10 Things You Didn't know Vacation

[Music] the Griswolds are going on a family vacation to Walley world only it's going to be a vacation from hell in this crowd-pleasing comedy classic released in 1983 making it as old as May and directed by Harold Ramis and written by John Hughes national lampoon's vacation tells the story of family man Clark Griswold played by Chevy Chase who wants to take his family across country on the perfect family vacation so they can visit the wonders of his favorite theme park Walley world however absolutely everything imaginable goes wrong from crashes and spills to dead relatives where Clark becomes more and more deranged we're making it to Walley world starts to become a psychotic obsession for him in this comedy classic that co-stars Beverly D'Angelo Randy Quaid and John Candy yo let's all get ready to take a trip down the holiday Road a song of which by the way I won't be using for this video to avoid a copyright Fiasco I think we could all relate to national lampoon's vacation as I figured some stage at one time or another we've all been on that holiday from hell you know those holidays where it feels like nothing goes right well 10 things you didn't know about national lampoon's vacation let's check it out [Music] number ten it started as a short story as with the movie Animal House which I covered a few episodes ago vacation was conceived in the National Lampoon's magazine in the late 70s writer director John Hughes worked in advertising but frequently wrote short stories and sent them into the rebellious satirical magazine in 1979 he wrote the short story vacation 58 during an intense blizzard no less it was a fictional tale about a family from Detroit traveling across country to Disneyland where all manner of comical chaos ensues Hughes even got a road map and planned out the fictional family's trip the story is also in part made up of memories from real-life holiday vacations Hughes went on with his family when he was a child and so the story was published in National Lampoon's Magazine and was so successful Warner Brothers purchased the rights of the story to turn into a movie however before Warner Brothers got their hands on the story vacation was taken to another studio number 9 Paramount Pictures port that vacation was unfilmable vacation was produced by Matty Simmons who also worked on the National Lampoon magazine as well as co-producing Animal House before Warner Brothers brought the vacation 58 script Simmons took the short story to Paramount Pictures to see if they would be interested in distributing the movie however paramount had some harsh words claiming that vacation couldn't work as a movie as the events that transpire in the film feel to episodic as opposed to having a flowing narrative like your average movie does Simmons argued that it's a roadtrip movie built up of experiences and situations the Griswolds encounter in their travels and that's kind of the point it's meant to be episodic however paramount weren't budging and considering vacation would go on to become a hit we can only wonder if they were kicking themselves afterwards number eight big screen differences so considering vacation 58 is a short story and national lampoon's vacation is a movie there is naturally going to be a few minor differences and tweaks the main being that vacation 58 is a story told in hindsight by rusty Griswold the son as he reflects back on his childhood with the events taking place in 1958 where his vacation the movie is set at the time the movie was made in 1983 and isn't told in past tense but his current the Griswolds no longer come from Detroit but Chicago because John Hughes also in the short story the Griswolds drive around in a 1958 play muff Sports suburban six station wagon whereas in the movie it was a Ford Squire station wagon which gets dubbed as the family truck star unlike the movie where rusty along with his sister Audrey don't really want to go on the vacation in the short story rusty is actually really excited about going on this family adventure and the short story also features the Griswolds in a police chase and apart from those few changes the short story and movie play out very similar to one another however one thing that definitely had to be changed for the movie version was the theme park as in the short story the theme park in question was disneyland but the movies production knew that the disney company would not let their brand be used for the movie after all the short story even features Clark Griswold shooting the Walt Disney in the lag and the loss this is how the fictional Walley world was created although watching the movie as a kid in Australia I always assumed that Walley world was a real theme park in the States number 7 John Hughes wasn't too happy with the changes to historian Chevy Chase made a name for himself starring in Saturday Night Live where he became a household name and left the show in 1976 however despite starring in the ensemble comedy movie Caddyshack most of the movies he subsequently starred in after his time in Saturday Night Live were flops National Lampoon had similar issues the company had a very strong and promising start with animal I was then followed by two flops with class reunion and movie madness so in short both the careers of Chevie chase and national lampoon's needed vacation to be a hit so how old ramos came on board as director as ramos had previously co-written animal house and also started to get into acting - where he previously starred in the army comedy stripes ramos and chase reworked the script to make vacation more of a chevy chase vehicle remember how i said the short story was told from the perspective of rusty Griswold well the movie's main focus shifted to Clark Griswold to capitalize on Chevy Chase although Ramos would go on to say that he felt that John Hughes was upset that his script for vacation had been changed and altered from his original vision and in essence is supposedly because of this but Hughes turned to directing himself so as far as we all know vacation probably prompted John Hughes to being a director where the following years he directed sixteen Candles The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off number six the song switching mrreow I've always loved vacation even as a kid I guess it's because I used to love going on holidays with my parents and national lampoon's vacation brought out those fun feelings and memories in me while also finding the crazy misfortunes that happen to be really funny vacation was shown periodically on Australian TV during the nineties especially during Christmas time interestingly enough I guess that's because Christmas takes place in summertime in Australia and it's when everyone goes on their summer holidays hence more of an appeal to show the movie at that time and something I always remember is the mysterious driver played by Billy Joel's uptown girl Christie Brinkley who shows up for out the film and flirts with Clarke when showing on TV these scenes always featured the song I'm so excited the 1982 hit song by the Pointer Sisters in fact these scenes always stood out to me because I felt the song I'm so excited just went perfectly with these scenes that and it's a fun catchy energetic song however jumped to the mid 2000s and I get vacation on DVD and for those scenes the song I'm so excited were inexplicably replaced with another song one called little boys sweet now don't get me wrong the song is fine but nowhere near as epic or as impactful or as catchy as I'm so excited I would be inclined to think that this is some