The Rewatchables - ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan
Episode Date: August 8, 2023The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan pack up the station wagon and head to Walley World to rewatch Harold Ramis’s 1983 classic ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation,’ starring Chevy ...Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, and Anthony Michael Hall. Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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The rewatch of us is brought to you by the Ringer podcast network where you can find
not only higher learning with Van Lathen, but you can find them in the
Ring or Verse,
doing the Midnight Boys.
And Prestige TV,
a little bit there too.
Yeah, hijack.
One of the greatest shows
ever made.
Hijack.
How do they do
seven seasons
hijack?
Can you just keep
getting hijacked?
Would you rather
see Idris Elba
keep getting hijacked
on planes
or should he get
hijacked on
different modes of
transportation?
Oh, like a train
the next one?
Crew ship.
They did it with Die Hard
and I bought into it
until like Diehard 5
was like, all right,
this can't keep happening
in this guy.
Chris Ryan is here as well.
Yeah.
A long time ago,
almost 299 movies ago
we did the first rewatchable
and now we're back
this is the 300th
I thought about doing 300
for the 300
but I don't really like that movie
I thought it would be weird
that would be a one-joke bit
we're doing an all-time classic
National Lampoon's Vacation
which came out 40 years ago
for vacation bill
for vacation bill and it's next
Russ your feet Russ
Russ Russ
this summer
when you're
Think vacation. Think National Lampoon's vacation.
See the real America.
Hey, underpants.
Hey, yellow.
Look!
It's friendly.
I'm okay. I'm okay.
Don't you want to look at the Grand Canyon?
It's educational.
And most of all, it's fun.
The dog went on the picnic basket.
Basket.
Let Chevy Chase.
Beverly DeAngelo.
Margeen Coco.
Imogene Koeh.
Randy Quay.
John Candy.
And Christy Brinkley.
Well, are you going to go for it?
This is crazy.
This is crazy.
This is crazy.
Take you for a ride.
This summer when you think vacation.
Think national lampoons.
Vacation.
Vacation.
Better check under the hood.
One of the reasons we're doing this, 40th anniversary,
300-free-watchable movie that we've done,
but also sets up Christmas vacation for Christmas.
Wait, you can't do Christmas vacation before doing National Lampoos vacation.
Should we go to Paris in between and do European in Paris?
I mean, I could be talked into it.
My arm could be twisted.
Van, you love this movie, I think the most out of the three of us?
It might be a tie because this is a top 20 for me.
I really, really love the movie.
Christmas vacation.
probably watch more just because
it's a tradition.
It's the best Christmas movie. It's the best Christmas movie.
Yeah.
To me, I'm not saying that this is the funniest movie ever made.
I'm not saying that.
But what I am saying is
joke for joke, scene for scene,
funny stuff happening,
it's so dense.
This is a movie that is like dense with comedy.
Something funny is always happening.
He's talking to Russ.
His glasses are falling off.
You know what I mean?
Like something is always, there's always comedy.
There's no P-Brick.
Yeah.
Right.
It just hums.
From the beginning all the way to the end, you're getting sometimes really devastating
obvious comedy and sometimes like really subtle stuff that's hilarious, dude.
I think the comedies from this era from like 80 through 87 are the movies I've probably
seen the most of my life.
Yeah.
I'd go 80 to 87, but I'm with you.
National Ampoon Stripes, like, you know, and even down to like summer rental and the
volunteers and summer school and stuff.
that. But every time I watch this movie, I laugh at a different part. Like, Chevy Chase is honestly,
like, this is one of the great comedic performances. There's, like, not a dead part of this movie
where you're not like, holy shit, I never noticed he said that. Or I never noticed he, like,
like, every time he fake cries and he chokes up and he's like, oh, and then he just walks away.
Is there ever been anybody funnier than this guy? It also, I mean, so many jokes from the movie
that just filtered in everyday life. But the big thing was just the Griswolds and the concept
of a family going on vacation became,
like my dad's family, my uncle Greg,
who had a son and a daughter.
It was funny to me too.
Why was that funny?
Because Bill's extended family is just objectively funny.
Well, my dad had six brothers and sisters,
could have my uncle Greg.
And every summer they would go on these vacations.
And my dad thought it was the funny thing ever.
And we called them the Griswolds.
And our whole family called them the Griswolds.
Because it's like,
where'd the Griswolds go this year?
They went to the Grand Canyon.
But like every family has the Griswolds, right?
This family that goes, this is the way the vacation can go the worst.
Everything unravels.
But for the most part, I think, I don't care what your family is.
You're identifying with some piece of this movie.
And that's the genius of it 40 years later.
So did you ever do any kind of cross-country or long-distance car trip with your parents?
I did with my dad in 1980.
We did a baseball park trip.
That's great.
And we hit a whole bunch of ones, including the Astrodome.
Wow.
You went all the way down to Houston.
Oh, yeah.
We did flight.
We did some plane and we did some cars.
You must have done something, right?
We did.
I've actually gone Louisiana to the West Coast twice with my family.
One trip is legendary for the amount of things that went wrong.
That's the thing.
These trips never go ever.
Just legendary for the amount of things that we love.
You leave with eight people, you come back with six.
Yeah.
There's all kinds of stuff happening.
I remember watching my father dodge traffic trying to,
something fell off because we had, one time we were moving.
Yeah.
And so something had fallen off the back of the truck.
Oh, yeah.
And I remember him out in the middle of the traffic trying to get it.
And my mother going, leave it, Terry.
Yeah.
And him just being like, no, I can't cost so much money.
And us literally being crying.
Like watching and this is going to be it.
Watching this is happening.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So just so many things were wrong.
of those, right?
Like, suitcases are just falling off the car left and right.
There are so many details of this movie that are so perfect
because even if it's not the exact thing that happened to you,
you just remember bad trips that, like, they're reflected in this movie.
Yeah, you don't remember the fun parts of the trips.
Yeah.
I remember we used to go to Vermont every summer, and my dad one year
was doing the thing where you, like, leave the trunk open
as you bring this stuff in and out of the house.
And, like, one year it was just, like, trunk just got emptied by it, like,
completely robbed while he was inside the house,
getting something else.
And it was like, that was the start of the vacation.
And I think it peaked with, like, getting food poisoning at a Howard Johnson's on the New York
State Thruway.
But, like, there's so much stuff in this movie that resonates.
We're telling war stories and horror stories.
I will say one of the biggest regrets of my entire life was not going cross-country with
Rob Stone, who now you can hear in the World Cup and my buddy Jim Grady, they were Colgate
buddies.
I was supposed to be the third one.
They went cross-country for, like, two months.
They did everything.
And I didn't want to go.
And I was like, I was, I was dating somebody at the time.
I was, I don't know.
And I'm fucking haunted by it.
I wish I had gone.
And if anyone's listening under age 25, if you haven't done it, if you thought about doing
it, just fucking do it.
The time to do it is when you don't have like a big job yet, you don't have a family.
Like, just go.
When you're like 18, 19, 20, 21, just fucking go.
I've actually thought about doing it like now because I want to go.
I'm so obsessed with Yellowstone.
I want to go to Montana.
I want to go to Montana.
Like a mini trip.
I was thinking about just like drive to Montana, man.
That whole part of the country, you know, drive to Montana and hang out there.
We did it with Rember in 2013.
I mean, Rembrandt explained to America.
I was like, you're just going to drive around America.
And part of the reason I want him to do it was because I never did it.
I was, you got to do this.
He's writing, he was sending in columns for his black bear.
Yeah.
And it was the right time of his life.
He was, I think, like 26, 27 at that point.
and just went to all these different places.
It was great.
Did you ever think about doing it with Ben and Zoe?
I mean, it would probably be easier now with the phones.
But that's part of the fun is like you have to be engaged.
You almost have to say no phones.
Phones go in the trunk.
Yeah.
But I guess in this movie they had the headphones.
But I don't feel like they would ever make it across the country with us.
They would think it was like the seventh circle of hell.
You know, it's both longer than you think, but not as long.
because once you hit about 11 or 12 hours on the road,
you get into this weird trans to where like the road is just coming.
And you don't ever think that you're going to get to where you are.
You just ask like, where are we now?
Yeah, you kind of give up spiritually.
Well, there's two ways to do it.
Like Europe is like that too.
Yeah.
By hour eight, you're like, I give up.
I'm giving into this trip.
I don't know if we're ever.
But the whole thing that's funny about this movie is like, yeah,
they could have just driven from Chicago to Wally World in like three days probably,
but they do.
They're going to see the house of.
mud and Dodge City.
Right.
It's the biggest ball of yard.
Yeah, the biggest ball of yard.
Right. And because he's like, we got to see all this stuff, you know, and capture this
moment.
We did that.
We saw, this is, my dad would always say, do you remember when we saw the Alamo?
Do you remember when we saw the Grand Canyon?
I'd be like, yeah, it was all at the same time.
Yeah.
Like, we never went back to those places.
It was one time.
Yeah.
We went and saw all of those places, you know what I mean?
And it just, you go and see those little things and you get your energy recharge a little
bit like you're like oh my god it's the grand canyon and then you got we got like six or seven more
hours to l.A. Yeah. Whatever. I think now with the even like listen to Spotify and having
playlist and podcasts probably a little more fun than it was in 1983. Yeah, you don't have to do
in the green station wagon. As many hymns as Kirkland sings or as many show tunes. Yeah. One of the things
I love about this movie is like like Vain was talking about the throwaway lines where it captures what
it's just like to drive where it's like that's the arch 60 60 floors elevator goes to the top
and Russ goes can we go it's like nope just keeps driving uh Chevy Chase our guy
Saturn Lives first big star leave second season movie career foul play in 1978 which is a really
good movie and it's like a great Goldie Hawn movie some drug issues in there starting out late
70s. Does O. Heavenly Dog,
Caddyshack, and Seems Like Old Times in 1880.
Love that movie.
Which one? Seems like Old Times. I love that movie
too. Love. I thought you were
going to say, Oh, Heavenly Dog. I was just going to get up and
leave. But like, seems
like old times. They're great
in that movie. Chevy Chase, Goldie Hahn.
Charles Groot. Diane Cannon.
Diane Cannon, the whole
The whole crew. Is Diane Cannon in that one?
No, she's not. No, she's in, no, she's in Heaven Can Win.
She's in Heaven Can Wait. There's somebody else
good than that. But you got
TC Carter in that. He's... T.C. Carter's
good in that. Yeah. So, like, that
movie is so
underrated to me. So it's going...
It's going fine. And then in 81, he is.
Under the Rainbow of Modern Problems. Oh, for two.
