Alex: Hello, everybody. Welcome to You Are Good, a feelings podcast about movies. I am one of your hosts, Alex Steed. We have just a couple of quick announcements. You Are Good is made possible with your support via Patreon at patreon.com/youaregood. Thank you so much to everyone who supports us there. Did you know that you get a couple of bonus episodes a month? We have one about the Titanic dead recovery effort that occurred after the Titanic went down and took place over the course of a couple of months. Despite the heavy subject matter, we had a good time talking about it. We also answered a lot of your questions. Our next bonus episode after that is going to be about the movie Center Stage.
So if you're able go over to patreon.com/youaregood and support our work there, thank you so very much. The show is also made possible with support by Knack Factory, K N A C K Factory. Knack Factory is a commercial and creative video content production company with offices in Portland, Maine and Nashville, Tennessee. But they do work throughout these here United States. If you need that sort of work done, get in touch with the fine folks at Knack Factory.
Each week we put up playlists that are inspired by the conversations we have about these movies. There is a Groundhog Day inspired playlist linked in the show notes. Be sure to check that out. Next week we will be covering the movie Anastasia with our great friend, Dana Schwartz. Shortly, you're going to hear a message from listener Paul. When we said that we were going to cover Groundhog Day, Paul said that they had a meaningful experience with this movie and was willing to share it. So I'm glad that we have that audio to share with you, you'll hear from a listener. This is a You Are Good first, I believe.
Just a quick ‘you should know’ about this episode. This is a content warning. Suicide is a theme that's touched on in this movie, and we talk about that here and there throughout the episode. We also talk about depression and mental health stuff. And living with heaviness, living with the big heavinesses, and so I just want you to know that. If this is not your cup of tea right now, you can move on. There are other episodes that don't have these sorts of content warnings, maybe it's time to revisit one of those. And that's totally fine. All right, let's get on with the show.
Hey, Sarah Marshall
Sarah: Hey Alex Steed.
Alex: Welcome to You Are Good, a feelings podcast about movies. We're here talking about Groundhog Day. We're talking about the depression daddy, Bill Murray, and we're talking about how lovely it was to talk about all of this with Josh Gondelman. How would you describe Josh?
Sarah: Here's my guess. I would trust him to be able to withstand Disney lines with a child for many rides. He gives off that energy. It's very powerful.
Alex: I think we both feel strongly about this episode. We love this episode. One thing I think we do really well, episode to episode, no matter what episode it is, as we talk, we use the text of a movie to touch on feelings that we might not have been able to do beforehand. And once in a while, we're able to channel the essence and energy of the movie somehow. And we did that here.
Sarah: I think so, too. And having this conversation was really wonderful.
Alex: We're like the podcast that exists in the Groundhog Day universe, even though podcasts don't yet exist in the Groundhog Day universe.
Sarah: That’s what we can tell people that opening radio DJ thing was a pre podcast.
Alex: On an archaic little machine.
Sarah: On a click radio.
Alex: How are you doing?
Sarah: I'm pretty good. I'm just tired of feeling overwhelmed continually. And I would like to feel overwhelmed maybe half the time, is my goal for 2022. And I just want to, I think at this point, this is part of why does talking about Groundhog Day feel like living in Groundhog Day thing. I just, at this point have to be like, well, my thirties are a pandemic. So I have to just live my best pandemic and figure out what that involves and figure out how to deal with my issues in a way that helps me to thrive because I can't be like, wow, when this pandemic is over, I'm going to blah, blah, blah. Because it's just Nope.
Alex: Even if it's not just like before pandemic, do you remember the last time you felt appropriately well?
Sarah: I do feel like there's been a big difference pre and post pandemic. I wasn't necessarily feeling appropriately whelmed before then, but I felt like I had some kind of a balance. It was like a weird plate spinning balance, but it did feel like a balance. And now it's I feel like I'm just getting out from waking up every morning and going, ah.
Alex: I think at least for me, I don't mean to project it, but for me, so much of that comes from the open-endedness of chaos, no predictability or rigidity and structure of the day. It's hard to benchmark anything. It feels difficult to benchmark anything and everything as a result feels like a gigantic task. Yes.
Sarah: And everything always feels like a gigantic task to me anyway, so I was doing pretty well with that handicap before this started. And now I just feel like it's this muddy hill.
Alex: So we rarely talk about upcoming things in these intros, but we are covering Misery at the end of this month, which is February of 2022, if you're listening later. As we've done with prior Stephen King title The Shining, we're doing it page to scream.
Sarah: I'm very excited about this.
Alex: I'm so excited. I want to let people know just so that they can read if they want to read along, we're going to be doing this in just about a month and Misery was fucking great.
Sarah: Have fun with it. Even if you don't read the whole thing, I think so. Alex, are you done with this?
Alex: I’m only halfway there.
Sarah: Yeah, I said in our shining episode that it was in my opinion, the best written of any of the Stephen King books I had read. And I felt like it could have won some kind of major award if people hadn't figured out that Richard Bachman wasn't a person because it was supposed to be a Bachman book, initially. Right. That's where you go to talk shit about your fans.
Alex: Ruthlessly.
Sarah: But I am excited to discuss that position and what you think about it. I don't know. I guess I think the writing is really doing something wonderful. Some Stephen King books are literary in a very try-hard way, and this isn't one of them. It's a pleasure to read and it doesn't feel like it's getting stuck in its kill level or anything.
Alex: Hearing a very popular writer process, what he believes he's allowed to do as defined by his audience is fascinating. And finally, we don't usually cover this in our back and forth at the front end of these episodes, but we have bonus episodes that come out for people who supported us on Patreon. And I'm so excited cause we had a very long conversation about the Titanic dead, which is going to be out this week. We are soon having a conversation about Center Stage. And we are having a conversation about the second half of this season of, And Just Like That. If you are into these bonus chats, some good shit is coming your way.
Sarah: Yeah. I was really happy that apparently a lot of people wanted to hear us talk about And Just Like That, because that makes it easier for us to do it again.
Alex: I mean, I am excited to have a hearty conversation about Miranda.
Sarah: Me too. I have so many thoughts about Miranda. And feelings.
Alex: All right. Any last feelings or thoughts before we dive into Groundhog Day?
Sarah: Yeah, enjoy this conversation. Winter will be over. And if you feel stuck in a time loop, then there are ways to make it your time loop. Don't forget your booties cause it's cold out there today. It's cold out there every day. What is this? Miami Beach.
Alex: Josh, what do you do? And how do people typically know you?
Josh: What do I do? And how do people know me? Okay. I mean, I would say typically, most people don't know me, but the people that do, I have a very photogenic bug and elderly pug named Bizzy, and my wife is very popular. Maris Kreizman has a very popular books podcast where she interviews authors called, The Maris Review. I am a standup comedian, a podcast host, a writer and a producer on Desus and Mero on Showtime. And a panelist. So if you've heard this voice, it's probably from those things.
