25 Raucous, Road-Trippy Facts About the Original 'Vacation'

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Four years after releasing Animal House in 1978, National Lampoon’s was in a rut. After two box office duds, Class Reunion and Movie Madness, the humor magazine needed another hit, so it asked Harold Ramis to turn things around with broad comedy about a family suffering its way through a catastrophic road trip. He did that and so much more. Vacation wasn’t only a box office smash, making back its entire $8 million budget in the opening weekend, but it spawned a franchise and, as of today, a reboot. Given the early word on 2015’s version of Vacation though, we all might be better off living in the past. So let’s do that with these 25 pieces of essential info about the movie that introduced the world to ugliest car in all of creation.

1. Vacation originated as a short story in National Lampoon magazine. It was called “Vacation 58” and written by an editor named John Hughes, who would go on to great things. The magazine’s publisher Matty Simmons thought the story would make a great movie and took it to Paramount’s Jeffrey Katzenberg, who turned him away because the story was too episodic. Simmons next approached Warner Bros. and the studio bit, hiring Harold Ramis to direct and Hughes to write the screenplay.

2. Ramis, who had recently directed Chevy Chase in Caddyshack, immediately knew he wanted the former Saturday Night Live star to play Clark Griswold. Once he landed Chase, Ramis set about changing the script, which focused more on the kids, in true Hughes fashion. Both Ramis and Chase performed uncredited rewrites on the script.

3. Beverly D’Angelo was the first choice to play Helen Griswold, but after reading the script, she says she wasn’t interested. It had everything a serious actress wanted to avoid, she says in a documentary included on the Blu-ray, including dogs, kids, and a role as the mother. After her agent convinced her to audition, D’Angelo and Chase hit it off and she took the part.

Watch the trailer:

4. After dozens and dozens of auditions for boys to play Russ, Ramis and Simmons weren’t satisfied with anyone and were in a state of “despair.” All of the kids were “too big, too energetic,” Simmons said. They then went to New York and auditioned about 50 more boys before seeing Anthony Michael Hall, who was perfect. Simmons insisted he keep the braces for the movie.

5. The Wagon Queen Family Truckster was built specifically for the film and based on the body of a 1979 Ford LTD Country Squire station wagon. Modifications included doubling the number of headlights and taillights, adding fake wood paneling and painting the car a horrid metallic pea color. After it was complete, Ramis wondered if the car was just too ugly to put in a movie.

6. Shooting the film required the 100-person crew to take its own road trip from Colorado to Los Angeles. The caravan consisted of two dozen trucks that drove 1,000 miles during eight weeks of shooting.

7. Imogene Coca, who played Aunt Edna, really hated to travel and didn’t want to audition for the part because she figured it would involve some. Her agent insisted that it would be shot on the studio lot, so she went out for the role. Her agent was, of course, wrong and Coca had to ride hundreds of miles with the rest of the cast. She was terrified the whole time, even hiding on the floor of the car when they drove over mountains so she couldn’t see down.

8. Ramis regrets the early scene that has the family drive through St. Louis and get ripped off by a group of black men. On the commentary track, he says it “dehumanizes everyone involved,” and he would not have included it if he was re-shooting the film.

9. If you look closely in that scene, you’ll notice there’s no driver’s side window when the Griswold’s nervously roll up their windows. Watch below:

10. Chris Jackson, who plays the pimp in the aforementioned scene, conned his way into an audition. While hanging out with his friend Howie Mandel, he called the production company and said, “Chevy Chase told me to call.” When the person on the other line said Chase was in New York, Jackson made up a story about how Chase passed the message through mutual friends Richard Pryor and John Belushi. Then he said, “They told me about this ghetto scene.” He didn’t know that there actually was one, but it was enough to get him an invite for an audition.

11. Ramis’ daughter makes a cameo as one of Cousin Eddie’s children. She’s the little one who “whistles like a bird and eats like a horse.”

12. Among the improvised moments in the movie are Clark’s unique approach to washing dishes (he wipes them and puts them straight into the cabinet), Cousin Vicki (Jane Krakowski) using her arm to stir the Kool-Aid, Aunt Edna’s bite of the pee-soaked sandwich and Russ putting his feet up in the car followed by Clark’s reaction.

13. Jumping the Family Truckster in Monument Valley was a dangerous stunt that driver Dick Ziker made even more dangerous by trying to set a world record. The crew drew lines on the ground to guess how far they thought he could jump and Ziker passed them all, jumping the car a total of 173 feet. Watch the scene below:

14. In Hughes’ original script, the scene where Clark is pulled over because he’s dragging a leash was much more gruesome. In addition to a long red line on the pavement behind the car, there was a bloody dog pelt attached to the leash. Ramis decided to forgo both of those touches.

15. John Diehl, who played one of the corrupt mechanics, is a Method actor. To get geared up for his part, he searched under on-set vehicles to find grease he could rub on his face. Then he rolled around on the ground.

16. D’Angelo’s husband at the time, Don Lorenzo Salviati, makes a quick cameo in the movie as the piano player at the hotel where the famous skinny dipping scene takes place.

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17. Christie Brinkley wears a flesh-colored bodysuit in said skinny dipping scene. As she said years later in the documentary on the Blu-ray, she had a pretty good career based on people imagining what was under her swimsuit and she didn’t want to ruin that.

18. The original ending had the Griswold’s tracking Roy Walley down at his house after finding Walley World closed. Clark forced him, at gunpoint, to sing and dance so the family got the entertainment it was after.

19. Test audiences hated the ending. Ramis says they laughed throughout the movie and were silent for the final 20 minutes. His theory was that they had invested so much in getting to Walley World that they were disappointed when it didn’t happen. So producers secured $500,000 for re-shoots.

20. The voice of Marty Moose, heard from the 6-foot animatronic figure outside of Walley World, was provided by Ramis himself.

21. The image of Walley World that the Griswolds gaze upon from the parking lot is actually a matte painting. The scene was shot in the parking lot of Santa Anita Park. The roller coasters, meanwhile, were inside of Six Flags Magic Mountain.

22. Ramis asked John Candy to step in for the re-shoots and play the role of the Walley World security guard. The two had previously worked together on SCTV and Ramis wanted Candy to play the security guard like he played Paul Fistinyourface, a surly bully he played on SCTV.

23. If you look closely at the ending of the film — which was shot around eight months after the rest of it — you’ll notice that Hall was about three inches taller and had some new pimples. Meanwhile Dana Barron, who played Audrey, was, as she says in the commentary, about 10 pounds heavier.

24. The roller coaster riding sequence near the end of the movie was quite the experience for several of the actors. D’Angelo didn’t want to ride, so her double stood in for her in many shots. Barron took anti-motion sickness pills to cope. And Candy was so big that Hall was the only actor who would squeeze next to him, resulting in a pretty uncomfortable ride for all parties.

25. Ramis wanted Fleetwood Mac to write the movie’s main theme, but the group was not in a good place when the studio approached them. Band member Lindsey Buckingham, however, took the gig and produced the iconic “Holiday Road.”