Episode published: Sunday 02/02/2025
Michael: Hi team, well the big day is finally here. If you're listening to this episode of Every Day is Groundhog Day (Except for the Days When It's Not), the only podcast devoted to the holiday Groundhog Day on the day that it comes out, then it's Groundhog Day! We hope that whatever you do today, that it's enjoyable and filled with shadows or no shadows, depending on what you prefer.
For today's episode, we're continuing our interview with Groundhog Day screenwriter Danny Rubin. If you haven't listened to the first part, you might want to listen to that first and then come back and listen to the second part of the interview, which starts now.
Michael: So, once the movie got sold, it got optioned, you wrote a revised first draft, then Harold Ramis wrote a draft, then you were brought back in to write your second revision. Is that generally the sequence of events? I know you said something about also doing some work with Bill Murray, right?
Danny Rubin: Yeah. There was some back and forth, and then Harold just nailed it down the way he needed to. And it went through some improv scenes that they liked that they kept, and then some test screenings where they decided to change and reshoot the opening, things like that. So, you know, making a movie is an evolutionary process. What did you ask? I can't even remember.
Michael: I think I was just trying to get the sequence, making sure I got the sequence right.
Danny Rubin: Yeah. I think that's basically correct. Harold's draft got greenlit by the studio, and they wound up hiring Bill Murray. And then Bill Murray read the script that was greenlit, and then he read the original script, and he said, "Let's get the original writer back on here to work it back a little bit because it's been a little bit too much in the direction of silly comedy." So, I worked with him for a couple of weeks, and we were pushing the draft a little bit closer toward the original, and Harold Ramis was already building sets and freaking out that the script wasn't solid anymore, which I totally appreciated. Bill wasn't talking with him so I was sort of an intermediary, which was also uncomfortable. So yeah, it was that sequence.
We met on the set in Woodstock where they were building the set, in Woodstock, Illinois, and worked together as a group to try and solve some of the issues and make some final decisions. As it got closer to the beginning of shooting, Bill Murray dropped out of our writer conversations and started learning his lines, getting into character, et cetera. And it came down to, it was a room full of people, and now it's just me and Harold saying, "In or out? In or out?" Is that debauchery scene in? We had some idea where Phil shaves his head so when he wakes up the next morning, he can see that he grew a full head of hair, you know, things to convince him that the day was really repeating. And so, they're saying, "Do we need to build the bald wig? Do we need to build…?" You know, people had practical things, so we had to make these decisions. And then Harold closed himself in a room and made the script that they started shooting. So, that's where I stopped contributing at that point.
Michael: Were you on set at any point when the filming was, or were you, like…?
Danny Rubin: I made it through the first week of filming. If you read anything about that, it was stultifyingly cold. It was the coldest I've ever been, anywhere, and I lived in Chicago for 10 years. So, it wasn't comfortable. It's never really fun being on a movie set, it's always really, really, really tedious. And Harold and Bill were able to, sort of, improvise stuff. Harold would typically shoot it the way it was written once or twice, and then they would just start messing with it because comedy requires a certain looseness and it's hard to reproduce that over and over and over again. Harold's a great writer so, you know, I wasn't really needed. They invited me to stay, but it was an inconvenient time in my life to be away from home so I decided to just sort of end it there.
Michael: I know you visited Punxsutawney with Bill Murray, right, in 1992 or I guess a year before? I found some news articles from that time. It didn't mention you were there so I didn't know that until I was reading your book, but it did mention Bill Murray. So, how was that? Were you, like, in a press box or were you able to get, like, up real close and see everything? I know it gets pretty crowded there, a lot more crowded now.
Danny Rubin: Well, that's just it. At the time, there were a few hundred people.
Michael: Oh wow.
Danny Rubin: There were some booths set up with, like, radio announcers from different places who were broadcasting live, and there were bonfires around so if it was cold, you could stand around and get warm. It was really a fun local event. Obviously, it was freezing. It was, you know, 3:00 in the morning and people were dancing and the beach balls. You know, I loved the spirit of it and it just reinforced the degree to which people in the town understood that it was this goofy holiday and that there is a real societal benefit that comes from waiting until you're really, really tired of winter, which is Groundhog Day is right in between the solstices, and just be goofy. I was afraid that the movie was making fun of the people of Punxsutawney, treating them like a bunch of hicks, and I was very sensitive to that because from Phil's point of view, that's how they are. But I didn't want it to look like from the filmmakers' point of view, that's how they are.
