takes Phil to learn the piano because you think he’ll slow down to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome. However, carpal tunnel is a physical condition and his body resets every morning (otherwise, he’d wake up burned, electrocuted, stabbed, etc., or at the very least he would age 33 years.) He wakes up every morning with wrists and muscles that have never even touched a piano. He could spend all day playing, from dawn to dusk, with no ill effects, and he could do this effectively forever until he learned to play. Not saying that’s what he DID do, but it’s a possible wrinkle.
(Although, now that I think about it, how much of learning to play the piano is mental memory and how much is muscle memory? It might take Phil even longer to learn to do anything physical because he has to retrain his muscles every day to perform the task. So, hell, maybe you UNDERestimated some of his totals.)
“Muscle memory” doesn’t actually take place in muscles – it’s a function of the brain, as are memories, both of which create physical changes in neural pathways. The fact that his memory – and his muscle memory – carried across days necessitates that changes to the structure of his brain carried over, which means that some amount of aging was occurring for him. Maybe eventually he would’ve gotten Alzheimer’s.
Unless his memories are stored in his, y’know, soul. It is meant to be a spiritual parable, so why quibble.
Great work, but you also need to add in extra days for everyone else at the diner he learned about, not just those Rita asked him about. After all, he presumably learned everything there is to know about everyone in the diner, not just those you listed, as Rita could have easily asked him about the chef in the back as Doris. In fact, we can presume that Phil learned everything about virtually everyone both in and outside the diner, including those on the street and in the park, etc. Why stop with just the diner people if he had unlimited time on his hands?
A good point well made- but I could only really work on what was explicitly on screen. If I was just guessing the article could have been three lines long, or even bloody longer than this one!
even more important, you didn’t even mention the time it was taking him to try and save the homeless man. i won’t even bother speculating days, but it’s clear you poured a lot of research into this, so it’s baffling you’d miss that. you even listed it as day 37. phil spends several scenes trying to save that guy. overall though, very good article.
No, he knows exactly what she will say and do. He only needs to learn what he needs as he needs to learn it.
One more nitpicky comment — you don’t need to add 8 days for leap years. You estimated/calculated a sort of “bare minimum” number of Groundhog days Phil would have needed to learn all of the skills he obviously learned (and who knows; maybe there are other skills he learned that he never gets to use), and the number of days you estimated was whatever it was (12,395). Why do you add eight days to that for leap days? The number of days is the number of days!
In fact, leap year makes no sense within the context of your calculations, because he wasn’t living for years; he was living the same day, over and over again. If we can suspend disbelief and believe that he was in fact re-living the same day over and over, the sun and moon and planets would all have been in the same place every day, so the idea of a “year” or a “leap year” doesn’t really make sense within that context.
If you wanted to calculate an “equivalent” number of years he spent re-living Groundhog Day (like “dog years”), then you could include the leap years, but you should SUBTRACT 8 days from your total day count; basically, the equivalent number of “human years” he spent trapped in Groundhog Day were an equivalent of 33 years and 342 days (not 33 years 350 days, or 33 years 358 days), because the “equivalent” years is the only place the leap year comes into account. (Each “equivalent leap year” would have 1 more day in it than an “equivalent non-leap year,” so 8 days would be “left over” if you know what I mean.)
Whew! Okay, I feel better now.
Thanks for doing all of the estimating — I always wondered how long Phil was trapped in Groundhog Day hell. I just needed to point out the one small error in your math, or rather, in your logic :)
I feel better now too, this bugged me as well.
This is pretty amazing. Quite quality investigations here.
I could offer up one nugget that might actually add quite a lot to the overall time:
You suggest that it takes 12 days of work to do all of the selfless acts he performs (changing tire, saving Felix, catching the kid falling from the tree, etc.). But it’s made clear that he does these things every single day. He mentions to the kid, “I’ll see you tomorrow…. maybe!” Since I assume he’s kidding about the “maybe” part, can we not assume he does that every single day? So doing all of these things for these people every day would take a lot of time. Hence it would take a lot of time away from learning French, Ice Sculpting, etc. It would be kind of arbitrary, but likely 4-5 hours of each day is taken up just by wandering the town and doing these things every day. Not to mention that don’t all happen back to back presumably. So he might have 35 minutes between fixing the tire and catching the falling kid. Which would not leave much time for anything other than reading a book or something.
I guess it’s a nitpick. Great article!
PS – and I don’t think leap years matter do they? Since the actual date means nothing. It’s the same day over and over. The only thing that matters is how much time he spends; February 29th would have nothing to do with anything.
I figure it would take 12 days to initially discover that each of the things was happening, and getting himself into a rhythm by the end to accomplish them all in the same day. Though I also actually think he never accomplishes them all in one go, until that final day, so he couldn’t have spent THAT long trying in comparison to the length of time he was stuck reliving the day in general. So he would probably have learnt as much as he meant to by that point- I mean he accomplished almost everything that Rita said made “the perfect man” which is all Groundhog Day is actually about. As soon as he gets all of the achievements she reels off, he only has selflessness to accomplish, so I dont think he would have been spending as much time learning more new things while sorting out his errands.
Interesting and clearly a lot of thought was put into this, but as I was reading it, some of your points made no sense. Why would he worry about frostbite? He can kill himself and still wake up the next day with no harm to his body. Frostbite isn’t a concern for him. The same could be said for carpel-tunnel. He could never get it because his body resets itself every time it becomes Feb. 2 again.