Alex: I like that you started with your pug, and then your wife, and then your work. That's fantastic.
Sarah: That's the order of priority.
Josh: I feel like a lot of the time people are like, “Oh, Bizzy is your dog”, when they see me on the street in the neighborhood, right. There's a lot of guys that look like me where I live in Brooklyn, but there's not that many stately, senior pugs that kind of walk through the neighborhood, just like waiting for people to give them treats. I would also accept treats, but people don't give them to me.
Sarah: We start doing that to humans.
Alex: Before Sarah lets us know what this movie is ultimately about. Josh, what is your relationship with Groundhog Day?
Josh: I love this movie. I think I first saw it probably when it came to VHS, which must have been like late 1993, early 1994. I watched it with my parents, loved it as a kid. Love it as an adult. I saw the short-lived Broadway musical, which I thought was pretty great. Gosh, I forget the name of the guy who starred in it, but he was terrific. He’s a Broadway guy that I think people are like, oh, this guy's good. “When's he going to be in the thing that really pops?”, is what I heard his reputation is. And I was like, maybe this is it.
It's a beloved story. And the music was by Tim Minchin, and I thought there were a couple of really fun sequences that were staged really beautifully that I was like, how are they going to put this on stage instead of on film? It's great. Just a big fan of the movie and think about it often.
Alex: Fantastic. Sarah, what is Groundhog Day? What's the deal?
Sarah: Oh my gosh. So Groundhog Day is like both a movie and now a bigger than a movie concept that leaked from the movie into American pop culture. The concept of paying it forward or a bucket list, which also started off as the titles of, I think, pretty forgettable movies.
Josh: This is the best of those movies.
Sarah: Totally. Yeah. By far. I mean, actually, I can't truly say that because I haven't even seen those other two movies, so maybe they're better than Groundhog Day, but I don't think so.
Alex: Was Bill Murray in either of those?
Sarah: No. And this was also maybe a breakthrough role for Bill Murray. Alex, you were theorizing to me that this is peak depression Murray, which we first theorized as Bill Murray, depression icon. But basically Groundhog Day is a movie about a TV weatherman named Phil Connors, who was sent along with his producer, Rita and his cameraman, whose name I forget to the town of Punxsutawney Pennsylvania where on Groundhog Day, the Groundhog will peek out of his log and whisper to Brian Doyle Murray and tell the town elders whether there's going to be six more weeks of winter. So it's just a classic fluff news piece that we know that Bill Murray's character is really bummed to be doing for the fourth year in a row. So he has a lackluster day. And it was just a little bit of a dick to everyone. If you have seen any Bill Murray movie from the eighties, you basically know what this character is like. I'm too good for all these people. But also, I know that because I hate myself. It's very familiar.
Alex: As he says in this movie, I don't even like myself.
Sarah: And also, I love it when Andy McDowell is like, my perfect man is handsome, but doesn't have to look in a mirror all the time. And Bill Murray is like, sometimes I go months without looking in a mirror.
Josh: I have a great body. So funny. There's so many great lines. Sorry. I'm interrupting now.
Sarah: Well, that's the thing, it's hard to tell the story without starting to pick out things we admire as we've already demonstrated. So basically, he has a lackluster day and then he wakes up and realizes that the same day has restarted again. And wakes up the next day and realizes that it's still happening. The movie documents the stages he goes through, which is realizing it, panicking about it, having fun with it, panicking again, trying to do a pickup artist thing with his producer, Rita, who he's progressively having more and more feelings for. And then the kind of final act is he levels with Rita and he's like, listen, I'm stuck in a time loop. I'm going to prove to you that it's a time loop. And then we're going to have a conversation like two human beings, and they actually bond this way.
And then I think through that, because she's the one who points out I don't know, this is maybe this is a good thing. Most people, you could do something more with this. Then he starts reading and learning piano and basically is like, I accept that I'm going to have the exact same day over and over, and I'm going to do all that I can with it and be helpful to other people. And that's how he gets unstuck and ends up with lovely Rita. The end. I'm your weatherman.
Josh: I think the song is by Harold Ramis, and it’s not good.
Sarah: I love that song.
Alex: He's like now is my time to put my song in the movie.
Josh: I might be misremembering, but I think it's Harold Ramis’s kind of Gran Torino, where Clint Eastwood is like, time for me to sing now.
Alex: So Josh, knowing that you saw this movie, when it came out on VHS, I did as well, there must be, and I imagine we're around the same age, but there must be a generation of people, probably boys in particular, who grew up on Ghostbusters and then saw Bill Murray movies that came out after this. And what immediately comes to mind is Scrooge, which we talked about, in which Bill Murray just walked around in a depression that entire movie. And this movie in which Bill Murray walks around in a depression the entire movie. And that's such a funny set of media to put in front of children who just wanted to watch Bill Murray be sarcastic and kick ghosts’ ass. We had to deal with existential dread at nine.
Josh: Yes, for sure. Because Scrooge, it makes sense that even a kid would watch Scrooge. It's like the Christmas Carol story, he's in a depression, but it's the classic Dickensian depression. This one he's really like grappling with things that are bigger than himself. Right. Grappling with more than oh, how have I lived my life? This movie is like, what does it mean to live? It's like huge philosophical questions in this package of a boat, a small increment of time travel as it's worthwhile to write about, or that has been written about in my experience. Right. In a pop cultural way. Yeah. It is very funny. I saw my first Bill Murray movie, I saw Ghostbusters Two in theaters, but I must've been four years old and it's one of my first two movie theater experiences for sure. And I remember being petrified by this movie.
Alex: Was the other Batman or Dick Tracy.
Josh: I think it might've been Little Mermaid. My parents wouldn't go out because they went to see Batman without me, they were like, we are going to see Batman. I'm like, that sounds cool. I'm going to not invite the kid. I re-watched it before so I could be more informed to talk about it in a more immediate sense. And I was just like, my breath was taken away by how much happens in a movie that's about one day over and over, how repetitive it doesn't feel. The different times the day starts. And the times you see it start in the same scene in the middle of the day, twice in a row, or how many times do we go actually hearing, “I Got You, Babe”, on the clock radio and him waking up. And how many times does he run into Stephen Tobolowsky, needle nose Ned, Ned the Head. I go by Ned the Bull now. It's phenomenal.
But also like you said, Alex, the emotional journey he goes through. And you said kind of despair twice, but I think the first one is like medical terror, a medical terror that you often feel when you're like, my leg hurts. Is this just what it is now? You know what I mean? I don't understand what's happening to my body. That's the first despair. And then the second despair is a full existential panic. When he says… God, what does he say? I am no longer myself or something. He said, I have killed myself so many times I no longer exist. It is fully a movie about learning to obliterate the self.