But anyway, it was really exciting. It was a fun adventure. It was interesting to be around Bill because he's Bill Murray, but he's also very, very famous, and watching him in a small town trying to walk from here to there, people would start to glom onto him. I had this image from Fantastic Voyage with all the antibodies that were starting to cling to Raquel Welch, you know, every time she took a step, she couldn't move anymore. And it was like that; if he went out in public, he couldn't take four steps before all of a sudden, he couldn't move anymore. I started to understand the limits of fame and how hard it was to try and be just a human being in a life like that.
But all in all, Bill was great to me, he was really nice. He was obviously having some problems with his marriage at the time, and some problems with Harold Ramis at the time. But he was always very nice to me and supportive of the script and it always felt like a very positive, exciting adventure to have done that with him.
Michael: Have you seen or heard from him since? I guess there aren't really Groundhog Day reunions per se.
Danny Rubin: No, and he wouldn't go anyway, I mean, unless he happened to be in town or it just struck his mood as being the fun thing to do. What was the question?
Michael: Have you kept in touch with him at all?
Danny Rubin: Yeah, lightly. We stay in touch. Once he came through New Mexico and we got together for a day. When the musical was playing on Broadway, he came out and we spent an evening together and he went to see the show. And yeah, we communicate lightly and fondly just because he feels, and in general, people feel a kindliness toward me just for having been involved with the movie and he feels that way too and I feel that way towards him. You know, I think everybody involved feels that way towards everybody else, which is what a hit will do. If it wasn't a hit, maybe everyone's pointing fingers and having bad feelings about it. Everybody was always very supportive all the way along.
Michael: That's nice to hear. I was going to say, when you said there were a couple hundred people in Punxsutawney, they should be sending you some sort of residual checks or something like that. The latest I've heard is, like…
Danny Rubin: It's thousands now, tens of thousands.
Michael: I saw, like, 40,000 or something at one point. And I've got to say…
Danny Rubin: It's their annual fundraiser, they make so much money for the town. The day after Groundhog Day, everybody's at the airport headed to Florida, the whole Groundhog Inner Circle. [laughs] I've been back a couple of times; they've invited me and it's been fun and everybody's nice.
The other place is Woodstock, which has been a movie set town because it's outside Chicago and has this, you know, lovely plaza and it's just a sweet little village. Since the movie happened, they've got their own groundhog, they've totally turned it into an event that people come to. This year, actually, they're showing the theater company is putting up the musical at The Opera House, which is that building that Bill Murray dives off of when he's doing the suicide sequence. So, full groundhog experience this year, everybody come. But that's two towns that I feel like I've helped their economic fortunes in one way or another that makes me unable to argue that movies don't make a difference. [chuckles]
Michael: All right. A few things I wanted to touch on. One is that Woodstock thing, I was going to say, I know they have, like, Woodstock Days now, like it's like a whole week of celebration or at least several days of celebration, which you are directly responsible for because there was no connection to Groundhog Day that I know of before the movie was filmed there.
Danny Rubin: Oh no. It's really fun because this town, the downtown area, is the movie set. So, when you're walking around there, I mean, they've dolled it up a little bit. They put a little plaque and said, "This is Ned's corner." "This is where the puddle was," you know. But for the most part, it's just surreal walking around inside a movie set and they always show the movie at the movie theater that's part of the movie set. So, when you're inside that movie theater watching the movie, and then you step outside and you're in the movie, it's fun. It's silly fun.
Michael: I hope to get out there someday. I've been trying to get to some of the local Groundhog Day because I've been compiling a list. There's, like, something like 100 alternate groundhogs besides Phil, besides Woodstock Willie. So, there's a lot of them in the area here where I live but at some point, I'd like to get out to Woodstock and check that out.
