Stage Two: Days Mentioned
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 and 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, the number of days Phil takes to learn things…
We are currently seeking Film contributors on WhatCulture. To find out more about the perks of being a Film contributor, click here.
249 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.
The flipside to that, though, is that because his body will always revert back to its original state, he therefore doesn’t develop muscle memory for any of the skills he learns, which would probably at least triple the mastery time (purely mental/intellectual carry-over). Especially the piano playing and ice sculpting.
I love this movie so I loved this article, but I must point out one small nit-pick about this comment: “any more and he would be in severe danger of carpal tunnel syndrome or tendinitis) though not every day (for the same medical reasons).” HRRR! He doesn’t even have to floss, so he could practice until his hands cramped up and he’d be back to normal health the next morning.
My only gripe is that you are assuming each day is only devoted to 1 skill.
Also, after realizing he can’t be killed, he wouldn’t be worrying about “carpal tunnel syndrome” while practicing piano, or anything else, because each day he wakes up in the exact same physical condition as he did the first time around. (except, obviously, his brain)
best post ever? best post ever. i say, repost it every day for a year or so, just to drive the point home.
When he saves the child from falling from a tree, he makes a comment along the lines of “You’ve never thanked me”. That would indicate that he has made at least several successful attempts saving the child. Just thought you may want to add a couple of days to your totaly.
Very interesting read, thanks for going to all the trouble of calculating it and sharing with the masses.
I think that 1 day per person is remarkably low estimate to have total recall of every detail of a person. Yes, 1 day is plenty of time to learn about a person, but I don’t know about you but learning something once doesn’t mean I could recited every fact back accurately later on.Especially considering the fact that he was learning several people.Also, as stated earlier it’s implied that he is versed in both the diagnostic and chiropractic fields of medicine when he asks to see “pops” charts and is thanked for fixing Felix’s back. So, the amount of time learning medicine is far too low. In addition, the line “You have never thanked me.” when the child falls from the tree indicates that he has already saved the child several times. All in all I think you could safely double your estimate.
thanks,
Albert Einstein
Director of Logistics
Facebook LLC
Atlanta GA
Thank you Sir.
Any of you who think it’s 10,000 or 1,000 are total idiots. The author of this article I would say is the best guess. Though I would maybe say it’s a few more years or a few less, BUT over all a very good and wonderful guess.
@Patrick or Revanide. He doesn’t wake up with any burns NOR broken Bones or Smashed HEAD because he wakes up repeating the same day. Apparently you’re not getting the concept of the groundhog day and you’ve probably not even watched it. If you lived the same day over and over just like Phil, and you committed suicide just like him, would you expect to wake up with burns all over your body? Time was being rewinding… So therefore he wasn’t gonna be waking up with burns nor a smashed skull or anything from his suicide attempts.
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.
Right on, Jam! :) As she says in the L’Oreal commercials, she’s “worth it!”
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.
Agreed. If every day is Feb 2, how can there be any Leap Days? They can only occur on Feb 29.
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.
8-12 months to learn French is being pretty optimistic. It takes most people approximately 3-4 years to become fully fluent in a language, and that’s generally with a native speaker as a tutor, not learning from tapes.
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.
2K facebook likes suggest another reading.
Very well done. Thank you for the analysis.
Make that 3K! BUUUUURRRRNNNNN!!!!!
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.
Hey readers,
Go to http://www.obsessedwithSimon.com to see my estimation of how many times Simon Gallagher needed to watch Groundhog Day in order to make such brilliant observations.
Then skip over to http://www.obsessedwithRandall.com to read how one snark-ster estimates how many times I must have read Simon’s article to make such brilliant observations.
After that–oh, never mind.
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).
He means that they only SHOW 38 Goundhog Days. Not that there are literally only 38 Ground Hog days.
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.
Fourth Base is much like “13th grade.” It’s an incorrect term on purpose, meant to illicit a sense that things “aren’t right with that.” Here, 4th base implies that Phil really ISN’T finished if he arrives at said “4th base.” It’s a very apt phrase if you think about it that way.
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!
impressive. Most impressive.
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.
@ Tim & Simon,
Throwing around made-up data (10,000 hours) as if it were fact and calling it fact does not make it factual. The average child attends school for 1146 hours a year. Are you saying that coloring with crayons and reciting your ABCs can only be considered mastered by the time you’ve gone on to Highschool? Really?
Bear in mind, too, that nothing displayed in the movie was “mastery”. It ranged from little better than half-assed (his French), to a cool party trick (the cards), to nice skill (ice sculpture), to good or even very good (piano). Did he rival any 3-year old from the streets of Paris, Penn & Teller, Michaelangelo or Mozart? Not a master, guys.
You should have no trouble looking at your own life-experiences, either. Did you practice 8 hours a day for 3.42 years (10,000 hours) to walk, talk or ride a bike? Teenagers hired by caterers for summer jobs sometimes learn ice sculpture. 10K hours? Nah!
A last thing, Malcolm Gladwell is recognized for his weak analogy and “aversion for fact”, and for being “impervious to all forms of critical thinking”. Hardly a keystone to build your arch around! He’s sold some books. So has Jessica Simpson and Justin Bieber.