I dont think he would worry about the frostbite, but I do think it likely that the numbness and/or pain would prevent him from continuing to work. So putting a limit on it is necessary. Also, and no matter what it was, doing anything for more than a few hours (no matter how enjoyable initially) becomes boring. So he would definitely stop sculpting, playing piano, etc., after a few hours continuous hours. When he referred to the number of hours spent tossing the cards, I always presumed he didnt mean he did it continuously.
I only meant he wouldn’t be able to go immediately and play the piano on the same day if he spent so much time ice carving that he got immediate onset frostbite.
> He could never get it because his body resets itself every time it becomes Feb. 2 again…
Interesting. Clearly he’s acquiring memories and expertise throughout all those days — i.e., his MIND is not resetting itself.
Is the film abstrusely weighing in on the mind-body problem? Are thoughts, memories, personality, knowledge — all the things he acquires through his journey — not ultimately bodily in nature? Stored in neural pathways, brain chemistry, and the like?
You guys are just swell!
And thanks for the responses- I agree about the leap years point. It should have been a subtraction, since he actually lived those leap year days, and didn’t somehow gain them, which is how the calculation has it. Great spot!
Another thing not considered is the time spent maintaining what he’d learned previously. Sure, it may take 4-5 hours a day for 6 months to become a proficient card-flipper, but he would then have to keep practicing somewhat to maintain that proficiency. The same with the ice sculpting, piano, and French. Not to mention keeping up the timing on making sure he’s at the right place at the right time for the selfless acts he does on the final day.
Say he takes up the piano 10 years into the nearly 34 year stretch, and it takes him 7.5 years to get to a given level of proficiency. He would then have to keep practicing some amount of time during the remaining 16.5 years to keep up that skill, all while developing whatever he moved on to afterward and practicing whatever skills he learned prior. I’d guess that card flipping would be something he’d take up early on in the cycle, after the suicide attempts. He’d need something to pass the time before getting inspired to do something better with the time given. Maybe after a year of Groundhog Days he’s an expert. He’s got to keep card flipping for some amount of time (maybe a couple of hours a week) for at least 32 more years!
By the end, he must have excellent time management skills.
Not sure he would have continued learning how to flick cards really- it seems more like an achievement of opportunity, rather than something he felt compelled to keep at every single day though. The final day would have been somewhat marred if he had decided not to help everyone he possibly could so he could sit and flick some cards at an upturned hat!
I love this! My own nitpicky comment would point out that there is a flaw in assuming many of the things happened on separate days, because on the final day he’s clearly done many of them on that one day. The guy thanks him for the heimlich, the piano teacher proudly mentions he’s her student, the married couple come up and thank him and he gives them the WWF tickets, etc.
And I just noticed you’ve already addressed my own points. Anyways, this was a very entertaining read and it’s fun to think about.
My favorite comedy of all time! Thanks Simon… What a wonderful analysis!
This is all assuming he is only practicing one thing a day. Probably not true.
Not true, Scott my friend. I addressed that in the disclaimer, and then in a second response. The other simple fact is, if someone had an eternity to learn new things (and he has fully accepted that he will never get out of the perpetual loop by the time he starts to learn piano and ice sculpting at the least), why would he then make sure he was spending his ENTIRE day practicing? Also, at some point along the line, he started with his voyage of selflessness by helping other people throughout the day. Even if he was only doing a couple a day, along with eating, and reporting on the Groundhog Day event, he wouldnt have had like 6 or 7 hours to learn multiple things.
I didn’t read all the comments but the only fault I see, aside from some concurrency of events, would be that #days does not necessarily mean full days. There is at least one suicide where he woke up, grabbed the toaster, and took it to the bath tub.
Regardless, this was some good fun. Now time to go home and watch it again.
In this context read “days” as repetitions Sir.
Yeah, I don’t think I’m normal either. Thanks for doin’ the math man.
Great … one more nitpicky point. When the kid falls out of the tree, Phil laments that the boy *never* thanks him for it. That would suggest that Phil saves the boy many times. Those could be parts of other days you’ve already accounted for, or extra days altogether.
Yeah, I’ve accounted for them- I figure he takes four or five days to get it down to a tee, so it becomes habitual, and then after that it literally takes him ten minutes or whatever to go and save the kid (unless some days, Heaven forbid, he chooses to just let it slide!). The day count only takes into account days spent learning/perfecting new things…
Fantastic post. I was going to chime in about “someone having too much time on their hands” but here I am doing the same thing.
I think the nearly 34-year estimate is pretty much on target … though you could argue it’s probably on the low side. If you allow for some creative hypothesizing you could easily scale that up to the full 40 years that Mr. Ramis estimates on the high end.
For example, I would argue that you could tack on an extra three years worth of suicides. Not that these were all premeditated. Putting myself in Phil’s shoes, I would relish the option of stepping in front of a truck every time I were having a bad day. He might not have been planning to off himself, but let’s just say things aren’t going well that day and he wanted to start over. It’s fair to assume he took this option many, many times.
Similarly, again putting myself in Phil’s shoes, I’m sure I’d find many, many ways to amuse myself out of boredom. The night of drinking and railroad-track driving with Gus and Ralph and his date with the french maid (both of which he seemed to thoroughly enjoy) may have been just the tip of the iceburg. I’m sure he did a lot of partying with Punxsutawney’s more colorful folks over the course of his stay. Add another three years of frivolity and there you go … 40 years.
Ha! I love the idea that he spent like 6 years just being completely debauched, and then when he eventually gets out of there he has to live with the guilt of what he did. If it was me, there would be a lot of experimental stuff going on. Like Groundhog Day: After Dark style. I mean, after 30 years curiosity is going to play a major part in shaping what he does with his leisure time…!