Danny Rubin: Well, what's kind of nice is that the themes of the movie have started to conflate with the actual ceremonies and people see that date, February 2nd, as a time to sort of look at your life and look at things that you're grateful for, and look at things that are right in front of you that maybe you didn't notice, and look at things that you might be repeating and want to break out of. All those ways that people have embraced the movie have become part of that holiday for a lot of people.
Michael: Yeah, the whole phrase "Groundhog Day," like, this is something, that time repeating theme, that's only associated with Groundhog Day because of you, and this is a phrase which is repeated, like, all the time. I have a Google alert for "Groundhog Day" and like 99% of the time, it's not anything that I'm interested in, you know, somebody lost the basketball game or, you know, some political situation that's repeating over and over again, it's not directly related to the holiday. But like, that's got to be kind of crazy to know that you've created this shortcut phrase that now has this other meaning that people quickly know.
Danny Rubin: I think it gives. It just gives language to something that people have experienced before but it's never been given a term before. So, that's an interesting thing about language; if there's a word for it, then somehow, it's able to come to the forefront of people's experience, they can talk about it with each other. If you don't have a word for it, it's like nobody's even talking about it.
Michael: And now we've got one. I want to at least touch on the musical before you have to go because that's a whole other element that we haven't even really touched on too much. So, could you talk a little bit about how that came about? It seems like it was something I had heard about for a while, like, people were considering doing it.
Danny Rubin: Sure. I had been thinking about it for a very long time. Reading over my Groundhog Day contract, I saw what I was allowed to do and what I wasn't, what I had the rights to do and wasn't. I didn't want to spend my whole life rehashing this one story, but they asked me what I would do for a sequel. And I said, "I don't want to do a sequel, and I don't think there should be one." And that, of course, always endears you to everybody in Hollywood because they just say, "Hey, this is easy money." And I'm like, "Yeah, but it's the movie that doesn't need to be made so, sorry."
But I love the themes of the movie, there's no end to exploring all of that stuff and very early on, I settled on, you know what? I'm a songwriter, I'd love to write a musical of Groundhog Day. So, exploring the same story within a different medium, you can bring out different themes or just bring them out deeper. As it turned out, I didn't want to work on it right away and it was a good 10 years after, it was just on my back burner as an idea, that I saw Stephen Sondheim being interviewed by Frank Rich. And Frank Rich had said, "What do you think of this phenomenon of Hollywood movies being made into Broadway shows?" And he said, "Well, there's this one movie that I think would make a great show," and he mentioned Groundhog Day. And so, I called him up and spoke to his lawyer and said, "Really? Wanna?" And he said, "Well, Stephen's doing something else right now. But if you call us back in two years, we'll talk to you." And I said, "Okay, I've waited this long. I don't care." And so, two years go by and I wrote back and said "Wanna?" And he basically said he'd thought about it, decided that one, he wasn't sure it could be improved upon from the movie and so he wasn't that excited anymore. And then the other thing was that he really didn't want to work with a Hollywood writer. He had his own people he'd like to work with.
I thought about it really deeply and decided, well, to have an opportunity to get this made by Sondheim would be absolutely amazing but I actually wanted the life experience of working on it. I didn't think I was going to get another opportunity, and this seemed like a great way to do it. So, I basically said sayonara and spent maybe another 10 years, kind of, taking it more seriously. What would I do if I made it into a musical? Who would I want to work with? Who could be in this? And every now and then I'd get this spate of phone calls that were unrelated to each other, just the zeitgeist, where a choreographer or a producer or an actor or a composer would call me up and say, "I just had this wacky idea. Wouldn't Groundhog Day make a great musical?" And I would see if I could work with them and what their ideas were. And nothing really, really clicked.
And then finally, I'd settled down and I was seriously writing it. I did a writing retreat thing, figured it out, figured out what I wanted to do, and came to the conclusion, "This is ridiculous to work on without doing it in collaboration with a composer because so many of my ideas are musical about repetition and et cetera. And it was within a week of having had that thought that Matthew Warchus, the British director, called me up. He had just done Matilda and the musical for Matilda, which was going gangbusters in London and he said, "I would love to do this and I have an idea for a composer, Tim Minchin." I looked up Tim Minchin and his stuff was unbelievable; he was funny and clever and thoughtful and seemed like a fun person to be with. And that means a lot to me because the actual working arrangement is that is your life, so you want that to be positive.
