![]() ![]() Michael Shamberg (via The New Yorker), a Hollywood producer and Ramis' college friend, felt that Murray was bitter about having his career so closely tethered to Ramis, as if he wasn't good enough on his own. Murray's work outside of his collaborations with Ramis left something to be desired. On top of that, some believe that Murray grew to resent Ramis for having such a significant hand in defining his professional persona. Ramis flatly told The New Yorker that Murray was "really irrationally mean and unavailable." That frustration poured over into his work, making him supremely difficult to work with for a long time. They wouldn't actually divorce until 1996, but in the years leading up to that, Murray was clearly having trouble dealing with those issues. When "Groundhog Day" was in production, Murray's marriage to his first wife Margaret Kelly was unraveling. ![]() The primary problem seemed to be Bill Murray going through a sort of midlife crisis. Some new lines were good, but mostly it was like a grenade had been thrown into the middle of everything."īut that was just the beginning of Murray's flummoxing behavior during the development and production process on "Groundhog Day." I can't remember what had changed exactly, but the script came and we were freaked out by it. Danny and Bill's draft got sent to us two and a half weeks away from shooting, and the delicate balance that we had achieved had been disrupted significantly. When they finally got this alternate version of the script, it was worse than they'd imagined. During these rewrites, Ramis tried to wrangle the pages they had been working on, but Murray wouldn't even speak with him on the phone. Murray was acting as if there was a chance he wouldn't make this movie, all while sets were already being built based upon his seemingly agreed-upon involvement. what do you suppose Phil would say here?" And after about an hour of puttering around he would sit down next to me and say some-thing like, 'OK, if I agree to do this movie. He would just grunt and pace and smoke cigars and read the newspaper. Rubin recalled their days spent in the Directors Guild Building on West 57th Street in New York: In-between random trips and errands, Murray and Rubin would work on the script little-by-little, though it wasn't the most conventional working environment. Meanwhile, Murray had reached out to Danny Rubin, and he recruited the writer to help him with rewrites of his own. As Rubin recalled in the book "Wild and Crazy Guys" by Nick De Semlyen: "I think there was a lot to my script that meandered in a way that was pleasing and enjoyable, but it didn't have those sharp dramatic edges that Hollywood seems to require."Īside from adding some sharper drama to the proceedings, Ramis and producer Trevor Albert also restructured the script to be a three-act story that worked as a studio-friendly comedy. Instead, it took some time to understand that the day was actually repeating. The original script by Danny Rubin didn't provide quite as clean or clear of a set-up for the time loop that Bill Murray's character, weatherman Phil Connors, found himself in. ![]()
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