Offscreen, Ramis and Bill Murray were trapped in a cycle of personal strains. Murray’s marriage was breaking up, and he was behaving erratically—the whirling, unpredictable personality that Dan Aykroyd calls “the Murricane.” Ramis sent Rubin to New York to work with Murray on the script, because he was tired of taking his star’s 2 a.m. calls. Rubin says that when Ramis phoned him to check in, Murray would shake his head and mouth the words “I’m not here.” “They were like two brothers who weren’t getting along,” Rubin says. “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.”
“At times, Bill was just really irrationally mean and unavailable; he was constantly late on set,” Ramis says. “What I’d want to say to him is just what we tell our children: ‘You don’t have to throw tantrums to get what you want. Just say what you want.’ ”
After the film wrapped, Murray stopped speaking to Ramis. Some of the pair’s friends believe that Murray resents how large a role Ramis had in creating the Murray persona. Michael Shamberg, a Hollywood producer who has known Ramis since college and who used to let Murray sleep on his couch, says, “Bill owes everything to Harold, and he probably has a thimbleful of gratitude.”
I read that Ramis demanded Murray hire an assistant because he wouldn't take his calls and would constantly be late to set. Murray ended up hiring a deaf person who only knew how to speak in american sign language...just to mess with 'em.
I guess I'm the only one who thought of it as a black comedy. Doesn't Bill Murray's character kill himself several times? Hasn't he been trapped in the day for the equivalent of several lifetimes? Sounds amazingly awful.
apparently the scriptwriter had the Murray character visit the library each day and read one word on one page of a book, as a way of marking time in a world where nothing could be written down. The first drafts had him finish the library - thousands of years in the same day.
