Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1203636
Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell on the "Groundhog Day" set with director Harold Ramis (right). P H O T O : P H O T O F E S T 57 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E P E R S O N A L H I S T O R Y A s far as holidays are concerned, Groundhog Day will never be celebrated as widely as, say, Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July. Yet, for a significant portion of the Ameri- can moviegoing public, Groundhog Day has taken on added significance. Thanks to the perennial popularity of a comedy released more than a quarter-century ago, the holiday has come to represent, of all things, an enlightened way to ap- proach life. Released by Columbia Pictures in 1993, Harold Ramis' "Groundhog Day" revolves around bilious TV weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray), who is given the unpalatable chore of covering the season-prognosticating groundhog in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Due to the magic of the movies, Phil becomes stag- nant in history, experiencing a ceaseless loop of Groundhog Days. Although Phil ultimately recognizes his situation as a chance to get his life on track, for much of the film's running time, he regards his predicament as a fate worse than death. The film co-stars Andie MacDowell and Chris Elliott. Working on "Groundhog Day" again — and again, and again — would have been an altogether welcome fate for music editor Sally Boldt. "There was a joke among the crew: 'I wish every movie was "Groundhog Day" so we could keep doing this movie over and over again,'" Boldt said. "It was just such a great experience." Directed and co-written by Ramis, " G r o u n d h o g D a y " e a r n e d p o s i t i v e reviews and strong box-office receipts during its initial release in February 1993, but as the years have marched on, the film has acquired the status of a classic. In 2005, critic Roger Ebert selected the film for inclusion in his "Great Movies" series of columns, while, a year later, the National Film Registry added it to its ongoing list of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films." What If There Is No Tomorrow? MUSIC EDITOR SALLY BOLDT RECALLS THE MAKING OF 'GROUNDHOG DAY,' AGAIN AND AGAIN AND… By Peter Tonguette