20 Surprising Facts About The Movie Caddyshack

Audiences were bowled over by the movie’s non-stop output of jokes, but there could have been much more if director Harold Ramis had his way. Indeed, it turns out that the original version of the movie clocked in at more than four-and-a-half hours. Yikes! According to Ramis, there were just too many hilarious gags in the film, making it extremely hard to edit.

Fans of the movie will know that Kenny Loggins ended up providing the soundtrack. However, initially, Harold Ramis inquired about the services of legendary prog-rock outfit Pink Floyd. It was quite an ambitious request by the budding director, so he probably wasn’t too surprised when they rejected it in favor of touring their album The Wall.

One of the most memorable scenes from the movie is when Carl Spackler (played by Bill Murray) recounts a hilarious story about caddying for the Dalai Lama. But the peaceful figure had never even heard of the movie. When asked in a Fox News interview whether he’d seen it, a rather mystified Dalai Lama responded with, “What?”

Sometimes the lines blur between fiction and reality during the filming process, something Scott Colomby knows all too well. His character Tony D’Annunzio was often puffing on a cigarette in the movie, but Colomby stated on the DVD extras that he’d never smoked before the role. However, following his portrayal of the human smoke machine, he was hooked.

Love scenes are tough enough to act in without things happening that you aren’t prepared for. Well, when it comes to a mostly improvised movie like Caddyshack, you should learn to expect the unexpected. Cindy Morgan certainly wasn’t anticipating Chevy Chase to pour oil on her during their love scene. Indeed, she said in a 2010 interview with Socialite Life, “When he dumped that bottle of oil on my back, did you think I knew that was coming?”

Just because you’ve starred in a movie doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re an actor. Case and point being college professor Dr. Dow, who played Mr. Wang in the film. After appearing in Caddyshack, Dow never appeared in another motion picture.

Not every movie can impress everyone, and Caddyshack is no exception. Upon its release in 1980, the movie had some terrible reviews written about it by respected critics, including Roger Ebert and Judy Stone. Criticisms ranged from the actors trying too hard to the movie simply not being funny. Fortunately, with time, the general consensus has mostly shifted in favor of this misunderstood gem.

With the first Caddyshack in the bag, it wasn’t long before studio execs approached Harold Ramis to do a sequel. In a 1999 interview with A.V. Club, the director recalled, “With Caddyshack 2, the studio begged me.” However, he didn’t comply, and with director Allan Arkush at the helm, the movie bombed at the box office due to its completely revised cast and nonsensical PG rating.

So, you’re flying your plane and you spot a huge explosion below you. What do you do? Probably report it to air traffic control, which is exactly what this particular pilot did. What he didn’t know, however, was that it was the massive golf course explosion featured in Caddyshack, and not a downed aircraft. Phew!

One of the most surprising aspects regarding the production was the Chevy Chase and Bill Murray dynamic. That’s because the two were allegedly sworn enemies leading up to their performances in Caddyshack, stemming from their days on Saturday Night Live. However, when it came time to shoot their only scene together, the two professionals put aside their differences and showed each other mutual respect.

We all know how Caddyshack turned out, but it could’ve been very different. Originally, Mickey Rourke was pursued to star in one of the main roles as Danny Noonan. Speaking with The Huffington Post in 2014, Michael O’Keefe, who got the part over Rourke, said, “They were interested in Mickey Rourke originally to play that part. And, you know, it would’ve been a different movie.”

Ever thought everyone in Caddyshack looked like they were having too good a time? That’s because they likely were. The movie is notorious for its behind-the-scenes parties, boozed-up antics, and illegal indulgences. Of the many examples, the most noteworthy include Rodney Dangerfield reportedly taking drugs during his audition, Bill Murray going missing after a wild night of partying, and the cast requesting cash in order for them to purchase more “under the counter” products.

