Vacation snapshots
Director Jeremiah Chechik looks back on his classic comedy, 1989’s NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION
THE THIRD INSTALMENT in the adventures of hapless family man Clark W. Griswold was a decent hit on its arrival in 1989. But National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’s blend of wickedly funny John Hughes screenplay, occasionally surreal antics and spot-on turns from a cast that includes Chevy Chase, Beverly D’angelo, Randy Quaid and a young Juliette Lewis has elevated its status over the years to bona fide Christmas classic. We asked its director, Jeremiah Chechik, to open the Advent calendar of his mind and share what was inside.
THE ORIGINS
A music-video director then seeking to jump into features, Chechik was sent a pile of scripts by Warner Bros., in the middle of which was John Hughes’ Christmas Vacation (Hughes wrote the first three Vacations, but never directed any of the films). “I’d never made a comedy, and the script was just hilarious,” says Chechik. “I thought I’d plunge in and channel the likes of Leo Mccarey and Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder and Howard Hawks. If those guys can make broad, silly comedies, I can too.”
THE CREDITS
The film starts with an animated credits sequence, in which Santa Claus endures a series of mishaps as he tries to deliver presents to the Griswold family home, all accompanied by the film’s bespoke theme,
Mavis Staples’ ‘Christmas Vacation’. “I always wanted animated credits because I wanted to set the tone as a kind of fantasy. Warners were like, ‘Animated titles are really expensive, we don’t want to spend the money.’” So Chechik found a traditional song, but sung by a guy who “was about 100 years old and had lost his teeth, so it was mumbly and obscure and weird” and added it to a set of credits that were black-and-white and French. “And they looked at it and went, ‘You know, an animated sequence sounds great!’”
THE SLED
Even though it does end with an armed siege, Christmas Vacation is a comparatively grounded comedy. Except for the sequence in which Clark takes his family sledding and, aided by a new lubricant that his company has been working on, takes off downhill at about the speed of sound. “The small moments are there for the audience to relax and lower their defences,” says the director, who admits that he took an intellectual, methodical approach to the comedy. “And then you hit them with a sledgehammer and a tonal shift, so that when something as silly as a runaway sled happens, they wake up in a whole other universe.”
THE SCENE-STEALER
“Working with Randy is crazy town, in the most fabulous way,” laughs Chechik. Randy Quaid’s Cousin Eddie had cameoed in the original Vacation, but he turns it up a notch or ten here, stampeding through every scene and damn near walking away with the movie.“clark was really nuts, but he’s keeping it in check. But Randy was all in, all the time. Chevy loved Randy’s character, and they balanced really nicely. One of my favourite scenes is between Clark and Eddie in the living room, and Eddie touches this windmill thing and it collapses. That wasn’t in the script. I had that put there because I wanted it to collapse.”
THE RANT
Even Cousin Eddie’s antics can’t wrestle the spotlight away from Chase, who gives one of his best performances as Clark, struggling to hold it together as his Christmas is beset by idiots, ill-fortune, and squirrels. There are world-class pratfalls and japery, but it’s his verbal dexterity that takes the family-sized
tin of biscuits at the end when, tipped over the edge by a shitty Christmas bonus, he embarks on an epic diatribe about his “brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless” boss. “I remember that it was super-long, but Chevy had it down,” says Chechik. “We just ripped through it, because part of it was getting that energy out.”
THE LIGHTS
For all its slapstick and buffoonery, Christmas Vacation is a far sweeter confection than its predecessors. At its core, it’s a warmhearted tale about a dad doing his level best to deliver the perfect family Christmas, as illustrated in the sequence where he tries to turn on the 25,000 lights with which he has bedecked his home. “In the very first test screening, the scene that really shifted for me was this scene,” says Chechik. “So, Clark’s trying to plug in the lights and nothing happens. And the entire audience groaned. And that was the moment I knew I had a hit movie, because I realised, it’s not about the jokes. People are really into what Clark is trying to do for the love of his family.” CHRIS HEWITT NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DIGITAL