I saw Modern Problems in the theater and we were like,
what the fuck? Yeah. I was like 12.
And wasn't that, like... Was Modern Problems the one
that was just like a horrifying, like, production
or something like that? And you could kind of feel the
cocaine easing out of the movie screen as you're watching it.
That's the toxic waste one where he gets special powers or something.
It's so bad.
Yeah, it's so bad.
And so it's like, man, this guy fucked up.
Never should have left SNL.
And then vacation catches him.
Kind of, he's a little older, is a little fatter.
It's not quite as handsome as he used to be.
But now he moves into this next phase of his career where he's got best offense?
Yes or no.
Okay.
Fletch, European Vacation, Spies, like us, three amigos all in the next four years.
One of the biggest stars in the world.
Bangers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I wonder whether or not he was also ready to start doing.
because like the caddyshack part is like pretty cool guy
you know I mean obviously it's a weird it's a weird role
but he is like more along the lines of like a Paul Newman
kind of like I'm just like a real like I'm the guy
everybody wants to hang out with well what did Sean say about him
in the caddyshack he's like the fucking asshole that you can't help but like
yeah and then you watch him in National Ampoons and it's like he's the joke
he's making himself the punchline the entire time
which basically becomes the 80s for him
leading to funny farm a film that I think we all like
I love that movie I always
looked at him as the grown-up of all of those guys.
Sort of because he was.
He was older.
Right.
He was doing the, I have a family type of comedy.
He was doing the comedy more so where he was like looking at Americana and kind of making
fun of it, like in Funny Farm.
Yeah.
That's a movie about somebody who's buying, I guess, their dream house and things just
keep going wrong.
He thinks he's going to write the Great American novel.
He thinks he'll write the Great American novel.
Those are different movies.
But he does write it.
It's just not good.
Those are different movies than the other S&L alums we're making at the time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, there was, he gets replaced by Bill Murray.
And then Bill Murray kind of steals his movie star slot, right?
Because he has meatballs.
They're kind of dead even.
But then Stripes comes out in 81 and then all of a sudden Bill Murray goes like this.
And Ghostbusters and it's over.
Yeah, and Ghostbusters is coming and all that stuff.
I love Chevy Chase, but the stories about what a fucking asshole he is is kind of become part of.
You almost can't talk about Chevy Chase without talking about that.
They say in this movie that I did a bunch of the research that somebody just wrote a book.
I think it was called Wild and Crazy Guys about, oh no, that came out a couple years ago.
He wrote an action hero's book recently, same kind of theme.
But the Chevy part where it was like he's finally kind of sobering up and moving into a new phase of his life.
But the reputation was this guy's a fucking asshole.
But for the most part, they said he's pretty good on the set.
Yeah.
And this was like 120 degree days.
And, you know, I don't think it was the most fun movie to shoot.
Yeah, I mean, they basically sounds like the production was the Griswolds where they're, like, stopping in motels, like, entire film crews or just, like, taking over motels so that they can shoot in Colorado or they can shoot in Arizona or wherever they were shooting at a given time.
Not a lot of great planning in the 80s.
Well, I mean, it's better than, you know, making movies at the volume.
Yeah.
Or everything is Atlanta and they're pretending like they're.
in Colorado, but it's pretending like they're in Colorado or something like that.
Like that part of this movie is like as they move on, you can tell they're in a different
spot.
Yeah.
In a different part of America, there's like a different sort of feel that you get from the
places, which puts the characters in different places and like opens itself up for more
comedy.
Yeah.
This is a real like, don't you think that this is basically goes back to the original DNA of the
The rewatchables pod though, where it's like, it's, I don't remember what order the scenes
come in.
I mean, obviously you can go east and west.
It doesn't even really matter.
But if I'm like, oh, did they, is Edna about to get in the car?
Or are they about to get to Dodge City?
Like, if I'm walking by and this is on, it's just like, oh, man, I got, hold on.
I want to see him.
Chrissy Brinkley's about to drive up next to him and then he's going to start sweating.
Like, I want to see the scene.
Like, this is back to the, like, I don't even remember how this movie really goes.
I think I forgot a big swath of it.
But, like, it's just always, like, it always goes.
It was on all the time in the 80s, all the time.
I started watching it, identifying from the kids.
And then as you get older, you switch and you become, you become Clark or you become the mom.
At some point I'll be A and Edda.
The way I am.
It also has Beverly DiAngelo, who had a decent career at this point.
And it had been in, like, she was in that Sissy Space Act movie that she won the Oscar for.
She played Coleman's daughter.
Coleman's daughter.
I think she played Patsy Klein.
she'd bounce around, but the movie she really, and she was in musicals and she was in hair and things
like that, but she was in this movie called Paternity with Bert Reynolds.
Okay.
Where Bert Reynolds, he's like in his mid-40s, he's running MSG.
Have you ever seen this movie?
No. He's running, he's running events at MSG.
Yeah.
So there's all these MSG scenes and Nick scenes.
It's good.
I don't even know if it's streaming anywhere.
And he decides he wants to have a baby and he meets this waitress, played by Beverly
DeAngelo, and she decides to be his surrogate.
but then they fall in love.
It's one of those.
It's actually a really good movie,
and it's just gone.
So I remember her from that,
and all of a sudden she's playing the mom in this movie.
She's a little young.
She's like 33 in real life,
but my son's big question,
because I made him watch this movie,
was like,
this woman's way too hot for a park.
Like, how did he pull this off?
Anthony Michael Hall agreed with him.
Oh, yeah.
She's throwing 98 in this movie.
Is it too unrealistic that she's even
mom in this fan?
Maybe the mom, but not the wife.
Because this is, we always see this, like some
bumbling, barely good-looking type of guy.
It's the ABC-Sic-com.
It's some unbelievable.
It's also a very, very prevalent thing in Los Angeles.
Yeah, I guess.
How is this happening?
How is it happening?
Yeah.
But, like, to be the mom, he probably is a little young.
But, man, we were talking about it before.
This is White Girl Rushmore right here.
Like, Chris said it.
I had to, yeah, this is, she is, you guys are not going to agree
because I said this before and I think Chris kind of made a face.
Christy Brinkley is amazing, like super beautiful, like one of the...
I was going to have this argument later.
I think she's harder than Christy Luke's like to.
Yeah.
I went there.
I had this to unanswer votes.
I was going to say that it makes it sound ridiculous to say either one of them is attainable,
but Beverly DeAngel is just more real.
Christy Brinkley is Uptown girl.
Like, she's just like not even a real person.
There wasn't as
unbelievably gorgeous as she was
and she was an icon of the 80s
and I even had the Christy Brinkley
calendars and the poster
and the whole thing.
There wasn't like,
you wouldn't say she was like crazy sexy.
She was more like beautiful.
She was wholesome.
Wholesome, beautiful.
She was like out of the Happy Days era.
Yeah, yeah.
The Angel was like fucking.
Sultry.
Yeah,
sultry.
Great word.
Like she shows up in Pacific Heights
a couple years later.
Oh, yes.
This is perfect.
She was in the Ellen Barkin zone.
That was just popped in my mind
Like an Ellen Barkin type of situation
Great stuff by her
So she had chemistry with Chevy
As did Anthony Michael Hall
And I'm gonna
I'm gonna break a rule
I'm gonna do this category now
I'm gonna do my version of the Stephen A Smith
Hottest take
I think Anthony Michael Hall is the greatest
Teenage actor ever
Wow
Yeah I think he's the De Niro
More than River Phoenix
Or the Brando of teen actors
More than River Phoenix or Leonhard
DeCaprio.
You know what?
I'm a resume guy, Chris Ryan.
Who's in this?
Okay.
So I'm a resume guy.
Vacation, 16 candles, breakfast club, weird science.
But raffles them off in three years.
So who's in this conversation?
Is Robert Donnie Jr.
In this conversation?
So people would say, like, Leo.
I don't think he was a teenager.
Leo, amazing actor.
John Cryer.
So maybe you wouldn't say he was the most talented teen actor.
You wouldn't say he was like the highest, whatever.
But just in terms of like, who did better than this?
If we were just judging this by sports, he did the best.
He's awesome in every movie.
Is Molly Ringwald not in that call him?
Molly Ringwald's in the conversation.
Playing Molly Ringwald in every movie.
Like, Anthony McAhala, Rusty is different than 16 Candles guy,
who's different than Breakfast Club guy, who's different than Weird Science guy.
Like, there is a little sauce with each one, but I think he's so good in vacation.
It's an awkward, you know, going through puberty, he's growing as they're filming in the movie.
But he's fucking hanging with Chevy Chase.
And sometimes he has to be
Chevy's straight man
in a scene.
When they have the talk
before Chevy walks away in the desert
and he's just like, yeah, dad.
Chiefs of beer, yeah.
So you're not with me on this.
I think that River Phoenix and Leonardo Caprio
are better teen actors than him.
But if you're talking about the biggest, I didn't realize Sean was here.
So what was the Lee Hart?
Shit.
Leo as a teen, though.
Like what are Lee?
team credit.
So Leo had this boy's life.
This boy's life.
What's eating Gilbert grape?
Romeo and Juliet.
Rom and Juliet.
Is he a teen?
He's in his 20s when that comes out, right?
Growing paints.
Yeah.
Growing paints.
Was he even basketball diaries?
Like he's probably like 17 at that point.
He's older than that in basketball diaries.
It's like 1995.
You want to just run down River Phoenix.
Do you care?
Are you just?
River Phoenix is pretty great.
Yeah.
That's a good one.
That's Stand by Me and Mosquito Coast.
Mosquito Coast.
running on empty last crusade
my own private Idaho
yeah all right I'm gonna give you again
little Nikita in there yeah little like I'm gonna give you
vacation 16 canals breakfast club
and weird science like it's a fucking murderous
row yeah he had a run he had a great run
he had a great run yeah I remember Phoenix is pretty good
so maybe it's that's why it was a hottest take
so maybe it's most successful
teen actor of the last 40 years
or you can say most beloved or something like that
I think Rivers movies are probably like a little bit more
I mean, they're not...
He's great in standby.
These films are probably like, you know,
the huge cult classics where, you know,
River's changing it up.
I'll put it a different way.
How many times have we seen the kid part?
Blow a movie like this.
Yeah, or it just doesn't work
or just completely torpedoes, like three scenes.
Yeah.
Oh, man, that kid sucks.
No, I'm, like, excited when he shows up.
He's just fucking humming it.
Like, he's on SNL in 1985 as an 18-year-old.
He's a cast member.
That weird season.
Like, the kids in Christmas vacation,
are liabilities.
And the boy in European vacation,
grown-up Russ?