Correction; there is one more “last thing”. The biggest flaw in the initial article is still the insistence that skills could not be learned concurrently. To tally the number of days for one skill, add that to the tally for the next and the tally for the next would only be useful if he died every day after every practice. 10000 hours to learn to sit up, 10000 hours to learn to crawl, 10000 hours to walk… Is it really 10+ years, or is it 1 year to accomplish all of those things & much more for even someone so simple as an infant?
Entertaining article, Simon, for everything noticed about this wonderful movie, it’s just way wrong when it comes to the math or the source to trust.
I stand by my estimate.
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.
C’mon, a year committing suicide? I think it’s pretty clear that after a handful of over-the-top attempts at killing himself still have him wake up the next day, he gave up on this idea. I’d say the number would be pretty close to the number of times portrayed in the film.
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
A very interesting article. I knew it was a long time, but 33 years IS much longer. Most of the facts you give are also inarguable, so the amount of time can’t be debated too much. A few things are rounded off, but it’s certainly a very long time.
Personally, I counted the original day as a baseline (1), and then 39 repeats onscreen. But, philosophically, I am on the side of him being there for thousands of years. Because 33 years adds up the activities that Phil performs; it also must be taken into account the years and years and years that Phil just stays in his room, crying.
This is wonderful ! Thanks !
This is great!
You should add a couple of days for the soul-saving part though. When he saves the falling kid he says something like “You never thank me” implying he had done it a couple of times. The same probably goes for the rest of the people.
Excellent work!
To the numerous posts suggesting “Well, he might have only learned that one song, or that one poem.” I think you’re misunderstanding that what we see Phil accomplish on screen is different from his goal.
The purpose of Phil’s purgatory, from HIS perspective, is not to learn how to play one specific song, or memorize one specific poem, or even drill into his memory thousands of facts about the people of the town. It’s to make a concentrated effort to change the person he is. So IMO, he probably does learn to speak the language relatively fluently. He probably does become an expert on the piano. It seems entirely likely that he learned about the people the way we “normally” do, by gathering pieces of information over time, not by some “Ok, today I need to learn all about Linda” method of cramming.
It’s also reasonable to assume, given that Phil doesn’t KNOW what he needs to do to escape that loop, that he spends a lot of time pursuing other activities that he feels make him a better person which we don’t see as on-screen. Who knows what they are? Maybe he learns to be a grief counselor or something.
As a result, I think there is a severe underestimation here. Again, I understand you, for the purposes of this article can only go by what the film gives you, but if we think about it bigger picture, it’s not like he was presented with a checklist of things to do that he needed to accomplish. He just knew he had to make himself a “better” person, but he didn’t know how. Again, it seems reasonable to assume–even if we don’t see it on screen–that he didn’t just pursue four or five specific things, but did those as part of a larger campaign of self-improvement.
Chuck Klosterman once posited something similar when he asked a hypothetical question: Would a magician who can actually perform five tricks (like making a rabbit appear, or moving a coin) but NOTHING else be more impressive than Albert Einstein?
The meta-question is sort of: Is it better to have mastered a very small, specific set of skills, or to be someone who’s actually got a general base of genius and can apply it in numerous ways?
The ultimate choice you make as to if this ~34 years is the “right” answer probably ties directly in to how you think the powers that are holding Phil in purgatory would answer that question.
I believe, that for Phil to escape this fate, the powers that be would probably prefer the bigger picture answer. They’re looking, not for a specific list of attributes, but a more general, overall transformation. Believing that, I think Phil has to do a lot more that what he’s seen.
Obviously, you can’t do anything regarding that, so I think that given the information you’ve been given by the filmmakers, you’re in good shape. I don’t think however, that what we see is anywhere near an exhaustive list of what he does.
I agree: The film only shows us the “interesting” things about his stay in The Day. It doesn’t mention his years of learning to be an expert orchid grower, for example. Or the many (many!) days spend staying in his room in a funk of depression.
Oh, yes. This article, interesting as it is, is off by at least an order of magnitude. Phil’s journey from a unprincipled jerk to being a human person is to be measured in centuries.
Okay, I know this would put me in a lower light, but I wonder how many times Phil seduced Nancy. She is perfectly attrative, and if one dont have to worry about STDs and babies, I am sure he did this many times. And we have proof he at least dated one other females–the French maid. Also let this be a lesson to girls dating. Play-hard-to-get.
Really enjoyed reading this, but i have one complaint. You keep factoring in things like getting carpal tunnel, frost bite, and leap years when actually none of things would have affected him. If you explained this in the piece, sorry I must have missed it, but otherwise very interesting article!
Excellent job. I love you went to the effort of working this out.
And well done to all those people disputing the figure without doing any form of working out whatsoever – You are the real heroes.
This movie inspired me to begin a program that I call 15 minutes a day. I have seven things that I do (almost) every day for 15 minutes each. I have a watch that beeps after 15 minutes and I try to stick to that limit. I have read two books since the first of the year and practiced piano more regularly than at any time since I have been playing.