One thing you’ll notice on this list is how the cast and crew seemed to just do what they wanted. And nothing exemplifies this more than when they decided to do the golf course explosion scene. Allegedly, the crew built a fake green for detonation purposes and sent the staff of the golf club to a party. While they were gone, they then blew up the course. That kind of deviousness would make the gopher proud.

Bill Murray didn’t just wipe his hands of the film once production wrapped up. Instead, he chose to immortalize it with his own Caddyshack-themed restaurant. With one in Florida and another location in the works, Murray Bros. Caddyshack is the ultimate food/golf hybrid for fans of the movie. With a catchy slogan like “Eat, Drink and Be Murray” and a tantalizing menu that includes the “Sandwedge” and the “Shack Burger,” who wouldn’t want to eat there?

As a comic, Rodney Dangerfield is certainly one of the all-time greats. However, until Caddyshack came along, he’d never starred in a motion picture before. This probably explains the fact that when “Action!” was yelled on set, the bamboozled comedian didn’t even know what to do.

While almost all of the facts surrounding the movie are humorous, one story couldn’t be any bleaker. A key writer, Douglas Kenney, was battling a serious substance addiction during filming. It didn’t help that when the movie was released, frustrations about the final edit and a torrent of negative reviews worsened his depression. The influential 33-year-old writer fell from a cliff to his death just one month after the film came out.

There were a lot of Murrays floating around the set of Caddyshack, including writer Brian Doyle-Murray and his younger brother, Bill Murray. With this much family interaction, it’s probably no surprise to learn that the film’s Noonan family were based around Doyle-Murray’s actual relatives.

Okay, so we’ve touched on the amount of partying that went on, but check out this odd little factoid about the movie’s main stars. According to Chevy Chase in the documentary, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, Bill Murray went on an after-hours search for marijuana, eventually finding himself banging on Chase’s door to see if he could hook him up. Chase sent the persistent Murray to Rodney Dangerfield, who in turn sold him... a bag of seeds. Joke’s on you this time, Bill.

Can you imagine how different Caddyshack would have been if Bill Murray’s character Carl Spackler was silent? Well, that’s what was down on the initial script. However, after the talented situational actor was cast, it became apparent that he needed to do his own thing. Even more impressive is the fact that almost all of Murray’s performance was improvised. The Lama would approve.

Not everything goes exactly as planned, as was the case for the initial filming stages of Caddyshack. Making his directorial debut, Harold Ramis called the early stages of production a “disaster” for which he was sure he’d get shown the door. And he was right to be suspicious: The studio had five other directors lined up in case Ramis couldn’t make good on the movie. Fortunately, he proved them all wrong in the end — and even got to direct another comedy classic a few years later.

Bill Murray’s turn as miserable weatherman Phil Connors in Groundhog Day is sublime. But director Harold Ramis originally envisioned Tom Hanks in the part. And he revealed in 2009 that Hanks turned it down because he felt his casting would mean the audience would simply be counting time until Connors became nice. Michael Keaton also said no as he didn’t fully grasp the script, but he later told Entertainment Weekly, “You can’t do it better than Bill Murray did it.”

Groundhog Day is famously set on February 2, with Pennsylvania in full winter mode. But according to Michael Shannon, who played Fred, the movie definitely wasn’t filmed in the winter. He told The A.V. Club in 2009, “It was shot during the summer, so they had taken over this town and covered it with fake snow, and everyone was walking around wearing down coats, even though it was 80 degrees outside.”

In 2009 Michael Shannon revealed an awkward interaction between him and Bill Murray. He told The A.V. Club that he saw Murray listening to Talking Heads on set and excitedly asked the star if he liked the band. Murray’s characteristically deadpan response to the obvious question was, “Yeah, I like the Talking Heads.” Shannon told director Harold Ramis he felt Murray didn’t like him and, to his horror, Ramis encouraged Murray to say sorry, which just made the embarrassment worse.