Sarah: Oh my God. It's about ego death.
Josh: Yeah, totally. I mean, literally it's about death. Yeah. Physically killing himself isn't enough. He has to experience the death of the ego.
Alex: Well, you described Sarah as reconciling that he's stuck in this day, what's the most that he can do in this day, which is enlightenment. It's the definition of enlightenment. Through ego death and through acceptance, he reaches this Eastern enlightenment and then is allowed to go to the next day and rent a house with Andie MacDowell.
Sarah: I mean, there isn't. This movie is perfect, but what if in my fan fiction version, there was a Jacob's ladder type twist, where it turns out that Chris Elliott who serves very little purpose here, aside from as a foil, actually administered an experimental psychedelic to Bill Murray. And he's just been in the news van and traffic this entire time. And he had a breakthrough.
Josh: Another thing that I've heard about this movie is that in an early draft of this script, and this might be IMDB-able, or it might be false, but this is something someone told me. And I'm going to relay without question, is that in a previous draft of the script, he never escaped from Groundhog Day.
Sarah: That's a scary story.
Josh: That's a Twilight Zone. It's a horror story. Yeah.
Alex: Well, the thing that Sarah brought up the last time when we talked about Scrooge, that I didn't know, and we confirmed since looking it up is it's never confirmed how much time goes by. If you were to actually live these days consecutively. And I think in the script, as Sarah brought up last and we talked about this, it's 10,000 years. And I think like they settled on three decades for some reason and they were like, even though it's not said maybe the studio heads were just terrified of the idea that it’s 10,000 years.
Josh: There was some meme that went around a few years. Maybe not meme is the right word for it. Like a little piece of trivia where someone did one of those internet things and figured out, how long does it take to become an expert piano player? How long does it take to accomplish all these things that he does throughout the movie? And years, it's years and years. And it's never addressed. The longest period of time. He talks about the Royal ‘forever’, “I've been doing this forever” or whatever.
But the specific thing, the longest period of time I think mentioned is when they're throwing cards into a hat, they're sitting on the bed and Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, and she says, I'll never be able to do this. And he goes, ah, four or five months, four or five hours a day.
Sarah: Yeah. It never occurred to me that he's saying that's how long that took for him. But yeah, of course he is. Yeah. I love that.
Josh: It's so good. So much is done without giving the specifics. There's nothing given for what insights Groundhog Day. Like you said, Sarah, we all think of Groundhog Day as an experience that keeps happening over and over again. People have referred to the experience of kind of pandemic doldrums as Groundhog Day. But before Groundhog Day, there was no like, oh, it's like a Groundhog Day situation. Obviously there has been time travel, but this is the thing, as you said, for an experience that repeats over and over again, and it happens without reason. The exit from it, there's given a reason for, right. You see the existential release from this, but it's such a big phenomenon and such a known cultural, big known cultural experience that 18 years later, right? When Palm Springs came out as the next great, repetitive time travel romcom, they had to try the thing that gets him out of Groundhog Day. So people wouldn't go like, why doesn't he just do the Groundhog Day? But that's how indelible this movie is.
Sarah: Right. I'm also going to do the thing that is always so depressing and be like it was 28 years later because 1993 was 28 years
Josh: It was 28 years later. Yes.
Sarah: That just sucks.
Josh: No you’re absolutely right.
Sarah: Yeah, but I shouldn't be right. 1993 shouldn't be 28 years ago.
Josh: Does it hurt me that 1999 into 2000 is the turn of the century? Yeah. Do I think about that every day? Yes. I'm still in denial.
Sarah: I think what gets me most is when someone says the 1990s is if we're going to think they were alive in the 1890s.
Josh: Yeah. This is the thing that I think is floating on the internet, but a friend said it to me, her high school students refer to the nineties as the late 19 hundreds. Absolutely just a kick in the stomach.
Sarah: Yeah. So it's the late 1900s. I was listening to the Spice Girls.
Josh: Yes, exactly. It was the turn of the century. Limp Bizkit was at the top of the Billboard.
Alex: As any time David Brooks writes a piece, everyone is holy shit, David Brooks is nuts. For just looking out his window and describing what’s happening.
Sarah: He's like the Randy Newman of opinion writers.
Josh: Mad attacked the driver. He told me what the world is like. That’s Randy Newman, not David Brooks.
Alex: Maybe both. There's a piece floating around right now where he's like America's coming apart at the seams. He explained all the reasons why there's bad behavior and not enough money being given to charity, et cetera, et cetera. And a lot of the stuff you said is actually correct. I read a David Brooks piece. And I was like, yeah, you're right. Everything you're describing is correct.
Sarah: That is hard to miss. Right.
Alex: And he's like, why? He's like, I can't explain why. And it's because we're in a perpetual Groundhog Day situation, no one knows what is happening tomorrow. It used to be yesterday, today, tomorrow now it's we don't know what's happening tomorrow. This is why. And we're in the early phase of Bill Murray realizing that he's stuck in this thing. We haven't hit the enlightenment part yet. We're not even close to the learn how to play the piano part of it.
Sarah: We started with learn how to play the piano. Isn't that funny? We were initially like, yeah.
Josh: Started with how to play the piano. Yeah. Then we got to drinking and eating a lot of donuts. And then now we're still there. I mean, I am.
Alex: Actually, at the beginning of the pandemic last year I had a medical emergency because I was eating so much rich food that I thought that I was imploding.
Sarah: Did you get gout?
Alex: No, I was just eating like cake and scallops. That's all. I was drinking beer. Yeah. That scene where we see Bill Murray just shove all that food in his mouth. I was like, that was me. That was me in April of last year.
Josh: So not to do the thing that Sarah just did. But you said at the beginning of the pandemic last year, that was two years ago. Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day!
Alex: Sarah, I don't know when you would've come into the movie, you didn't come into it in real time. What is your relationship with Groundhog Day?
Sarah: My memory of first watching this movie is so connected with TNTs programming in the mid aughts, which I feel like decided a lot of what I ended up seeing multiple times.
Josh: Big Shawshank fan?
Sarah: Yes, Shawshank. And then I think this in and out, Dave, a lot of Kevin Klein in there.
Josh: I talked about this with previous You Are Good guest, Chris Gethard, but there are some movies that just feel significant and become American cannon because one cable network played that over and over again when you were at an age where you would just put on TV and watch what was on. And Catherine and I were talking about for both of us, Airheads was one of those movies.
Sarah: Oh yeah. That was on all the time.
Josh: When you were like, name 20 Adam Sandler movies, I bet 50% of people don't get to Airhead. Very Buscemi. It’s a Brandon Fraser.
Sarah: Oh my God. I remember truly the experience of trying to watch Comedy Central in the late nineties and being like, ah, it's Airheads again.
