‘Ned Ryerson’ to revisit Groundhog Day – Woodstock Independent

As 2019 approaches, Woodstockians and film fans from around the world look forward to that most dependable of holidays. To the delight of everyone except weatherman Phil Connors, Groundhog Day is coming again.

Barring any time-loop shenanigans, of course, visitors to the 2019 Woodstock Groundhog Days can expect at least a few changes from last year: the Drink to World Peace has been moved to the opening of the four-day event on Thursday, Jan. 31, alongside other events.

Friday’s schedule includes the Groundhog Day Dinner Dance among several activities that begin at 1 p.m.

Falling on a Saturday this year, Feb. 2 will be packed with 12 events, starting with the 7 a.m. Prognostication at the Park in the Square by the celebrated rodent himself, followed by the Groundhog Day breakfast at the Moose Lodge (ticket required). The day ends with the Groundhog Day Pub Crawl (6-10 p.m.).

Breakfast with Woodstock Willie from 8 to 10:30 a.m. will kick off events on Sunday. Free showings of “Groundhog Day” are scheduled at 10 a.m. both Saturday and Sunday at Classic Cinema Theatre.

Reliving the experience

But the biggest treat this year will be for anyone interested in whole-life, term, flood, fire, theft, auto, dental, health (with optional death and dismemberment plan), and water-damage insurance. For the first time in 15 years, Stephen “Ned Ryerson” Tobolowsky will return to Woodstock.

In a phone interview, Tobolowsky said he remembered his last visit by two things: christening Ned’s Corner, and the infamous 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

“We all watched the Super Bowl that evening,” Tobolowsky said, “and Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake did their thing, but it was a great game!”

Tobolowsky had appeared for several Groundhog Day celebrations before, but he said that his prolific and ongoing work in film and TV had kept him booked in early February ever since – until this year.

“I think it’s going to be all in the clear,” he told The Independent.

The veteran actor plans to be in town for all four days, showing up for the weather prediction, the chili contest (which his wife will help judge), and other events, including his own storytelling session at the Opera House. There he will share groundhog stories and a chapter from “My Adventures With God” (the autobiography of his own surprisingly eventful life, which includes being held hostage at a grocery store, being held hostage in a Buddhist temple in Thailand, and suffering a “fatal accident,” according to doctors, while horseback riding on an Icelandic volcano).

Tobolowsky said he hoped to eat at the Tip Top Bistro and the former ice cream shop near the Opera House, which gives a sense of just how much he’s missed out on. He was also unaware of the restored Woodstock movie house auditorium, named in honor of the late director Harold Ramis, and of the nearby mural immortalizing his own face in a gigantic, somewhat terrifying portrait.

A deeper meaning

Many film theorists would see Ned’s “nightmare fuel” impression on the mural as fitting – half the fun of Groundhog Day has come from waxing philosophical about its hidden, not-so-hidden, and dubiously real meanings. And Ned’s role as Phil’s archetypically annoying tormentor has led some to interpret him as the devil himself.

“He’s certainly not the devil!” Tobolowsky said. “Although I could see in the Shakespearean tradition, the devil character was always a delightful character that appeared early on in the plays, like in Richard III. … Many of these characters were considered ‘devil’ characters, and Ned is kind of the same way.”

Instead of a tormentor, Tobolowsky said, Ned is an important “foil” to Bill Murray’s character.

“Before Bill meets Ned, Bill is the antagonist of the movie,” Tobolowsky said. “Bill is the jerk; he’s the guy that we don’t want to see succeed. … His position in life has gone to his head.

“He assumes that I’m just another fan of his, but the lovely turn is, I don’t know him at all from TV; I know him from high school. And that becomes his nightmare, that you’re not famous with everybody, and you can’t escape from who you are, and I think that’s what turns Phil into the protagonist of the movie.”

If most of the theories and film-student essays over the years on the “philosophy of Groundhog Day” have seemed like a stretch, Tobolowsky shared, then that’s the film’s secret – none of it was actually planned. Ramis, as many have described (including his daughter, Violet, in her recently published memoirs), went into Groundhog Day intending to make it a pure “screwball comedy,” like previous Murray collaborations “Caddyshack” and “Meatballs.”

The Murray factor

Murray, however, came on as an all-too-real version of the pained, acerbic, desperate Phil of the final cut, likely due to relationship troubles that would lead to his divorce with his first wife, Margaret Kelly, in 1996.

According to Violet Ramis-Stiel and others, Murray was the one who drove the film into a darker, more thoughtful mode, which in turn fueled Ramis and writer Danny Rubin to make it something of a Buddhist allegory for reincarnation and the battle against the ego.

“That approach to the script became a later part to it, … “Tobolowsky said. “It wasn’t so pronounced at the beginning, but through the script changes, it reflected that more and more.”

The end result, to the delight of audiences worldwide, was an almost perfectly balanced mix between the comedic and the serious, with an apparent spiritual message that has resonated from Rome to Jerusalem to Lhasa, Tibet.

But sadly, the film had the opposite effect on its two driving creators – Murray still felt that “Groundhog Day” was too comedic, while Ramis, in a 2004 article in The New Yorker, considered Murray to be an actor throwing a tantrum. The two long-time friends didn’t speak to each other for 21 years, and when they finally did in 2014, Ramis was on his deathbed.

‘I love the people’

Tobolowsky said, however, that in the four weeks he was present over the three-month shoot, he “never saw any conflict between Bill and Harold.

“Bill was always very serious,” Tobolowsky said. “He approached each scene very seriously, and he would challenge Harold, but not in a snarky way. … So I didn’t notice any of that tension.”

But if Murray has preferred to let his experience in Woodstock lie (except, if rumors are to be believed, for the occasional cold one at Liquid Blues), then Tobolowsky is just as much his opposite as his character was in the movie.

“I love the people, and I love the fans,” Tobolowsky said. “The fans of the movie are the greatest, happiest, most lighthearted people, and it’s such a joy to be with people who love that movie as much as I loved being in that movie.

“So there’s just that spiritual thing about being in a community that’s so damn happy! I’m bringing my wife, and I’m taking every opportunity I can to fall in love with Woodstock again.”

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https://www.thewoodstockindependent.com/2018/12/ned-ryerson-to-revisit-groundhog-day/