In 2014 Ned Ryerson actor Stephen Tobolowsky wrote a piece for Slate magazine praising Harold Ramis’ storytelling courage. He recounted how Ramis shot an expensive scene which took three days of hard work, involving Murray sporting a mohawk and wielding a chainsaw. In the end, though, he realized a simple shot of a broken pencil becoming whole again would do the job. So he cut the scene entirely.

Groundhog Day was filmed in Woodstock, Illinois, and one day around 500 locals convened to watch the Hollywood crew shoot the movie. Stephen Tobolowsky revealed in a Reddit AMA that Bill Murray said to him, “Do you know what these people need? Danishes!” He then marched into a bakery, bought every pastry they had, and gave them all to the hungry crowd. What a guy.

When shooting the scene in which Phil Connors lets the groundhog drive a truck, Bill Murray was bitten by the animal actor, whose name was Scooter. Well, he actually bit Murray two or three times in total. In 1993 a miffed Murray told The Philadelphia Inquirer the crew, “went out into the woods and caught this Scooter, a groundhog who hated my guts from day one.”

In the film, Phil Connors is shown repeating the day 38 times, but there is no official answer about how long he truly spent stuck in the time loop. Ramis estimated ten years but later revised this to between 30 and 40 years. The website Wolf Gnards crunched the numbers and came up with eight years, eight months, and 16 days. Incredibly, screenwriter Danny Rubin’s initial draft specified 10,000 years!

Ned Ryerson happily telling Phil Connors, “Watch out for that first step. It’s a doozy,” is one of the most famous repeated scenarios in Groundhog Day. Every time Connors’ foot sinks into that icy cold puddle we feel his frustration and then we get a kick out of him learning to sidestep it. And the shooting location of the scene is now adorned with a plaque that reads, “Bill Murray Stepped Here.”

Screenwriter Danny Rubin revealed to The New Yorker in 2004 that Murray and Ramis could not agree on the tone of the film. Rubin said, “They were like two brothers who weren’t getting along. And they were pretty far apart on what the movie was about – Bill wanted it to be more philosophical, and Harold kept reminding him it was a comedy.”

Murray and Ramis were one of Hollywood’s greatest comedic pairings, having worked together on Ghostbusters, Caddyshack and Meatballs. But they fell out so badly during Groundhog Day that Murray refused to speak to Ramis for 20 years. Ramis told The New Yorker, “At times, Bill was just really irrationally mean and unavailable; he was constantly late on set.” Murray finally reconnected with his old friend not long before Ramis died in 2014.

Rubin’s initial screenplay had a considerably different tone than the finished film. Rita, played by Andie MacDowell in the movie, is a much swearier and more jaded character in the script, for example. Plus Rubin’s original twist ending involved Phil Connors breaking his time loop, only to discover that Rita was now trapped in one of her own, cursed to live February 3 forever. Yikes.

One of the most beloved locations in the movie is The Tip Top Café, which was a set created by the production. But the set proved so popular with Woodstock residents that it became a real eatery known as the Tip Top Bistro. Unfortunately, it closed its doors in 2012, but if you visit the location today you will find a Mexican restaurant named Taqueria La Placita.

During the Groundhog Day shoot, Murray’s marriage was collapsing. This must have made the scene in which Phil reads to Rita after she falls asleep especially poignant, because it was inspired by Murray’s own wedding night. You see, his wife enjoyed too much champagne on their big day, and Murray read to her out loud when she nodded off early.

The movie’s final scene, when Phil wakes up in bed with Rita having finally broken the time loop, was shot an incredible 25 times. Ramis wasn’t exactly sure of the tone, so stuck the crew in their own loop of re-take after re-take. He even had them vote on whether or not Phil and Rita made love the night before, and a young assistant had the deciding vote. Phil didn’t get lucky.

While Murray was shooting Mad Dog and Glory in 1992, he was also prepping Groundhog Day as his next film. Conveniently, the Glory shoot was located close enough to Punxsutawney that he and Danny Rubin were able to pay a visit to the real-life 1992 ceremony for research purposes. A local woman revealed that Murray kept his attendance on the down-low but did slip on the ice at one point.

