I return to the subject of favourite lines from the movies, and am surprised to find that I have not written about this for over two years. The most recent piece, “Get this boy a bib”, was about “Westworld” (the original 1973 release).

Last night my children and I watched “Groundhog Day” again. It’s a few years since we last saw it. I was prompted to dig out the DVD (yes, we still use a DVD player) after hearing that the story has been turned into a musical, currently playing at the Old Vic. An old school friend mentioned it the other night (he was planning to see it last night for his birthday) and I spent the weekend listening to the soundtrack.

The film contains one of my favourite exchanges, and last night I made a note of exactly when: around 77 minutes in. The film is only 97 minutes long, so it’s quite near the end. Do we need a spoiler alert here? Probably not. “Groundhog Day” is over 30 years old, and the title has entered into everyday usage.

TV weatherman Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) wakes up at 6am to relive the same day over and over. He changes his behaviour to deal with the thousands of iterations of 2 February that he lives through. There is a sequence where he kills himself in a variety of ways, and still wakes up at 6am the next day. That sequence was always a bit troubling when the children were younger but I never fast-forwarded through it. As the film progresses, Connors helps out a variety of locals. One of them is an old homeless man. Early in the film he asks for money, and Connors doesn’t give him any. Later on, Connors buys him a meal and tries to keep him alive through the night. At one point (77 minutes in) he takes the old man to hospital. When he returns to check on the man’s condition, Connors learns that he hasn’t made it. He looks shocked.

The medic says, “He was really old” and then “Sometimes people just die”.  Connors says, “Not today”.

Just typing those words has brought a tear to my eye, again. Trying to say the words out loud does the same. Over the weekend I tried to tell my daughter about it, how this brief exchange is one of my favourites from any film, and I couldn’t even utter the words, “Not today”. I know. What a wuss. It affected me just as deeply last night. The only other film that we have seen together that opened the floodgates in a similar way was “Saving Mr Banks”. I mentioned it in this piece, “More about the songs that make you cry”, and see that I never returned to the subject. I’ll leave it for now. You don’t need any more words about a grown man crying while watching Hollywood movies. Not today.

[This piece was drafted on 1 August 2023. It was finalized and posted on 11 September 2023.]