I bet there isn’t a single item in Punxsutawney that he hasn’t had sex with by the end. Animal, mineral, vegetable. You name it…
Doesn’t he also learn italian to talk with the guy in the bed and breakfast? Not to mention all the days he spends with the homeless man trying to make sure he doesn’t die?
Love this movie and this article. Thanks Simon
Entirely welcome Ryan.
I’m not sure he learns it entirely- what he says is effectively just Hello and Goodbye.
And the way I see the homeless guy- that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back for him and makes him seek to be entirely selfless (when the nurse says “people just die” he says resolutely “not today”, but then cant stop him dying). So yeah, you are probably right that for a while he spent time exasperatedly trying to stop the old man from dying. Good shout.
With the WWF tickets, they could have already been in the possession of someone else in town. In all that time, it’s possible he could have heard someone mention they had them, they had them but couldn’t go, etc and could have made a bargain for them in order to give them to the other couple.
Also, great read. I enjoyed it.
The Wrestlemania tickets could have been purchased from a retail outlet with a Tickmaster terminal. I remember that I bought WWE (then WWF) tickets once at the customer service desk at what is now a Macy’s. According to Ticketmaster there aren’t any locations in Puxatony now, but there could have been then.
Points for your effort, but negative points for originality. Since there is clearly not meant to be a “real” answer anyway, the fun and novelty in this topic is solely in the silliness of trying to work out the math. And the blogger from Wolfgnards (the linked article) already played that game two years ago. This just seems like coattail riding really.
Coat-tail riding? Erm, ok…
If there is no right answer, why cant multiple people answer the question? I didn’t agree with his answer so I offered my own. That’s the joy of interpretation!
Don’t get me wrong. I get that you had your own approach. But for what boils down to a quirky entertainment piece, the concept seems a lot more important than the approach, let alone the answer. I would have crunched the numbers differently than both you and wolfgnards did, but I feel like it’s been covered at this point :). Amusing once. A little less amusing twice. That’s all.
Why would he be worried about carpal tunnel or tendonitis? His body “Resets” every day! If he kills himself, he wakes up the next day, unharmed. If he were to chop his arm off, chances are, he’d wake up the next day, unharmed.
It doesn’t always reset- a problem I found pretty annoying. After the sequence in which Rita slaps Phil a number of times, he wakes up the “next day” looking terrible, and Rita greets him with “Rough night?” Despite him looking normal every other time he wakes up.
But, yeah, I agree. I just thought I could suggest he might get some strain after extended playing and carpal tunnel syndrome is close to my heart…
Great post. I myself am one of those people that likes to think of the sometimes trivial aspects of films that aren’t mentioned and I do things like this myself, so I appreciate all the effort. This is especially impressive seeing how your results ended up mirroring Ramis. Thumbs up, Simon!
12 years to learn a language? Is Phil retarded?
Nope, he’s just in the worst environment to learn. And with very limited or no opportunity for conversation-aided learning.
I agree that it wouldn’t take Phil 12 years to become fluent in French unless he’s a complete idiot. You say that Punxatawney is the worst learning environment for a language, but that leaves out 2 major options as far I can tell:
1) He could have found a French person and spent the afternoon with them asking them to only speak French. This would equate to total immersion for Phil, but would probably be seen as a fun diversion for any French person stuck in Punxatawney. In total immersion it shouldn’t take any English speaker more than 8-12 months to learn French (and yes, I speak from experience).
2) He could have bought or sourced (library in Punxatawney?) some kind of language course on tape and listened to it literally all day, every day. If he has a good memory (which he seems to), he’d be able to learn rather quickly. If he supplements this course with reading of French poetry (which I presume he does, since he’s trying to woo Rita), he could conceivably learn in maybe 1-2 years at most. If he’s doing this while simultaneously learning piano, ice sculpting, etc. (maybe 1 hour per day), then it might take 12 years to learn French, but it also couldn’t be counted as additional days, but rather as “complementary” ones.
If he can kill himself, and then wake up fine the next morning…. why would carpal tunnel be an issue again?
You mention concerns of carpal tunnel syndrome, but he’s obviously already a middle-aged man. After 34 years, he would be clearly elderly. There’s also the small matter of having repeatedly *died*. Obviously Phil’s body is also part of the time-loop, and is unaffected by the effects of time. Phil is absolutely right…throughout the course of the time-loop, he IS immortal, and also effectively invulnerable. Any damage done to his body is reset the next time the day repeats. Ergo, carpal tunnel would not be a problem.
Ok ok, Carpal Tunnel wasn’t the best choice of ailment! Let’s just say short-term Wrist Strain. It is actually possible to immediately develop Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from an extended period of unfamiliar, stressful activity (in terms of stress on the wrist)- I know this because that’s how I developed it the first time. So I was basing my assumption that an extended period of piano playing (five or six hours) might develop a short term, and immediate problem. But, I do take the point!
Great post. But it’s sad to believe that it takes him that many years to become selfless and not narcissistic, which is how he finally gets released from the day. For example, when he wakes up with Rita on february third and begins getting frisky, she says to him that she wished he’d been like that the night before instead of just falling asleep, meaning of course that he finally gets Rita in bed and he does nothing with her, the ultimate sacrifice.
I have often been stuck in time loops and I approve of this article.
This article is total shit. Your grammar and sentence structure are terrible, and your ideas are stupid.
2K facebook likes suggest another reading.
Make that 3K! BUUUUURRRRNNNNN!!!!!
Very well done. Thank you for the analysis.
