Tuesday, February 02, 2016

Bill Clinton watched Groundhog Day while in office – and lots of comedies, oddly


Today is America's favorite non-holiday that we're all still obligated to talk about: Groundhog Day! The classic Bill Murray movie with that name came out 23 years ago this month and almost immediately had its fans – including, apparently, Bill Clinton.

That's a clumsy topical segue into a new list from Gizmodo's Matt Novak of every film Clinton watched while he was president. Novak previously rifled through public records for a list of everything Jimmy Carter watched, and Clinton's history is even more fascinating for its variety.

Groundhog Day was one of the first films Clinton watched after his inauguration in 1993, which set the tone for the hundreds of movies that followed. Where Carter's movie selections were defined by New Hollywood classics like The Godfather, Clinton watched far more new-release action movies and comedies. It just makes a lot of sense to read that he watched Demolition Man, Deep Impact, The Big Lebowski, Fight Club, and the third Naked Gun movie.

Novak argues that this surprisinglye exciting list might reflect that Clinton used the White House theater for entertaining visitors rather than his tastes. We chose to believe Bill Clinton was a Bill Murray fan.

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