Disaster.
Like, we never saw that kid again.
Harold Ramos, who directed
Caddyshack Vacation and Groundhog Day,
and probably that could have been it.
He didn't even need to work other than those three,
but also wrote or co-wrote from 1778 to 86,
Animal House, Meatballs, Cattyshack,
stripes, Ghostbusters, and Back to School.
I think this might have been your real father.
Yeah, seriously.
I mean, he practically raised me.
Yeah, he's like your surrogate father.
Like every day one of these movies is on in my house during the summer.
What a run.
What a one of the just childhood makers for me.
Yeah.
Like a memory maker.
And there's a moment when you, when it crystallizes in your mind that he's like directing
and writing the movies too, like somebody tells you or you figure it out.
And then you have even more of an affinity for him, man.
I remember when he passed, it was, I was like, oh, my.
my God.
Yeah, I feel like I was raised by him.
And I'm blanking.
Who's the other one from that generation?
John Lannis.
John Hughes, who wrote the script ironically.
But all that generation of filmmakers, right?
Like shaped how I thought just wanted to be funny.
Like what I thought was funny.
Lord Michaels and those guys.
And then like the Craig generation,
it's that all those Apatown movies and all the Aptel.
And I was thinking like, what if you're,
under 20. Who is, who are your, who's your Hald Ramis? Like, like, who's your John Hughes?
Like, I would say Danny McBride, but Danny McBride is really part of that post-Aprosop.
That's the Craig generation. Yeah, I don't know, it's depressing. So, dude, I don't know if those,
I don't know if things are the same, bro. It's probably some TikToker, right?
But it's also like you don't really go to comedies for what, like, like, one thing that's
really funny about all these movies that we're talking about from this era is that they're
actually pretty engaging movies and stories. Like, you are pretty engaged with this road trip.
You are pretty engaged with stripes
and whether or not they're going to get out of basic training.
Yeah.
Like a lot of movies stop at the concept now
where it's like, oh, what if this person got pregnant?
Like, knocked up's a bad example because that's a good movie.
But they stopped very early on
in like thinking through whether the story is good.
And these movies have like very engaging,
rewatchable stories.
Yeah, you know, something else is when for us
as being kids in that era,
we were expected to understand this humor.
Oh, yeah.
We were expected to watch this.
In the car.
Yeah.
We were expected to watch this and think that it was funny.
I think things now are a lot more segmented.
You have like a whole bunch of shows that are like just for people between 13 and 17 and 18.
Like summer I turned pretty.
Right.
And like kind of saved by the bell starts.
I blame saved by the bell for a lot of this because it was like live action Saturday morning programming just for like a specific chunk of people.
Right.
And it kind of you, some people, you weren't really ever too young for it.
but you definitely were at a point where we're too old for it.
But like when I was a kid,
my comedies were not comedies
that were supposed to make kids laugh.
Yeah.
They were this stuff and you kind of had to figure it out.
And you wanted to like sneak in to see it.
You wanted to see it, yeah.
So the screenplay was written by John Home.
John Holmes.
John Holmes?
John Holmes.
Whoa.
And John Hughes.
Let's check Bill's browser history.
What were you doing before to me?
Before the five.
John Holmes and John Hughes wrote the...
I thought John Holmes is uncred.
rewrite of all the president's men
screenwriting-wise,
like his best work,
but this is pretty close.
He wrote a short story
called Vacation 58 in National Lampoon.
And then it was from
Rusty's point of view.
And then Ramos and Chase.
Is it Ramos or Ramos?
It's Ramos, right?
Yeah, okay.
They rewrote it,
wrote it from the father's point of view,
made Christy Brinkley's character.
That was supposed to be
a 13-year-old love interest for Rusty.
And we're off.
They brought it to Paramount.
Rusty's like imagining her or he's like her place poster come to life or something.
Not sure if she was real.
Katzenberg of Paramount rejected the script.
Thought it was too episodic.
They bring it to Warner Brothers instead.
The rest is history.
Five sequels.
Can you name the five sequels?
I'll try.
European Christmas.
Vegas vacation.
The vacation joint that they made with the grown-up Rusty.
And you were just pitching me,
Abu Dhabi vacation.
Ed Helms.
Ed Helms.
Like, because what's his name's in that joint?
Yeah.
European Christmas.
The other one you won't get.
Christmas vacation too.
It was made for TV.
You know what is basically this movie is they just took, they just take this movie and just
remade is Weir the Millers.
Which has become like a huge like, like it's always on movie.
I know Craig.
Craig nodding happily for Weirther Millers.
Yeah, it's fine.
But it's like, that's just this movie.
I really want to wear the Millers to get there.
And it threw like six and two thirds.
innings and all of the sudden
there were guys on base and
the bullpen had to come in.
Sure.
It was one of those.
But it felt like the seeds were there.
And that's the one with the guy who plays
Adam Warlock now, right?
Like he...
Sudakis and Jennifer Anderson.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, oh my God, Jennifer Anderson's cursing.
Right.
Well, then what was the one with Cedric the entertainer?
Oh, Johnson Family Vacation.
Was that not, was that an unofficial sequel to this
or just a different...
Was it a rip-off movie?
Was it nationally in Poon?
No.
Nah, it had nothing to do with it.
It's just a rip-off?
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
It's like,
we gotta have our stuff too, Bill.
Can we have a vacation?
Well, I was going to say five sequels and then there's unofficial, the We're the Millers.
I mean, they got, are we there yet?
I mean, other people have taken this movie is kind of like a diehard situation.
You got your under siege is out there and your road trip comedy is like other people
have done it.
What else?
What else is adjacent?
You mean like what else is like adjacent from this time period?
Like they clearly were like, let's not remake vacation, but remake it.
I think the movies that wind up being like summer rental, for instance, the John Candy one that's
basically, like the idea of taking the family somewhere.
A little bit of Sunshine, he's even adjacent.
Captain Ron, maybe.
Kurt Russell?
I love that movie.
I don't know if I know that one.
Captain Ron is like he's got his whole family.
Martin Short got his whole family and they meet this irreverent captain
that takes them on these crazy adventures.
There's a whole original ending, new ending thing that I don't want to go into now.
We'll do it.
Just remind me.
$50 million budget made $61.4 million.
which doesn't seem like a lot.
And that time was, I was expecting.
It had a great opening weekend.
I have some stuff about the box office in a bit.
Ebert, no review.
Refused.
Beneath him?
Yeah.
Maybe not a Chevy Chase guy.
Maybe he loved it too much.
He said, I did find the TV show with Siskel.
And Ebert said he liked the first half better than the second half.
I guess I do too.
Pretty relatively dismissive of it.
See, I disagree.
You like the second half more?
And all of these movies,
the further Clark gets from his sanity,
the more I'm in.
Yeah.
When he starts really fraying,
because all of these movies have a Clark outburst.
Yeah.
It's like too fucking funny, man.
The further he gets from it is the more I like it.
We'll take a break, come back, rewatchable scene.
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All right, most rewatchable scene.
This was one of those where I just had trouble because I don't, like, what's a scene?
There's a half scene.
So would you put buying the station wagon in there with Eugene Levy?
You would, okay.
Now, I owe it to myself to tell you, Mr. Griswold,
but if you're thinking to take in the tribe crash country,
this is the automobile you should be using.
the wagon queen family truckster.
You think you hate it now.
But wait till you drive it.
I don't want to drive it.
I just want my old car back, okay?
I'm not falling for this bit.
No way.
Let's go, Russ.
He's really good.
He's taking the whole tribe across the country.
Davenport!
The start of the road trip
where we get Mockingbird,
which is really funny for some reason.
That's like a classic.
My parents are losing their minds.
already, what's going on?
My mom used to harmonize with songs.
Yeah.
And it would just drive me insane
because she would try to do
like different parts of,
of like, Joni Mitchell or, like, Billy Joel's songs.
And I would just be like, oh, my God.
The scene bothered me so much
because I can remember my mom used to sing this song
called Redeem.
It's a Christian song.
And we were getting a car.
Jesus wasn't eating his last passed over.
And I'm like, oh, my God.
Please, man.
Chill.
And it's grading.
This has the Wally World National Anthem.
It has Russ, your feet, Russ.
What did I see?
Coming for to carry me home.
Van der Vean.
What smells in here?
Russ, Russ, your feet.
Which is just a running joke.
At least with me and all my friends for a long time.
And then the gas stations grew up.
With the feet scene,
Chevi Chase said in the DVD commentary,
that Anthony Michael Hall just put his feet up
and they kind of ad-lib some of that.
Feet rust.
Yeah.
I have Clark falling asleep at the wheel.
Great.
You're skipping St. Louis?
Right after his wife gets stuck.
I didn't know when we wanted to do St. Louis.
You got to talk about St. Louis.
St. Louis is up there for me, man.
I had it.
You could have told me it's in what's age the best, the worst.
I have it in both what's age the best and what's age the worst.
Right.
I'll just tell you.
you that. I've aged with that scene where
initially I thought when he said,
fuck you mama, I thought that was like the funniest
thing of all time. And then
as the years passed, they're like, oh, this scene
is actually, and then now by the time we get
to 20s, it's like, oh my God.
But up until the invention of
Google Maps and Ways and stuff,
but up until then,
every single time I asked for
directions I thought about saying, excuse me, Holmes.
So here's the thing about the scene.
The scene is obviously overtly racist.
However, however,
like, I mean,
it's just,
But it is.
It is.
The dude that's talking to him is holding a basketball.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like overtly.
He's dressed.
The dude,
he don't have no ball shorts on.
It's amazing.
It's also the middle of the night.
It's the middle of the night.
By the way, he was the guy for the way Chadd out.
It was Reese.
They were like,
just here's a basketball.
And the kids go,
I wonder if they know the Commodores.
So they know in the movie,
roll them up.
They know in the movie that they're being racist.
They know.
that they are, right? Yeah. Yes. Which was
kind of early 80s. Like, you could
do stuff like that. Right. But there's
something that I noticed about the film.
Okay, so they asked the
the residence
of East St. Louis there for
directions, and they get charged $5.
Yeah. Yeah. And they think it's
so fucking crazy, right, that their
hubcaps get stolen and they're charging
$5. There's something to be saying. Don't forget hockey lips
on the car. Hockey lips the whole nine.
Fuck your mother, the whole nine. By the
end of this movie,
Clark becomes a criminal.
Oh, yeah.
By the end of this movie, he gets so desperate.
Like, there's some commentary in there that I think people miss.
By the end of the movie, Clark gets so desperate that he becomes a criminal.
So if you look at the totality of the film.
It's a journey.
A little bit.
