Catch 'Groundhog Day'. . . again

Thursday is Groundhog Day, so there's no better time than right now to ponder the "Twilight Zone"-ish Bill Murray comedy "Groundhog Day."

That movie (which airs Thursday at 8 and 10:30 p.m. on CMT) about a caustic TV weatherman forced to relive a single day over and over, has become an existential classic.

Don't take our word for it: No. 8 on the American Film Institute's list of top fantasy films and No. 34 on its list of top comedies, it was inducted in 2006 into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. A year after Columbia Pictures released it on Feb. 12, 1993, the prestigious Motion Picture Guide Annual called it "a primer on western philosophy, as well a reasoned case for Zen Buddhism."

"A psychiatrist saw this movie and told me it was a perfect metaphor for psychotherapy," director and co-writer Harold Ramis said in an interview several years ago. "You keep revisiting the same material over and over, and each time you get a different insight until you finally get clear of it. Religion, the same way -- Christians, Jews, everyone saw it as embodying their own philosophies."

Co-written with Danny Rubin -- now a Harvard lecturer on screenwriting -- "Groundhog Day" is ultimately "about the human condition," Ramis said. "A lot of people start doing the same thing every day, thinking the same misguided thoughts every day."

The movie was filmed primarily in Woodstock, Ill., subbing for Punxsutawney, Pa. The B&B where Murray's Phil Connors stayed is the Cherry Street Inn. The Woodstock Theater is the movie's Alpine Theater, which is screening the made-up movie "Heidi 2." An aerial establishing shot of Pittsburgh shows the Pittsburgh Press and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette buildings, as well as the four-building Gateway Center office towers.

For fans, of course, the biggest conjecture is just how long was Phil Connors condemned to this purgatory. Co-star Stephen Tobolowsky has said Ramis told him "that in Buddhism, they say that it takes 10,000 years for a soul to evolve to the next level. So he said that he felt that the entire progress of 'Groundhog Day' covered 10,000 years. . . . "

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Ramis himself later told a magazine, "It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and, allotting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years."