Another Gift of Groundhog Day
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The Writer’s Groundhog Day
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We’ve done it! Â The eBook is now ready for its close up, Mister DeRubin. Â I hope you like it!
Available NOW on Amazon.
Available NOW on Barnes and Noble.
Available VERY SOON as an iBook.
check it out: http://www.howtowritegroundhogday.com
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Naming the movie Groundhog Day was easy. All I had to do was to choose a day for the character to endlessly repeat from the 366 available (yes, I considered leap year); but once I chose February 2nd the title to the movie somehow, I don’t know, just came to me.Â
And now I have a new book coming out!Â
The title for that book just came to me, too. But then so did another one, and yet another one. I asked my friends and family to help me choose from my short list of titles, but you know, when you ask creative people for solutions they don’t choose from a list – they add to it. And it keeps getting bigger.
Want to check it out? Kinda entertaining:
(Naming page is closed in anticipation of the eBook launch.)
What is the book about?Â
It’s about writing Groundhog Day. I’ve used the original first draft screenplay – FINALLY available here, folks – as a roadmap to comment on everything from where the idea originated to why scripts in Hollywood are never shot as written, including, quite appropriately, this one.
Along the way I’ve sprinkled plenty of background trivia (Why “I Got You, Babe�); myth-busting (Where’s the Gypsy curse?); and true tales from crazy Hollywood – such as how I only wrote this script because I was fired from a job at Disney Animation that I had never been hired for.
That kind of thing.
Publication is not far off and none of it will happen until I choose a title.Â
I made it so you can vote on your favorite titles, and if you want you can add your own better title ideas because I know you’re thinking of one right now.  Eventually I will use one of them – maybe yours.
Thanks for taking a look.Â
Be the groundhog!
(Naming page is closed in anticipation of the eBook launch.)
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So, where was I? Â
Yeah, I don’t remember, either.    Hey, look!  It’s Groundhog Day!
No, folks, this isn’t some new dementia – just the same old one.   Not that I forgot to tend the blog-garden; I’ve just had other things on my plate.  Good things.  Don’t worry about me.  But you have my apologies for stepping out.  I’ve missed you, too.
Still, the sensation of losing my place, losing my train of thought, of suddenly waking up as if for the first time is very familiar to me.  You too?  It’s like the opposite of deja vu.  It’s a feeling of “I’ve NEVER been here before†– even though I must have because, well, here I am, so clearly I was here a second ago.
“So, where was I?† That’s me all over, my train of thought derailed, and the tracks that got me here somehow invisible.
I recently told my students that it made sense to me that they would naturally write in a manner consistent with who they are.  For example, if they are fearless, they will write fearlessly – perhaps easily beginning a scene without knowing where it is going to end up.  If they are cautious, they will write cautiously – perhaps making an outline before setting out to write the script.
How they write depends on who they are. Â That probably is true for me as well.
So, where was I? Â The mental issue. Â Right.
My issue is not about losing track of time – it’s bigger than that.  It has something to do with losing track of context.  How is everything connected? What connects people to motivation to emotion to logic to place to time?  Which bonds are strong and which are weak? Â
Life has been confusing to me for a long time.
All of my new ideas – including contextual information – pass through my short-term memory, which is like a bulletin board with no thumbtacks.  The ideas only stick to the board when I hold them there myself, but take a hand off the board to reach for another idea… Gone.  And I’ve only got two hands, folks, and a lot of ideas.
While I’m writing I find it necessary to re-discover or re-invent context constantly.  In order to hang on to all of the moving parts of a scene I require lots of repetition: reading the scene over and over and over, repeatedly watching a mental video as I try to grasp context and hang onto it, all the while nudging and revising the scene bit by bit.
By the way, to the best of my recollection, my memory has not degenerated, thanks for asking.  This is me.  I remember a high school pal telling me, “Danny, if you ever get senile nobody is going to know the difference.†  That pretty much describes it.
However, my Teflon bulletin board of a brain can take some credit for my creativity.  For instance, I easily let go of assumptions – who can remember them? – and in seeing a situation fresh I frequently notice things I hadn’t before, see things in original ways.  The patterns and associations that I have been taught (in society, in writing) are no more enduring to me than my memory of the twelve cranial nerves (olfactory, optic, uh, trochlear, trigeminal, vegas…?  Is that twelve?)
In this way I construct the life I want to live in and write the movies I want see.  And someday – one hopes – you may see them, too.
So there you have it – my poor memory is my curse, but it is also my superpower.  I live with it and I write with it.Â
And that is how you’ll find me, on this Groundhog Day or any other: sincerely enjoying your company while I try to figure out how I know you, and doing similar detective work on my characters, trying to figure out who they are and why they’re here and how it’s all somehow connected. Â
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Unique among the plants and animals – or so we believe – humans are able to concern themselves with life’s meaning. Over the years many (people) have shared with me the meaning they have found in Groundhog Day.Â
The most recent example brought to my attention concerns the clock-radio at Phil Connors’ bedside, the radio alarm predictably going off every morning at six a.m. The display shows “6:00â€.  A rabbi who enjoys the film saw this number as “600â€, representing the age of Noah at the time of the big flood.  This would reflect the great cataclysm flooding through Phil’s life, washing away the sins of his past. On the final morning of Phil’s movie-life the clock switches to “6:01â€, signifying the time after the flood when the rainbow appears and the world begins anew.
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As part of the application to my screenwriting course at Harvard I ask the students to ask me a question. Most of the questions I’ve received are just fine – good indicators of what the student hopes to learn and sometimes what they misunderstand about what screenwriters do. Yesterday I got this question and it simply blew me away:
“Would you write a feature length screenplay if you knew it would not be produced?â€
Oh my. That gets to the heart of so many things.
My immediate response is, without a doubt, no.  Of course not. Why would I do that?
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