The movie Groundhog Day is a classic. It follows a news reporter named Phil (Bill Murray), who is a disgruntled narcissist. He goes to cover the Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where he starts to live each day in a loop, awaking every day on Groundhog Day, with the same people saying the same things, and only he knows it.
The movie is a hoot, and it still holds up, despite the major trouble Murray caused on set. The film had a great cast, including Andie MacDowell, Brian Doyle-Murray, Stephen Tobolowsky, Willie Garson, and Chris Elliott.
Elliott has had a solid career in the years since making Groundhog Day, and has gone on to make some great TV, including Everybody Loves Raymond, Eagleheart, How I Met Your Mother, and Schitt’s Creek, as well as several films. But he still looks back on the film shoot with fondness.
In a recent interview with EW, which you can check out below, Elliott remembered working with the late, great director Harold Ramis on Groundhog Day. Elliott was working as a writer on Late Night With David Letterman at the time, and he had aspirations of working on Saturday Night Live. He remembered:
“We went out to dinner once, and he told me… I told him that ‘Saturday Night Live’ to me, was like the cool show. And you know, when I first started working for Dave, I thought, ‘It’s going to be my stepping stone to Saturday Night Live’, but he said, you know, the feeling up there, and certainly with him, was that Dave was the cool show, and I thought that was sweet for him to stay that to me. He was such a kind and sort of a George Harrison-type personality. You know, just a real peaceful kind of guy. It’s a great movie. Still holds up.”
Elliott actually went on to join the cast of Saturday Night Live the next year, and stayed for a season before returning to David Letterman for many more years. It’s cool that he has those memories of Ramis, and had a dream fulfilled by joining SNL. He’s a great comedic actor, and will always be fondly known as Roland Schitt to me.
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