After an obnoxious weatherman begrudgingly covers groundhog-day in Punxsutawney, he continuously wakes up to that same day, and must find a way out of the time-loop.

As I indicated earlier this move has given me a lot to think about in terms of plotting and loglines. ?So here are some randomized thoughts leading to no firm conclusions or definitive answers.

First of all as a result of my participation in this forum, I ‘ve come to the point of view that ?the most important feature of a logline is the answer to the question:

What is the hook?

For “Groundhog Day”, I submit that the hook is not just about living the same day over and over. The hook is that the main character relives ?the worst day of his life over and over. This why the movie instantly resonates with so many people. It’s a predicament we can all identify with. We all can come up with a worst day in our lives. (Or several candidates for the worst day.) ?Situations in our lives that afflict us day after day after day and we are powerless to end our misery.

So Phil gets trapped in an endless loop of the worst day of his life.

But: when Phil realizes there are no consequences for what he does, that his life resets every day, he goes on a binge of irresponsible and lawless behavior. ?This includes using the knowledge he gleans from being with the locals every day to successfully seduce women.

Phil, it seems, has turned this lemon of a predicament into lemonade.

But: ?around the 45 min/page mark, Phil focuses on seducing Rita. The “A” story converges with the “B” story because wooing and winning the heart of Rita becomes the objective goal that drives the rest of the story.

But: no matter what trick he tries, no matter how much he can learn about her from one day to the next, she can’t be seduced. The one woman he wants most he can’t have.

And so: ?at the midpoint he spirals into a round of suicide attempts. To no avail. He wakes up alive the same morning in the same place facing the same situation.

Until: he starts to deal with his character flaw. This movie is an excellent example of a “B” story mediating the overcoming of the character flaw.

(But again, loglines are not about supposed to be about the “B” story.)

The standard theory is that only after overcoming his character flaw is a protagonist fit to achieve his objective goal. So only after Phil transforms himself from a selfish to a selfless character can he win Rita’s heart. And break the spell, breaks out of the time loop.

But here’s the twist: ?winning Rita and breaking out of the time loop are unintended consequences of Phil’s overcoming his character flaw. Trapped in the worst day in the worst predicament of his life, ?Phil finally stop struggling. ?He accepts his situation and makes the best of it– with virtue, not vice.

Without wandering away from ?movie making into metaphysics, this seems to me to be a Zen-like resolution of the plot problem, so very non-heroic, so outside the Western dramatic paradigm. Which perhaps ?is why it is so hard to distill the plot into a succinct logline. ?The standard formula for a logline, after all, ?is based on the Western Heroic ideal (Like the “Hero’s Journey” paradigm.)

Back to 1st principles. First, foremost and always, a logline is a sales tool. It’s primary purpose is to get someone with the power to green light a project to read a script. And ?the standard way of doing that is for a logline to describe (briefly) ?a ?plot of a ?protagonist struggling against a dramatic problem toward an objective goal.

But in “Groundhog Day” Phil must stop struggling. ?He must abandon his original objective goal since it’s not working and it’s the wrong goal, anyway. ?He must surrender and embrace the situation.

How do you build ?a succinct logline out of that?

(Research and reflection continues.)

fwiw

I think Gabriel Yakeb has chosen a very interesting movie in terms of the challenges it presents to succinctly composing a ?logline. ?”Groundhog Day” is one of my all time favorite films and there’s a lot to think about.

First of all, let me get out of the way the matter of the character flaw. I believe a more accurate term would be that Phil is egocentric.?Per the exchange between Phil and Rita in the Tip Top cafe where Rita is repelled by Phil literally stuffing his face with food.

Phil: “You think I’m acting like this because I’m egocentric?”
Rita: “I now you’re egocentric. It’s your defining characteristic.”

Now then. I agree with Nir Shelter that “After an obnoxious weatherman begrudgingly covers Groundhog Day…” is not the inciting incident. Why? Because covering Groundhog Day?is an assignment Phil is grudgingly undertaking for the 4th year. It’s his ?SOP, his unhappy status quo. ? And the purpose of the inciting incident is to upset the status quo, commence a significant, irreversible change in the trajectory of the protagonist’s life.

And what event changes the trajectory of Phil’s life? What upsets his status quo? His discovery that he’s living the same day over and over. Which ?occurs at about the 18 1/2 minute mark in the film.

However, I’m not so sure about Nir Shelter’s take on the plot that follows the inciting incident, that Phil’s objective goal is to “learn the rules of his new existence to find a way out of the time loop.”

The standard formulation for a logline ?is to give the protagonist an objective goal. The pursuit of ?that objective goal is the result of an intentional decision. But when Phil realizes he’s trapped in time and space, he states no intention of learning any rules to find a way out. ?Rather, ?he goes about breaking all the rules because he’s realized that there are no lasting consequences.

In the bar, around the 30 minute mark, Phil raises the Dramatic Question of the film: ” What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”

Two minutes later, while driving the car he asks again: ?”What if there were no tomorrow?”

And Gus, a drunk, answers: ?”No tomorrow? That would mean there would be no consequences… we could do whatever we wanted!”

Phil: “That’s true. We could do whatever we want.”

And he proceeds to test that by deliberately driving recklessly, ending up in jail… and waking up the next morning in bed, a free man.

The only rule he seems to have learned is that he can get away with anything. ?And his only objective goal for the next 30 minutes plus is to exploit that rule. ?It’s the wrong objective goal, but that’s what he intentionally decides to do.

But I do believe he has to “learn the rules” — but that he goes about learning them unconsciously, and unintentionally does. What does he have to learn? To stop being a selfish, egocentric prick. Start being selfless, other-centric. Use the time loop to help others instead of exploit it for his own gratification.

But that kind of “learning the rules” relates to his subjective need — the “lesson learned” — rather than to his objective goal. And loglines are not supposed to be about subjective issues, lessons learned. ?That’s a ?”logline rule” both Nir Shelter and ?I ?point out in evaluating other posters’ loglines.

But aren’t there always exceptions to every guidelines, every “best practice.”? ?Is Nir Shelter’s logline ?a righteous exception to that rule? ? Or —?