Harold Ramis’ director’s commentary on the Groundhog Day DVD is a treasure trove of interesting behind the scenes anecdotes and creative insight. One of the nicest revelations is the real reason that Rita drinks sweet vermouth when Phil is trying to romance her. Ramis happily admits, “Because that’s what my wife drinks.”

In Groundhog Day Phil says “Be the hat” to Rita when they are throwing playing cards into a hat. It’s a way of getting her to focus entirely on her goal, but it’s also a sneaky Easter Egg reference to a previous Murray/Ramis movie. You see, in Caddyshack, Chevy Chase’s Ty Webb gives the advice “Be the ball” to a golfer trying to focus on playing well.

Phil performs a 19th century French poem at one point in a German restaurant, all in an effort to impress Rita. But the poem wasn’t actually a poem at all. In reality, the movie used lyrics from a 1957 song by Jacques Brel entitled “La Bourree du Celibataire.” In English, the translation is, “The girl that I will love, Will be like a fine wine, That will become better, A bit every morning.” Aww.

Buster Green is played by Brian Doyle-Murray in Groundhog Day. If his surname sounds familiar, well, it should. He is Bill Murray’s older brother and over the years has appeared in many of his little brother’s movies, including Caddyshack, Ghostbusters II and Scrooged. He added “Doyle,” his grandmother’s maiden name, to his stage moniker to differentiate himself from actor Brian Murray.

In Groundhog Day, the filmmakers wisely chose not to explain the reason behind Phil being trapped in a time loop. This ambiguity works perfectly because, ultimately, the “why” isn’t important. Instead it is important that Phil learns to be a better person. This wasn’t always the plan, though, as the script’s second draft revealed a curse set by Phil’s ex-girlfriend Stephanie as the reason why.

Groundhog Day opens with Phil in the television studio reading his weather predictions. It is here that the audience is also introduced to Rita. Amazingly, though, these scenes were re-shoots accomplished months after the main shoot had finished. Ramis only realized he needed them when the movie was being edited.

There is a clever background detail in the diner scene with Phil and Rita. The audience can see that, behind them, the wall is adorned with several clocks. Perhaps the owner of the diner is a clock enthusiast. Or perhaps Harold Ramis wants us to take a closer look. Because the clocks have all stopped, which is a representation of Phil’s life in the time loop.

Groundhog Day was especially tough for Murray as many scenes were shot with only slight variations, due to the time loop factor. As a result, it was all rather confusing for the star to remember where the character was in the story’s timeline. And in the end he resorted to asking Ramis, “Good Phil or bad Phil?” before the cameras rolled on each scene.

The location where Phil meets insurance salesman Ned Ryerson is the corner of Cass Street and Benson Street. It is situated northeast of Woodstock, Illinois’ Town Square. And the scene became so famous after the movie was released that the city decided to adorn the building on the corner with a commemorative plaque that read, “Ned’s Corner.”

One of Phil’s time loop cons is his attempt to convince Rita he is the sort of guy who has playful snow fights with neighborhood kids. What a lovely fella, right? But when shooting the scene Ramis told the children to throw as hard as they could at Murray, and he responded in kind. On his DVD commentary, Ramis chuckled, “That kid almost took his head off.”

In 2010 Danny Rubin revealed some pretty out-there inspirations for his Groundhog Day script. He had read Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire, which left him pondering the nature of eternal life. William Dean Howells 1892 short story Christmas Every Day and Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, which dealt with the notion of living one’s life over and over again, were also in mind.

This casting “what if” is particularly intriguing because the person reportedly considered to play Rita, before Andie MacDowell was cast, wasn’t actually an actress. As the movie was coming together, a music magazine published a photograph of singer-songwriter Tori Amos holding the Groundhog Day script. It transpired she was being thought of for the role, which sounds strange nowadays, considering she never transitioned into acting.