Josh: Always Airheads.
Sarah: Because I remember Groundhog Day just always being on when I was middle school and high school. This is probably the source of the great bond I feel with it. That to me, high school was really a Groundhog Day experience. You wake up at some ungodly hour. You haven't slept enough. It's grueling again. You're like once again, grueling pace and the winter will never end. And it's eight o'clock in the morning and it's dark out. And Groundhog Day, I always thought was very special for being extremely watchable. It's like Legally Blonde when it comes on, you're just sort of taken down a beautiful, lazy river in a tube of enjoyable scenes.
And then by the end, I think there's this very accessible, very existential message, which is listen, there's no inherent meaning to any of this. You have to make all your own meaning in life. So just deal with it, basically. And it'll be great. It's weird that this was a movie that I think actually deserved that it's going to be on in your house every third day treatment. And maybe it wouldn't be such a classic if it wasn't so rerunnable, which then makes me think of the thing I just learned, which is that this was the end of the working relationship between Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, because Bill Murray was like, let's make it more about philosophy. And Harold Ramis was like, no, we got to play this in malls.
Josh: I think they struck an incredible balance. The touch is so light on the philosophy stuff, right. That very lovely Andie MacDowell speech when they're cozy in bed in a pretty platonic scene, right after they show the cards. There's him ascribing the like nihilism or, describing the nihilism of I'm going to live forever, and nothing matters because I cannot die. So I don't exist. There's the scene of him being like, I am a God, not the God. I'm a God. And there's just like all these little things where it's theology, existentialism, nihilism, and it's all done without feeling like, oh, this is one of those movies where just like people sit and talk about philosophy for a long time. And there's no real thrust. It's not, no offense to this movie, which is, it has its own charms, but it's not Waking Life.
Sarah: I still think about Waking Life sometimes. And I think it was right at the beginning, but the scene where I think it's Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in bed. And they're talking about maybe when you die and your brain is dying, you experienced this long dream state. I still think about that fairly often.
Alex: That's my number one takeaway from that movie, because they're talking about Timothy Leary, the way that your time changes. And this is the thing that, that doctor who had a stroke and had a Ted Talk about it eventually about how your perception of time changes. It's very acidy. You could essentially like in the last seconds of your life, what feels like 10,000 years. Yeah. I love that part of Waking Life.
Sarah: In small town Pennsylvania, if you're lucky.
Josh: So it's so fun. We get these great montages, right? There's the one of all the hedonism, one of all the suicide, then there's the one at the end with all the philanthropy, all these sequences are so fun and it's the same stuff. The same set pieces over and over again, reconfigured and with a different emotional tenor. Can I give you my Groundhog Day overall, take? Alex, you were talking about young boys, young men growing up to watch this as a Bill Murray movie, right. And it's about depression and existentialism. I think it is a Trojan horse romcom that doesn't get talked about as a romantic comedy.
Alex: That's great.
Josh: When movies are high concept and high prestige, romcom is like a slur, it's a slight against them. Slur is too heavy. It's a slight against them. But what happens is romcom-ish. It's the same as when Silver Linings Playbook came out and people were like, this is a great movie about mental health, and you’re like, eh.
Sarah: Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Josh: It's a romantic comedy which is why it plays in malls.
Sarah: With a scoop of something extra. But yeah, I do love that when I finally saw Silver Linings Playbook a couple of years ago, I really enjoyed this movie. And also this is literally a movie where they do a dance contest at the end.
Josh: The climax of the movie is a dance competition. And it's because of who directed it and who's starring in it. It's not a romcom. It's a prestige drama.
Sarah: It's an Oscar movie.
Alex: This has the same, not the same mechanism, but this is like a 40 dates and 40 nights mechanism. There's this element of repetition that leads us to get to the inevitable them getting together. And there's growth and learning and there's a mechanism. And I think that the reason that Silver Linings Playbook worked and was confused as prestige, although I guess it was prestige when it came out, is in seeing romantic endeavors on screen. I don't see dirty mentally unstable people like myself on screen ever. So you're like, what am I doing up there? This can't possibly be a romantic comedy because this is not aspirational.
Sarah: No, one's rich for no reason.
Alex: Yeah, exactly. I think the confusing thing, like about what makes a romantic comedy in one way or another is it has to be aspirational, but it shouldn't be.
Josh: Oh, interesting. This is also not like a super aspirational movie, right? I think that's part of what's fun about it is that Bill Murray is a Pittsburgh, big city weatherman with delusions of grandeur. And he thinks his life is in a rut because he's covered the same event four years in a row. That's a little winking thing, right. Oh, my life is over. I've done the same day, four days out of four years. And then he has the same day for years. It's just those little details I think are so perfect.
But these are not fancy people. Everyone, except for maybe Chris Elliott, aspires to have a more prestigious station in life than in their industry, even then they have. This isn't like people who are living the dream, this isn't can she have it all? It's like, can she have anything?
Sarah: Can we get out of this town? I was scandalized to learn also prepping for this episode that they actually filmed this in an outer Chicago suburb. I spent my whole life thinking they had really gone to Punxsutawney.
Alex: I grew up seeing this movie next to Maine, thinking that Groundhog Day happens in New Hampshire, my entire life.
Sarah: They're like the wood check state or something, right? Isn't there some reason?
Alex: There must be some charismatic rodents.
Sarah: Yeah, of course there is. Who's the mayor of somewhere.
Josh: Much like Adam Sandler, Chuck E Cheese grew up in New Hampshire and went on to great show business acclaim.
Alex: Charles is from New Hampshire.
Sarah: Yes. Charles entertainment, cheese.
Josh: I mean, with a name like that, it’s destiny.
Sarah: This made me think about our town, which I've still never seen or read, but which people reference all the time. And which I know is about repetition of time and a small town and death and stuff. Oscar was wild, but Thornton was Wilder. I feel like one of the powerful things about this concept is that it is so dystopian and so utopian to me. And I think one of my favorite scenes is this little moment where Bill Murray's reading a bunch of library books and the diner and these classical music playing. And that's, I think, setting us up for him deciding to learn the piano, but he's also just looking around and is like, I am enjoying my afternoon. And I have this thought all the time, I'm like if only I had a spare lifetime where I could freeze time in this life and step in over there and just read, just read in a diner. I think maybe concepts are stickier if they're both depressing and fantasy wish fulfillment in that way,
Josh: It's such a happy ending. Everybody gets what they want. Especially Bill Murray. He's the most improved man. A brilliant thing about the time construct is when you said take this time to do self-improvement and to do stuff that's edifying, I think a problem that some romantic comedies face is when you make one character kind of a dickhead, you then have to make sure they do commensurate work to counteract that.