You know what I'm saying?
So it's like, yeah, sure, they had something fucked up to say.
But then at the end, Clark not only holds somebody up at Wally World and takes a hostage,
He also steals from the hotel.
That dude's saying, this ain't even my neighborhood is honestly still,
like, one of the fucking funniest five things.
Go down there and talk to that guy and think.
It's not from the west side of Chicago.
This ain't even my name.
One of the other characters starts laughing.
He, like, breaks character.
He can't, he can't hold up.
But let me tell you guys one thing real quick.
And another reason why I kind of fuck with that scene a little bit.
I'm driving to a girl's house one time, right?
She lives down in New Orleans.
And when I get out of the car, everybody is outside.
Yo, what's up?
Where you from?
You from around here?
And I'm like, man,
how the fuck do they know
that I'm not from around here?
Right.
She gets in the car,
we go to where we're going.
And she goes,
yo, when you're coming down the street in my house,
you got to go slow.
Because, you know,
that loose manhole that you hit?
And it was loud as hell.
She goes,
everybody that's from around here,
they know to drive slow down in the street.
Oh, yeah.
So when they hear that,
they think either you the police
or you're somebody that's not supposed to be around here.
And I'm like, shit.
So the moment they knew the Griswals weren't from around there,
it was fresh bread.
Let's see what's up.
Harold Ramis said the St. Louis scene
was one of the most politically incorrect sequences he ever shot.
And that it practically demonized everyone involved.
Indeed.
I mean, look, I went back and like, obviously that's what...
I'm not saying it's not racist.
It's just, yeah, it's so funny.
Do they know the Commodores?
It's got like four great lads.
Clark falls asleep at the wheel.
I like when his wife's head gets stuck in the kids.
Anytime the kids lean over the back seat, it's just a home run.
But can we talk about that real quick?
Clark was going to get a blow job.
He was thinking about it.
While his kids were in the back seat, Clark is one of the horniest dudes.
It's really wild.
It's really, really wild.
That's nuts, bro.
Yeah. Well, just wait to have kids.
Be surprised.
The Dodge City Wild West scene.
Hey, tenderfoot. Move your chicken wings, turkey.
Clark, that's not nice.
That's all part of the act, huh?
Hey, underpants.
Hey, yellow.
I'm okay.
I'm okay.
I'm all right.
Is to me the underrated sleeper fucking hilarious scene.
I don't get her foot.
He's an orderly cuss.
It's the funniest scene in the movie, bro.
It makes me laugh the hardest now, 40 years later.
Is Teddy Chase getting shot?
Honestly, the apex mountain of the 80s?
Of the 80s.
He talks that dude for some reason.
I'm okay
It's all right
I know they love it
That scene is
The foot
Bro that shit is so fucking hilarious to me
So he just
And he's so hilarious in it
Where he's got that
I'm fucking with this guy
I kind of glow to him
Tenderfoot
Hey
Yellow belly
She sees this dude
This dude isn't fucking with this
He's like yo stop fucking with this guy
And he just
Shoots a gun full of black saddle
It's hysterical bro
Well we go right from there
That we get to meet Eddie's family
Clark's family
Yeah
Or it's
Cousin Eddie
Yeah
She's born without a tongue
Clark
She can whistle like a bird though
He's like
Oh my God
We get
I'll just say for
In the 80s
This is my favorite
Stretch of the movie
Because we got
The French kiss part
Daddy says
I'm the best at it
The kid working out
Is jerking offhand
Yeah
Yeah
He's too much
You have a poppy
Blow
It's all
No it's
Guy taught me something really cool last year.
You ever bop your blonny?
It's just like, what guy?
Wait a second.
A guy taught you how to do that.
Eddie said after I have the baby, I can quit one of my night jobs.
The hamburger helper, real tomato ketchup.
It is just seven minutes of beauty.
The daughter stirring the Kool-Aid with her bare hand.
Yeah.
Can I help you with that?
Please.
And by the way, it's just the, bro.
It's just the whole fucking thing, bro.
Dad says, like, you know.
Don't go show them your worm farm.
Like, let's go show your cousin's worms.
That scene was so iconic.
That whole stretch was so iconic that when Jane Krasinski became somebody,
I couldn't accept it for like five years.
Jay Krakowski.
I couldn't accept it because I was just like, that's the girl from vacation.
I can't unsee that little girl.
And then eventually she became.
That big deal, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
But even on 30 Rock, I was like, wow, the vacation?
The French kisser?
Yeah.
She's going to still keep going.
The Grower?
The Eddie character.
I mean, it's going to be no surprise when he wins Dion Waiters.
It's almost like we could name Dion Waiters after Cousinetti.
It is an all-time heat check.
It's amazing.
It's amazing.
When he gets him the white shoes.
He's like, I remember.
Craig, did you know anything about Cousinetti heading into this movie?
I had seen Christmas vacation, so yes.
Did you know you were going to get the origin story, though?
No.
What about the little girl born without a tongue?
Did you know that was kind of way?
coming now.
Cousin Eddie is a repeat winner of Dionne.
He's the,
oh,
it's,
the quintessential Dionne Wade is.
This family,
it's just unbelievable.
There's nothing like this in movies now that is this funny.
Is that Ellen's sister?
I had this in unanswerable.
So it seemed,
they said they were second cousins.
Oh,
it seems like the women had the relationship,
the kids are second cousins.
And the women had their relationship,
and then they had the aunt.
So I'm guessing they were first cousins.
Okay.
They were, yeah, their mothers or sisters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wait.
If their mothers or sisters, they're just cousins.
She's there.
All right.
And she's kind of, yeah, so she's their great aunt.
She's there.
Yeah.
I don't know families.
The dead dog scene.
Explain this, you son of a bitch.
Oh, my God.
You know what the penalty for animal cruelty is in this state.
No, sir.
don't. Well,
it's probably
pretty stiff. Oh, you
can't think I do this on purpose, sir.
Look, I tied him to the rear
bumper when I was packing the car.
It was very confusing. I must have forgot.
I'm very sorry. I feel
terrible.
Dude, this was the one that got me this time.
This is the one that I was like...
Poor little guy. When James Keach is like,
do you know what the penalty is for animal cruelty
in this date? Clark's like, no, sir.
And he goes, well, it's pretty
He's stiff.
Poor little guy.
Probably kept up with you
for the first mile or so.
Like, what?
And they're like trying not to laugh.
Jesus is so fucking funny.
He was like,
they said, uh, they kept...
He lets him off.
Yeah, he's just like, yeah, okay.
Yeah.
They said they kept fucking the scene up
because they just couldn't get through it.
Mm-hmm.
Because it's too good.
Uh, my wife was upset after the scene.
Was she?
Yeah.
All the dog levers.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We've talked about this, our changing relationship to house pets.
I still think, I have four dogs.
I still think it's 100% hilarious.
It's very, very funny, but it's just elite.
I love my pup, but it's super fucking funny.
They go back, and there's just a leash on the back of the car.
Yeah.
It's funny.
What's that rattle?
Next one, Clark and Russ have a man-to-man talk.
You know what I want to do?
When I was your age, my dad shared a beer with me, and I thought it was about the best thing in the world.
When I was a boy, just about every summer, we'd take a vacation.
And, you know, in 18 years, we never had fun.
Now I have my own family, and, well, we're on our own vacation.
And you know something, Russ?
What, that?
We're going to have fun.
That was the good talk, son, before they, Fort Clark goes on his walk.
The beer was empty, according to the research.
He didn't actually pound the beer.
They did a good job of faking it.
I love all the clubs.
Clark, Russ scenes are just home runs for me.
Good talk, Russ.
And them figuring out Ann Edna's dead is just a great minute.
A dead person breathed on me.
They're like, wait, what's going on?
Clark flips out.
I think you're all fucked in the head.
We're 10 hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out.
Well, I'll tell you something.
This is no longer a vacation.
It's a quest.
It's a quest for fun.
I'm going to have fun and you're going to have fun.
We're all going to have so much fucking fun
we'll need plastic surgery to remove our goddamn smiles.
You'll be whistling zippity-doodah out of your assholes.
I think you're all fucked in the head.
That's 10 hours from the fucking fun park
and you want to bail out?
Don't touch!
You'll be whistling zippity-dud out of your assholes!
He's just going for it.
I ran it back against
Don't fuck with me art
from Christmas vacation.
Yeah.
We're going to have.
have the hap hap happiest Christmas
and
Hallelujah Jesus Christ
Yeah
Oh hallelujah holy shit
I ran it back
They're of the same quality
Yeah
There's no winner
We're gonna need plastic surgery
To remove our goddamn smiles
It's just elite stuff
And then the last one is
Clark kidnaps John Candy
When this is all over
Your father might be going away for a while
And he's like
He has the whatever
He's like an an end and he might have killed
Mayaneda
You can't prove that rusty
What do you have for most rewatchable scene, Chris?
I think I'm going to go with meeting Cousin Eddie
and the whole sequence with the kids on the farm.
But I am incredibly...
The Wild West is growing on you.
I'm incredibly tempted to put the dog scene in there.
Like, even Russ being like,
why do you pull you over? And he was like,
I was driving like a maniac.
Wasn't your mother?
I have to go with the guys shooting the gun on the
The Dodge City one?
I just watched it so many times
that I just think it's so
hilarious every single time
I don't know if they speed up the camera
He's also, he's such a good pratfaller
Right. That he just does such an
amazing getting shot by a shotgun.
That's a good point. He really was like the Michael
Jordan of a craftless. Yeah, that was. Yeah. And then when
he gets back up, you're so polite to the guy.
There's only one that we, that I
think we kind of miss. When they get to the hotel
Oh, the bed shaking? No, no, no, no. When he's
when he is
cruising throughout the bar
trying to pick up women
into the Christy Brinkley scene
where he's just straight up cheating on his wife.
Yeah.
I have something on that.
But just his whole bit where he's just like,
she's like, I thought you were in the CIA.
He's like, I used to be.
You're right.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I used to be.
What's age the best?
The opening credits with the Lindsay Buckingham's
Hollywood Holiday Road in the postcards
is just really good.
It's just a good opening.
You're just happy.
You're right into it.
I just wrote this down for what's age is the best.
The early 80s, so happy and drug-soaked and innocent.
Just they made movies like this.
They didn't overthink it.
Some weird shit happened.
So we've been moved on.
They filmed up for six weeks and then they were on into the editing.
We're recording this.
This is coming out next week?
Yeah, Monday.
Okay, so we were recording this.
We're still in the Barbenheimer zone.
Yeah.
Just wanted to just tell people the way it used to be.
This was the box office for the,
the weekend that National Amputins came out.
