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 —?

What Richiev said. It’s almost always better to hang several stories on the clothesline/story line of a lead character’s struggle.

As that great non-humanitarian Joseph Stalin ?said , the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million ?is merely a statistic. ?James Cameron understand the dramatic truth of that when he hung the deaths of 1500 people in the sinking of the Titanic?on the clothesline/story line of the fate of 2 star-crossed lovers.

And ?characters don’t “adjust” in ?drama. ?They struggle. ?Against overwhelming odds to not merely survive but prevail. ?In this case, they would be struggling to survive and rebuild.

fwiw