One Suicide that was missed-here, and of course one of better ones(not to sound morbid about it) had to be the ol’ “Thelma and Louise” trip off the Cliff w/Phil steering the car…..”Check your mirrors!….” “Don’t drive Angry!” “O.k. Larry, on me in 5….4….3…..2…..1……..”—->
excellent work
i now want to watch the film again
He really padded it. It doesn’t take 12 years to learn enough French speak it well (and certainly not if you spend four hours a day learning it), nor does it take an entire day to watch a kid fall out of a tree, so his final total seems way overblown. His thinking and analysis were interesting, though.
Larry- it could take way more than 12 years to learn to speak French, as an adult learner, without any obvious means of learning through conversation. I got the figure from looking through adult learning language forums, I didn’t just pull it out of the air!
And it isn’t a whole day to watch the child fall out of the tree- it is a day to discover the child falling out of the tree, as there must have been one day in which he witnessed it, before he worked out the specifics to save him. Do you imagine he watched the child fall and then merrily want on with the rest of his day?!
He could never master the piano or learn to be a great ice sculptor.
Sadly he may mentally master them but his body would not. Muscle memory is INTEGRAL in the regard. It is why “book learning” is crap compared to real hands on experience.
And since his physical body was reset… his muscle memory was reset… or I would hate to see the nerve pain he experienced after suicide.
Many thanks for an excellent piece of work on this topic.
One point though, you described it as “light-hearted comedy”. I have never managed to understand this conclusion since I regard this film as possibly the finest horror film ever made. This poor man is totally destroyed and rebuilt countless times over with only the infinite sadism that a deity could inflict. He is not allowed the final refuge of death or insanity until he toes the required line.
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)
what?
based on how he recited the poem, I’m going with a year or two of learning French from the local high school teacher…
and you would be completely fluent in FAR less than 12 years. With total immersion we’ve seen fluency in less than a year. Not sure where this basis is coming from.
NSWEBB- But it isn’t “total immersion” is it? As you will have noticed during the article, I could only work on the basis of what was offered as a clue in the film. The fact is, there is no mention at all of a French teacher at the local high school: to fabricate one for my own means would be slightly cheating, so I could only offer what is clear on screen. We know there is a library, and we know of one fluent French speaker in Punxsutawney (Andie McDowell), but even then we don’t see him using her skills manipulatively to learn from her. And if he was willing to fastidious chronicle all of her interests on-screen, why would we not see him “tricking her” into teaching him French as well.
To be honest, if I was to extrapolate the idea that he could have learned everything with unseen expert help, my final number would be completely off. But there is no hint of that on-screen, so I wasn’t willing to take that much of a leap.
if, during the course of this movie he DIED repeatedly, I highly doubt carpal tunnel syndrome is going to have much of an affect
A wonderful article!
I like the comments too.
I just saw GD this month, on groundhog day! first time.
From my own and from other comments, I have come to my own conclusion, my own “final words” on the subject and what an interesting subject it is, the number of days in this town.
Agreed: he spent many many days there and the movie hints at many more than , say, 42, or so.
my own take?
—that the movie ITSELF has to give to us a clue, and for me it does.
1..if the shadow is seen, 6 more weeks of winter. that will be 42 days.
2…the winning bid, in the auction, is $339.88
in the “339″ there is the “3″ and the “39″, which add up to 42.
42 is “years” as the Archetype of 34 and 3 has to do with the Jesus appearing after his three days in hell, where he appears for those 39 days.
Thus the movie itself has an Encoding, where the maximum number of days there is. satisfies me, anyway.
I actually am wondering if the Christian Idea of “repentance through salvation, accepting Jesus as your savior”, had crept into this movie as the archetype is powerful and socially prevalent. If one does have a spiritual mystical experience of some sort, indeed one would then look at one’s whole past life and “redo” the personal history of this life lived, then change to the good, the present life, from now on.
so I would say he was there for 42 years. time to learn many things.
freestone Wilson
It’s entirely possible that he learned to play the piano much faster. One of the reasons you say he didn’t play longer is the risk of carpal tunnel.
Why would anything like carpal tunnel travel back with him? He obviously never ages, or gains weight. It just seems odd that injuries would remain when nothing else does.
Again, I wasn’t saying his carpal tunnel syndrome would travel back with him. I merely meant immediate onset, short term carpal tunnel syndrome. To some people it may not seem that off-putting a threat to get a strain from over-playing when you know it’s going to disappear the next day, but for me it is senseless to punish oneself like that, and I just don’t see Phil as that sort of character. Remember, when he is learning the piano he has no deadline, and no motivation other than self-improvement. It is entirely for pleasure- so regardless of strains or carpal tunnel or whatever, why would he spend so long a period every day slogging it out to learn to play piano?
Same as everything else: Because he wanted to.
If you watch Groundhog on VidTaggr (http://vidtaggr.com/taggs.aspx?v=vtbed907f1-d2) you can add in-line taggs that give details and information as the video is playing. There’s a few taggs up there already…
You know I was saying to a friend the other say. “Where have all the great minds in this country gone?” Well now I know. Fantastic article. Better Comments. Thank you for this everyone.
Glad to hear your response, thanks!
Throwing around data made up by a clever flake (10,000 hours) as if it were fact and calling it fact does not make it factual.
The average child attends school for 1146 hours a year (2009 stats) and studies many topics each day. Are you sticking by your guns and saying that a child, in this case, needs 9 years of school to learn to color with crayons, 9 years for ABCs, 9 years to read, another 9 years to write, and they all have to be sequential?
