[Patrick Murphy]

Patrick Murphy
Day 5 — The Three Gradients

What I learned from this assignment:
There are a lot more details in this emotional journey than I had been paying attention to. Breaking it down like this has given a richer texture to the emotions. Their seems to be an overlap between the elements. Also it was helpful to think about the difference between the Forced Change and the Desired Change.

The Forced Change Emotional Gradient

DENIAL
1. Emotion —

a. Refusal to believe it’s happening. Isn’t that bad.

2. Action —

Try to act tough. Up to the challenge.

Must look good.

Must not seem weak.

3. Challenge / Weakness
a. Pain, beatings
b. Humiliation,
c. Betrayal (spied upon/dossier) revelations from others d. Hidden truths uncovered

ANGER

Emotion —

a. Why are they doing this to me?
b. Why am I letting this happen to me?

Action —
a. Who do they think they are?
b. To what do I deserve this?
c. How do they know all this about me.
d. Why did (whomever) betray my confidence?

Challenge/ Weakness
a. How can I stand this much longer? b. I am going to look like less of a man.

BARGAINING
1. Emotion —

a. Fear of the pain. Fear of not being able to stand up to it.

Action —

Act Tough

admit only as much truth as you can get away with.

Pretend to be honest as can be

Plead innocence.

Just enough to not feel humiliated in front of the others.

Anything to stop the pain.

Challenge/ Weakness

a. How can I stand this anymore? b. Humiliation.

ACCEPTANCE

Emotion —

Letting go

Forget it.

Action

Okay. What the hell

I am a bad person

I have committed so much indiscretion.

Help me please to repent.

Challenge /Weakness

No choice

I must give up

No more ego or resistance left

Who cares anymore

I am done.

Relief when you’re declared done, through, past the chalice.

Willing, even excited to participate in the breaking down of others.

To do as you are told.

[Patrick Murphy]

THE PURPOSE OF “THE PIT OF TRUTH” By Patrick Murphy

By thinking about these details I have learned more about what should work in the execution of this production and I have more ideas about how to work with the different elements of the story and how to balance and enhance them.

PROFOUND TRUTH
Who is so pure that they are qualified to judge, torture and imprison in the name of improving fellow humans. It is very un-American and yet cloaked in patriotic fervor. It doesn’t work and it has no lasting effect, beyond humiliating the individual and causing PTSD. The ends don’t justify the means and don’t even exist in reality.

THE BIG CHANGE FOR THE AUDIENCE
The audience should question the efficacy of torturing individuals in order to “help” them find their truth, in order to force them to become better humans. Does forcing them even work? Hopefully they also come to a better realization about cult like organizations such as this and how they work, possibly finding themselves enabled to avoid getting caught up in this type of entity.

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE
There are several things working here.

SUSPENSE over how each individual anticipates and makes it through their crucible.

ABSURDITY including the weird, bizarre ideas the instructors espouse as they conduct this seminar, as if these ideas are somehow true and absolute.

COMEDIC, sardonic voice over narration of the main character as he comments on the absurdity of the proceedings. Also watching the false bravado of the individuals as they anticipate their own crucible.

HORROR and AMAZEMENT at the way the attendees are treated by the instructors.

FACSINATION at how those past the crucible are recruited into the mistreatment of their fellow attendees. And also at the fact that the attendees put up with this horror, accept it and put up with it all happening without rising up and throwing off this oppression. They allow this to happen to themselves and to others and then join in the action as if they have become convinced that somehow “good” is coming out of this. Also we see in the end that very little has been learned by any of these individuals.

[Patrick Murphy]

ANALYSIS OF THE PROFOUND NATURE OF — GROUND HOG DAY BY Patrick Murphy

1. Transformational Journey
TV weatherman, Phil, goes from being a sad, sarcastic, acerbic bully who thinks very little of the others around him (except what he can get from them – like sexual gratification) because he can’t stand his loveless, frozen, going nowhere fast life — to a man in love who suddenly sees all the possibilities of life and starts tackling them at every turn, looking for and meeting challenges and finding ways to help others where ever he can. He becomes loveable and everything changes for him — even falling in love.

2. Lead Characters
Transformational character – Phil Connors – Weatherman Change Agent – Rita, his producer
The oppression – The boring job with no upward mobility.

3. Connection with Audience
We find his biting sarcasm funny and can relate to being stuck in society.

Relatability

– He feels stuck in his job

– He looks down on the people he works with

– Life is a pain in the ass sometimes and often gets in the way of plans

– And is very repetitive. Same old same old

– Gratification is damn hard to come by

– And doesn’t live up to expectations

– I can’t get no satisfaction

– We all wish we could get second chances and do-overs

Intrigue

– He gets seemingly stuck in a time warp where the same day repeats itself ad infinatum

– Although he is freaked about the repetition —

– He starts to use it to improve the outcomes his sins and missteps of the

previous day

– He uses the memories of the previous day to his advantage, even to the point

of impressing his love interest with his God like clairvoyance of things he

couldn’t possibly have known

– Even though he doesn’t initially succeed, he doesn’t give up and tries new

tacks

– He doesn’t fully succeed until he realizes the overall mistake of not just being

a loving, enlightened person. 4. Old Ways Versus New Way

Old — Life is a pain and people are stupid bores.