National Amputs vacation number one.
Jaws 3, number two.
Oh.
Return of the Jedi number three.
Wow.
It was like week 48.
Crawl number four.
Kroll!
Staying alive, private school, trading places, clash,
class, sorry.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, War Games,
Octopus, and Flash Dance.
Oh, my God.
You might go to the fucking movies.
Like, I would go to the movies three times a day.
Private school.
They put Betsy Russell on the freaking horse for no reason.
She's just riding around Topless.
Love private school.
Not surprised.
Good talk son always makes me laugh.
Yep.
I used that with my own son.
I brought it down.
He has no idea because he was barely watching the movie.
1983, Christy Brinkley has aged the best.
It was Cheryl Teigs.
Then it was Christy Brinkley.
You might want to throw Farrah Fawcett in there
if you're going non-swim suit models.
But she was
the goat.
She was yokeage right now in the NBA
for, I would say, 18 months.
Christy Brinkley was?
And then she married Billy Joel
and people were furious.
And I actually think it was bad for Billy Joel.
Why?
Because it was like, how dare he lands
Christy Brinkley?
It was like a Rico Kasich, Paulina Poroscova thing.
And didn't he like manifest that?
Wasn't he like this just, this woman is amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They were such a staple couple for so long, no.
Beverly DeAngelage,
the best. The funny
exchanges like the St. Louis Arch one.
Young Jane Krakowski.
I must say Krasinski again.
The 80s vacation touches
like Camp Comfort
with two K's.
Camp Comfort.
The station wagons.
Yeah. Station wagons. They can have station wagons
like that anymore? Those are just gone. This movie essentially
ushered their exit from the market.
You think that they were just not cool anymore except for
my uncle Greg and his family? Well, I think the
minivan comes in soon after this.
And minivan becomes a station wagon,
much, much more practical.
I have one more,
I have a couple more, actually.
Dinky, the vicious dog.
Russ.
It's really good dog.
Take Dinky for a walk.
Really good dogcasting.
Yeah.
Roll them up is funny.
The vibrating bed.
And then I have one more.
But what else say it for which is the best?
Growing wheat.
She had our own little grow farm.
Yeah.
She was an early pioneer.
Oh.
Cannabis.
You think she owns a place in like
Venice and without a doubt
She got priced out though by legalization
Probably did
Because she was running her own situation
I like the snitching that goes on in the movie
When the cop rolls up
And she goes
That's the kind of things I think about
She goes yeah hold my purse
Because she got the purse full of weed
She's giving it to Aunt Edna
Yeah
Also all of the marital shenan
In this movie have aged
really well to me.
You're right. His shenanigans,
also the moment he's
out of his city, for some reason,
he gets like ten times
hornier with his wife. All of that
type of stuff age crazy
good to me. He comes out of the
sleepy bag with the panties
on his figure, go to bad, Russ.
That scene is great. He actually
tells her when she thinks that the
dog's a wolf, he says, I'm going to go for it.
I'm going to go for it.
want to go for it.
You have anything, Sierra?
There's just, like, basically something that I would put under the umbrella of, like,
Chevy Chase shit, which is, I don't think any other actor would do it, and it would be this
funny.
So I have a couple of examples.
Yeah.
Clark drying dishes, even though they have food on them and they have a dishwasher, and he's just
drying the dish and put it back in the cabinet.
Clark not knowing where the gas tank is on the station wagon and then throwing the license
plate across the gas station by accident.
Clark saying, it's living history, Ellen.
It's just so funny.
And I honestly, I wish I could make this my screensaver
is Chevy Chase walking with his jeans on his head
through the desert.
And it's just stuff that like any other actor
wouldn't be that funny.
That scene is hysterical though.
He's like, every 100 yards we pass a fucking cast station
and he's just losing it?
I love that scene.
Yeah, I don't know who us could have played Carpgren's rod.
I mean, there could have been like,
you could have said like Dan Aykroy could have done
or Charles Groton
go to have done it or whatever
but it's just like it's not.
Hanks maybe.
It's not the same.
It was like 1989.
In the gas tank is not the same thing.
You gotta be a little snide.
Like there's a part of,
yeah,
you gotta be a little snide.
Clark is very sarcastic
with his family,
sometimes short with them.
So you got to be a little snide.
Some guys,
some of those guys are a little too lovable.
But he,
yeah, as sarcastic as he is,
he's still holding on to this concept of
this is a really important trip
for me and my family.
Like he still cares about that.
To me, the way I look at that is he, she calls himself self-centered and egotistical.
And he is, right?
Because he's doing this to fill a whole left from his childhood.
And he's really not paying attention to the fact that no one else is enjoying this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know what I mean?
My last one's aged the best.
I did something about this in my book.
I'm just basically regurgitating it.
But it's super important.
The Pointer Sisters, I'm so excited,
which also appeared in the second best NBA,
it's fantastic commercial ever.
It was in the Miami Vice two-part return of Calderon
that we did on the rewatchables.
Is it in Beverly Hills Cop?
It was in Beverly Hills Cop, too.
It was in vacation.
And it was in the Say By the Bell episode
when Jesse got addicted to caffeine pills.
I'm so scared.
I'm so excited.
I'm so excited.
I'm so scared.
This is all in the span of seven years.
This is the most important song for pop culture of the last 45 years.
I'm so excited.
This is what is the age of the best?
No, it's just name me another song that's in five different things.
It's in sports.
It's saved by the belt, Miami Vice, Vacation, and Beverly Hills Cod.
It's crossing every audience you could possibly get.
Just amazing stuff.
The Pointer Sisters.
Yeah.
Like they had they, one of those.
like weird, not weird.
One of those groups that like was
everywhere, like omnipresent.
But when you start talking about
greatest girl groups ever,
people don't, I don't think I could name
a seven part. Yeah, there's a seven part
Pointer Sisters documentary.
He'd be like, what? Yeah. Right.
The neutron dance instead of the last dance. But like, these songs are
everywhere. Yeah. Do you consider
slow hand a yacht rock song? A little bit.
I think it is. Yeah. Yeah. I've had this
argument with people. It just is.
A little bit.
I think there's some black artists
who have gotten the shaft on Yacht Rock.
Well, I think Yacht Rock is looked at
as derivative of black art.
Bill's making up for not thinking
that the St. Louis scene is racist.
Yeah, he's like, I'm with you.
I didn't even have it in most rewatchable seeds.
I'm just fucking with you.
It's derivative, but yeah, a lot of that stuff
is Yacht rock type of stuff.
Sohan, definitely.
On my own.
George Benson.
No, I'm talking about, though.
What's the one with the Patti La Belle, Michael, Michael.
That's definitely Yot Rock.
Oh, yeah.
What about
100 Ways by James Ingram?
I don't know what that song is.
I'll play it for you later.
The Kid Cuddy Pursuit a Happiness Award for Best Needle Drop.
Opening credits?
Yeah.
Bliss Creebop.
Wow, this is gonna be hard.
Big Cochhuna Burger Award for Best...
Wait a minute. Hold on, hold on.
Opening credits is Holiday Road.
Opening credits is Holiday Road.
Then Bliss Creek Bob is in there after that, right?
When they're on their draft.
Little Boy, sweet, little boy.
This is not a conversation.
It's Holiday Road.
Yeah, it's Holiday Road.
Big Hooner Burger best use of food and drink
The Hamburger Helper
I don't know why they call this stuff
Hamburger Helper
What is hamburger helper?
You're the gourmet around here any
I know what's funny
Is we're fucking killing this podcast
Because we keep cracking up
And I keep looking over
Craig's just like fucking watching 60 minutes
He likes like he's like fucking reading
A New Yorker article over there
He's a Nevada occupation
I was confused about something
So he was making hamburger helper
But he doesn't have any meat
But that's what is in hamburger helper?
Oh, it's like hamburger
It's like a hamburger
Sort of like a breadcrum
Mixed thing, yeah
So you take the hamburger
It was actually like a delicacy
Like you like I was like a big deal
When you had it
But it's not a protein right
Okay
No you but the point is you need a hamburger
Yeah I got that part
They had two to help her part
I figured but yeah
And so
he's making hamburger helper
but then there's no meat.
So what the fuck is he doing with the hamburger?
He's basically making like a bread burger.
I guess so.
Edna, your helper's ready.
I have another
best use of cooking burger.
Is the full fucking lunch that falls off the car
because he doesn't want her to put it in the window.
New interior.
That's so funny to me.
The food is waitress.
This is so funny.
The peat on sandwiches.
Oh yeah
The sandwiches
Because he's actually
Using the sandwich
To woo Christy Brinkley
And then he spits it out
Great
It's already funny
And then they're like
Edna eats the sandwich
It's just like perfect
80s humor
Where it's like the last
Let's go one step further
It might be the best food movie
For comedy
Just the best use of food
In any comedy
There's just so much food
And drink in this movie
Yeah
Even the stirring the Kool-Aid
With their hands
Yeah there's like 20 things
Of that
Rust taking the beer down
It's great.
Denny Theves Benihana Award,
scene stealing location.
The Grand Canyon
can see it for like a split second.
He just puts his arm rider.
Gonna keep going.
The Great Shot Order Award,
did you go roller coaster shots?
Yeah, because I thought those were pretty effective.
Yeah, it looked good.
Those are great.
I don't know if I had seen roller coaster shots
in a movie like that before.
Like action shots,
when it actually on the roller coaster?
Yeah, there was a roller coaster run there,
late 70s, early 80s,
where roller coasters became like a real thing.
And it's like, oh, there's one in Cincinnati.
You've got to go.
Oh, yeah.
Well, this is Magic Mountain, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The Butch's Girlfriend Award for Weeklink of the film.
I honestly...
I don't know if there is one.
You could nitpick with...
Clark is almost too dumb sometimes, but I don't...
You could say Audrey, like if you had to choose one.
Because Russ does a lot more for the kids in this movie than Audrey.
I like Audrey.
I like it.
I like it, yeah.
I got no note.
What's age the worst?
Originally the producers
wanted Christy Brinkley
to appear naked in the film
but she refused.
I don't know which part of that
is age the worst
so I'm just going to say
you can take that
however you want to take it.
But 1983 me
it would have been the most important
moment of my life.
You know, Beverly just gives you
once again the 80s.
Yeah.
This might be number one
unnecessary 80s
needs to.
Just it twice.
It just does not need to be there
at all.
Beverly gives it to
just, hey, okay, we're here.
Why not?
The shower scene is, they just shoehorn that shit in there.
She's very comfortable with their body, Craig.
Christy negotiated compromise
of bra and panties before jumping in the pool,
and that's what they did.
