National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation - Supplement

While we try to cover as much as we can in our episodes, there's always more to see, hear, and read about a movie that can enhance your viewing experience. If you enjoyed our episode on National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, here's a few extra bits you might find interesting...

Here's the original trailer:

The film is based on John Hughes's original story "Christmas '59," which was published in the December 1980 issue of National Lampoon. You can read the story at the link below:

We mentioned several scenes deleted from the movie. Here's a still from a moment cut from the film, an extension of the Christmas Tree lot scene we mentioned in the episode. This photo was used on the case for the original DVD release:

As we mentioned, director Jeremiah Chechik makes a cameo on the cover of the People magazine Clark reads in bed, as seen below:

The homes from the film were standing facades on the Warner Brothers backlot, a location known as Blondie Street that has since been demolished. Here's a great video by The Daily Woo in which he tours this location before its demolition and points out some of the various productions shot there:

Among those productions was the Disney Plus Marvel show Wandavision. One in-joke we didn't mention from that show has the character of Vision hurling an opponent into a familiar-looking RV parked on the same backlot street, visible in this still:

The infamously excessive Christmas lights display that Clark decorates his house in has been massively influential on real Christmas decortions. Check out this news clip about the incident we discussed where a good samaritan tried to rescue what he thought was someone dangerously hanging from his roof, not realizing the homeowner was replicating a scene from the film: 

The film would be followed by the sequel Vegas Vacation almost a decade later:

In 2003 came the made-for-TV sequel Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure. Check out the trailer here:

The most recent film in the series, Vacation, is a reboot with Ed Helms taking over as Rusty and continuing his father's overzealous but disastrous vacation planning, with cameos by Chase and D'Angelo:

Several TV ads brought back cast members to spoof the movie, such as these Old Navy ads bringing back Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, and Juliette Lewis, along with several other iterations of the Griswold kids from the previous films:

Then there's this Ford ad for the Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle featuring Chase and D'Angelo: 

Thanks for listening!