Your insistence that no skills could be developed simultaneously and all took 10000 hours just doesn’t work. You produced a fun read, but you should be pickier for your expert source and look deeper before digging in your heels.
Perhaps a saving grace could be found in saying now, after arguing so strenuously that that wasn’t the case, that the time is for “mastery” and Bill was just “very good”, more or less. “Mastery” at card throwing would have extended to flipping the card between two flames, blind-folded and getting it in the hat, or at least something more spectacular than the simple hat toss.
His skills ranged from practiced fakery (his French), to a cool party trick (the cards), to nice skill (ice sculpture), to good or even very good (piano). Did he rival even a 3-year old from the streets of Paris, Penn & Teller, Michaelangelo or Mozart? No. He’s not a master, Simon. Even if 10,000 hours held some truth, it wouldn’t apply.
Did you practice 8 hours a day for 3.42 years (10,000 hours) to ride a bike? Maybe you’re just saying you’re a really slow learner, but I doubt you’re that bad. And teenagers get hired by caterers for summer jobs to make ice sculpture. 10K hours? Nah, that’s just wrong!
Google Malcolm Gladwell, your expert. He is recognized for his weak analogy and “aversion for fact”, and for being “impervious to all forms of critical thinking”. Hardly a keystone to build your case around! He’s sold books. So has Jessica Simpson and Justin Bieber.
And yet the biggest flaw in your article is still your insistence that skills could not be learned concurrently. Hopefully your baby doesn’t need 10000 hours to learn to sit up, 10000 hours to learn to crawl, 10000 hours to walk, as so on… He’ll be 35 years old and only on his 10th skill according to you. Is it really 10+ years to master just those 3 skills, or is it 1 year to accomplish all of those things & much more for even someone so lacking in motor skills as an infant? In this article you’re saying an adult has much less potential than a newborne.
Entertaining article, Simon, for everything noticed about this wonderful movie, it’s just too bad that your math falls flat and you didn’t pick the right source to trust.
Eight years, tops. That’s how long it took.
Nary- next time you comment on something like this remember that your opinion of someone does not over-rule everyone else’s knowledge of them. I know full well who Malcolm Gladwell is, and what he represents, so do not require the frankly patronising explanation you’ve just offered me: my opinion of the man is the same as the significant proportion of commenters who respect Gladwell as a reliable source. And this is supposed to be a light-hearted article, not a definitive mathematical equation- so having an accessible source with a nice-round figure (which is widely quoted) was far better than just grabbing a number out of the air!
And my “insistence” that he couldn’t have learned new things concurrently? Since when did I dig my heels in? It’s called healthy discourse. Oh, and read this- which you’ll see if the disclaimer from the start of the article:
“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!”
So, I am not insisting that he didnt learn things simultaneously- there would have been some overlap (again, I say so in the article), but maths isn’t the only factor at play here. As I’ve said in other comments, I don’t agree with the fact that Phil would spend his entire waking day learning things- why would he? (And please don’t say “because he wanted to” like above, because there is NO indication in the film itself- the primary source remember- that this is the case).
Likening his learning experience to that of an institutionalised school child is one thing, but it isn’t appropriate here, because Phil was doing it at his own leisure without rigid structure. And remember, by the time he learns ice sculpture and piano he has accepted that he is going to relive Groundhog Day forever (in his head there is nothing he can do to affect the outcome), so why would he go and cram as much learning in as possible?
And I hardly think drawing with crayons, learning to ride a bike and learning your ABCs are on a par with what Phil learns. The reason I’m saying Phil was an expert, and not just very good is because it appears in the source material. He refers to himself as an expert card-flicker: I didn’t evaluate his skills and call him a master. Everything I used in this “equation” was either on-screen in the film, or easily accessible on the web (as I state in the article). It’s not a mathematicians guide to how long he spent reliving Groundhog Day, it’s a movie fan’s.
Fair play, I get that you don’t like Malcolm Gladwell, that much is patently obvious, but lighten up a little!
Caterers might hire teenagers in summer jobs where youre from, but they don’t around here!
Simon, I completely agree with your opinion that Phil does not practice simultaneously.
I could accept the idea that some days Phil was in a great mood and tried piano and french the same day, but Phil is still a person and I don’t think that he went regularly from 4 hours of piano to some hours of french or any other activity, I mean, he can get tired as any of us when practicing anything anyday, and why would he impose himself such a strict learning rutine when he really thinks he is never going to get out of the loop and has no kind of rush?.
But above this, I think that for Phil to practice different things on the same day, there is a basic restriction given by the flow of time each day. For example, if he decided to study poetry in the morning, then french in the afternoon, it isn’t normal to assume that he could go at night and just knock at the piano teacher’s house for a lesson until midnight!. So, I think that even if he wanted to have very productive days, the number of possible skills he could improve in one day depends a lot on the time at what the events of groundhog day happened.
Nice job on this article, it was very fun to read.
I’m glad you responded in detail to Nary. Nary elaborated on the knee-jerk response I had. My immediate thoughts are that the tasks he mastered (social study, arts, medical, etc.) were learned at a frequency of no less than 3 ‘courses’ per day (excluding lazy days of course). However, after some reconsideration, I think your estimate may actually be too conservative.