Morewood's age the worst.
Clark's home computer is just out of like 1784.
Yeah.
And it's also like they can also play video games
on the computer.
Don't even recognize it.
The chariots of fire jokes probably have an age that great
for people under 35.
Yeah, I've never seen the movie.
Did you know that the music was from the, yeah.
Yeah.
I know that, but yeah.
Morewood's aged the worst.
This is for my friend Jim Grady who's probably listening.
Freeze frame in the VHS during the pool scene to see if you could see Christy Brinkley's nipples.
Might have been a thing we did in the mid-80s.
Right.
Because there's a couple moments where it's like, wait a second.
You think you can get in there, yeah.
Yeah, it's hot.
Yeah.
But, boy, we came through some harsh time.
Hey, listen, man.
Yeah.
Changing the channel for you.
You young people now, it's all your hands.
We didn't have it.
You really have to fight.
That's the Craig generation.
To do some work to see a nipple in 1985.
The Wally World scenes,
Anthony Michael Hall is taller than Beverly DeAngelo
because they reshot the scenes later.
David Robinson when he went into the Navy.
Yeah, he did a Dennis Rodman.
He grew all this height,
and they had to reshoot the ending,
and all of a sudden he was way taller.
Is that when he started kicking game to Beverly DeAngelo?
Do you want to talk about that now?
So apparently, like, he was like,
he was like, what's up and trying to sneak peaks
and stuff like that on Beverly.
I like it. What's the age difference here?
He was probably 15 years younger.
And she's 33 when they're filming it.
I'll allow it. Shoot your shot.
I'll allow it. Shoot your shot. You're 15.
You don't know any better.
Ron Burgundy flew to wear it. Best time for a pee break.
You can't miss any of it, man.
You could talk to me in a Clark's Desert Walk,
but I also like for it as the jeans on the head.
Bro, because I think the desert walk is so funny,
and then it leads into the hysterical scene
where he's getting the car fixed.
I just, I don't think you can, man.
It's hilarious to me.
Was there a better title for the movie?
Road trip, I guess.
The Griswolds?
Yeah, I guess you could do the Griswolds,
but I think that...
Because we call this movie the Griswolds.
Really?
Okay.
Yeah, just like, ah, the Griswolds.
Well, I used to call it National Ampoons.
Yeah.
That's it.
Best quote.
We've done 3,000.
We've done a million.
I just wanted to mention...
I have one, though.
Is this your idea of a good meal?
Dog killer!
And then, this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy.
The funniest thing that anyone's ever said in the history of cinema
is when Chevy Chase says, she's a pool waitress.
I was ordering some fish for you and Audrey.
Are you not kidding me?
I was selling here.
Didn't want to change.
And I see this person here.
She's a pool waitress.
He's in there with a sports
Illustrated model dog
It's over
You're cooked my man
Do you have a hottest take
You know what I think that
The Eugene Levy character Ed
He was right that wagon did make it
They did
You know
Like he was like
This is what you want to take
The tribe across the country
And he was right
I don't know if the sports wagon
Would have done it
It survived a 50 yard car crash
Yeah the wagon queen family truckster
I have a hottest take
P Green
Clark wasn't wrong
to at least go test the waters
with his CIA motel stuff.
His wife rejected him so many times
in this movie.
His wife looked like it.
It is true.
She didn't.
His wife rejected him so many times.
He tried to get it popping in when she was in the shower.
He tried to get it popping in the car.
In the camp.
He tried to.
Sleeping back.
He's in a loveless, sexless marriage.
No, he's not, man.
No, he's not.
And so I think that the reason why
she didn't end.
things is because she probably
realized like maybe you know what I can step up
on my end. There's just no fucking way if you get caught in a pool
with a naked woman and then when she's like
Park get out of the pool and he's like hold on
I'm going to have like a really close face to face conversation with her
yeah that's and then try to be like she was a pool waitress you can't do it but
there is a toxicity that I could bring to this podcast
where I could say he was driven to it. Okay all right
I love it van that was a great
hot take. Let's take a break
and do some casting what ifs.
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All right, casting what ifs.
This is an interesting one.
And this is half-ass internet research.
But allegedly, Kim Cottrell was the original choice for Ellen.
No way.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah.
That's peak Kim Contraal right there.
That might be a little bit overpower.
Is this around like Big Trouble in Little China?
It's like three years after Porkies.
Yeah, a little bit before.
Or maybe a year after Porky's?
When is Manikin?
That's like two years later.
Two years later.
She's like, she's.
I'm happy where we landed.
but that did make me go,
how?
They wanted John Landis to direct this movie,
but he was filming a Chris Ryan favorite
in American War Wolf in London.
Couldn't do it.
So,
because of Eddie's tongueless daughter
was played by Harold Ramis' daughter, Violet.
That's unbelievable.
She whistles like a bird.
He's like a horse.
She was born without a tongue.
So John Candy got paid a million dollars.
Let's just do this.
now. They do the original ending where the Griswolds go to Roy Wally's house and hold their family
hostage. An ending that has never been released, but Chevy Chase claims he is a tape of it.
Well, then there's another part of it, right? Well, yeah, so they go to the house. Clark points a
BB gun at Wally. Forces him and a security guard and business associates to sing and dance Wally World
theme songs and police arrive and get arrested. And then there's some rumor that the girl in the
Red Forrari shows up and his
Wally's daughter.
But that's been debunked.
And on the plane ride home,
the Griswold's realized they're on the wrong flame,
Clark snaps and hijacks the plane.
And that's why the last postcard you could see is them on the airplane.
Yeah.
There's probably not a great hijacked vibe in the 80s.
Yeah.
Yeah, you don't want to do that.
Yeah.
Much better now.
So they do test audiences.
What did you say about John Candy and a million dollars?
Well, so they do test audiences.
And the movie does.
Like the airplane part they hate.
So Ramos says,
it crushes, crushes, then
strangely quiet and did not laugh
again for the rest of the movie.
It occurred to me that they'd now invested about
70, 75 minutes on the way to Wallyworld,
and they really expected to get to Wallyworld,
and here we were denying the path full of trip.
So they're like, we got to go to Hollywood.
We'll get John Candy.
John Cady makes a million dollars
for three days of shooting.
They paid him a million dollars.
million dollars.
In 1983.
Yeah.
Cocaine, man.
$50 million budget.
He got one-fifteenth of it.
Wait, wait.
Okay, you guys got to help me with this.
Where is John Candy at in his career at this point?
Beloved guy you would bring in for a movie like this,
but they're also desperate.
And John Belushi's dead.
And who else would you even do?
You need somebody who's...
I get it.
That's a...
Am I tripping by thinking that at that time that a million bucks
is like a shit ton of money to pay an actor to be in a movie?
you just period. You're definitely not tripping.
But I would say it was money
well spent. I would say too. I would say too.
It's almost like the Jalen Brown
contract, which seems ridiculous right now.
$304 million. So he's on SNL and he's
on SCTV. That's like, that's where they're
drafting him out of. Jennifer Lopez
was the first Latina actress to ever get paid
a million dollars to do a movie. Oh, he was in
stripes too. That's like 14
some odd years later. I'm not comparing
the two movies. I'm just saying a million bucks. That's a
shit ton of money. Good for him, man.
Love that guy.
Buffalo Hannah Rubinick Partridge overacting award.
They knew and they let it happen.
Don't you call me, lady.
I come in here.
I give these things to you.
Give it all you got.
Give it all you got.
I treated you like a son.
You fucking stand me in the heart.
Fuck you.
Anne Edna.
Christy Brinkley.
Overacting?
Overacting?
She's just trying, her trying to act.
She didn't act.
She's just Christy Brinkley.
She can't act.
I'm giving her the award.
Some sort of an acting word.
She didn't act at all.
She was...
Are you going to go for it?
You got to give that to Aunt Edna, man.
Yeah, it's Ann Edna.
You got to give that to Ann Edna.
Aunt Edna was just...
She screams the entire movie.
Okay, fine.
Do you remember Ann Edna's other huge role, Imaging Coco?
No.
She was Jan's ugly doppelganger and Brady Bunch.
Oh.
When Jan was worried because as a kid, she looked like...
Imogene Coco
and it was like, oh my God, I'm going to look like you
and then they worked it out in 22 minutes.
Never seen one episode.
Best that guy award.
Well, Reese from the White Shadow is the guy holding the basketball.
Also, Audrey ends up dating Brandon Walsh on 902 and O for
the first six episodes of season three.
Unfortunately for Dana Barron,
I have just referred to her as Dana Barros.
For like my entire life.
She should have married Dana Barron.
Light it up from three.
I got, you know, John Deal?
The guy who plays...
Yeah, I feel like he's John Deal.
You feel like John Deal is John Deere?
Miami Vice cast member.
What about Brian Doyle Murray?
Is that Brian Doyle?
I think he's Brian Doyle Murray.
Dion Wader's a word.
Randy Quaid wins for Eddie.
I just want to give a shout out to Cousand Dale, Eugene Levy,
Dinky the Dog, and then obviously John Candy.
And Young Jane.
Is there a case for John Candy?
No, I think it's definitely Randy.
Cousine Andy, right? Okay.
Yeah. And I would actually, I think Eugene
Lee's really funny in this. He's really good.
All right, Van. Instead of recasting couch,
I'm going to give you 23,
all black cast recasting couch, go.
Okay. Um,
I did not prep you for this. I know.
So the lead in this
would be,
uh, this is not a Kevin Hart situation.
You guys got to help me. I don't know if we have
a straight up and down
comedic guy like this in that age range. I'm trying to think.
Jay Farrow
comeback movie?
I still have my stock from like 2012.
Jay Farrow is fucking amazing.
The wife is like Nicole Bihari,
you know her.
What if we do
Gerard Carmichael and we have
Can we get Regina Hall in this
and can Regina Hall basically be the Clark part?
We've done now.
Oh, the flip.
Oh, I love two in a row, but I like it.
Because if you bring Regina Hall in
to it. You got what she's clerk.
Right. Actually, you could, if you wanted to, you could
do Regina Hall. She's too old to be clerk or now?
She's a working woman. She's the breadwinner
in her family and she takes her whole family on vacation.
You could, you could
do Hawk for Jesus, but you could
flip it and you could have
I like this idea. Well, no, it was
Sterling T. Brown. Stirlingty Brown.
So you could have him
in the Ellen part, and then you can have her there.
The kids, we can get the kids from Grownish.
They're going to be cheap.
Sterling Brown and Regina Hall, I'm in.
I'm into it.
You didn't like my Gerard Carmichael with a, and it's a gay couple?
You can do that.
