True or False Trivia: Groundhog Day

TOFT

One of the fascinating pieces of trivia below is true*, the other is false. Do YOU know which is which?

Groundhog Day (1993)

1) Near the beginning of the second draft of the script, we meet Phil’s girlfriend, Stephanie, who Phil coldly and unceremoniously dumps. Later, as Phil is going to bed in Punxsutawney, we see Stephanie in her room, using Phil’s business cards and broken watch (conveniently set at 5:59) to perform a magic spell from a book titled 101 Curses, Spells, and Enchantments You Can Do At Home. This sets the theme of Groundhog Day in motion. There is no “higher purpose” given, just an angry, embittered ex-girlfriend with a little book.

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2) Bill Murray and Harold Ramis initially came up with the idea for the movie’s plot when they were hanging out in Ramis’s garage, drinking rye and punching groundhogs to death that they would hang by their feet from the ceiling. After they had gone through all of their rye and groundhogs (rumored to be at least 35, but some estimates have that number as high as 60), Murray wondered aloud how great it would be if they could pass out and wake up in the garage and all the same groundhogs would somehow be alive again, and they could punch them to death anew instead of going through the hassle of finding more groundhogs by invading their nests with tongs and hot wax. Ramis agreed that that idea was bitchin’, then they both promptly passed out, smacking their shaved heads on the concrete floor of the garage. They awoke at dawn, surprised and horrified to find that the groundhogs had indeed returned to life, and were gnawing at Murray and Ramis’s genitals so furiously they looked like a peeled pile of spaghetti squash. Ramis claimed until the day he died that before the screams began in earnest, he saw a wizard exiting through a swirling portal in the corner of the garage, giving Ramis a knowing wink as he dissolved into the ether. Many of these situations were cut out of the finished film, however.

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*true trivia courtesy of Eddie Deezen at Neatorama

13 thoughts on “True or False Trivia: Groundhog Day

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