Harold Ramis reportedly wanted Bill Murray to join his 2005 dark comedy *The Ice Harvest*, but Murray declined, reflecting the long-running rupture between the former collaborators after their difficult experience making *Groundhog Day*. The episode matters because it illustrates how a highly successful creative partnership behind films including *Caddyshack*, *Stripes* and *Ghostbusters* had become personally and professionally estranged.

Ramis considered Murray for Pete, the alcoholic husband of Charlie’s former wife, and also suggested he could play Gerard, Charlie’s cynical boss. At the time, Ramis said he did not even have Murray’s telephone number and had last spoken to him eight years earlier; Oliver Platt ultimately played Pete, while Randy Quaid played Bill Guerrard. The two men later reconciled shortly before Ramis’s death in 2014.