New — Life is wonderful and is what you make of it. Take the consequences of your actions as they come. Don’t worry about the outcome.

5. Gradient of Change

Transformation: Phil must go from a grumpy sarcastic putz to an all-loving person who’s glad to be here.

– He sees himself as stuck

– Life is repetitive and boring – Once again covering groundhog day for the 4th

year in a row. Same old thing, over and over again and again.

– He’s pissed to be back covering the dumb ass Ground Hog for another year.

– He goes through the motions but a snowstorm he didn’t prognosticate,

strands him in Punxsutawney.

– He wakes the next morning in the same bed to find his day is repeating itself

at every turn.

– At first his reaction to this situation is to dive deeper and deeper into his

curmudgeonly attitude. He actually gets meaner, out of frustration.

– He even starts to think that he is invincible and since tomorrow is doomed to

repeat, why throw caution to the wind without fear of consequences. The rules are out the window. He drives on railroad tracks, gets chased by cops and ends up in jail.

– Since tomorrow will just be a repeat, he figures he can eat what ever he wants, and then starts using the knowledge of the day before to take advantage of women and pull off a armored car robbery.

– He starts to get bored and actually starts getting philosophical and starts to realize that he really likes Rita and uses subsequent days to figure out what she likes and gets better and more knowledgeable day after day, and for a while he’s able to connect day after day on just a little deeper level, even when he

– But his shtick becomes a little too rote and she detects he’s not being real, and way too pushy. And we see that he can’t quite figure it out day after day, failing miserably and starts to become super bitter.

– He becomes suicidal. Steal a truck with Panxawtunay Phil inside, gets in a big car chase and with everyone watching drives off a cliff and the truck explodes.

– He then proceeds to kill himself in everyway imaginable. But waking everyday that starts to get monotonous.

– He figures out he can make her realize what he’s going through and he does.

– Now day after day he realizes that life is to be embraced and he tries to be a

better person in each situation he comes upon, He has made a real change

and really starts to

– An old man he has befriended dies.

– The next day he does the groundhog gig and waxes poetic, impressing everyone. He catches a kid falling out of a tree at the appointed time. He fixes the tire on a car full of old ladies.

– All his good deeds start to pile up.

– Rita is becoming more and more impressed as he becomes the most popular

and talented man in Punxatawney.

– Rita outbids all the other women in town at a madhouse charity auction, for

Phil’s services.

– The next day he awakens like so many times before and yet something is

different. Rita is revealed snuggling up lovingly to Phil. Life has finally unstuck, a new day has dawned and he is in a loving relationship.

6. Beliefs Challenged

Phil is ego centric, narcissistic and believes that most people around him are nincompoops. He also believes he is stuck in a job with very little future other than doing the same boring thing over and over.

– He thinks Ground Hog day is imbecilic and the people attending and running it are a bunch of unsophisticated, cornball hicks. He resents having to be there.

– He is stuck in Punxataweny. He awakens in the same bed and room as the morning before. As he Every event from the day before is repeating. He comes to believe that he is stuck in some type of time loop.

– He starts to anticipate and react to the things he knows are coming.

– Day after day it really starts to irritate him and it becomes a kind of hell.

– He fails to make in progress in any kind of substantial way.

– He starts to use tricks to get a different outcome, knowing what he knows

from the “day before”.

– He realizes that he has feelings for the very sweet, positive and fetching, Rita.

– As he gets close to building a relationship with Rita and ultimately failing, he

comes to realize eventually that he has to change.

– However his frustration starts to build as he tries to improve as a human

being and things day after day don’t work out, he instead begins to screw up in a very self-destructive way. He basically gives up and lets himself go, driving more than wildly, kidnapping the Ground Hog, stealing a truck and driving it off a cliff.

– Since that doesn’t work (he comes back day after day) he starts dreaming up different ways to commit suicide. This again doesn’t work .

– He finally decides that the only way (that he hasn’t thought ofis to become a better human being. He takes piano lessons (Rita told him she wanted a man who plays an instrument) and other things such as being compassionate to others.

– This doesn’t work out instantly (Rita senses he isn’t sincere). Finally he accepts things as they are and learns to go with the flow with expectations of success and things turn around and he is successful.

7. PROFOUND MOMENTS

– The first time he wakes up and realizes that yesterday is being repeated. It is still Ground Hog Day.

– The pencil he broke the night before is whole when he wakes up.