And then I went to London and saw Matilda and said, "These are the guys I want to work with." I've loved musicals over the years, but also not liked a lot of them and I've never been attracted to the high-kicking, razzamatazz kind of Broadway but Matilda was none of that. It was just innovation and cleverness and deep, deep emotion. I did laugh, I did cry, I did find the songs amazingly tuneful, I wanted to listen again. And then I met these guys, and they were wonderful, really great people. So, we shook hands and said, "Let's write this thing on a handshake. Let's not wait for all the legal stuff to happen. Let's not wait for the money people to tell us what to do. Let's make the show of our dreams and then let's find the financial backing." And that's what we did.
So, it played in London as a tryout for two months and then we moved it to Broadway in 2017 and it ran for about five months. We were really pleased with the show and the critics loved it and the audiences loved it, but it was very expensive. Turned out to be a very popular season on Broadway with a lot of great shows, which was a fun class to be part of, but it made it harder to nab all the audiences so we had to close. But it's been running here and there. I just got back from Tokyo, there was a production in Tokyo. And earlier this year, I was in Melbourne, Australia, which was so far my favorite production yet, it was amazing. It returned to London at The Old Vic theater and it's getting teed up all over the globe.
So, it was so fun to revisit it after 20 years as an older person and look at the things that we cared about, what still stood up, and what we wanted to take from the movie, and what we wanted to invent fresh. And that's what we did. I'm very proud of it.
Michael: I hope to be able to see it someday. I wish I had gotten the chance when it was on Broadway. I didn't realize it was only going to be there for such a short time.
Danny Rubin: Neither did we.
Michael: I figured it was something that would be running for years.
Danny Rubin: Based on the reviews we got, we kind of thought so too. But, you know, I also understood that having a hit Broadway show is, like, the hardest investment to reach, ever. It's like, if someone wants you to invest in a Broadway show, that's like throwing your money away. It's a very, very small chance of anything ever happening with it. So, I always went after it as this is an experience and I'm going to get everything out of it that I can and I did. And in the end, it actually does have some legs and it's thumbing its way around the globe as we speak.
Michael: So, when it goes to other locations like Melbourne or Tokyo, are you making any adjustments to the play based on the location, or is it pretty much just what…?
Danny Rubin: It is what it is. For the Tokyo show, they actually translated it into Japanese so there would really be no way, even though they translated it back for me so I could check, there's no way to understand culturally why a change was made or was it because something rhymed better. They did ask permission to add some lines, which of course I gave. Part of it was an opportunity to explain to their audience what a groundhog is. So, there were some small cultural things that seemed important to mention. We make a big deal out of the sticky buns and that, of course, is not something they relate to either. So, you know, there were those kinds of changes.
Michael: Yeah, I have the soundtrack. I was trying to find— And I don't know if this is, it kind of surprised me because I was trying to find the book, like, just the script of the play and I couldn't find it anywhere when I was looking for it. Is that a standard thing? Like, they don't just print those?
Danny Rubin: As sort of a visitor in this country, this country of musical comedy theater, I don't know what the rules are.
Michael: Right. I didn't know either and I was like, "Oh wait, I just can't buy this?" Yeah. So, I haven't been able to find it. Yeah. So hopefully someday I can check it out. Maybe it comes back to Broadway.
Danny Rubin: Well, we did some wonderful stuff. So, anybody who is a fan of the movie, it gives you a chance to feel like you've just seen the movie again, but it's completely different. And so, it's like, you don't have to watch the movie, you can watch this other medium, and the music takes you deep into the humor and also deep into the emotions. We kind of modernized Rita's character a little bit to make it a little more sophisticated and we gave absolutely everybody a story that starts and ends because as the first half is very much from Phil's point of view, all about Phil, the second half is Phil realizing that there are other people in this town, and they have stories as well. It helps us get out of our own ego and realize how we've been falling into the same trap that Phil has about thinking he's the only one who counts. So, you're able to explore all kinds of cool stuff.
