The story centers around Clark Griswold (played by Chevy Chase), his wife (played Beverly D'Angelo), son (played by Johnny Galecki), and daughter (played by Juliette Lewis). Clark tries everything to make this the best Christmas ever for all of them. However as more family visits and everything that can go wrong goes wrong, this makes it a much harder task than he thought.
John Hughes had written a Christmas story for the magazine National Lampoon. Executive producer Matty Simmons, loved this story and wanted to make a movie based off it. After the success of National Lampoon's Vacation, he wanted this to be the next vacation movie. It took several years of pitching to get Warner Brothers sold on the idea and European Vacation was made before this. When it was final sold, John Hughes (who also produced this movie) was working on Uncle Buck. Because understandably Warner Brothers wanted the film released by Christmas time, shooting began three days after Uncle Buck was completed.
Christmas Vacation was the first feature film directed by Jeremiah Chechik, who had worked on TV commercials before. He would later direct Benny and Joon. This was definitely a fantastic debut.
For the scene with the squirrel in the tree, a animal trainer and a trained squirrel were brought in. However the squirrel died before the shoot (Animal Trainer: Ya know, they don't live that long). Because of this an untrained squirrel was used. The director for some reason recalled this being a chaotic day of shooting. Diane Ladd, who played Clark's mother remembered the director telling her to get closer to the squirrel, and the animal trainer telling her to stay as far away from it as she could.
This film is fantastic. It is very funny. The humor is timed perfectly and will never date. What makes the comedy work is that it comes from simple understandable situations. It may go over the top, but it always has a foundation in our own Christmas memories. Because of this the film is pure Christmas. It is impossible for me to watching this film without remembering my own Christmas memories.
By the way for my fellow cartoon fans, Aunt Betheny is played by Mae Questel, who was the voice of Betty Boop and Olive Oyl for many years.
-Michael J. Ruhland
Resources Used
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/untold-story-of-national-lampoons-christmas-vacation-20141222
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