ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Actor Stephen Tobolowsky, who played Ned Ryerson in “Groundhog Day” joined St. Louis Talks to discuss the moment that the script of the now iconic movie was re-written and the entire direction of the film changes.
Tobolowsky’s portrayal as a pushy insurance salesman is one of the many memorable performances from the film. He mentions that one of the most commonly asked questions about the film is how long Bill Murray's character Phil Connors lived in the loop.
To get an answer, he asked director Harold Ramis, who passed away in 2014.
"Harold, how long is Bill trapped in time? How long is he trapped in the town? Everybody always asks me," Tobolowsky recalled. "And he said 'Stephen, 10,000 years' and I said 10,000 years? He said 'You see, I'm a practicing Buddhist.' Who knew that! 'I'm a practicing Buddhist and we believe that it takes 10,000 years to perfect the human soul. And that's the real story of Groundhog Day, the perfection of the human soul.'"
Tobolowsky, who's been in more than 100 movies and 200 TV shows, says he saw Ramis do something he's never seen a director do before or since on the movie set.
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"He looks at the footage, he looks at Danny Rubin our screenwriter and says 'What story are we telling here, I mean is this a story about Bill going nuts and going crazy and having no consequences or are we telling a story about the consequences of how we use time? What story do we want to tell?'" Tobolowsky says. "This has never happened, the director the first week of shooting takes this enormous scene and throws it away."
Released in February of 1993, “Groundhog Day” stars Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. Filmed mostly in Woodstock, Illinois, the story takes place during the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
"It almost was never Groundhog Day," Tobolowsky says. "All Danny knew about writing the script was he wanted to have a repeated day and he wanted it centered around a holiday. And so the first thing he thought of was Thanksgiving, then he thinks of Valentine's Day, then he thinks too cliche. He looks at his desktop calendar and it's the beginning of the year and he goes what's a holiday I can use and the next holiday was Groundhog Day."
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