I'm with that.
That's even higher level of difficulty.
Woke, son of a.
But, you know, but you know.
He's still making him for St. Louis.
You're still trying to make him for St. Louis.
Bill's going to St. Louis on us again.
The question is, who's cousin Eddie?
That's the question.
Is that, is that J.B. smooth?
Oh, that's pretty good.
that J.B. Smooth? Is J.B. Smooth just the
go-to guy for any role like that?
He essentially was Cousin Eddie in
Kirt, you know what I mean? So the
question is, who's cousin Eddie?
That's really good.
Half-Fastenernered research.
So they avoided legal troubles with
Disney World by doing Wally World and Marty Moose.
They did make Roy Wally look like
Roy Disney. The parks
were San Antonio in Arcadia. You've been to that one?
I've never been to Arcadia. Six Flags in Valencia.
Yeah.
Did you go to, have you ever been to Magic Mountain?
Of course.
Yeah.
Okay.
Just asking.
Yeah.
It's not only have I been there, but there's like a good, there's a couple good stops on the way back.
There's some good ice cream place.
Like a Foster's Freeze type place?
Yeah.
The, uh, the wagon queen family truckster station wagon was created for the film.
Does not exist.
Hmm.
But was based on the 1979 Ford LTD Country Squire Station wagon.
So there you go.
Holiday Road reached number 82 on the Billboard Hot.
100.
You know, I thought that was
Loggins to like 2013?
It's understandable.
Yeah, there was a lot of
hard to keep track
of all those people.
So Anthony Michael Hall said
Chevy was the first person
to point out that puberty
kicked in for him.
He'd pimples and he'd shut up
about a foot.
Chevy made me feel goofy about it
and I was kind of embarrassed.
Asshole.
But at least he hit on Beverly DeAngelo.
Yeah.
And then Dana Barron said,
I had craft services.
I had meals all the time.
I found food.
So I went from like 80-0 pounds to like 96
and I'm little,
so that's a huge gain.
Michael grew up and I grew out.
And then everybody had a miserable time
filming the Wilder World.
They all threw up.
They all threw up.
Like trying to,
because they had to get on the-
They kept having to the rides.
Yeah,
the people were,
like, they are actually like really sick
and not having a good time.
The, uh,
Imaging Koka,
who played Ann Edna,
they think she had a stroke
as they were filming the movie.
So funny.
What?
And they filmed the scene that warden.
It's not the way you delivered it.
Because I was like, Imaging Coco.
She used to actually be in 1950s, you know, like.
Yeah, they filmed the scene, and then something happened
her that afternoon, and she had to go to the hospital and re-learned her lines and
finished the movie.
Like Mitch McConnell.
Yeah.
And then the family truckster, when it does the jump, there was a whole bet on the crew,
whether it could go 50 feet, and the assistant director won the bet.
And that's why Clark goes 50 yards.
or whatever it was.
And then they cut out,
originally Brando Murray's character
snuck into the tent.
And they decided that was weird.
In a moose costume, and then they thought it would be
funner if it was a dog.
That would have been weird.
Why would he do that?
That's why they cut it.
And then the family was rescued
by the two Native Americans we saw
and a camel rider
and the camel scenes apparently
just didn't work and they had to cut out.
No shit.
But be honest with you, it's just funny
that she said that we see,
these two other guys, but then we never see
whoever's on the camel?
We have no idea how they...
Yeah, right.
Then, uh, when they filmed the race
to the Wally World's entrance, it was so hot
that Anthony Michael Hall got heat stroke
and had to go to the hospital.
Damn.
God damn, man.
This movie's just taking people down left and right.
And then, uh, Chase got mad at Ramis one time
when it was hot and he threw a suitcase at him
and Ramis yelled at him and then they were fine.
It's kind of like working here.
By the way...
Yeah.
Balencia, Magic Mountain, pick your battles.
It gets fucking hot.
You do not want to go basically at any point from, I would say, May through Thanksgiving.
Yeah, through October.
I thought I was going to faint after I got off Superman.
It's tough.
Apex Mountain, Chevy?
For me, it's still Fletch.
But I guess if you want to consider it this area.
I think it's Fletch.
Because he's got this in his back pocket, then Fletch.
And it's like, oh, we're doing this.
The only reason why I'm going to say it's,
this, he's Clark Griswold, man.
He's Fletch to me.
Fletch sets up everything else for him.
Really?
That sets up the next couple years.
Do you think that there's a Christmas vacation?
Just 20 seconds here.
Do you think that this is a, I know a lot about movies?
Is this a Sean Fantasy classic here?
To where the average person, if you ask them who this guy is, they're probably going to say
this guy is Clark.
I think it's split.
I think it's half Fletch and half Clark Rizwell.
I think you guys.
Mark is probably now bigger.
because they've, I think Vegas,
not Vegas, Christmas has become so huge.
Because to me, it's like this in European
are bigger than Christmas.
No.
Do you think they're bigger movies?
To me, they're more important.
I think this movie is probably the most important of the three.
I don't know, it's an interesting argument.
Well, you know, European had the thing where it was,
I think it was the first PG-13 movie or one of the first.
So it had nudity, but it was still PG-13.
Yeah.
Which was very important to a certain demo.
I think Christmas
has had the longest tail, though.
Probably.
It's just on, you just know it's going to be on
for four weeks every year.
And that's a really, really great movie
in addition to being funny.
I can't wait to do it in December.
Beverly DeAngelo, yes.
Anthony Michael Hall,
it's probably Breakfast Club for him.
I think Michael Hall,
breakfast club are weird signs.
Family vacation movies?
Or being in Dark Night?
Dark Night.
Rises or is it Dark Night?
No, the Dark Night.
He's in the Dark Night.
Yeah, he's the TVcaster.
vacation movies, yeah.
Right?
The Ferrari 308 GTS, I'm going to say yes.
Christy Brinkley, definitely yes.
It's this over Uptown Girl, right?
I think it's right around the same time.
This comes out and then Uptown Girl.
John Deal, not yet.
It's probably dying
in special two-part episode in season four.
You ever see a movie called Madhouse
with John Lerillard and K.
And Kirsty Alley?
Of course.
he's in that he's hilarious
in that he's in a lot of stuff
I have an important Apex Mountain question
Let's hear it
Is Holiday Road
Apex Mountain for 80s movie theme songs
That play over the credits
The open credits
So the competition would be power of love
These movies
These songs have to be written
For the express purpose
Of being in the movie
Okay
Power of love
Danger Zone
Or Holiday Road
Danger Zone is tough
I don't know if I can see
Because Purple Rain plays over the end
So it has to be written for the movie.
For the movie.
Like Power of Love was written for Back to the Future.
Danger Zone is written for Top Gun.
Oh, these are, bro, these are some.
What about Call Me, American Gigolo?
Wasn't that?
I don't think that was written for American Gigolo.
Yeah, I think it was.
We did that in the rewatcher.
Shit.
I think it's Danger Zone.
It probably is Danger Zone.
No, it's Power of Love.
Because Huey was massive.
And that was the biggest of all the movies.
How old love, like, set you up for best.
back to the future, like the way
Danger Zone and Holiday Road. Like, Holiday Road.
So you're saying all-encompassing. Yeah, like,
I think that power of love in a vacuum might be the best
song. Danger Zone. Danger Zone, you're like,
I'm going to watch Top fucking gun.
But in the same way
that this movie is kind of like
when I hear Holiday Road, I think about
Yeah, you're going on vacation.
Tobiasa.
Good question, CR, man. You still got it. Thanks,
brother.
John Candy, no.
Rollercoasters?
In films, definitely.
You ever see fear?
Oh, yeah.
Forget it.
Never mind.
Or Final destination.
Final destination, yeah.
Dead aunts?
Dead aunts.
It's the number one dead aunt for me.
Yeah, I don't know.
Maybe I can't think of me.
Speaking of dead aunts, best racehorse name.
How about Ann Edna?
That's the one I got.
Here comes Ian Edna.
I got on Edna right there.
Not pool waitress?
Tinderfoot
Pickin'nets
Wally World would never ever
ever be closed for two weeks
Under any circumstance
Disney famously is open 365
Yeah he closed for one day
But not two weeks
You close individual rides
The whole part is not going to
Never happening
For two weeks
Yeah
No
I mentioned another knit
Where my son insisted
On putting this in the podcast
Which is starting to understand
at least a little bit, even though he tried to change it by just having us rank characters.
He wanted for a nitpick.
His was Clark landing his wife.
He just thought it was ridiculous.
He just thought she was way too hot.
He was a little sweet.
I'm better than they dance.
I didn't tell him how she married Pacino years later.
I feel like the kids would be more bummed out by dead Aunt Edna than they were.
I think that would be the worst thing that ever happened to me.
You can't leave a dead body in front of a house.
You can't.
a hell of a minute. By the way, we didn't talk about it in this funeral
which I have this written down.
Bro, it's just like super hysterical, bro.
Hold on.
He's talking about the Canaanites?
Yay, admit this good and decent
woman into thine arms
in the flock of thine heavenly area
up there. And Moab,
he laid it down by the hand
of the Canaanites and yay,
though the Hindus speak of Kar.
I implore you,
give her a break.
What do you want, Ellen? I'm not an
ordained minister.
It's fucking hysterical, bro.
You just can't,
but you can't leave a dead body
outside somebody's house.
You cannot.
The car,
I don't think survives the crash.
I don't think it's fixable
by these two jackasses
in Arizona.
Why did Clark wear a jacket
on his desert walk?
I thought it was bothered me.
It was a nitpick.
Well, you got to,
you know, protect yourself
from the actual son.
Can't just,
nobody walks down in the desert way.
I wouldn't have thought to do that.
At one point,
he takes his pants off
and puts them on his pants.
Yeah, that's the funniest
I've ever seen.
But then his pants are back on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Any of their nitpicks?
No.
There's a big Christy Brinkly one, but it's more for unanswerable.
Uh, sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast are untouchable.
We kind of did this.
By the way, it's been all of those things except prequel.
Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treo, Catherine Hahn?
I have to admit, there's actually, like, nothing I can do here that was funnier than the movie.
So I would actually say that my one recasting couch would be Catherine Hahn being in this movie.
Catherine Hahn is like...
Maybe Cousinetti's wife.
you would want Wayne Jenkins as the
as the police cop
What if Wayne Jenkins was the dude in East St. Louis?
God damn, Clark!
This ain't even my neighborhood!
And yeah, I am in the Commodores!
Just what Oscar, who gets it?
It has to be Chevy.
All right, probably in answerable questions.
Where was Christy Brinkley going on movie?