I truly believe that what the movie displayed was strictly limited highlights of a millenia. You did touch on most of the basics of what the character experienced but there is much neglect when considering the practice involved for his creation of ‘perfect days’.
The film displayed two primary ‘perfect days’: the date/s with Rita and the final day. Secondary perfect days could include the truck robbery or the late night with Rita.
The thing that should be evaluated is how Phil practiced at manipulating each and every situation to get whichever training he was in the mood to learn that day then, of course, the mastery of somehow weaving everything together to construct perfect days.
In the end, he most certainly would have had to develop some form of structures to accomodate his needs/wants.
Aside from that, I would like to address the problem of neural pathway construction. I can only offer my personal belief as a solution which may never be widely accepted. I believe memory and the concept of will are completely separate. I think (organic) memory is a tool which can be manipulated by outside influence which in turn can influence perception. But I believe that ‘will’ may only be altered by whichever entity is conceiving it.
I think that the concept of will is infinitely complex which could instantly convert our known Existence to utopia if we would comprehend it.
As such, I believe that it is Phil’s will which carries forth. I think his will may instantly contruct the neural paths (memories from previous loops) upon waking. This theory would carry much more weight if Phil experienced headaches/nosebleeds upon waking (like on The Butterfly Effect) but it is the only theory I have to explain away this problem.
What I don’t get (and I suspect is also unimportant) is how he even remembers his previous days at all, let alone accumulates skill. If he can’t get fat or get lung cancer, or carpal tunnel as someone mentioned, then how does his brain retain memories? Neuron path building is essential for developing skills such as piano playing and card throwing. Is his brain exempt from the turnover? If so, do you think he’d be susceptible to neuro-degenerative diseases?
He can’t die though.
You did such a good job on this simple movie. How about taking on
The Man From Earth and do for us, your public, what we can’t do as
well as you….find the flaws that underlie this wonderful movie and
wonderful tale….please?
The fact that Andie McDowell says she wished she “Could live a thousand lifetimes, I don’t know Phil, maybe it’s not a curse” nullifies the research. I would hundreds to thousands of years is more accurate.
Not wholly true though. Because by that time, Phil was reconciled with the fact that he WILL live forever, so he has presumably mentioned that to Rita. This doesn’t mean he already HAS lived forever, and I was only allowed to go with what was shown on screen.
Nice call though.
Our marketing team was discussing this movie yesterday – it’s my all-time favorite – and one of them had read your post. I was intrigued and so he forwarded it to me. All I can say is, WOW. Nice job. A good bit of fun. Hard to believe anyone would be so daft as to challenge your fun guesstimates – but I often a famous quote at these times “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.” Thank you Simon for a fun take on this movie. By the way, from now on I’m going to recite your guesstimate as the closest thing we have to an accurate number of days. Cheers.
Thanks Chris- happy you got the tone of the piece. Fun is exactly what it was supposed to be! And I’m glad you have enough faith to use it as your guesstimate of choice.
What a cool article!
And, by god, you’re a man of stout bearing to not respond with venom for every carpal tunnel correction offered to you.
Anyway. . , I’d take your figure of 40 years and at *least* double it.
Consider: I’ve lived for about 40 years and I’m no French-speaking chiropractor, sculptor, pianist. Sure, my first ten years were just spent growing up, so really I’ve only had 30 years to practice things, and a good half of that has been spent working to pay the mortgage and repay student loans, so my time hasn’t been quite as free. . .
But you take my point.
Also, I don’t know about Phil, but I’m going to assume he’s spent time killing time. That would include the simple things like reading every book at the local library. (Hey, he’s watched Heidi 2 a hundred times? He’s into mindless entertainment; why not mindful entertainment?)
We don’t know what other skills he didn’t put on display on his final day.
While there is no evidence of these assumptions, I will bank of human nature being what it is. Ten years can slip by pretty fast without a lot getting done if you’re not careful.
I’d feel safer tripling the figure in a ball-park kind of way. 120 years sounds about right to me.
And as somebody else already pointed out, I wonder if his re-entry into real time wouldn’t be more shocking than his initial entry into loop-time?
Anyway, what a great article! Thanks for the fun and thought-provoking read!
Man, alot of respnoses and obviously, alot of fans. One of my favorite films. Oh by the way, he does mention more than 3 suicides in the scene with Rita. He mentions hung, stabbed and burned. You could count the truck crashing as burned, but I wouldn’t refer to that as being burned if it were me. I would probably call that something else. Great job though.
Good read. Thank you
Just saw the movie for the third or fourth time last night.
Have wondered about the elapsed time frame. Thanks for the answer.
What about the memories of the others in Phil’s influence?
The piano teacher proudly comments on Phil being her student, etc.
After whatever time elapsed, the town’s fate was forever changed.
Great thought provoking article.
Sent absent the spell check.
Thanks for the article – well done.
I think there may be an error in your calculations however. When Phil is caring for the old man, this is not a single day. The old man dies over and over again. How many times do you think it would take for Phil to finally understand that there are some things that he can not fix?