And in this movie, Bill Murray does decades of self-improvement essentially. And so, it's not oh, I showed up with flowers, even though I cheated on you with your sister. It's like, I was rude to you for our first 12 hours as coworkers and then I spent the next 30 years becoming a man worthy of, and considering himself worthy of love.
Alex: I experienced ego death.
Josh: Right. It truly is like, hey, what have you been up to? What's new? Well, I obliterated my ego.
Sarah: I wonder if Harold Ramis took a bunch of mushrooms or Bill Murray seems into mushrooms, right? He’s got that look about him.
Josh: It's wild that this movie drove them apart, considering that they both achieved their goal.
Alex: Their friendship died.
Josh: One of the best movies of the last, when did it come out? Five years ago. One of the best movies in the last 30 years.
Alex: I can't believe I know this. When Steve Zissou came out, I read in an Entertainment Weekly article a profile on Bill Murray. I grew up loving Bill Murray, but they talked to Harold Ramis about their falling out. And it was not just a professional falling out. It was a total friendship falling out. He said something along the lines of Bill has a code, and you don't know what lines that code is built on. But when you transgress the line, there's no coming back. I was like, is Bill my dad?
Josh: What a wild thing to observe about someone, and to have printed about you in a magazine.
Sarah: Well, yeah. And also, I mean, I was thinking this while I was thinking about this whole thing, I was like, I'm going to have to say to Alex, I think it's weird that Bill Murray couldn't compromise more because you're the person who sees me at my least willing to compromise about literally anything. And it's weird for me to be like, sometimes you need to compromise when you're working in entertainment, but like you do.
Josh: If the movie had imploded based on this fight, I would understand. Or if one person got their way and it was like, this was a purely silly sci fi movie romance. Or if it was purely a philosophical treatise, I could get the idea that ugh, this person took the reins and changed the course, but it just feels like such a wonderful compromise between those two missions. If told the concept before you sign, if you didn't know the reputation of Groundhog Day, you'd think it would be one of those movies that you go to, oh, that's a fun premise, but I wish it had gone to better places and it's no, it's perfect.
Sarah: Right? I mean, that's part of why we're all just standing around marveling about it two years after it came out.
Josh: 1993. Just merely a fortnight ago.
Sarah: I guess to me, there's always something that's really a draw about a movie or a book or any significant piece of work where you can't really see the seams. You can't see how the craftsmen did it. It's getting a jewelry box that’s a bunch of like different wood together. And you're like, I have no idea how a person would do this, but I'm holding it in my hand.
Josh: It functions so smoothly. If you really peer at it, you can see the grain a little bit of oh, that's why this happens here. Right? This is the narrative function of this person. Oh, this is the moment they chose where he is not only aware that he's repeating the day, but the day he stops, watches the guy step in the puddle in front of him and then hops over the puddle, you go, oh, he's now taking control of this. Right. That's the little moment that shows he's in charge now. I don't know how you get it sanded down so smoothly. But sometimes you watch a work of fiction and when you watch it, it is so exact and makes so much sense that you go, oh, they must've just wrote this down exactly as it happened.
Alex: Right, right. I love Palm Springs. I thought Palm Springs was great. There were a couple other good movies that dealt with quirks in time. But this is the most seamless as far as I can imagine. Because you can look at any plot hole and Back to the Future with regard to how time travel works. They don't fuck with any of that, which I love in this movie.
Sarah: We don't even know that it's time travel. We don't know.
Alex: Exactly this thing happens. And we somehow did the math on all of the real possibilities and found the most realistic and resonant ones. Back-to-back so you never questioned the concept of the movie.
Josh: You know the rules. The day resets at 6:00 AM. If you die, you immediately, Bill Murray dies, the day resets at 6:00 AM. Anything about the day resets, even if he just did it at 5:50, it immediately resets and gets glued back together. Nobody else has any knowledge of this or experience of it, or residual genetic encoding that these things happen, right? It only happens to this person. Nobody else knows any of it and those are all the rules we get. We don't know why it started. We don't until it ends know how it ends there. He's not working towards a goal, which I think is important to the movie. He's just decided to live in Groundhog Day until it releases him. But he's fully given himself over to it. In Palm Springs, they spend so much actively working to undo it and they spend so much time playing with it. What if you die? Well, if you die, it's done. But if you get maimed, then you stay maimed until you die. And here's the point at which you spawn. And this is just a bed and breakfast in Punxsutawney Pennsylvania. It happens every day. Sonny and Cher, shut up and watch.
Sarah: Just deal with it. Kids is fucking deal with that. Harold gave you a movie.
Alex: So the David Brooks piece, and my own personal life, I've had a tough week. I freaked out a bit just based on all of the responsibilities and stuff that I have. It felt like it was too much. I'm a person who meditates and finds mindfulness really important in their life. And I'm really good at being in the moment a lot of the time. And then when I am not, it sucks. And so to David Brooks’ point here. And with regard to what is figured out to be the solution in this movie, a solution that this country is not going to come to because it's not in our style or DNA is we really do have to, when we're freaking out, learn how to embrace and be in the moment and not freak out about not knowing what's happening tomorrow, because we never know what's happening tomorrow. And I love that that's what unlocks this thing. To your point, Sarah, but either Harold Ramis did a lot of mushrooms, or he was a big enlightenment guy or both. This is a masterpiece of a person who was trying to convey that to other people.
Sarah: And did so successfully, and I love that I as a kind of depressed 14-year-old was able to, I mean, I think that a lot of the reason I'm so attached to TV and to movies is because there were just always movies that could make me feel good about the world when truly nothing else did. There's an accessibility there. This goes down so easy because it does follow a classic hero's journey as we're accustomed to receiving it. And it's just that the thing he has to do is accept an existential lesson and he, and we see him do it.
Josh: The conflict is so internal. He overcomes himself and all the other things he does are manifestations of him accepting that existential lesson. Right? He becomes a better person and that's the reason for it too, right? There's a period where he's learning about other people to manipulate them. And then there's a period where he learns about other people for the pleasure of community.
There's a period in the movie where maybe he would have learned a couple of bars on the piano to impress Andie MacDowell. By the time it's the end he starts doing all these other things. He knows when to give someone the Heimlich maneuver. He knows when to catch a kid who's falling out of a tree. He changes a tire for three older women every day. You know that this is something that has become his daily routine to do for others. He catches the kid and it's the first time we see it and he goes, and he puts the kid down. He goes, what do you say? And the kid runs in and he goes, he never thanks me over and over again. And we don't have to see him catch the kid five times, that one bit of dialogue gets to, oh, this is my life now. I live in service of others and in pursuit of self-improvement.
Sarah: He kind of becomes an angel over time, which is so funny.
Alex: All of the things that he used to do as a means of manipulation or sort of gaming his experience with other people, he realizes that if you just go another step on that, you might actually find enjoyment in the things that you're trying to use to manipulate people. You might actually like playing the piano more than a couple of bars. That might be good for you.