Yeah, this is one of those things
Where is she heading?
I'm sure anybody other than us
Like younger than us watching this movie is like what?
And we were just like, sounds good.
Christy Brinkley is driving in a Ferrari
Next to these guys.
Crummy hotels and you know what?
My, it was like, is she stalking him?
Well, I thought she was a fantasy.
At first I thought she was.
But then she's not in the pool.
When I first started like, when I first saw the movie
and was actually following, I'm like,
oh, this is a fantasy.
he's freaking out.
But then she gets in the pool.
She's obviously not a fantasy.
She's a pool rachel.
I'm like, she's a pool rachel.
I'm like, is she following them?
Yeah.
Why is she everywhere that they are?
Where was Wally World supposed to be exactly?
Because they leave Wally World
and they're immediately in Santa Monica
next to the PCH.
I know.
They get down there.
So like what do you think it's like supposed to be?
There's no place it could be.
The 405?
Oncewhere where he's buying the guns,
there's no place that's realistic.
Yeah, right.
You can't be there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it had to...
Yeah.
I don't know.
Gun laws have certainly changed.
Because he bought that gun and he was back.
And you know he probably brought that thing back on the plane with him.
I was thinking like, did they think it was Elsa Gundo?
Yeah.
You're absolutely right.
Also, like, if you're like the Grizzewalds and you see the Pacific Ocean,
are you like, can we just chill here?
Yeah.
We're in Santa Monica.
It's such a lovely.
It's just a mistake that they filmed that scene there.
It should have just been in like San Bernardino or something.
We figured out Cousinetti's relation to the Griswolds.
Why didn't Beverly DeAngel have a bigger career, in your opinion, C.R.?
I mean, just we kind of go over this whenever we get to somebody like her.
It's parts for women, you know.
Very crowded marketplace at that time.
You're dealing with the Michelle Pfeifers.
And Hurricane Ellen Barkin comes through, you know?
Yep.
Like, why didn't Kate Capshaw have a bigger career?
I mean, she did well.
Liked her too.
Yeah, you know, so it's like a lot of different people in that era.
The Andy and any
Any unanswerables for you guys?
No, that was mine.
My own answer was
was, was Christy Brinkley
was she stalking him?
Yeah, I just, all I had was just like
the unanswered question is how
Clark and Ellen remain married after
she sees him in the pool of Christy Brankley.
Yeah, that's...
He doubles back down to...
There'll be some therapy.
In Christmas vacation, but she doesn't, you know,
Clark is,
Clark is trying to get it happen.
He's trying to make it happen.
He's down to get it.
popular. He makes a, in European,
he's like filming her in the shower. He's a wild
guy. He really is.
Yeah, he is, bro. He's a horny man, bro.
Clark directed, Buttman leaves Brazil.
What was that movie you said the last time?
It was a lot of people,
did people correct you? They corrected me, because it was
a lot of feedback? You got some Buttman
Brazil feedback? It was John
Stagliano directed in it. It was actually the right
movie. It was Batman's Brazil, or something like that.
I didn't have, it wasn't Brazilian butts. It was
Batman. He went to the business. We apologize.
We should have corrected that earlier.
in the podcast.
Best double-feature choice with this movie.
Wow.
Would you go Euro or would you go Christmas?
I would do Europe, but I also, like, just for fun,
because I saw it like a few minutes of it,
but while I was doing getting ready for this is Summer Rentals.
Oh, if you went outside the Griswold universe.
Summer Rental, am I remembering correctly,
or does Summer Rental also have weird 80s boobs in it as well?
It does.
That was part of the joy of early 80s comedies
is that was also where you would get to see
a random top listing.
Summer Rental just,
There were just too many comedies.
It was survival of the fittest,
and some of them didn't hit the way they would have
if they had just come out,
like two years later or six months later.
It's very funny, though.
It's like the late 90s were like that,
where there's so many good movies.
Some stuff just got lost because they were too many movies.
Because you're watching Kroll back then.
Kroll.
Kroll.
Love that.
Andy Reds-Wan-A-Word.
What happened the next day?
Like, no, criminal charges at all for Clark.
We're good.
And so, like, what, there's no, like, the guy,
who's the person that,
they're leaving Edna with in Phoenix.
Okay.
Yeah, we got,
this movie's not like,
what the fuck?
This movie is,
this is an apex white privilege.
Oh my gosh.
You guys.
Like,
Clark does so many things
in this movie.
Yeah.
That like only a white dude.
He commits 11 crimes.
He could get away with steals.
He's a dead body out there.
He takes prisoners.
He breaks it.
He does so many things.
The Wally World thing alone is like 20.
years in prison.
Yeah.
Also, if SWAT comes,
you can't talk them out of being there.
I like that we didn't put this in nitpicks.
Like,
Clark's just not going to jail.
For a long, fucking time.
Mr. Wally can't tell them not to arrest you
after you've broken
into the park and taken hostage.
And made the black security guard
bark like a dog and roll around on the ground.
And he shot John Candy in the butt
with a BB gun. Also, why does
Wally come?
Yeah, what's it?
That's great question.
He did anything better?
Well, if somebody's holding up Disneyland, they're like, hey, Walt, get over here.
Yeah, Bob Iger, you got to come down here.
Yeah, there's one part when he goes to talk to Wally and he's got no handcuffs on, but his kids are all handcuffed.
And they just, like, the police officers let him walk on the side of them.
Very strange.
What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie, Van?
Oh, man.
You can't say the Red Ferrar that's cheating.
I don't really want the Red Ferraria.
Either I want the BB gun.
or I want the double-barrel shot
up at the dupoo pool
up for the way to the bartender
I know
you guys think I'm bushing in you
like last night as I'm watching this movie
like I hear from the other room
what are you watching
I got that too
because I was laughing so hard too
I'm laughing so hard I hear
what are you watching I'm like yo this movie
is the funniest shit ever yeah
my son was like your dad stop laughing
you're being annoying I'm like I'm gonna laugh
yeah
good talk Ben
Good talk about it.
The Loveby license plate on the Ferrari, I thought would be a good one.
The Griswold Mobile just having that in the...
I just think bringing station wagons back would be cool.
Yeah.
Eddie shoes.
Eddie shoes are crazy.
Yeah, Eddie shoes are crazy.
Cousandale's Magazine.
Probably not finishing top ten.
The Coach Finstock Award, Best Life Lesson.
Spend time with your family.
Yeah.
Take the long way around.
Yeah.
Who won the movie Chevy Chavez Chase?
Did we have everything?
I've been waiting for 90 minutes.
I mean, this is really like, it was all foreplay until we get producer Craig's married,
seems super relaxed and happy.
Has never experienced a car ride where he couldn't look at his phone and find out where he was going.
Yeah.
All right.
What was your take, Craig?
I've also never taken a long road trip like that.
I don't think West Coast people took road trips.
Why would you?
You didn't want to go anywhere.
During the destination, yeah.
Yeah.
I want to preface what I'm about to say.
just by communicating a few things.
First of all,
I really enjoyed you guys
cracking yourselves up today.
I think this is the hardest
you guys have ever laughed
on a rewatcher.
It might be up there.
I like Chevy Chase.
I love Fletch.
I like 80s comedies,
most of them.
I like, you know, whatever.
Airplane,
Ferris Bueller,
Beverly Hills Cop.
I'm not denying
that this movie was funny.
You're not on trial
for January 6th.
You haven't been indicted.
Give us the shit.
I'm not denying it.
this movie was funny, I just don't think it is funny right now.
Wow. Okay.
I think this movie is funnier to talk about than to watch. I think the situation, it's like
I think you should leave, where it becomes memes and it's actually funnier than the actual
movie itself. When I watched this, I was like, okay. But now listening to you guys
describe all the situations, I'm like, oh, this is hilarious. But in the moment, this movie
didn't really hit for you got to watch it again for like the Chevy Chesson. Yeah, you got to run it
Are we sure it wasn't like
you had to be there movie?
No, because it's like
it had nothing to do with the cultural moment
it was released it.
It's how many times you've seen it
and then because...
That's what I mean.
You saw it when you were like 10 or whatever.
Yeah, but I just cracked up at it.
It's like at 45.
But that's why because it's like an old t-shirt.
A couple of things, number one,
I think you should leave is hilarious.
Number one. Number two,
it's fine.
You don't like, I think you should leave.
It's fine. I love it.
Breathe.
But I do think that there's a style of comedy
That Chevy does
That like people they don't really do
Maybe maybe Jason Bayman still kind of does it
But like it doesn't people don't do it
I think that's what it is
I think you had to have grown up with Chevy Chase to some degree
Maybe
To just be have
But you like Fletch though
I like Fletch I don't know
Do you like the story in Fletch more?
Like do you think you were like
Fletch is a movie movie movie
Craig's like Ebert
He's like I like the first half more
the second half, I'm not reviewing this.
I don't know. I found the pacing of this movie to be weird.
I think it was just a style of the 80s.
I think these comedies were cut differently back then and it's just something that...
It's a lot of cocaine.
Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
Don't make excuses for him.
Listen, I'm not surprised.
Running back in like a year.
Maybe that's fair.
But listening to you guys run through all the scenarios, hilarious.
And I was like, damn, why didn't I laugh as much?
But in the moment, I was like, I don't know.
I mean, Ben kind of felt the same way.
It does, there's a lot of stuff that's dated about it.
He might have.
I laughed about 40 minutes left with the movie.
Maybe Craig's right.
I ran that bitch.
And I started laughing from the...
I was just playing clips while we were waiting for you.
He was just fucking laughing.
I'm like, I don't...
The movie's hysterical to me.
Well, we'll find out what America thinks.
We will.
I hope Craig doesn't get vilified.
We always appreciate your takes.
I loved it.
Yeah, on the town, I said that I didn't think this movie
was that funny.
and Matt was very mad.
He was like, you're completely wrong.
It's a hilarious movie.
You said you don't think the town is funny?
No, sorry.
He's on the podcast, the town.
I didn't think this movie was that funny.
The town is not renowned for its country.
Episode 300, Bill Wallet.
Way to go.
We did it.
We don't know, we're probably not doing anything with the heat,
but we have a bunch of the 1999 rewatchables
that we know we're going to have
and we have some really good stuff coming up.
I don't know the schedule yet.
Sierra, you'll probably be involved.
I think so, yeah.
Van, we'll probably be grabbing you.
And we'll be doing Christmas vacation in December.
Love it.
Can't wait.
I think Christmas is actually on the rewatchable schedule day this year.
Oh, he said.
Yeah, something like that.
Produced by Craig Horlebeck, as always.
Van, CR.
Your feet.
Feet.