Danny Rubin actually talks about the elapsed time in the special features of the special edition GroundHog day. It’s waaaaaaayyyy more than 30-odd years…
Excellent analysis. Ever noticed that the main character’s name and the groundhog are both Phil? Like Punxatawny, Phil the reporter has to go through the same things over and over to learn something new, in a town that stays the same year after year. Lots of layers to this movie.
I think that for Phil, the reporter to have improved himself, it would take reinforcement of learned activities. At the end, he knew he had to be in the same location to catch the boy falling out of the tree, help the person choking, help the homeless person, etc. Once something is mastered, it’s a case of just reinforcing things each day or every few days. But, towards the end, he had decided to stay on the same routine. Are you correct on the timeline. Probably. If not, it’s still a fun analysis.
a good friend of mine was a friend of Danny Rubin, the original screenwriter for GHD. He said that in the beginning they considered starting the movie at the 1000th day, but decided in the end that they owed it to the audience to show how he became trapped in the GHD web. In any event, apparently the metaphysical implications of the movie were deliberately intended and do not come from “over analyzing” the flick.
Yeah I had heard that, and that Harold Ramis promised not to abandon that idea so we just landed into a scene like where he steals the money, so are utterly confused as to how he knows what’s happening. Would have made for an excellent film, but an entirely different tone- with Bill Murray’s ability to be nasty at the flip of a switch, its far more fun to find out a little of why he gets trapped (his terrible self-centred attitude).
My other favourite thing about the original script was the idea that Rubins allegedly played with the idea of Phil being cursed by an ex-girlfriend/witch to spend eternity in the loop. Glad they swerved that idea!
you count the one time phil saves the old man but in the film he saves him multiple times. you didnt factor in those days. also he saves the kid more than once as he says “you have never thanked me! ill see you tomorrow” so while i think youre close i think youre missing some key days along the line
I actually thought the same thing- but he doesnt. At least not on screen- there’s the time he gives him a big wedge of money (which doesnt take more than a minute), then there’s the night he takes him to and then dying to Phil’s despair. And there is actually only one more time shown- when Phil takes him to the diner and we see the old guy eating soup- the film then cuts to Phil attempting to revive him in the street. Whether this is the same day is a matter of contention as it looks like the old man is in a make-shift shelter of sorts when Phil is resuscitating him, and presumably Phil wouldn’t have sent him back there after the diner! But then the way the film runs at this point we are obviously supposed to sympathise with Phil’s despair at not being able to affect the old man’s fate, and having his care and death in the same day emphasises the effect.
Your commentary about chiropracty and how long it would take to learn reminded me of a bit in Schlock Mercenary, where they are talking to an alien who is, personally, millions of years old. He comments that he has the equivalent experience of a medical degree and that “millions of years leave a lot of time for trial and error.”
Did you factor in how many times he hits the alarm clock and then it goes to the next day and he hits the alarm clock and so on and so on?
I, too, was compelled to nit-pick the carpal tunnel idea until I saw that several astute commenters had already descended upon it like so much carrion. I also had the idea that the number of days reduced could then be increased depending on whether muscle memory (ie Phil’s hands “knowing” what to do) was stored in the brain or the muscles themselves, something that, if there is definitive neurological research, is beyond my ken. You yourself bring up an excellent point that there is an odd distinction that Phil has MEMORIES from day to day, but memories can be attributed to corporeal functions as neurological impulses. In turn, in this bit of speculative fiction, we MUST necessarily grant a distinction between PHYSICAL effects and MENTAL memory. I think it is safe to say that the argument about Phil retaining physical effects because of the aftermath of being slapped holds little validity. He did not wake up with a bruised face, but rather, with a bruised ego. One can clearly look like they had a “rough night” when they drag themself around looking depressed, which Phil certainly did. Thus we return to the fact that one of the most fascinating crux-points of the film is the distinction between physical harm/training and mental sharpness. If he had all that time to train his brain with no physical deterioration, it’s almost a wonder Phil did not develop telephathy by tapping the 90% of the brain most human never consciously use. That COULD explain his intimate knowledge of the diner patrons…but maybe now *I* am the one reaching too far from overthinking.
In an entirely different point, the one thing that REALLY always bothered me with the logic of Groundhog Day is that it never ever addressed what would happen if Phil never died or went to sleep. Lord knows it is easy enough to stay up for more than 24 hours, and given a seeming eternity to experiment, it follows that Phil would have at some point stayed up past the hour on Feb 3 that his alarm clock goes off on Feb 2. The closest we get is when Rita is with him at the end of the night, but they still fall asleep with hours to go before the reboot. If you ask me it would be way more jarring to be awake and maybe in an entirely different location and then be blipped back to waking up in bed to an alarm clock…
@Jay Insult: It’s a myth that humans only use 90% of the brain.
Amazing work!! However, I seriously doubt that fluent French should take 12 years. Half of that should do, even for an American.
I agree with dL. You don’t need 12 years top speak French or any other language fluently, especially if you have SOOOO MUCH time to work on it. French is not that difficult
My mind can finally be put to ease! Could you know please solve the following, so I will no longer have to question anything:
1) Did the chicken or the egg come first?
2) If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is present to hear it, does it still make a sound?
Thank you very much in advance! Lol! =)
Impressive as this is the one fatal flaw is that many different actions could have occurred on the same day in many, many instances. Giving a separate day for every instance of experience and learning doesn’t make any sense.
For instance, in the 100 days he watched a movie, he could have also attempted a suicide, practiced throwing cards for hours, worked on piano playing. Many of the days he does and practices these things could have played out simultaneously.
