As 2019 approaches, Woodstockians and film fans from around the world look forward to that most dependable of holidays – to the delight of everyone except Phil Connors, Groundhog Day is coming again. Barring any time-loop shenanigans, of course, visitors to the 2019 Woodstock Groundhog Days can expect at least a few changes from last year: the Drink to World Peace has been moved to the opening of the event on Thursday, January 31st, alongside the Awakening of the Groundhog, Groundhog Storytime and Groundhog Day Trivia (both at Stage Left Cafe this year).
Friday will feature the movie memorabilia display at the Woodstock Library, the Groundhog Day Dinner Dance, and Doug Elliot’s “Groundhogology” at the Opera House (“a rollicking and revealing journey into folklore, history, mythology, philosophy and into the lives of people of different cultures, past and present,” the description reads, exploring the history of the groundhog in Native and European-American Appalachia “flavored with traditional songs, regional dialects, lively harmonica riffs, and more than a few belly laughs and wood chuckles”).
Falling on a Saturday this year, February 2nd will be packed with twelve events, including the chili cook-off, groundhog bowling, Groundhog Day bingo, Jim May’s Groundhog Tales, the Woodstock Rotary Bags Tourney, tours of the Opera House and Old Courthouse, and the return of last year’s official Groundhog Day Pub Crawl, on top of the prognostication, Groundhog Day breakfast, wood carving, free film showing, and walking tour. Sunday will close out with Woodstock Willie’s breakfast and family funday, and with one more free showing and walking tour.
But the biggest treat this year will be for anyone interested in whole life, term, flood, fire, theft, auto, dental, health (with optional death and dismemberment plan), and water damage insurance – for the first time in fifteen years, Stephen “Ned Ryerson” Tobolowsky will be returning to Woodstock. Tobolowsky said he remembers his last visit by two things: christening Ned’s Corner, and the infamous 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Show. “We all watched the Super Bowl that evening,” Tobolowsky said, “and Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake did their thing, but it was a great game!”
Tobolowsky had appeared for several Groundhog Day celebrations before, but he said that his prolific and ongoing work in film and TV had kept him booked in early February ever since. But this year, he said, “I think it’s going to be all in the clear.” Tobolowsky plans to be in town for all four days, showing up for the Prognostication, the chili contest (which his wife will help judge), and other events including his own storytelling session at the Opera House, where he will share groundhog stories and a chapter from “My Adventures With God” (the autobiography of his own surprisingly eventful life, which includes being held hostage at a grocery store, being held hostage in a Buddhist temple in Thailand, and suffering a “fatal accident,” according to doctors, while horseback riding on an Icelandic volcano).
Tobolowsky said he hoped to eat at the Tip Top Bistro and the former ice cream shop near the Opera House, which gives a sense of just how much he’s missed out on – he was also unaware of the restored Woodstock Theater auditorium named in honor of director Harold Ramis, and of the nearby mural immortalizing his own face in a gigantic, somewhat terrifying portrait. Many film theorists would see Ned’s “nightmare fuel” impression on the mural as fitting – half the fun of Groundhog Day has come from waxing philosophical about its hidden, not-so-hidden, and dubiously real meanings, and Ned’s role as Phil’s archetypically-annoying tormentor has led some to interpret him as the Devil himself.
Responding to this, Tobolowsky said, “He’s certainly not the devil! Although I could see in the Shakespearean tradition, the devil character was always a delightful character that appeared early on in the plays, like in Richard III… many of these characters were considered ‘devil’ characters, and Ned is kind of the same way.” Instead of a tormentor, Tobolowsky sees Ned as an important “foil” to Bill Murray’s character – “before Bill meets Ned, Bill is the antagonist of the movie,” he said. “Bill is the jerk, he’s the guy that we don’t want to see succeed… his position in life has gone to his head. He assumes that I’m just another fan of his, but the lovely turn is, I don’t know him at all from TV, I know him from high school. And that becomes his nightmare, that you’re not famous with everybody and you can’t escape from who you are, and I think that’s what turns Phil into the protagonist of the movie.”
If most of the theories and film-student essays over the years on the “philosophy of Groundhog Day” have seemed like a stretch, Tobolowsky shared, then that’s the film’s secret – none of it was actually planned. Ramis, as many have described (including his daughter Violet in her recently-published memoirs), went into Groundhog Day intending to make it a pure “screwball comedy,” like previous Murray collaborations “Caddyshack” and “Meatballs.” Murray, however, came on as an all-too-real version of the pained, acerbic, desperate Phil of the final cut, likely due to relationship troubles that would lead to his divorce with his first wife Margaret Kelly in 1996. According to Violet Ramis-Stiel and others, Murray was the one who drove the film into a darker, more thoughtful mode, which in turn fueled Ramis and writer Danny Rubin to make it something of a Buddhist allegory for reincarnation and the battle against the ego. Tobolowsky said, “that approach to the script became a later part to it… it wasn’t so pronounced at the beginning, but through the script changes it reflected that more and more.”
The end result, to the delight of audiences worldwide, was an almost perfectly-balanced mix between the comedic and the serious, with an apparent spiritual message that has resonated from Rome to Jerusalem to Lhasa, Tibet. But sadly, the film had the opposite effect on its two driving creators – Murray still felt that Groundhog Day was too comedic, while Ramis, in a 2004 New Yorker article, considered Murray to be an actor throwing a tantrum. The two long-time friends didn’t speak to each other for 21 years, and when they finally did in 2014, it was when Ramis was on his deathbed. Tobolowsky, however, said that in the four weeks he was present over the three-month shoot, he “never saw any conflict between Bill and Harold. Bill was always very serious, he approached each scene very seriously and he would challenge Harold, but not in a snarky way… so I didn’t notice any of that tension.”
But if Murray has preferred to let his experience in Woodstock lie (except, if rumors are to be believed, for the occasional cold one at Liquid Blues), then Tobolowsky is just as much his opposite as he was in the movie. “I love the people and I love the fans,” Tobolowsky said. “The fans of the movie are the greatest, happiest, most lighthearted people, and it’s such a joy to be with people who love that movie as much as I loved being in that movie. So there’s just that spiritual thing about being in a community that’s so damn happy! I’m bringing my wife, and I’m taking every opportunity I can to fall in love with Woodstock again.”
For the full schedule, times, and locations of events for the 2019 Woodstock Groundhog Days, visit http://www.woodstockgroundhog.org
Willcockson Wordsmithing 