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- “Holiday Road” Why not start with the opening credits sequence? Just about every part of Vacation is worthy of inclusion on this list (the really racist scene where they get lost in “the ‘hood” being one of the biggest exclusions; I’ve also never liked the dog-dragging bit) and the postcard-filled intro is pretty special, particularly for the super catchy weirdly bark-infused song by Lindsey Buckingham.
- “The Ole Miss, the Old Man” Even if the cast didn’t go everywhere the second-unit crew did, the establishing shots of the Family Truckster driving by places like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis make this movie genuinely feel like a filmed road trip.
- Skinny Dipping in the Motel Pool. One of the more famous scenes in the movie, I just grew up finding it memorable for always trying to figure out if I can see any of Christie Brinkley’s naughty bits.
- “Daddy Says I’m the Best” All the more enjoyable now that Jane Krakowski is all grown up and even funnier with inappropriate dialogue (man, we’re going to miss 30 Rock), this brief moment – a quote we love if anything – is one of the more disturbingly hilarious in a movie chock full of early gross-out shtick.
Jul 30, 2015 · Chevy Chase desperately trying to dance in a cool way with a bologna sandwich is just one of many examples of how he was a master of physical comedy, and the split second when he realizes it's...
- Ethan Anderton
- The Movie Pretty Much Killed The Station Wagon.
- It Was Based on A Rand Mcnally Road Atlas.
- Chevy Chase Really Needed A hit.
- John Hughes's Script Had to Be Rewritten.
- The Production Saved A Dog Tied to A Bumper.
- Anthony Michael Hall Tried Peeping on Beverly D'Angelo.
- The "East St. Louis" Scene Was Actually St. Louis.
- Boris Vallejo Paid Homage to His Own Work For The Poster.
- Christie Brinkley Was Supposed to Be Rusty's (Nude) Dream Girl.
- They Ended Up at Six Flags.
Griswold’s plan to cart his family from Chicago to California to visit Disneyland stand-in Walley World required a durable vehicle. Obviously, he didn’t get one. The unheralded star of the film is the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, a station wagon with eight headlights and a pea-green finish. The car was actually a Ford LTD Country Squire heavily mo...
John Hughes was working at a Chicago advertising agency when he began pestering the editors of the National Lampoon for writing assignments. During a catastrophic blizzard in 1979, a snowbound Hughes wrote a short story, "Vacation ’58," about a Detroit family taking an unfortunate trip to Disneyland. Hughes laid outa Rand McNally road atlas from th...
Though Chase had made a strong impression in his single year as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, his film career wasn’t the runaway success most had anticipated. Of the six films he made between leaving SNL in 1976 and 1982, only two—Foul Play andCaddyshack—had been hits. Likewise, the publicly-traded Lampoon brand in film had seen just one ma...
"Vacation ’58" was written by Hughes from the point of view of Griswold’s son, Rusty, which he felt tempered some of the more outlandish moments. (Originally, Clark shoots Walt Disney in the leg.) But casting Chase meant switching the focus to the head of the family; while Hughes shifted the perspective, director Harold Ramis and Chase retooled the...
One of the particularly morbid gags in the film is when the Griswolds forget that their Aunt Edna’s dog is still tied to the bumper of the Truckster as they drive away. Appearing on Late Night with David Letterman in 1983, Ramis told the host that the crew was staying at a hotel in Durango, Colorado and saw a car begin to drive off with a dog still...
Hall, 14 at the time he was cast as Rusty, was flirting with puberty during filming, growing three inches before the cast reassembled to shoot scenes after principal photography had wrapped. Prior to that, the actor tried to make himself an on-set presence for a scene in which his onscreen mother, played by Beverly D'Angelo, is naked for a shower s...
Ramis expressed regret over a scene in which the Griswolds take a wrong turn into East St. Louis, Illinois, having their hubcaps stolen and the Truckster stripped while Clark asks for directions from a local. The area subsequently developed a reputation for criminal activity that wasn’t warranted. Though it doesn’t exactly soften the blow, the scen...
Fantasy artist Boris Vallejo was hired to illustrate the theatrical release poster for Vacation. The “king of the hill” style template, with Clark standing triumphantly and raising his tennis racket, was used by both Frank Frazetta and Vallejo for their respective Conan illustrations. Vallejo later stated that the Vacationposter brought him more as...
The Hughes story and script originally had Brinkley’s mystery woman cruising by in a Ferrari and flirting with Rusty. When the focus shifted to Chase, so did her attention. Brinkley was also supposedto strip naked for the movie, but refused; she wound up in a nylon bodysuit that gave off the impression of being topless while in a pool.
The film’s climactic trek through Walley World was actually shot at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California; Ramis had Chase, John Candy, and other cast members board a roller coaster with a camera mounted to it in order to capture shots on the rides. Dana Barron, who played Audrey Griswold, became so distressedwith motion sickness she had...
- 14 min
Clark Griswald : When I was a boy, just about every summer we'd take a vacation. And you know, in 18 years, we never had fun.
Vacation: Directed by Harold Ramis. With Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Imogene Coca, Randy Quaid. The Griswold family's cross-country drive to the Walley World theme park proves to be much more arduous than they ever anticipated.
- Harold Ramis
- 1 min
Jun 29, 2023 · The 1983 film chronicles the cross-country journey of Clark Griswold ( Chevy Chase ), wife Ellen ( Beverly D'Angelo ), son Rusty ( Anthony Michael Hall ), and daughter Audrey ( Dana Barron)...
Oct 4, 2012 · For Chase, the defining moment was a scene at the beginning of Vacation, when Clark is being ripped off by a car dealer (Eugene Levy) who has given him the bulky station wagon instead of the...
