Phil: Let's live here! (Kisses Rita) We'll rent, to start.
The film's ending was left to a vote
Murray is said to have put his foot down before shooting the film's final scene. He needed to know what he was wearing before he embarked on his last celluloid interaction with costar Andie MacDowell, according to "Groundhog Day" castmate Stephen Tobolowsky. Was he dressed in the same clothes as the night before? Or are he and MacDowell depicting a passionate night, waking up in the buff? Ramis hadn't thought it through, so he canvassed the film crew. The result was a tie vote.
"Then one girl in the movie—it was her first film—she was assistant set director. She raised her hand and said, 'He is absolutely wearing the clothes he wore the night before. If he is not wearing the clothes he wore the night before, it will ruin the movie. That's my vote.' So Harold Ramis said, 'Then that's what we are going to do." I've never told anybody that behind-the-scenes story, so keep that a secret now," Tobolowsky said in 2010.
Its philosophical implications
"There's an element of truth to the fact that we are repeating the same day over and over again," Rubin has said. Indeed, the film has been embraced by various philosophical and religious thinkers. "Everybody seems to bring their own way of thinking and their own discipline to bear on the ideas within it and would express this is absolutely describing the essence of Judaism. This is the essence of Nietzsche’s philosophy," said Rubin. "I think the movie shows that it is the repetition of days itself which pushes us forward in our own maturation as we start to encounter the same things over and over again."