I hate to be critical, but I think you need to re-evaluate. I carefully studied your post, then set out to replicate Phil Connors’ accomplishments.
I’m not especially bright, but I AM a fast learner. I figure it took me about five-days…maybe closer to a week.
:)
First off, @Chip, @Johann Schmidt — Total Asses.
Great article, enjoyable read.
Thanks Ken! Really appreciate everyone’s feedback.
I was just having this conversation with my friend last night while watching Groundhog Day ON Groundhog Day lol! Admittedly, it was late at night and my senses had already been dulled a bit but as we sat watching I started pondering exactly how long it would to learn all these fantastic things (the ice sculpture being the largest example). Thanks for all the hard work in figuring this out, my mind can rest now :-)
Very interesting! I always wondered how many days he spent in that loop. A clever way to detemine that.
I think you missed one day — when he considers learning ice sculpture, it seems to be after day 34.
I reckon you’re out by a factor of 10. I reckon it’s in the hundreds of years, because it would have taken a long long long time for him to get to be so selfless.
Actually I suspect Phil only spent one day in Punxatawney. When he was trying to get an outside phone line talking to the operator on the pay phone he got clunked on the head with a snow shovel by some yaboo walking by. He was knocked unconscious, dreamt the whole damn thing and woke up the next day ans went back to Pittsburgh. In a dream you don’t have to explain any of the seemingly amazng feats that Phil accomplished.
Okay. This is one of my all-time favorites, and I have both answers and more questions.
The 4th time I watched it I counted all 53 days that are re-done, or mentioned. I considered all of the things you did, Simon, plus a few that are inferred by the events in the scenes (which you wouldn’t necessarily catch the first 3 times, even with Rewind).
But I always came back to the Piano, the Doctor, and the Ice-Sculpting.
The French and Italian he could have “faked,” seeing as how he is good at that. He’s a fast learner.
The Old Man drove him to study medicine, and he learned it the same way he learned Piano and Armored Car heists. He put on a lab coat and followed the doctors around, asking questions.
About the WWF tickets. If he couldn’t get out of Punxatawney, coudn’t he still have things brought in? If he accepts that it is his karma that won’t allow him to leave, and he needs to maximize his experience, then the Fates/Gods/Singularity would certainly allow him other opportunities to maximize his Experience.
…Like a French and Italian tutor. Obviously he could have taken Italian lessons from the man in his B&B, or learned Italian by osmosis while he flipped cards with him. But, once Phil is resigned to the fact that he isn’t leaving, why can’t others come in–since outside people, such as the piano teacher, can be brought into the loop? Or maybe a French professor is visiting from State College or something.
Of course, the WWF tickets could just as well have been a trade that he learned about at the Hospital, and then engineered as the day went on.
By the end, Phil knows everyone in town, and it is key that he seeks to maximize the happiness of all Punxatawneans. There are obviously quite a few days that he probably just went around and knocked on doors, getting to know everyone. He’s a friendly kind of guy, and boredom would’ve driven him to make every connection between townspeople, just to get to know how everyone is related.
But you’re totally leaving out the concept, Simon, that Phil could have done MANY things in a day, once he knew that a)the days would repeat, b) he could spend (or acquire) unlimited funds, and c) his knowledge, experience, and muscle memory would be taken with him.
Would you get tired if you knew that tomorrow you wouldn’t be sore, but you’d have better muscle mass/muscle memory/physical talent? He could get a good workout every other day, and spend the alternate days doing ice sculpting and piano. He doesn’t need to end the night with Andie McDowell, since a) the Fates won’t allow it, and b) the French Maid can satisfy his needs on the days he is particularly testosteroe-driven.
OF COURSE he wants to live in Punxatawney at the end of the movie–because, like an omniscient demi-god, he knows the territory and people inside and out. And which houses are for sale. And where all of the money is hidden.
So the questions I have at the end of the 15x watching the movie are these:
1) How many days/years did he spend there?
HE COULD NOT have spent more than 5 years there, Simon, because he would have forgotten how to be a reporter (and the very fact that he WAS a reporter by trade, reporting to the Outside World). Once he loses sight of the Outside World, there would be no reason to continue doing newscasts, since he couldn’t be fired and he wouldn’t need to become the Ultimate Reporter while in the Continuous Loop.
Like Toma Hanks in Cast Away–once everything else in the Loop became two-dimensional, then only the things that were most important became the things that would be “Real.”
2) How much money would he have spent on his Ultimate Groundhog Day which carried over to Feb 3rd, his first day of Freedom?
That’s what I got. Thanks for sharing!
Nice points Jedi Jeffs
He can’t leave Punxsutawney because of the storm (though I never understood why he didn’t just leave early in the morning when the storm obviously hasnt hit) so presumably that would be an impediment to him having the tickets sent or brought in too. And the phone lines are down as well, so he wouldnt be able to get in touch with anyone to bring them in, which goes for the tutors as well.
And, whether he would be tired or not- I simply cant accept that he would fill his ENTIRE day with learning if he thought he was going to be stuck there infinitely. Eventually, he would run out of knowledge, in a Johnny Five “More input” manner, and he wouldn’t be able to help anyone else out, or spend the time to get to know everyone or have some brainless fun if he did do that.
Also, I really don’t believe that he would forget how to be a journalist after five years! For one he still goes to cover the Groundhog Day event a lot (otherwise presumably there would be days in which he would have to just dodge Rita, his boss, for missing the one appointment he was in town for!), which would keep him sharp.
