Why Groundhog Day? Could the movie have just as easily been “Arbor Day?
” Yes, it could have just as easily been Arbor Day, and the events of the movie would have been dictated by that choice. There were many reasons that Groundhog Day was a good arbitrary choice. It was a good choice because it’s in the dead of winter. That made good sense for the story since the main character was stuck in his darkest day. It made sense that the character would come from out of town, and that the character was predicting the weather. He felt could predict anything. It’s also an “unexploited” movie holiday. The reason it became Groundhog Day was that I got the idea right around that time, and I happened to be one of the few people outside Pennsylvania that knew about it. Where had you heard about Groundhog Day? I had done a trade show for Bell of PA while working as an industrial writer. I encountered the holiday somewhere during that experience. Was Bill Murray who you had in mind to play Phil Connors? I wasn’t thinking of it as a comedy, so I didn’t want to put a comedi
