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| Waiting for Woodstock Willey in 2014. |
As
I type this on Sunday afternoon, a
full fledge blizzard has arrived in McHenry County after wet, heavy snow
has already fallen over the last 18 hours.
The long, stubborn storm is scheduled to depart these parts about 3 am Monday morning. I just came in from a first round of snow blowing looking like I stepped out
of The
Cremation of Sam McGee. There
was already over a foot on the ground and drifts in several places well over
the intake of my little machine. They
keep revising the eventual total from the storm upward. Looks to be not record breaking, but moderately epic.
But
the Woodstock Groundhog Days Facebook
page cheerfully reports that they expect Willey, our local prognosticating
rodent to declare his prediction for the duration of winter precisely at 7:07 am from the Gazebo in Woodstock
Square. Which is better than during
the horrible winter of 2012-13 when a Groundhog
Day blizzard struck that turned out to be the third worst winter storm on
record in Northern Illinois. This sort of thing has been going on for
twenty two years, since a little movie was
filmed in the town. The town never got
over it.
Woodstock
makes it nearly a week long event with dances,
storytelling events, a chili cook-off,
walking tours of places featured in the film, and, of course, showing of Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day for which the McHenry County Seat impersonated Punxsutawney,
Pennsylvania. Yesterday the historic restored main auditorium of the Woodstock Theater was dedicated to the
memory of director Harold Ramis who
died last year. Ramis, the cast and crew spent weeks filming in Woodstock and on a makeshift sound stage in a converted Crystal Lake warehouse. They got to be familiar sights in local restaurants, bars, and stores and
many local residents were used as extras
or even got small speaking parts.
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| Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. |
If the
movie hadn’t become a critical favorite
and cult classic, the thrill being
briefly Hollywood in the corn fields,
would have worn off. But now Ground Hog
day is as firmly entrenched here as back in Pennsylvania.
***
I work in the city of Woodstock,
Illinois. It’s a country town, the
governing center for suburban/rural McHenry County. The 19th
Century Square, replete with Civil
War Monument and gazebo, seems sometimes to rise like Brigadoon or Avalon from
the mists of a forgotten time.
The venerable Opera House dominates one side of the Square. On another side sits a large red brick
building with now with gleaming, restored copper
dome, the former McHenry County
Courthouse built in 1854 and the yellow Milwaukee brick Jail attached to it.
Historic public buildings, churches, and graceful old homes on tree-lined streets radiate
out from the Square. Three blocks away
as the crow flies the Peter Nestor House,
built in 1900, sits halfway up Madison
Street. I work there in an office
in the basement of my employer’s
home.
At the far end of the street, on a small hill
and facing all of us on the block when we walk out the front door and look up
the road, looms the manor house of
our neighborhood, a large imposing Victorian
mansion.
You may have seen it before.
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| A private residence when used as a Bed and Breakfast in the movie, this old home has since become one--The Cherry Street Inn. |
This mansion played the role of a bed and breakfast in the classic Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day. In the movie, the Square was dubbed Gobbler’s Knob, the name of the site in
the Pennsylvania town where a
Groundhog is pulled from his sleepy den every February 2 to prognosticate
whether or not spring was coming.
Most movie comedies sink below the surface of
memory without leaving a ripple. But
since its release this film has resonated with audiences in a way that is
reminiscent of the James Stewart/Frank
Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life—with which it shares important themes.
However, unlike James Stewart’s likable
character, Bill Murray begins the film as a repellant jerk. An arrogant Pittsburgh TV weatherman, Murray has
been assigned to cover the Punxsutawney
festivities. He is surly to his camera man, Chris Elliot, insulting to his lovely and generous producer, Andie MacDowell, condescending and disdainful to the local
Punxsutawney yokels, and their ridiculous pageant.
While Stewart learned to value the person he
actually was, Murray in Groundhog Day
learns how to change the world for the better—but only after he becomes someone
other than the vain, shallow human being we first see in this film.
After being forced to stay in Punxsutawney by
a blizzard, Murray wakes up in that
Victorian bed and breakfast—the one at the end of the block—only to find that
his bedside clock/calendar tells him
that he has awakened once again on the morning of February 2. Then the film
shows us that day repeated, and then
again repeated, as day after day he wakes up again on February 2. He is caught somehow in a closed loop of
time. The movie shows snippets from
dozens of these February 2s, but makes clear that he experienced hundreds,
perhaps thousands of them.
After being astonished to discover that is his
life is an apparently endless series of empty, identical experiences, Murray
goes through the stages of grief
over the meaningless of his existence—denial,
anger, bargaining, depression,
and finally, acceptance. He tried to escape by repeated, ever more
creative attempts at suicide, always
to re-awaken in the same bed to the same song on the clock radio.
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| Guess what day it is.... |
When he finally comes to acceptance, he learns
something remarkable.
He learns that he is actually able to change
how this otherwise repetitious day unfolds—by how he himself acts. He discovers he can change the outcomes of
lives around him. For instance, every
day when the moment comes when a certain child
is to fall out of the tree, hit the ground and break his arm, he arranges
to be there, under the tree where he can catch the child. He uncharacteristically acts in a kind manner
to a sick and dying homeless man. He creates an engaging conversation with an
otherwise annoying insurance salesman
who—as his previously repetitive experiences had taught him—will accost him
every morning on a certain street corner.
He also learns he can improve himself. He becomes a piano virtuoso by showing up each day and presenting himself as a new student to a piano teacher. Each day having mastered what she is unaware
she that has taught him, he presents himself anew and learns from there.
At first the object of this self-improvement
is largely to win over and seduce his lovely producer. And each day he makes progress with
her. Yet as he comes to know her, his feelings
turn to something like real affection and love.
But he’s not through learning yet.
Each day at some point his old, habitual, self-centered arrogance rises
and puts the kibosh on their blooming relationship.
Yet he really is changing. Eventually the whole town comes to adore him
for the many kindnesses this one-day visitor bestows on them, not just for his
wit, his talent and his fame.
And each day we see an implicit love affair
that had previously been stymied become something possible. We see it in Andie
McDowell’s eyes which—when in his presence—shine a little brighter a little
longer.
But this love relationship cannot break
through until that day arises when, in a simple act of complete unselfishness,
Bill puts Andie entirely ahead of his own needs and wants. We are then shown a scene in which she comes
to his bed at the inn and they awake in each other’s arms. The next morning the clock/calendar awakens
them to February 3. We know that he and she may have an unfolding future
together that would not have been possible for him prior to his awakening.
So Groundhog
Day becomes the metaphor, not of
some automatic seasonal rebirth
experience, something that appropriately takes place in the spring, but
rather of a breakthrough in taking responsibility now. By taking an action that
anyone can take when one chooses freshly—an action that is not a mere
repetition of the past, not the result of some long-established habit—Murray,
you, or I, can cause a future that otherwise would not be. And we can take such an action anytime—
Even in the dead of winter. Even in the
dead of winter.
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