When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter. --Phil Connors (Bill Murray), Groundhog Day
My alarm went off at 6 a.m. Wednesday morning, but Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" didn't come blaring through the phone's speaker ("Okay campers, rise and shine! And don't forget your booties 'cause it's cold out there."). It was just time to go to work, which meant walking through the house to my office and firing up the laptop, preparing to send the morning's edition of Shelf Awareness Pro.
I also, for the first time, watched the traditional Punxsutawney Phil Groundhog Day extravaganza, which was livestreaming from Pennsylvania. It was all I would have expected it to be, but I like the movie better.
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| Wiarton Willie | |
As it happens, I'd been preparing for G-Day this year much more than I usually do (which, I confess, is not at all) with a little research. I learned some dark things: New Jersey's Milltown Mel died just before G-Day and this year's event was canceled; in Canada, Wiarton Willie, "a celebrity so beloved that he has statues built in his honor, died last year--and his demise was covered up by town officials." I learned fun things too: The boy in the tree who is saved by Phil is now a reporter (not a weatherman, alas): Shaun Chaiyabhat works for WCVB in Boston.
But I was mostly drawn to Chaiyabhat's hometown, Woodstock, Ill., where Groundhog Day was filmed and which has become its own G-Day destination spot over the years. There's a Groundhog Days festival, with walking tours, several showings of the movie at the Harold Ramis Auditorium, Classic Cinemas Woodstock Theatre on Main Street, and much more.
And there is an indie bookstore in Woodstock, Read Between the Lynes, that has great fun with the celebrations. On G-Day morning, while still at my computer, I opened an e-mail from Danielle Cybulski-Herbert, communications manager at the bookshop, who noted that G-Day "is a very big thing in our city" because the movie "was filmed here 30 years ago in our historic square and around town. So just after 7 a.m. this morning, we gathered in the square to hear the prognostication of our very own groundhog pal Woodstock Willie. Willie saw no shadow after emerging and declared an early spring. Hurrah!"
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| Woodstock Willie at Read Between the Lynes | |
During the week's festivities, Read Between the Lynes showcased its groundhog gear ("help commemorate our favorite furry weather predictor"), welcomed Woodstock Willie as a bookseller ("Guess who stopped by? That's right! Our pal, Woodstock Willie visited us to say hello and see what we have in store for Groundhog Days.... Yes, we'll be here for your morning coffee/tea/muffin run! Bing!") and reported that Willie had predicted an early spring (unlike his Punxsutawney cousin).
Groundhog Day has a strong bookish foundation. Phil cites Chekhov and reads from Poems for Every Mood to Rita (Andie MacDowell), who studied 19th-century French poetry in college and at one point conjures up lines from Sir Walter Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel." Among Phil's books on the coffee shop's counter are Treasury of the Theatre: From Agamemnon to A Month in the Country by John Gassner and Johann Strauss: Father and Son, a Century of Light Music by H.E. Jacob.
In fact, an imaginary library could have been a key moment in Groundhog Day. Danny Rubin, who wrote the original screenplay, cited Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat and H.G. Wells's The Time Machine as sparks for his movie idea. In an interview a few years ago, he recalled that his initial concept called for a "library scene" at the b&b that would have emphasized just how long Phil had been trapped in his time loop.
"I decided if he read a page of a book every day, he could remember where he was," Rubin said. "So there's this big bookcase in the bed and breakfast, and every morning he goes down and he reads one page of one book. So you know that by the time he's gotten to the last page of the book, it's probably been about a year. And then he gets to the end of the row; and then he gets to the bottom of of the shelf. And then there's a very momentous day where he reads the last page of the last book of the last shelf, and you see him put it down and then, in a very depressed way, walk all the way back down to the beginning and start over again."
In the spirit of G-Day as a book holiday celebrating an infinite reading loop, I'll end with this bit of real-life trivia, courtesy of IMDB: "The idea of Phil Connors reading to Rita Hanson while she sleeps came from Bill Murray. His wife drank too much champagne on their wedding night and fell asleep early, so Murray read aloud to her until he too fell asleep."