The Less-Than-Lavish Premiere

The Scene: Thursday’s benefit premiere of Columbia’s “Groundhog Day” at Westwood’s Village theater. A reception followed. All concerned acknowledge this wasn’t a lavish event. It was a low-budget affair and, in a way, appropriately so. This was to a full-blown premiere what Groundhog Day is to Christmas.

Who Was There: The film’s star, Andie MacDowell; co-stars Chris Elliott and Stephen Tobolowsky; director Harold Ramis, studio execs Mark Canton, Sid Ganis and Michael Nathanson, plus 1,300 guests including Rodney Dangerfield, Virginia Madsen, Catherine O’Hara, Mimi Rogers and Danielle Alexandra. The film’s other star, Bill Murray, opted not to come, which prompted one guest to remark, “Bill Murray didn’t stick his head out, so there will be six more weeks of winter at Columbia.”

The Absent Star: Murray has a well-deserved reputation for being a loose cannon. “He’s a force of nature,” said Ramis. “(Dan) Aykroyd calls him the Murricane. That’s what people love about Bill. They see the anarchy in his eyes and know he’s capable of doing anything.”

The Buzz: The film could have used a different title. It’s more an oddball romantic-comedy-with-a-moral than the Bill Murray/”Caddyshack”/rodent-killer movie the name implies. But it got big laughs from the crowd.

Fashion Statement: Andie MacDowell wore an Anna Sui slit dress with pink, knee-high lace-up platform boots, a look she described succinctly as “Victorian grunge.”

Chow: Mercifully, no over-achieving party planner came up with a theme menu. Guests were spared the prospect of seared marmotte d’ Amerique in Madeira sauce. There was wine, coffee and desserts, all donated by local restaurants.

Money Matters: Tickets were $50 and $75. Columbia underwrote the expenses and contributed financially. The net to the Scleroderma Research Foundation and the Turning Point Shelter was $40,000.

Quoted: “Bill got bit twice by the same groundhog,” Ramis said. “The groundhog will do whatever you want as long as you keep feeding it bananas. When it ran out of bananas, it started eating Bill.”