If you see nothing but the clip of the song, "Hope," that is so, so, so brilliant, both the performance by Andy Karl and Tim Minchin's conception of this song, which is Phil at his deepest, darkest, most depressed singing, "You've got to have hope," while he's committing all these suicides. Of course, we use stage magic to do all that so it's jaw-dropping every time Phil disappears one place and appears somewhere else. Phil is basically saying, "You can't give up like a quitter just because you can't commit suicide today doesn't mean you're going to fail tomorrow so keep trying." So, it's very dark, and at the same time, it's amazingly funny and clever. So, it pulls on you in so many ways. It's just a brilliant, brilliant piece.
Michael: I don't think I've seen that off the search it out. I know sometimes they'll do, like, high school versions or junior versions as there have been anything like that.
Danny Rubin: Yeah, absolutely. It was in a high school theater competition thing, a high school boy in the Midwest, I can't remember where, maybe Minnesota, they did a fantastic job. And they just changed a little bit of the language to be a little bit less offensive to a high school audience because it's basically an adult production.
Michael: I did notice that it seemed like the language was a little— I feel like in the movie there's, like, no cursing whatsoever. And it's a little, a little more cursing in the play.
Danny Rubin: That's true. It's I'd say that's a little bit of Tim Minchin coming out and it works for the play so of course it's all in there.
Michael: So, I'm going to have to see if I can get my children's schools to put it on some year while they're still in there. That would be fun. Were you able to incorporate any of the ideas that you had to let go of when the film was created? Anything that you were able to reincorporate? It doesn't seem like it starts in the middle.
Danny Rubin: No, we really felt that… I mean, it's slightly different than the movie, the way it works. It puts a little bit more emphasis on the community of Punxsutawney. However, if you diverge too much from the movie, people don't feel like they're getting the experience of the movie. You know, "Why did you call it Groundhog Day? It's just a story about a guy repeating." So, I had to cling to a lot of it, which was fine. I'd say, no, I wasn't going back to ideas that I'd started with that never made it into the movie. I was pretty much starting from the movie and then saying, what else can we do from this vantage point?
Michael: Is there anything else you wanted to mention? We talked about the musical and, you know, hopefully, it will be playing in other places that people can go see it, I know it's going to be in Woodstock. Are you going to be in Woodstock this year?
Danny Rubin: Regrettably this year, no. They would like me to come, and I would love to be there, but not this year. And, you know, there's a balance to my own life creatively. The public knows me as the "Groundhog Guy," but I have other things going on. And if I'm doing nothing but Groundhog things year in, year out, it starts to feel like "Maybe I am just the Groundhog Guy," [laughs] which is okay. I mean, there are worse things to be but it's not an annual pilgrimage for me to go to one of these ceremonies.
Michael: I did see that Stephen Tobolowsky is going to be there this year.
Danny Rubin: Is he?
Michael: Yeah.
Danny Rubin: Oh! Maybe I will know. I don't know. Stephen and I have stayed in touch over the years and had a lot of good times and I respect the hell out of the guy. I really like him as a person too. So, oh really? You read that, huh?
Michael: I did. They made that announcement a couple of weeks ago.
Danny Rubin: Well, Stephen has yet to see the, I don't think he's seen the musical yet because he's a real hardworking actor so he's always busy. But I think maybe this will be his chance to see the musical so that's great. I'm happy for that.
Michael: Yeah. No, he seems like a good guy that I was going to ask if there was anybody else. You said Bill Murray sometimes you keep in touch with and Stephen Tobolowsky. Anybody else from the film or the production?
Danny Rubin: I get together with Trevor Albert, who was the producer whenever I can, not very often because he lives in LA and I don't, but he's somebody I've stayed in touch with. Harold, I was in touch with, until he died, of course. A couple of people I've brushed shoulders with, but have not really, you know, don't consider them people I stay in touch with, but Stephen and Billy and Trevor, I would say are the main people from the movie that I still see. And the people from the musical, you know, I just saw Andy Karl in New York and some of the other people from the production. I love seeing them pop up in other productions. I'm so proud of them because they're so excellent. You could throw a rock at the cast and any one of them could be a music star, pop star. They're great actors, great singers. I felt really privileged to meet these really talented people.