I do agree that the timing is off in your calculation as there is a learning curve involved with each thing he had to do..
all of the different events he had to do during his day, he had to learn about them first then try to solve each problem.. how many times was he short on catching the kid, how many days with the old man, and how many days getting timing down for everything, as for killing himself, I counted 4 days on tv of him killing himself.
I think this is the most extensive research on a movie I’ve ever seen… great work..
12,403 days – good estimate, and I would agree that this is really a minimal estimate and in all probability it could very well have been an order of magnitude higher.
But one writer above made an excellent point: Wouldn’t his re-entry into real time be more shocking than his entry into loop-time? If loop-time persisted for 30 years, then the answer can only be yes! In fact – re-entry into real time where life is no longer predictable after several decades, could only be met with abject horror! Clearly that’s not the case in the movie – but still, he must have spent decades in loop-time to acquire all of those skills!
Well, it would appear that we have a contradiction – and after all this is a fictional account, so we can’t really expect otherwise.
Groundhog day remains one of my favorite movies. Someday I will see it as many times as Phil saw Heidi 2.
Hi Simon, Brilliant work. I am a high school teacher in an Australian public state school and I work in a Responisble Thinking Room. This is a room where students can end up if the choose to persistently disrupt the learning/ teaching process. Many (though not all) of my regulars are ‘glass half empty types’ – often due to contextual home life experiences. I have for the past few years thoroughly promoted the film to teenagers who seem to be stuck in their own time loops with varying levels of success. It is a good seed to plant. Brilliant movie and everytime I watch it I pick up on new themes. In regards to your reply to Jedi Jeff’s post money would not be a problem – just like the broken pencil he breaks one night before he goes to bed, he would walke up each morning with the exact same amount of cash in his wallet as the previous day. Best wishes.
Now Simon, give us the cost of 12 days of Christmas. I loved you Groundhog Day story!
Thanks for bringing attention to my favorite movie.
Up to now I thought I was pretty much alone in considering the philosophical aspects of the film. From the first time I saw it, I wondered about what I would have done in Phil’s place.
Its not simple immortality, rather Phil could remember and learn, but everyone else reset. I asked myself while watching – what would I do, what would I learn and how long might that take?
Before reading this excellent analysis and likewise the comments, I thought Phil spent hundreds, if not thousands of years in the loop. My take was that film portrayed Phil’s activities in a sort of logarithmic sense with regard to time, in that the first few Ground Hog days took a certain percentage of the film and subsequently the next same percentage of the film covered months and years of Ground Hog days, and the last bit of the film, in which Phil overcomes his unhappiness and self-loathing by self-improvement and unselfishness, in fact was the great majority of time that Phil spent in the loop.
At then end, when Phil says to Rita, “let’s live here!”, I think that for the great majority of the time spent in the loop, Phil was indeed very, very happy, and wanted that happiness to continue – yet play out.
Despite being written as a comedy, it has a strong science fiction aspect that makes this my favorite film because it is so thought provoking.
The flick was a classic, and your estimate is very clever!
I haven’t read all the comments but here is something to think about. If he did spend about 10 years in the cycle then what was the next day when he broke the cycle, was it the same year when he started the cycle or was it 10 years later from when he started the cycle. just something to think about.
has to be the same year the loop started. phil is the only one who at least realizes every day is february 2nd. everyone else wakes up to the dawn of a new day. when he finally breaks the loop and wakes up next to Rita on February 3rd, neither of them have physically aged a bit.
that`s incorrect – they’ve both aged a day:-)
The maths are very wrong. When you estimate you need to keep track of the error propagation.
For example, 6 months +/- 1 month.
At the end of the excercise the digits inside the error range are not significant. Again if you estimated 6 months +/- 1 month, 3 days more or less do not make any difference. So instead of 12403 days must say 12400 +/- 30 days.
If you do all the excercise again with and the total error range gives about 1000 days. The result would be something like 12000 +/- 1000 days.
I love your work. The only thing i think i noticed that is innacurate is the number of days he spends trying to keep the old man alive. You only have one day listed, im pretty sure he put in a good 3 or 4 attempts to save him. This nearly pushes you to 34 years exactly
i just watched it and i made a mistake in my previous post. He gives 2 days towards the old man. Once he dies in the hospital, the other he tries to feed him and still dies in the ally. So you have to add one extra day to the grand total. Heres the clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NjNOAncIlI And if you notice the kid in the background at the hospital, this is the same kid he saves falling from a tree later on.
This, no doubt, is where he heard of the child’s fall and planned later on to save him.
This is absolutely remarkable! I’ll only add that if you’d like to know the “actual” answer – you can ask me or read the eBook i just made about how i wrote the movie. http://bit.ly/A1y9SP (Oh, right: i wrote the movie.) Happy GHD!
After almost 34 years of reliving the same day over and over again and not having to shave. Do you think that he might have forgotten how to shave? What else might he not be able to do? Toilet?
What makes you think he wouldn’t need the toilet all day?
Number 2 every other day at the most, well for me that is.
“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).”
I think you can assume he is playing piano every day without getting carpal tunnel. He doesn’t age or shave or get hair cuts, I don’t think his hands would be affected by piano playing every day. 6 weeks to learning the bank routine also seems high to me.