Sarah: This has just always been funny to me how Andie MacDowell says that at college, she studied 18th century 19th century French poetry as if that's a major. I just love that. There is also wish fulfillment in the nineties and now about having a movie with a functional small town where you can, there's a knowable seeable boundary population, which also feels very Twilight Zone. I also love that we established early on that you can't leave town long distance lines. You're down. You're stuck here. There's a time limitation and there's also a very definite spacial limitation. And I think a lot of us secretly long for that in some way.
Alex: In my experience of not growing up in this town, but growing up in a town that was very much a small town in the nineties and is now just still has the small town aspects, but also just has a giant dollar store in the middle of it. And that ended up occupying a lot of stuff. This was a romantic vision of a small town in the nineties. This is an especially romantic idea of what small towns used to be.
Josh: I think that's the part of the ending that rings the most out of step with reality now. Obviously their relationship, you can accept it or not, but the idea of them walking out of the bed and breakfast and they're just like, I love it here. Let's live here now. As if the problem was Pittsburgh ever. Pittsburgh ambitions, and that's no slight against Pittsburgh.
Sarah: Pittsburg as the Paris of Appalachia.
Josh: In the same way that you could be happy in Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York city. Their idea of what we really need is like a small-town beauty is a very, it's an idea that feels like it's been disproven by all of American history.
Sarah: It's such an interesting thing to be attached to. I remember finding it when I saw three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. Let's be honest. If the person who wrote this movie lived in America, this would all take place in a Walmart, and it would make a lot more sense. Because this idea that the drama of the story is propelled partly by the fact that people are on a main street or a town square type deal where they can see each other and surveil each other, that is increasingly going away. I mean, there's still tons of surveillance, but in less direct you are in my sight line all day long, a way.
Alex: Although I will say when I was in Maine, not long ago in that form, you were saying, it almost felt like it was a blast from 30 years ago.
Josh: You mean the 1950s.
Alex: Exactly. The 1950s, I got a text from someone who was like, Hey, just so you know I just drove by your house and there's a couple of sheriffs there and there's a guy who looks like he's from the Hills Have Eyes just hanging out on your lawn. And it was like a classic, I didn't need to be concerned but someone new to let me know. It was, it all turned out to be fine. Someone got pulled over and they happened to be on my lawn. It just made sense.
Sarah: It was one of your Hills Have Eyes friends.
Alex: But I was just like, oh, this is like quaint to this is a really quaint situation that doesn't happen much anymore.
Josh: I don't mean to sound like a big city elitist. I mean, you can also be happy in a small town and you can enjoy life. But I think like the antidote to what ailed Bill Murray was not small town living where everybody knows each other, and everybody is just working in a little town where there's never any friction except for what will the Groundhog say? I think that does not quite exist in the, in the way that it's presented here, obviously. But it was not something that had occurred to me until you brought up the nineties-ness of we're just going to go to a little self-contained town where nothing goes wrong, or this isn't even true. Their homelessness problem is one old man.
Sarah: And they've got a couple of guys who were unsatisfied.
Josh: Yes, that's true. Those guys, a couple of guys, the proto Trump voters.
Alex: Post Ghostbusters pre Operation Dumbo Drop Bill Murray. Again, it's like Scrooge did this. And what about Bob? Bill Murray was doing a lot of heavy lifting on explaining to us how fucking intense our lives were going to be psychologically.
Sarah: This was his mental health trilogy.
Josh: In the Bill Murray Renaissance, it’s like the ennui years. Lost in Translation and Life Aquatic. And he gets into that place of he's seen it all and nothing makes him feel anymore.
Alex: The Scrooged episode, it was talking about the ennui years as his third act. And that's been going since 98.
Josh: For six years already?
Sarah: It's like the Irish men.
Josh: But no, you're right. When you think of elder statesman weary faced Bill Murray, that's been 20 plus years.
Alex: Again, we were talking about in that episode, the myth of Bill Murray, the Bill Murray that will sneak up on you and take a selfie.
Josh: Bar mitzvah your children.
Alex: Yeah, exactly. Or be a guest bartender without being asked, all that stuff that, this feels like the birth of that myth. Because by the end of this movie, he is essentially the Bill Murray that does that. By the end of this movie, he's the guy who surprises Michael Shannon and lover with WrestleMania tickets. That's the shit that our new modern Bill Murray is.
Sarah: I’ve watched this movie like three times this week and I'd ever noticed that it was Michael Shannon. My God.
Josh: I didn't recognize that either. Yeah. And he talked his fiancé into marrying him.
Alex: I mean, outside of just the real experiences with Bill Murray, this fictional Bill Murray went out in the world and now lives in the world. Like Freddy from the postmodern Nightmare on Elm Street moving
Sarah: Wes Craven's new nightmare.
Alex: That's the one. Thank you.
Sarah: You also earlier you said, I think you were trying to say 40 First dates and you said 40 days and nights, which makes me think of a cross between 41st dates and 30 days of night where Adam Sandler has to date a vampire in Alaska.
Josh: I think it's 50 First dates.
Sarah: Oh yeah. Oh my God.
Josh: Wasn't it 40 days and 40 nights with Josh Hartnett.
Sarah: Yes. Oh my God. You're right. It's very confusing. There's too many numbers. It's not your fault, Alex.
Josh: I recently called the movie Se7en, six.
Alex: Sarah, what stood out for you this time that you didn't catch last time?
Sarah: I mean, one of the ironic things about this movie maybe, or the appropriate thing is its re-watchability. So I feel like I've seen it 50 times. I don't know. I don't think I noticed anything new this time. That doesn't mean I caught everything.
Alex: It’s rare recently that I will watch the movie from start to finish.
Sarah: That is unusual.
Alex: Josh, anything that stood out immediately to you?
Josh: One thing that I think there's less of than I remember. Stephen Tobolowsky, whose scenes are so indelible to me. And he really only shows up a couple, a few times. His initial monologue, which I love so much, his initial like introduction, but he's like the I see something I want, I grab it by the horns and head of the bull. That's me now. And then my old roommate, Jason, Marcus, and I, we used to live together, and Ned the bull, that's me now is something that sticks. So we'll still text each other about that. Josh, the bull that's me, I'm grabbing. And then the other thing, which is such a funny joke that he's explaining. He's like I went to Case Western High School. I did the whistling belly button trick at the talent show, dated your sister, married Pat, a couple of times until you told me not to, or you told me to stop, which is like so funny.
Alex: The best part of that is the follow-up where Bill Murray says, so did you turn pro with the whole belly button thing?
Josh: The setup of it, where they haven't left for Punxsutawney yet. The thing that really stuck out, cause that's not like a super memorable part of the movie. It just kind of sets up. Here's Andie MacDowell, here's Bill Murray. He's a dick, he's a dick to her. He's a dick to Chris Elliott. When he goes oh, I've done this for four years. I'm sick of this. I'm over this. I'm going on to bigger things. And everyone makes fun of him. And it's the rut he thought his life was in.