And the money issue- probably not a great deal in all honesty. You never really see him buy anything, and his good deeds dont cost anything. And I bet he didnt even have to buy a drink at the party, given that he’s just helped so many people out!
Perhaps he does not spend everyday actually doing the news reports. But he really likes Andie McDowell. And imagine how his day goes when he does not show up. She is furious with him, etc. He only has one brief obligation that he has to do, and in doing it well, he makes someone he longs for happy.
Imagine the book this guy could write on pick-up lines and techniques. Because I suspect he has worked on every eligible female during his 10,000 years. I know I would.
Can you do Ferris Bueller’s Day Off next?
That one’s slightly easier, so here goes.
Ferris Bueller spent one day off, or 24 hours, or 1440 minutes. :)
Man you did some serious work on this. This is probably the most in-depth talk of a film I’ve read in a long time, and I appreciate you putting all this effort into it. Like most of America that has any sense I watched this fantastic movie again this year, only I watched it today. I DVR’d it off Encore and then when it ended today I flipped over to the Internet using my Logitech Revue with Google TV (I’m a DISH customer/employee) and was asking myself that very question…just HOW LONG was Murray there? YOU sir, have finally and definitively answered this question for me for once and for all, and for that I thank you. Again, much respect on the research!
I can certainly appreciate your detailed investigation! This is my first time to your site (via Reddit).
I did want to point out that, given Phil Conors has showcased quite a flexible moral fiber, he wouldn’t necessarily need to be an expert in many of the other fields you mention in order to be effective at accomplishing one demonstration of it. For instance, instead of learning the entirety of Chiropacty he could just attempt to fix her husband’s back once per day until he gets it right. He could analyze his experiences with horribly mangling the old man’s back repeatedly until the he finally, accidentally managed to *fix* it. Then he could work from there.
I’d imagine it wouldn’t take more than 15-20 times of someone as sharp as Phil to learn how to fix the guy’s back pretty easily. As mean natured as it seems for him to repeatedly break an old man’s back, the fact that he’s killed himself, robbed the bank, etc. I think shows that he’d be capable of the act (considering it was for the greater good — ultimately fixing the old man’s back).
Very interesting read, though! Thanks.
I think that since the language of film is symbolism, that we should perhaps take a more symbolic approach to the question.
Groundog Day happens once a year. There are 38 Groundhog days in the movie. Ergo, it takes him 38 years to develop the perfect Groundhog Day.
This is prety close to your mathematical breakdown, and has a nice metaphysical symmetry as well.
@Michael, by your reasoning, if there are only 38 Groundhog Days total, then everything takes place in 38 days, not 38 years. 38 years would be 13,870+ days (quick calculation at 365 days/year).
Fascinating, of course.
I don’t understand, though, how Phil learns anything (like a language or ice sculpting) when every day is “just like the one before.” How does he build skills?
Not a quibble about your math or assumptions — a quibble with the movie itself. Or my misunderstanding of something about it.
MWms,
On one Star Trek:TNG, they were in a time loop but didn’t know it until they began to hear ‘echos’ from the past. Each time they repeated it, their memories of that day were eliminated and they started again.
With Groundhog Day, it seems that even though the day and it’s events repeat themselves, Phil’s experience, knowledge and skills remain. It is not like he gets amnesia everyday.
Yeah doesn’t make sense to me either really. But he needs to be conscious about his predicament otherwise the film would be incredibly horrible to watch. It would just be a tragedy, with Phil never learning to become a nice person!
Phil remembers everything that has happened to him. Only his body is reset each morning.
This author is off by THOUSANDS OF YEARS – 33 years is an absurd assumption on his part – I think he really needs to put some thought into this.
Thanks Rich. Sarcastic much?
Fourth base? I chuckled, but as I read on, I came to the sad conclusion that you were serious. FYI, there is no such thing as “fourth base,” only 1st, 2nd, 3rd and Home. Home is not a base, it’s a terminus; the goal, the end of the quest. That thing you’ve been longing for. This is why, when Americans are wildly successful at something they say that they’ve hit a home run. Not “I’ve made it to 4th base!” There’s “stealing home,” “sliding into home,” “rounding all the bases,” and “hitting it out of the park,” all of which indicate varying forms of success.
Oh, and Americans call their country “the U.S.” or “the United States” and almost never “America.”
Use this knowledge wisely. Or don’t.
Thanks for the input.
I know fourth base is called “home”, but I’m not talking baseball here am I, and I actually think using the phrase “sliding into home” was a little bit too graphic even for me!
Probably the vast majority call this America. When most Americans are asked in foreign countries, when asked where they are from, most USA residents answer America. There has been considerable backlash from Mexico and other North American countries about this, as well as in some South American countries. Do a little research and thinking before just throwing your thoughts out there. Try the “Man on the Street” approach. Walk up to just 10 different people you don’t know and ask them what they call this country.
Also, “Fourth Base” is urban slang for sex. Also search “sex fourth base” (without the quotes) on Google.
Fun read, Simon. And well reasoned. If you figure there are 5 to 6 “skills” he learns in the movie (ice sculpture, piano, medicine, French/Italian, don’t be a dick) at 8,000 to 12,000 hours each to master (using Gladwell’s 10,000 hours as a guide), he’s spent 40,000 to 72,000 hours on improving himself. Given 2,000 “working hours” a year for that development, that’s 20 years on the low end and as many as 36 to reach enlightenment with plenty of time left over for all the chicanery we see early in his process (card flipping, bank robbing, toaster bathing, Heidi 2 watching). Add in a 25% fudge factor and you get between 25 years to roughly 43 years. I would definitely think someone who’d had to live that same day repeatedly for his entire lifetime might learn to change his ways. In other words, your number seems right on to me. Nice job.