– He decides to press his luck and test the theory the it doesn’t matter what he does, by driving on the Railroad Tracks and and getting involved a car chase.

– After several days and attempts, he learns more about Rita and starts to make a connection with her, by discovering and cataloguing all her likes and dislikes. But then he is too pushy and subsequently tries too hard and blows it with her. Failing over and over again.

– He becomes more and more bitter at all his failures.

8. PROFOUND DIALOGUE

– He asks the drunks at the bowling alley, “What would you do if you were

stuck in one place and nothing that you did mattered?”

– PHIL — “Let me ask you guys a question, what if there were no tomorrow?”

– GUS — “That would mean there would be no consequences, there would be

no hangovers, we could do whatever we wanted.”

– PHIL —“That’s true, we could do whatever we wanted.”

– PHIL —“It’s the same thing you’re whole life, clean up your room, stand up

straight, pick up your feet, take it like a man, be nice to your sister. Don’t mix

beer and wine, ever. Oh yeah, don’t drive on the railroad tracks.

– GUS — “That’s one I happen to agree with.”

– PHIL — “I’m not going to live be their rules anymore. You make choices and

you live with them. –

– RITA — “The wretch, concentered all in self, living shall forfeit fair renown and doubly dying shall go down to the vile dust from whence he sprung, unwept, un-honored and unsung”. Sir Walter Scott. What you don’t like poetry.

– PHIL — (laughing) “I love poetry, I just thought that was Willard Scott. What you think I’m acting like this because I’m egocentric?

– RITA — “I know your egocentric. It’s you’re defining characteristic.” –

– RITA — “I’m just amazed, and I’m not easily amazed”

– PHIL — “ About what?”

– RITA —“How you can start a day with one kind of expectation and end up so completely different.

– PHIL —“ Well do you like the way this day is turning out.”

– RITA — “ I like it very much. It’s a perfect day. You couldn’t have planned a

day like this.

– PHIL — “Well you can, it just takes an awful lot of work. Come on in I want to show you this one thing.”

– RITA — “I don’t think I should, Phil.”

– PHIL — “Oh, I don’t think you should either. That’s’ why I’m just gonna show

you this one thing and kick you right out.”

Phil is super turned on and tries to impress himself on her.

– RITA — “ No really Phil, I’m tired. We can see each other tomorrow.

– PHIL — “No. Tonight, It’s got to be tonight.”

– RITA — “No, Phil, really.

– PHIL — “Come on, just stay for a while. And I you like it you can stay for a

while longer.”

– RITA — “Let’s not spoil it, okay?”

– PHIL — “ I’m not spoiling it. I don’t want to spoil it either.”

– RITA — “You know I can’t stay with you.”

– PHIL — “Why not. I love you.”

– RITA — “ You love me? You don’t even know me.”

– PHIL — “Oh, I know you. I know you.”

– RITA — “Oh, no. I can’t believe I fell for this. This whole day has just been one

long set up.”

– PHIL — “No, it hasn’t.”

– RITA — “ And I ate fudge. Yuck.”

– PHIL — “No white chocolate, no fudge.”

– RITA — “What are you doing? Are you making some kind of list or

something? Did you call up my friends and ask them what I liked and don’t

like.”

– PHIL — “No”

– RITA — “Is this what love is for you?”

– PHIL — “No, this is real. This is love.”

– RITA — “Stop saying that. You must be crazy. I could never love someone like

you, Phil, because you’ll never love anyone but yourself.”

– PHIL — “That’s not true, I don’t even like myself. Give me another chance.

– RITA — (slaps him) “That’s for making me care about you.”

Rita views a snow sculpture of her that he just did on the fly. She is beyond impressed, by this and all the other things she has witnessed him accomplishing this day.

– RITA— “How did you do that.?”

– PHIL — “I know your face so well, I could have done it with my eyes closed.”

– RITA — “ It’s lovely. I don’t know what to say.”

– PHIL — “ I do. No matter what happens tomorrow or for the rest of my life,

I’m happy now, because I love you.”

– RITA — “I think I’m happy too.”

9. PROFOUND ENDING

The reality of life seems to have finally worn Phil down and gotten through his dense head. Two things are at work here. One — You can’t force it. It has to be organic and real. You have to let it happen on one hand, and at the same time it is more than worthwhile to work at being better.

10. PROFOUND TRUTH
Giving up and sitting on the couch eating bon bons and drinking beer and after beer is not the answer. Love is letting go and at the same time caring for and loving yourself which is engaging yourself and your relationships with out dwelling on the results.

[Patrick Murphy]

My name is Patrick Murphy from L.A.

I have written 5 feature scripts and 2 shorts.

I hope to create screenplays that have more than just a great plot. I would like them to jump off the page when the audience starts to really engage with the character and the situation they are in.

I have been working in production and equipment rentals for quite some time. I have finally sold most of my lighting and camera rental company and I am semi-retired.