Ramis revealed in his director’s commentary that Rubin’s script began with Phil already in the time loop, meaning the audience would have to play catch-up. Ramis wasn’t a fan. He said, “Of course I’d actually told Danny Rubin that I loved the fact that he just started right in the middle with the device already occurring, that it was one thing I would never change. Of course, it was the first thing I changed.”

In Caddyshack, Bill Murray played a golf course groundskeeper who became obsessed with killing a pesky gopher that was ruining the course. In the original vision of Groundhog Day, it included a scene in which Phil tracked the animal to its home and did away with it. But the scene wound up being cut because it felt too similar to Caddyshack.

Murray and Ramis butted heads constantly when prepping the movie. In 2004 Rubin told The New Yorker that when Ramis became frustrated with Murray’s erratic behavior, he sent Rubin to iron out the script with the star. But when Ramis would then call to check on their progress, Rubin admitted Murray would mime the words, “I’m not here.”

Stephen Tobolowsky’s performance as Ned Ryerson proved a hit with Ramis and Rubin. It led to them wanting to add an extra scene with the insurance agent, so Tobolowsky helped write the sequence in which he lists insurance policies. The actor based his performance on his own real-life insurance agent, who was reportedly so happy with it that he thanked Tobolowsky.

Following the movie’s release, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania was thrust into the national spotlight. The Groundhog Day event became a tourist attraction, with the festival beginning to attract as many as 30,000 people. And that’s an awful lot of people hoping they’ll catch a glimpse of a Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinary. Yes, that is his full title.

Everyone’s had a morning where they’ve wanted to grab the alarm clock from their bedside and smash it to smithereens. Phil Connors actually does this in Groundhog Day, although filming the scene didn’t exactly go off without a hitch. Murray threw it to the floor, but it didn’t smash into pieces in a cinematic manner. So the crew took a hammer to it. Simple.

If you were forced to repeat the same day, with no consequences, eventually you’d throw caution to the wind. This is exactly what Phil does in the diner when he gorges himself on pastries. When shooting the scene, Murray was offered a spit bucket. But he refused, preferring to actually swallow everything he ate. This might have been a bad move, though, as the angel food cake made him feel as sick as a dog.

Harold Ramis, on top of being a celebrated director, was also an actor. He is likely most recognized as Egon Spengler in the Ghostbusters franchise. So when he popped up in Groundhog Day as the neurologist seen by a desperate Phil, audiences would have known his face, even if they didn’t know he also directed the movie.

When Phil goes to the piano teacher and makes an initially awkward attempt at playing, it is actually Bill Murray’s fingers doing the talking. Despite not being able to read sheet music, he learned a portion of Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paginini” simply by listening. That’s pretty impressive.

The residents of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania have always been extremely proud of Groundhog Day. And over the years three people from the movie have attended the real life festivities as the Honorary Grand Marshal: Harold Ramis, Stephen Tobolowsky and, of course, Bill Murray. Tobolowsky’s speech, in which he did the “whistling belly button act” Ned Ryerson refers to in the movie, was particularly well-received.

One of Groundhog Day’s darkest yet funny sequences occurs when Phil tries to break the time loop by experimenting with methods of suicide. He tells Rita, “I’ve been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted and burned.” These gruesome techniques were all used by the attempted assassins of the Russian monk Grigori Rasputin. Weirdly, they are also mentioned in Murray/Ramis’ Ghostbusters II in reference to the evil spook Prince Vigo.

In 1993 Ramis told The Los Angeles Times that he and Danny Rubin’s framework for Phil Connors’ character arc was Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief. This helped them get in Phil’s head and recognize all the emotions he would feel in his predicament. Ramis floated the idea to Murray and he liked it, though Ramis laughed, “But I think that’s because he was more interested in death than he was in how it related to the script.”

On his director’s commentary, Ramis confessed that he initially didn’t want to read the Groundhog Day script. He wasn’t that intrigued but wound up being cajoled into reading it by a producing partner, who reassured him there was a lot more to the story than he might think. Thank the Hollywood Gods for that producer.