Great movie, fun story.
But…
Ramis “..it had to be more like 30 or 40 years…
You: “I don’t agree with his estimate at all, as you’ll see below.”
You: It was “33 years and 358 days”
I watched Scrooged over the holidays, another good Murray film, some channel had it on a 24-hr loop xmas day.
Yeah you got me! that sentence was written before I added the bit in about him saying it was closer to 30 or 40 years, and then I missed it in the final read. You should be an editor!
You think he speaks that french poem perfectly? Clearly you are not French, mon ami! We laugh ahrder at thatt han at anytihg else over here (Paris), in fact, with Murray’s personality and demeanor, it gives us the impression he’s s till kind of bluffing!
Sans blague!
You think he speaks that french poem perfectly? Clearly you are not French, mon ami! We laugh ahrder at that than at anything else over here (Paris), in fact, with Murray’s personality and demeanor, it gives us the impression he’s s till kind of bluffing!
Sans blague!
i remember reading this same article years ago. when was the original publication?
Are you joking, in line with the Groundhog Day theme? I can never tell.
If not, it was written on Tuesday the 1st of Feb 2011, and published on the morning of Groundhog Day (the 2nd). There was indeed an earlier article addressing the same question over at Wolf Gnards- which I linked to- but that one’s entirely different.
Interesting. When I fist saw the movie I assumed the time-scale was on the order of 100-500 years. It seemed obvious to obtain all the skills, to try and fail at different things and to come to terms with being stuck in a time loop with no hope of escape and finally making peace with it and choosing to improve would take a very long time (and a run on sentence)
On the topic of Phil’s learning French, he DID have access to someone who could teach him – Rita. He could have spent many of the days with her, speaking French and learning all about her at the same time.
I tend more toward the hundreds/thousands of years reading of the movie. You don’t necessarily get this strictly from the skills and knowledge shown onscreen, but I get the distinct impression that these things are meant to imply much greater knowledge. Probably the most obvious example, as others noted above, is the people in the diner – I find it unlikely that he has only mastered the knowledge of the people we explicitly see him rattling off biographical details for. I think we’re meant to assume he has this level of knowledge of every person in Punxsatawney.
And then there’s the time he spends convinced he’s a god. He’s reached a stage where his immortality and near-omniscience have made him feel like a deity – to me, this implies he’s lived, at the very least, beyond the span of a single human lifetime.
His assumption that he is a God is surely a direct reaction to him not dying when he kills himself though surely? I mean, he even says it in terms of his surviving the suicide attempts?
The film doesn’t show it, but I think you have to factor in some “escape time.” For some time, he must have leaped out of bed and jumped in every possible sort of vehicle, and driven ever conceivable direction to escape town. A month or two?
But what really bothers me about the movie is–what happens to the other people? Are we all re-living the day too, we just don’t know it? Or does everyone else continue on a different trajectory? Are there thousands of angry Andie McDowell’s wondering why Phil disappeared forever?
To me this movie is just like real life… We all keep doing the same loop until we GET IT or we grow old and die and come back….
-peace
Do more for others than you do for self and be free!
Interesting. In a similar time loop situation during the endless eight story arc of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, the period of Aug 16-31 repeated 15,532 times, or 594 years.
Correction: when he sees Heidi 2 with the french maid, he’s driving a Mercedes not a Rolls Royce.
Great work, Simon and everybody.
I am still plagued, however — suffering sleepless nights! — over concern about one thing:
How many years did Phil spend learning Russian so that he could quote Anton Chekhov with such deep feeling and experience to a rapt audience of journalists and VIPs?
You don’t have to learn Russian to quote Chekhov or anybody else. You just memorize the line(s) you like. I have students (VERY talented students) who learned Russian themselves during the summer months (3 months). I also have students who after 6 months of Russian (6 hours a day!) can only say “Hi!” and “Bye”. It depends…
What do you think would have happened if he had tried to stay up all night? (I was hoping he would try to do this a little into the movie when I watched it for the first time.)
I always knew they did not show everyday since Phil mentioned things he had done that you did not see as well as him having days perfectly memorized while you did not see him actually learning how the things happened- but I never thought it took more than a decade for him to actually get past February 2. I do not think it should really count as weeks, months, and years because it is actually the same day all over again. When the day ends- everything is completely reset as if it never happened and only Phil is aware of what had gone on before while it is a fresh day for everyone else. Weeks, months, and years are made up by different days that finish the week, month, and year. When February 2 ends, it is February 2 all over again meaning the rest of the week, month, and year are being delayed. I always did wonder that when he finally made it to February 3- would he have forgotten about anything important that was going on in his life before the day he started reliving?
Also, I always wondered how it worked for him when he killed himself- would he actually go to the afterlife and see what God looked like or would it just be black until 6 A.M.?
Last, I also sometimes wonder why he did not try to leave Punxsutawney by sneaking past the highway patrol blocking off the exit when he knew anything they did to try stopping him would not matter the following day?
Any special reason why you didn’t take into account that in the repetative burden of living the day over and over again, that he didn’t spend 4-6 hours tossing cards, then go off for his piano lesson, then hang out at the diner to kill time & get to know people, and then go off to the Heidi 2, and when he didn’t have sex or whatever, that he’d hang out watching the ice sculptors?
Yeah, it’s a stretch to say he was the kind of guy that would keep that busy all the time, but to say that he spent each day doing one thing at a time is well out of sync with the movie. If he was so bored that he spent 6 months tossing cards for 4-6 hours a day, are you saying he killed himself everyday to keep from being around to do anything else?