I think you missed a few days when he’s leading up to the slaps. Several drinks, remembering no white chocolate, finding the snowman accessories, beating off kids with snowballs. Of course you may have included them in the 100 days. There must have been some time spent in learning chain-saw safety. And possibly, by the same instrument, some additional suicide attempts that may not be alluded to, but I guess we cannot add any days that are not alluded to, since this would open a can of worms. Such as.. Not only may he have learned French, he may have spent time learning the geography of France and memorized all of the works of the French master poets. This is a great look at a really fun movie. I love this. The movie has become a ground-hog day tradition in our home. Thanks.
“Beating off kids with snowballs.” Could be misconstrued. Just sayin’…
I laughed when i read that, too.
This was fun to read, good movie. A few years ago I also thought about how long he spends in groundhog day. And being an artist and a piano player, I think your numbers are way too high. It is amazing how 6 hours straight on a piano can improve your skills. And he has all day to do it because his job only takes like 5 mins (if he decides to show at all). That and the fact he is learning that one piece of music in the beginning means he is memorizing a repertoire, not writing and reading music fluently. I’d say he could do it in 3 years, the ice sculpting in 2 (if he does that for many hours with some overlapping with the piano years). I don’t think it takes 100 dates to know someones basic likes and dislikes, maybe 10. Also 20 days to commit suicide seems unnecessary (he was already pretty depressed from being rejected by a woman he likes over 12 times, just to have her say hi the next day).
So it might be possible he lived the same day 6 years. Taking this into account it is still quite reasonable the 10 years estimate the Director stated. Just thought I would give my 2 cents.
Fun to think about. Sometimes I feel like I am living the same day over and over again.
Has anyone given the butterfly effect any thought?
It could really throw a monkey wrench into the mix.
Stu:
I say the egg came first, because, in the end, the chicken hatched from an egg. Evolutionarily, the chicken would have evolved from something, and would have undergone a long long transition into chickenhood. Thus, you can think of it as a not-quite-a-chicken laying an egg and hatching a chicken, that final minute difference in the composition of the DNA that differentiates chicken from not chicken. But the first chicken didn’t spring forward from the ether (unless you believe in the geneseis story), so it had to hatch. Egg came first. I never liked that “dilemma”, as it is clearly explainable, whereas the tree in a forest one is much more ambiguous.
Also, I wonder if anyone considered developing an RPG/SIM-date style game out of this. It is exactly like any game where you have 100 days to learn things about characters, upgrade relationships, etc. The only difference is, they would have to simplify the experience or it would be an absurdly long game, but I bet it could be done… though who would be compelled to program it, I haven’t a clue.
Kevin: A tree falls in the forest and no one can hear it does not make sound.
Sound, by definition, is received. So if there’s no receiver, there’s no “sound”, just vibrations.
12 years to become fluent in a 2nd language? are you joking? you realise there are teenagers in Europe who are fluent in 5 languages or more.
or are you yanks just really slow at language? i mean you still dont get ‘colour’ right ;)
It’s easy to speculate on how the author’s count is wrong, and you could argue more/less days for EVERY skill/act performed, but after getting over my own temptation to nitpick, I’d have to say he accounted for everything that was SHOWN ON SCREEN very well. The point in asking “well what if he did this…?” or “How do we know he didn’t do that?” is pointless because it helps you come no closer to using the evidence presented to form a guess. Great article.
Late to the party I know, but awesome article my man. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t see some other activities covered by Phil in the piece or in the comments. He is, as the 3 old lady’s hapily proclaim, “the fastest jack in Jefferson County.” We have no way of knowing Phil’s tire changing expertise, but considering we know enough about the type of man Phil was, I doubt anyone would assume he’s a car buff. For him to be not just as good, but better than car jocks (in central Pennsylvania no less) certaintly adds some time to the loop. Also, his popularity in Punksatony is enormeous. He seemingly helped every town resident in one day, or at least struck up a meaningful conversation with them. When he is called up to the stage for the date auction, everyone looks at him in that celebrity status type way. You don’t see any “who the hell is this guy?” in anyones eyes. Imagine all the time that took. The lighting of the ciggarette on the dance floor, I believe, blows the 30-40 year range out of the ballpark. The writers are basically telling us he knows what everyone is doing at every minute of the day, not just the dramatic. (child falling out of a tree, inept security guards lack of focus creating a robbery chance, etc…) I don’t care how small that town is, that is some serious time to take mental notes of a day in the life. To me at least, it is not absurd at all to imagine this loop lasting close to 1,000 years. Just my two pennies
NOBODY has yet to take into consideration the whole space time continuum significance of being trapped in a time paradox.
The entire event took place in less than a day, perhaps even as Bill slept that night.
Your welcome.
Your assumption that he couldn’t play piano for long periods due to tendonitis and carpal tunnel and such is inaccurate, since his body is the same every morning, he would not receive that type of damage.
Not to nitpick… Good job.
I personally think that the reason Phil always remembers is simply because if he doesn’t he will never learn the lesson that is being taught to him. Being stuck in GHD was his punishment for being a bad person, it was only when he learned to become a good person that he could leave Punxsutawney.
the answer is 1. It may have been repeated over and over and over, but it is still the same day. so 1.
