"Groundhog Day" original ending

ahalpert

ahalpert

Major Contributor
Apparently, Groundhog Day was originally written to end like this:

"At the very end, Bill Murray wakes up with Rita just like this. And then a second later, Rita is out of there. She can’t wait to leave. And it turns out that she’s been reliving February 3 over and over again. But the thing is it switches over to her story, at the very end as we’re realizing she’s been repeating that day over and over again, there’s a Rita voiceover. So the movie actually switches point of view from his voiceover to hers."
https://nofilmschool.com/groundhog-ending

What do you think about that?
 
I had the original screenplay (off some mag, I think) that was credited to Ramis and Rubin. And it was pretty close to the shooting draft. Overall, not having read the original Rubin's version before Ramis's rewrite, it's impossible to say whether the original made any sense or not. The final draft was about a hundred pages and, given Ramis's list of credits vs. Rubin's, it's hard to fathom the original being better.

https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/groundhogday.pdf
 
Well, basically my reaction was that the original ending ruined what I appreciated about Groundhog Day.

To me, Groundhog Day is a philosophical treatise about what gives life meaning (altruism).

By whatever power, or simply as an illustrative metaphor, Bill Murray is trapped in the hell of repeating a single day because he's a paragon of selfishness. Only by growing spiritually and developing a greater capacity for empathy does he free himself from that prison.

So, if the same thing happens to Rita the following day... And she's a pretty good person... What was the point of it all?

It becomes just another "what if...?" magical Hollywood plot with no more meaning than a crude thought experiment.
 
That's not how I see the meaning of the film. But ... diff'rent strokes to move the world.
 
DLD said:
That's not how I see the meaning of the film. But ... diff'rent strokes to move the world.
Click to expand...

What's your interpretation?

He's freed from repeating the day + he only gets the girl once he becomes a saint
 
A sincere saint - a change from a total a-hole that he is at the beginning and the middle of the film. I don't think it's about altruism. That's never been a Ramis theme.
 
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