kind of copyright issue but what makes this case even stranger is little boys sweet as a song by Jun pointer who is one of the pointer sisters the group that made I'm so excited upon doing research I learned that I'm so excited featured in the movie statical cut and some early vhss but with later VHS and DVD and blu-ray releases the song was replaced with little boys sweet I read one online theory that it may be because the license fee for using I'm so excited may have been too high but are we seriously made to believe water brothers can't pay to use I'm so excited I mean after all I'm so excited has been used in other movies like Hot Shots - and The Nutty Professor but seriously though does anyone else remember I'm so excited featuring for our vacation and does anyone else agree with me that the song seriously needs to be put back in number five Griswold the destroyer unlike the movies poster for Animal House which had a real slapstick cartoon look it was decided to make the poster for vacation look more grand and epic and beautifully painted almost looking like an Indiana Jones poster as we see a sarcastically muscled up Clark holding up a tennis racket and victory while his wife and the mysterious woman cling to his ankles the fact this poster looks so grand and epic is part of the joke as in reality it's merely a movie about a family trying to reach a theme park but the scale of the poster demonstrates the all importance of this quest to the Clark character the poster was illustrated by fantasy artist Boris Valley Joe whom had done many similar style of paintings giving off an adventurous muscular sorcery vibe in fact Valley Joe took inspiration for the vacation poster from his previous artwork that he had made for Conan the Barbarian and I can't help I feel like this one looks very similar to the vacation poster what would the colors in the background along with the stance of the two characters and even the tears in there shirts are more or less the same incidentally Valley Joe would return to illustrate the poster for the sequel European vacation number for vacation affected car sales one of the reoccurring gags in national lampoon's vacation is the Griswolds truck star and how it's basically a heap of junk that keeps letting the Griswolds down as mentioned the car was a Ford station wagon and apparently adjustments were made to the car before filming to make it come across as even more unappealing and slightly hideous to look at casting a bad omen that this is not going to be a relaxing holiday although the idea of the Griswolds going across country in a crappy station wagon may have been a good joke it is actually believed to have hurt the sales of station wagons as after vacations release station wagon sales had drastically dropped and it is believed to be because how they are portrayed in vacation or at least how the Griswolds truck store was portrayed to which that style of car was replaced with other models like SUVs the irony is the car scene in vacation has gotten to become a pop cultural legend in its own right and even to this day still has merchandise associated with it number three the infamous lost ending there are some still shots featuring scenes cut from vacation like this one where the Griswold truckster breaks down and the Griswolds have two results of pushing the car but the most notorious deleted scene is the infamous lost ending where unlike the theatrical ending where the Griswolds arrive at the close down Walley world where Clarke buys a toy gun and forces the park security to open the rides his family in the lost ending that the Griswolds travel to the mansion of Roy Walley the Walt Disney inspired owner of Walley world where Roy is having a business meeting in his back yard where Clark with his gun forces Roy and the other business men to sing and dance in order to entertain his family to make up for the park being closed down when the police show up and arrest Clark but the mysterious woman played by Brinkley shows up where it turns out that she is Roy's daughter yeah we were going to find out her true identity where Clark convinces her to convince her dad to drop the charges and next scene involves the Griswolds on a plane to go home wearing Walley world hats where Clark's breakdown isn't quite over where he then proceeds to hijack the plane this ending is a lot more twisted and a lot more out there than the original ending but who knows maybe it would have been funnier the irony is the ending with the Griswolds traveling home by our aeroplane which leads to Clark interfering with the plane's travels was somewhat recycled for the ending for the sequel European vacation number two a Fleetwood Mac band member provided the movie's main song vacations happy-go-lucky score was composed by Ralph burns who previously provided music for all that jazz and urban cowboy and after vacation he would score the Muppets Take Manhattan however the piece of music everyone remembers from vacation is the song holiday road the song was specifically recorded for vacation by former Fleetwood Mac guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham the song definitely got more popular with the passing of time as when it first came out and only made it to 82 on the Billboard charts what probably helped to increase its popularity is the fact that the song would go on to be used in European vacation Vegas vacation and the 2015 soft reboot making it identifiable as the franchise's main theme I always found the song to be fun and exciting it kind of gets you in the mood for a holiday a holiday Road I guess you could say number one box office vacation [Music] vacation was released in July 1983 and opened up in the number one spot in the box office and it would go on to make over 61 million dollars on a 15 million dollar budget the movie also got positive reviews from critics who praised its style of screwball humour without going too over-the-top keeping to its limits and for putting national lampoon's back on the map after a series of flops the film has gone on to become a crowd-pleasing movie among fans and is now in cult status it's just an enjoyable movie celebrating wacky comedy as we see a family vacation turned into a vacation from hell something a lot of audiences can probably relate to as well as the character Clarke's misjudge optimism in trying to make it the best family vacation ever where in actual fact it's a nightmare as well as his optimism eventually descending into madness I guess vacation really is a comedy which you can say they don't make them like that anymore as evident in the 2015 remake of which one of that movie's biggest marketing selling points was Chris Hemsworth's junk buy regardless there will always be the summer of 1983 when the Griswolds took off on a vacation to Walley world and had a terrible but memorable family vacation okay I really like this movie although it's a comical family disaster movie it only always makes me feel good yeah it's a feel-good film I think that might come back down to the fact that we have all been on family holidays that turn into nightmares be that vacation isn't over-the-top exaggerated version if you're a fan of comedies of the 80s then vacation is a must and should be part of your top priority list of movies to watch anyway I'm in T and I hope they release a version of vacation we've I'm so excited put back in seriously guys it's a better song see ya [Music]

Channel: Minty Comedic Arts

Views: 463,725

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Id: ygCM-OvAFOg

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020