Brilliant! Just been enjoying this great movie again and wondering this. I thought it was maybe a year or something!
One more day for him to realize that the lady smoking needed a light…:)
Awesome post! And while calculating this is fun to think about, I believe the point of these little facts is to help us understand just how much down time he’s spent in this town. The fact that he knows all this stuff about all these people, and that Rita can just pick folks at random and he knows everything, doesn’t imply that he spent 1 day each studying 6 specific people, but that he’s spent so much time in that diner with those townies that he knows everything about every single one of them. Or that he knows all the answers on Jeopardy, or that he perfects ice sculpting and piano, suggests that his time there is unquantifiable, it’s infinite. The implication is that he may have been stuck on that same day for a thousand years.
It takes a while to learn piano, Ice sculpt, become cultured, learn all the towns events and when to be in the right place…. They say 38 days, but to do the above i mentioned, i would figure 6-20 years stuck in the sameday… I wish that could happen to me… I would learn everything i possibly could, and win the largest Pennsy state lottery there is for that day….
I’d give a few more days to the tyre change…. He had to know exactly when to be there, and he mentions being the fastest tyre changer in Punxsutawney, so he has obviously done it multiple times.
Wonderful blog! I found it while browsing on Yahoo
News. Do you have any tips on how to get listed in Yahoo News?
I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there! Appreciate it
dude that was great. you mathematician you
all this only for a woman…????
Like many posters I have a problem with your limiting Bill Murray to one activity per day. Especially when it was shown that he clearly put in late, late hours. I imagine that during his learning phase he would spent all day practicing a skill. What else was there to do?
Learning French may not have been as difficult as you described. He justs needs her to speak the lines he wants to remember, and then the next time they meet he has it memorized. She would not recall that she taught it to him the day before.
Same goes for the back adjustment. He knows that the guy won’t be permanently damaged, so experimenting until he gets is right shouldn’t take 10,000 hours.
Once he got past the initial hijinks and depression, I imagine Bill went all out to learn the things he did, so 10 years or 87,600 hours was probably sufficient time.
Reading the responses is like living Groundhog Day all over again, and again, and again. I love it!
great article and great time you put into this! but… i have some complaints with the length.
I’m sure mastering a craft takes thousands of hours of time, but wouldn’t he just learn a phrase, or practice that one piece on the piano only, or just work on that one style or ice sculpture?
The doctor part, is understandable in the difficulty. And i’ll give you some days with that, but then again, he knew he could keep trying things in order to get it right. COuld have gone in there everyday and tried something different… trial and error with no consequences
:)
And learning that route and timing with the armor truck would take some time. I’ll also give you that :)
I dont have a figure on what I think it would be, but i see it far less that 2 years.
Since he starts the movie as a vain douche bag tv presenter, you have to assume that he is extremely stupid to begin with. So you have to triple all your numbers at least.
Doctor here..
This is a great post. Well done.
My own little addition would be the years required for him to acquire enough medical knowledge to be able to make heads or tails out of a medical chart to identify what things he might be able to do to save the old man (i.e. malnourished). He wouldn’t need to be a doctor, but he would have to read up enough to be able to understand the lingo, the shorthand, the abbreviations and ability to evaluate the lab data in a meaningful way. Sticking with your “full time job” theory, I would think he could do that in 6 months.
Keep up the fun work!!
- Dr Mike
It’s “interesting” to see how many people believe that “muscle memory” actually resides in the muscles themselves; that it’s the fingers remembering how to play piano, not the brain (or, for the purpose of this movie, the soul). As for the article; it overestimates how long it takes to learn certain things, but also doesn’t account for downtime, so it probably balances out – assuming that the person is extremely intelligent, talented and strong-willed enough to avoid spending the majority of his time dealing with mental issues.
I think im just going to go with the 10,000 years one because its just so insanely terrifying and amazing.
A couple of things though: 1) It doesnt take anywhere NEAR 12 years for an adult to become conversationally fluent in a foreign language. 2) Considering he woke up every morning with no lasting damage from his many, many deaths and suicide attempts, i dont think that hed suffer any repetitive carpal tunnel damage whatsoever. His physical body resets with each new day.
Thanks for scripting this useful article..Cherished your reports. Make sure you do continue to keep writing Alternatives to Google search engine http://asdasgh333dsdfs5hf.com
wonderful posts.
For me, I *think* I have found a Marker for the number of years.
It comes from me seeing his first visit to the town. He walks across the street and we see STONE JEWELERS, [or a similar name with "stone" in it].
In India, there are 10 Avatars, 6 who have incarnated into the physical world.
the six: dwarf. rama I, rama II, krisna. Jesus, and the Second coming of Jesus. he is number six.
so Christ is the Cornerstone and each of us is a stone in the walls of this temple of Man.
He wakes up at 6:00 AM every day.
So I see this movie as a parable for what Jesus’s Unfinished Business would be! He needs to save the unrepentant thief on the cross, who died with Him. That is…most of us!!
This is why every single person in the Town Must Be Known In Every Detail!
[every soul to be Saved!]
The movie is, to *me*, a Model for what the Second Coming needs to do to have a mission accomplished!
The time spent repeating the days? why about 2000 years, give or take, from 33 AD to “now”!
freestone wilson