I think that establishing the scale of it, of I've been at this job for four years being a Pittsburgh weatherman. And that being he's cultivated this disdain for his colleagues and his work and still can perform, right? You see him on camera and he does a good job pretending to blow the clouds across the screen. The scale of my life is just stalled out of doing the same job for four years is such a fun little thing to establish that is just such a short time frame compared to the eternity that he's up against. He's not near the end of his career. He's not like I'm burnt. I can't believe I'm still doing this. Life has passed me by, he's not an up-and-coming go getter. I know he's just like a guy with a job. I'm so contemptuous of my life after this four-year stint in Pittsburgh.
Sarah: I’m just realizing that so many classic Bill Murray movies begin with him sort of just hating his job. Right? Off the top of my head, we have Stripes, we have Ghostbusters, we have Lost in Translation. Okay. Those are the ones I can think of, but there have to be more. Alex, you said this before, like being the face of ennui, okay. What do you do? What do you do with this ennui that's part of our human condition?
Alex: It’s so interchangeable with regard to what you are dealing with. Well, I'm saying it for two experiences, one is being stuck in a rut about just how to be in the world and figuring it out over time through trial and error, and ideally doing it by embracing the moment and actually embracing your space in a community.
But the others is, being stuck in a depression. I find this relatable in a huge way where it's no matter what you do for the first long time, there's nothing that can be done. There's obviously things that can be done, but there's nothing that feels hugely impactful, and you feel stuck for a long period of time until something else happens. And so I see the read there in a really substantial way. This movie feels like a good companion for both of those phenomena.
Josh: What I appreciate about the ennui more than the ennui of Lost in Translation, even, by the time of Lost in Translation, Bill Murray is a more wizened appearing figure. Right? He's older. His character has past his prime professionally, substantially, right? He's in Japan doing these ads, his career is he's tasted all the flavors of the world. There's nothing left to sample. And in this, I think we're catching him numb already.
And I think there's something about that that's more relatable where it's not like there's this big star. You could see your local weatherman at the grocery store, or even like a big city weatherman, this guy isn’t wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. It's not the kind of the Malays of someone who has spent five, six decades indulging in all the experiences of the world. This guy's just fuck you. I'm going to be a weatherman in Philadelphia.
Sarah: He'll never make it.
Josh: He’ll never make it, they're gonna throw batteries at him. What's keeping them out of the community isn't his celebrity. It's his perception of himself as better than others. in a false perception. Where he's he could be a beloved, regionally famous figure, but instead he believes himself to be like a temporarily disgraced Al Roker.
Alex: An unintentional pivot but we rarely talk about the people who made the movie. And I think sometimes people get frustrated about that, but that's not what this show is about. But have either of you seen the new Ghostbusters movie, I assume. Probably not. Because you’re adults.
Sarah: No but I want you to talk about how depressing you found it.
Alex: Okay. If you're psyched to watch the new Ghostbusters, maybe tune out for like maybe two minutes, but they bring Harold Ramis back as a ghost.
Sarah: And for the record Harold's Ramis, the person is dead.
Alex: Dead. And I'm looking at you both responding to that with your faces. It is upsetting.
Josh: Wait, did Kanye do this for Kim Kardashian’s birthday? He's like Kim, it's your favorite filmmaker, Harold Ramis.
Alex: in the beginning. It's excusable because we see a character who we know to be elder Harold Raymond's, but he's in the shadows and stuff. And you're like, okay, I get it. We're setting up that this is Egon Spangler's estate. I get it. And then he shows up as a ghost and busts ghosts with the guys as a ghost.
Sarah: Which is a conflict of interest.
Josh: Like a turned ghost.
Sarah: Fucking scab.
Alex: Yeah. There were so many good things about the movie that they couldn't get out of their own way because they were like, you like Gozer? Here’s Gozer, in the same exact set that was in the original. There's so much fan service and that was part of the whole criticism. And I was like, just gritting my teeth until we had Harold Ramis as a ghost. I was like, fuck, I can't fuck this. This is a bad time because Harold Ramis, I love Harold Ramis. I love everything he made. I love his impact on people that pre-existed my life. I love everything about him. And it was jarring.
Josh: This may be controversial. I think Groundhog Day is better than Ghostbusters.
Alex: Yeah, I think so, too. I think you're right.
Sarah: Yeah. I mean, Ghostbusters is a fun movie that I could not possibly tell you what the theme of it might even be.
Josh: Fuck the EPA.
Sarah: Yeah. Fuck these dickless, government workers who want to tell you how to run your ghost business
Josh: De-regulate ghost busting.
Alex: This is timeless. This movie is timeless. Ghostbusters is timeless, but for specific, my wife and I, we've talked about this in the past, but my wife - who produces the show - watched Ghostbusters. And Carolyn was like, these guys are just mean.
Josh: Yeah, you get a little bit of Bill Murray is funny when he's being mean at the beginning. Right. When he says, did you approach the belly button whistling? It's not nice. But him being mean to the people at the, excuse me, the bed and breakfast on his original run through Groundhog Day, where they go, ah, you think we're going to get an early spring? He goes, yeah, I've got a peg for March 21st. And just being sarcastic and withering and there's that, but that's not the joy and the comedy of the movie, it's watching him process these feelings and those kinds of character based like despair and delusions of grand jury at this theological level.
And that's what's fun and funny about it. And it's not just like, Hey Dick, now get out of my way. I had this problem when we re-watched Cheers. There were some parts that I thought were so delightful, but the way people talk about Cheers as just the classic era of joke writing. And there's just a lot of Hey, rat face, I'm trying to work over here. Okay. And I'm like, there are some amazing jokes and the characters are incredible, but I just found coming to it with the weight of history, which is the way you watch Ghostbusters now. Right? People being like this new Ghostbusters ruined my childhood and your childhood was one movie that holds up fine?
Sarah: Someone on twitter the other day was like, I tried to listen to your podcast, but your voice makes me want to off myself. And I was like, really? You have nothing else going on?
Josh: And also, that's the tipping point?
Alex: Are you sure this isn't about something else?
Sarah: I have more power than I ever knew.
Josh: Hey man, have you considered climate change? You're going to lose your shit.
Alex: To your point about that version of Bill Murray from Meatballs to this part of Bill Murray's career, like Bill Murray being a disaffected dick is funny. It's very funny when it lands, but now thinking about, again, the existential depression trilogy, this is the last movie I can think of where he is that character in any way. After this, he's in Operation Dumbo Drop for sure. But then he's in his third act of the career. At this point, he certainly a dick by way of his demeanor. He's always Bill Murray, but he's a dick that knows that things are deep and he's in over his head in one way or another. This is the last like cocksure shit Bill Murray.