Michael: I think you originally were writing Phil as, like, a younger character who was just starting out. And when I saw Andy Karl was playing him, I was like, "Oh, maybe he's going with that idea." But then I realized they're around the same age, like, Bill Murray and Andy Karl actually the same age.
Danny Rubin: Yes, at the times they're doing it… They were both right around 40-ish.
Michael: Right. When they started anyway.
Danny Rubin: The production I just saw in Tokyo, the actor they cast as Phil looks much younger. I think he's in his mid-thirties, but he looks even younger than that and I think played it younger. He was like a teen idol, a pop star in Japan and that's who they cast in the role. He did a great job and I loved seeing a slightly younger person because the story still works as a young man setting off on his journey through life, as opposed to a middle-aged man trying to reclaim his youth, really.
Michael: I think one more thing and then I'll let you go. I think I would be remiss if I didn't at least ask about the number of days or the amount of time. I think I know your answer, it seems like it doesn't really matter as long as it was, like, more than a lifetime.
Danny Rubin: That was the experiment. I mean, that was the whole point of how I got into it was maybe one lifetime isn't enough for some people to grow up. When you meet these middle-aged guys who still feel sort of arrested development, maybe they just, some people just need more time, and repeating the same day was a way for me to come up with a kind of infinite timeline that allowed us to imagine that he was just living for a very, very, very long time. In terms of how long, yeah, it's a fun parlor game to think about, how long he must've lived or in order to have learned the things that he learned or developed the way he had. And ultimately, I think in Harold's mind, it was maybe 20 years. In my mind, it always needed to be more than one lifetime. In the studio's mind, it was two weeks because they have the attention span of children. [laughs] Or the execs at that time seemed to. [laughs]
Michael: Yeah. More than a lifetime, we'll go with that.
Danny Rubin: It doesn't really matter. And whatever you get out of it, you can define that as you wish. That's fine with me.
Michael: Okay. So, I guess anything else you wanted to mention? Anything I missed that you think we should talk about? Or anything else you want to plug? Are you still teaching? I think you at one point were teaching writing classes. Is that something you're still doing or…?
Danny Rubin: Well, I was teaching screenwriting at Harvard, which required moving to Boston and so that happened for a while, but now I'm back in Santa Fe. I'm not teaching currently because Hollywood has become… It's sort of an up-in-the-air place right now and I'm not quite sure what even to tell students. I wouldn't want to tell them the wrong thing and it's not that I'm out of touch, it's just like, nobody knows what's going on there. So, it's hard to know what kind of advice to give, you know, "Write toward this audience. Write from your heart, but don't expect to sell anything. Write to formula but now you're competing with AI formulas and they might be better at it." I wouldn't know what to say. I enjoy teaching a lot, so maybe I'll get back into it. In the meantime, I've been writing short stories, songs, working on a stage play. I just sort of keep busy.
Michael: Okay, good. All right. Well, if there's nothing else, I really appreciate all the time you've spent with me. Sorry for keeping you a little long. Enjoy the Groundhog Day season.
Danny Rubin: Okay. Thanks a lot, Michael. I hope this whole podcast thing works out for you.
Michael: All right, thank you. I appreciate it.
Danny Rubin: Take care.
Michael: Thanks so much.
Michael: And that's the interview, hope you enjoyed it! Thanks, Danny Rubin for taking the time to speak with me.
Music for the show was written by the mischievous Breakmaster Cylinder. Show artwork is by Tom Mike Hill. Transcripts are provided by Aveline Malek at TheWordary.com. If you want to learn more about Groundhog Day, visit countdowntogroundhogday.com. Any feedback or voice messages about the show can be sent to the podcast@countdowntogroundhogday.com. We'd love to know how your Groundhog Days went, so be sure to send us pictures or videos. If you want to see a Groundhog Day forecaster, we'd love to hear about it. Once again, happy Groundhog Day! And happy birthday Rich Sommer, Rich Sommer's wife and other family members, Shakira, Steven Charleston maybe, Brent Spiner, Paul Mescal, Christie Brinkley, Christopher and Gregory Cuneo's father, and every other Groundhog Day baby out there. Thanks for listening, talk to you next time!
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Transcribed by Aveline Malek at TheWordary.com