With even a little effort, talking to diner customers after his piano lesson and before going to the movie, for example, or trying out ice sculpture after his piano lesson, the whole thing is easily done in 1/4 to 1/3 of your guestimate.
I mean, really. Is even his character so single purposed that he’d go feed the homeless guy, or save the kid, and call it a complete day and then go back to his room and refuse to even toss cards?
Ramis guessed 30-40 years with the same thought that went into the reason why Murray is stuck in this day. He just never really thought about it and focused on making a great movie without worrying about the details like that.
I’m thinking 5-8 years, because if I’m giving $1000, I’m getting 5-6 hours of piano until I get good. Follow that with a trip to the diner, 3-4 hours of ice sculpture, a movie & sex, and we’re talking 14-16 hours of his day. If you had to put up with the repetition, you’d fill your day too.
8 years tops.
@Nary – At the risk of repeating myself and Simon (though, given the theme of the movie…), it generally takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of a given topic. Even assuming he spent 16 hours a day, every day, mastering his 5-6 skills, that’s almost 2 years to master each skill, for a minimum total of 8.6 years. 8 years would be the absolute minimum threshold and I expect a practical minimum is at least twice that long.
Even if you allow for “partial mastery” (say, 4,000 hours), a more realistic schedule of 10-hour days, 6 days a week would take roughly 6.5 years to accomplish. Even by that standard, 5-6 years seems short. And none of this answers how long it takes to achieve enlightenment. For all practical purposes, there really is no upper bound on the number of years he could have been trapped in a single day.
For these reasons, I still think you’re looking at a bare minimum of 15 years, with a more likely minuimum of 20-25. Simon’s estimate remains entirely plausible to me.
Thanks Tim, my sentiments precisely.
What a great read. That was awesome, Simon. I quizzed my wife on ‘how long do you think Bill Murray was stuck in Groundhog Day…take a guess,” I said. At first, people usually respond with “a month” or so. She was shocked to learn 33+ years, as I was.
What a great piece.
As someone pointed out, Phil doesn’t learn fluent French – just one quote, not very well pronounced. The Italian is a simple phrase, followed by a quote from Katherine White (in English). Chekov can be plucked from a dictionary of quotations. Playing the piano to the level we see – I’m remembering a quote in “The Moon is a Balloon” (David Niven autobiography) where he talked about having to portray a concert pianist (A Kiss in the Dark) and practising every day until his fingernails bled. And there’s always the intriguing possibility of an undiscovered talent for jazz …
I was under the impression that Phil had already mastered the art of flipping cards before arriving in Punxatawney.
Great article, and I agree with most of the points and with the overall time estimate. The author of the article and some of the people here in the comments have suggested that with regards to the Piano he only “learns that one song.” I disagree with that as they show his progress when he is at his lessons: he is learning arpeggios and scales the proper way. Which shows that he isn’t just learning one song but actually “learning” the piano. The piece he performs is Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini.” At his performance at the Ball at the end he is shown improvising a Jazz solo. This shows a high level of musical expertise. Most music students aren’t usually able to improvise on that level until after about 3-4 years.
Extraordinary bit of work, Simon, thank you so much. Also was a fun read. If I may add my two cents, I think you may have underestimated the medical training (you gave it 20 days). It’s not just the guy’s back, learning the Heimlick Maneuver, or CPR. Two scenes advised me he spent a lot more. The first is obvious: At the hospital, Phil asks for the old man’s chart. Understanding that takes a lot more than 3 weeks. The second less so, but given Phil’s obsessiveness which is clearly indicated throughout the film, it may be more telling: the resignation in his eyes as he looks up to the sky after the old man dies for the final time suggests he went down a long, long road and explored all the possibilities (including learning about them) before deciding things were ultimately out of his hands. Anyway, it’s all in fun. Best to you.
How many days did it take to complete this assessment? About 18 years give/take?
I’ve watched this movie, dunno, lots of times. The over-riding thing I take away from it is that literally an OCEAN of time passed while he was stuck in groundhog day. Melting it down to “he did this on this day, and that on that day” is impossible. While it’s interesting, I thing your final number falls well short, far short, of the time. I would guess a minimum of 400-500 years, if not MUCH longer. Truthfully, there’s really no way to know. What about the 150 years worth of days he never even left his room? Memorizing everything of import that takes place in a town during a given day, and working your schedule to actually be there and make a difference? A couple days? Really? Years, and years, and years. Music, art, literature, medicine, all that stuff. Too much to learn in the short time you’ve listed. I’m sure that Anton Chekov quote, he just walked into the library, and grabbed it off the shelf. No. The impression is that he’d read, and learned, most (if not all) of the local library. How long did it take to get to the point of wanting to commit suicide? This would be before all the self-improvement stuff. Years. And a minimum of a year actually attempting suicide in various ways. And recovery time. And a million other things. Anyway, there it is.
I love this movie. This is a great movie for several reasons. Not least of which is the character that Bill Murray brings to it but also the message that the basic person will eventually gravitate to what truly inspires them. My calculations of time spent in the loop stopped when I realized it was years. Thanks for the quantification.
Absolutely wonderful article. But now I worry about poor God.
He’s been practicing for at least 16,000,000,000 years of our time.
Has he gotten it right yet? Or is He bored by now?
Your next assignment. Did the little boy who saw ghosts in the “6th Sense”, know that Bruce Willis was a ghost? Get Watching, right after you watch “Hot Shots Part Deux” again