Josh: In Life Aquatic, even when he's lashing out, you see the wounds that that's covering where he's not wounded in Ghostbusters. He's just, I'm fucking Bill Murray.
Sarah: What a cool guy. Yeah. I feel like this is the point at which the movie stops agreeing with his character's demeanor.
Alex: Yes. What a great way to put it.
Josh: It might be the fulcrum, right? I think that is why it is maybe my favorite. You get the joy of seeing him be like a smug prick, which is fun. It's funny to watch someone say funny things, and then you get the kind of heartwarming, multiplex pleasure of watching him learn this existential lesson. He gets less funny as the movie goes on. Right? I was clocking that today. That's something I noticed is that he still is, doing nice zingers by the end. He does the Heimlich maneuver buddy in the restaurant. And he goes, “Hey, next time you have a steak, maybe get some sharper teeth.” And it's not a good joke, but it's structured the same as when he's being funny.
Alex: The additional layer on that joke of this is Bill Murray making a Bill Murray joke is very funny.
Josh: It's like a dad joke version.
Alex: Typically, we wrap our episode by identifying who a father is, but who is the daddy? And I don't think that Groundhog Day has a father outside of time.
Josh: Sure. A helicopter parent in this movie. Can I pitch?
Alex: Of course.
Josh: I think Bill Murray starts out as a daddy and becomes a father.
Alex: Oh, wow. Tell us more about that.
Josh: So he is the kind of swaggering masculine authority, not necessarily authority, but celebrity figure, small c celebrity, even though he says, on the phone, right, with the emergency hotline. He says, don’t you have something for emergencies or celebrities. I'm both, I’m a celebrity and an emergency. He's kind of the swinging dude of the beginning of the movie. And that doesn't serve him especially well in the long term, even though he eats a lot of sticky buns and has had sex with at least one, maybe two or more members of the community.
And then he becomes, I mean, the movie is him learning to nurture. I think he is a father by the end, spiritually. He's protecting the children of the town and he's respecting his elders and doing them favors. And it's very fatherly to me in a very sweet way, the things he does at the end of the movie. He's reading good night's stories, very fatherly stuff.
Alex: That's fantastic.
Sarah: I think that's the answer also to me, something that saves this from being one of those movies where some guy is a real shit hat and then he meets a woman and he's I must seduce you. I'm going to become slightly better, but only just enough to get you to like me and I never would have thought to do it without you. To me, there's something meaningful about him actually falling for Andy McDowell's character, who I also love that she's named Rita. He talks about the fact that she's such a kind person, this comes up multiple times and that this is what inspired him to actually practice. A thought that I've had since becoming so pandemic housebound is that I just managed to avoid really thinking about housework for a lot of my life. I would just sort of live like a slovenly bachelor. And I still basically do. I mean, Alex, you know this, but I'm trying to be civilized. I think a lot about the fact that the real work of our lives is housework, and housework maybe trains us to do this where you just have to, like every good thing that you do or care about you have to do constantly. And this idea of doing some big thing one time and being done with it is very illusory.
Josh: A beautiful thing about this movie. It's not that he does the thing to be with her. Right? It's not that he changes to be with her. He doesn't take up the piano when she says, “I like a guy that knows an instrument.” Right? When she says, If I were you, I would just live like this is a gift.” Like you have all this time to do all this stuff that you never thought you would get to do. And so it's not like a gesture to win her over or win her back. It is what he does inspired by her goodness and taking cues from the way she lives and wanting to be, as you said, Sarah, more like her, right. A kinder person, because he has so much ability to trick people and you see that it doesn't work on her because she just sees through what he's doing as an attempt to seduce her. And then it's not like I'm gonna get with her and that's the goal of all this time I spend in a loop. His goal is I want to live in line with what this wonderful person, the philosophy, this wonderful person laid out before me that I hadn't considered.
Sarah: Which David Brooks also wrote a book about.
Alex: It's called marry a millennial.
Paul: Hey, hi. Hello. It's me Apollo 95, otherwise known as Paul. So this week as of February 2nd, 2021, it's close to a year of me surviving a suicide attempt. And lots of the same mixed feelings are obviously still there. I've had close to 11 months now of therapy, and meds and managing my emotions, and being really earnest and vulnerable of where I am and who I am at any given moment.
I had this really great, and I don't want to say inspiring, but it was an eye-opening conversation that I had with my dad, of all people. I have dealt with a lot of high standards before not living up to people's expectations, being the overachieving, queer kid in the closet for the majority of my life. And so I just straight up asked my dad if he hated me. And he assured me in the most honest way that he can, that couldn't be further from the truth. And I don't know, it was a release to sort of have this honest conversation with someone, who for years I thought could barely stand my presence. So it was good that I got to clear the air.
That night ended on a really good note and I'm actually glad that it happened, but in the middle of the conversation where it's very obvious that I'm spiraling and not doing well, my dad tells me of the truth that I am very hard on myself, and I take things far too seriously. And it's funny because he said that I was doing things over and over in this way where it's not routine, but that it's like Groundhog's Day. Now, keep in mind, February 2nd, my attempted un-aliving, my ‘unbirthday’ as I call it, he decides to bring up Groundhog's Day as sort of like a neutral, positive. And I'm like, “Dad, you do realize that is the movie where Bill Murray, for at least a good scene or two within act one and act two, is trying to kill himself repeatedly to get out of the Groundhog’s Day loop.” And it was just, it was a funny and heartwarming moment of him trying to help in the way that dads do, and just go like you just made it worse, dear god.
None of us could write something quite so salient and funny and just self-aware to where it's just yeah, my dad would be 58 year old, retired steamfitter from Pittsburgh has not always gotten it right, will never get it right. And neither will I. But you know, the broken clocks they're right at least twice a day. Thanks for listening. Love the show and Happy New Year.
Alex: All right, everybody. That is it for this week's episode of you are good. Thank you so much to our fabulous guest, Josh Gondelman. It was wonderful to have you, Josh. Thank you to Carolyn Kendrick for producing this week's episode and for providing an original song this week, which is called, Weatherman. You can find Carolyn's music at carolynkendrick.com. You can find the music of You Are Good and Carolyn's other music on Bandcamp. You can find it on streaming. You can find it that link @carolynkendrick.com. Carolyn makes her episode sound great, and we are grateful for that.
Thank you so much to Fresh Lesh for providing the beats to the show. Thank you for listening. Thank you to everyone at patreon.com/youaregood for making the show possible. We really appreciate you. You can find us on Twitter. You can find us on Instagram. I think that's all you need to know again, if you are trying to get ready, if you're trying to prepare yourself for the coming episodes, we have Anastasia next week. So thank you so much, everybody. You are good.