Film Stories From The Book:
Hollywood of the Rockies
By: Frederic B. Wildfang
National Lampoon’s Vacation
1983 — Warner Brothers — produced by Matty Simmons — written by John Hughes, directed by Harold Ramis, photography by Victor J. Kemper, music by Ralph Burns, production design by Jack Collis, film edited by Paul Herring — starring Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Anthony Michael Hall, Dana Barron, Randy Quaid, Imogene Coca, and Christie Brinkley
‘Have a good laugh — I did. I liked taking this vacation.’ — Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune and At the Movies
Although Halliwell’s Film Guide has called this movie “straight black comedy,” it plays more like a “farce.” When Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his all-American family — wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), son Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and daughter Audre (Dana Barron) — set out from suburban Chicago for a vacation trip to Disney-like Walley World in California — they are beset by one hysterical disaster after another. The worst of these occurs when they visit their country cousin in Kansas (Randy Quaid) — who sends them off with crazy old Aunt Edna (Imogene Coca); the best of these, when Clark becomes mesmerized by fellow female traveler in red Ferrari (Christie Brinkley). Certainly, as characterized by The New York Times, the movie is “fast, funny satire.”
“Colorado is a key locale” for scenes shot in this movie, said Producer Matty Simmons (in an interview published in the Durango Herald in 1992 — at the time of the filming), “because you have such a wide variance of backgrounds.” Because of this variety, many scenes shot in and around Durango actually represent locales in other parts of the country. In one scene shot at the Strater Hotel in downtown Durango, for instance — a scene in which Chevy Chase has an argument with a rude desk clerk — The Strater is intended to depict a hotel at the Grand Canyon. In another scene shot at Hunter Brothers Auto Center — a driving scene at Sixth Street and Second Avenue — Durango is intended to represent Dodge City, Kansas. In this scene, reports the Herald, “Hunter Brothers was appropriately renamed ‘Wyatt Earp Ford City’ with bright signs painted on the windows screaming ‘Buy it from Wyatt’s.’” All the cars parked at the dealership were rigged with cardboard Kansas license plates mounted over the top of Colorado license plates. In yet another scene (filmed in La Plata Canyon), the Griswald’s station wagon is represented as it looked when it was vandalized in St. Louis — “Honky Lips” spray-painted on the side — an example of both “black humor” and “satire.”
As Imogene Coca observed (in an article published in a supplement to the Durango Herald in 1993), “If you’re going to satirize something, vacations are a good place to start.” “They provide a good canvas for comedy.”
National Lampoon’s Vacation was only the second film ever made by Imogene Coca — who is best known for her performances with Sid Caesar in the early days of television. Durangoan Mel Flock — who has worked as a driver and location man on some 27 movies — relates some interesting stories about Miss Coca when she was here for the filming:
‘She had once been in a terrible auto accident,’ Flock recalled. ‘She hated driving and riding around, but for this film, she had to ride from place to place.’
Flock drove Coca to locations in Pueblo and Alamosa. They then travelled over the mountains to Durango. By then, the legendary comedienne appreciated Flock’s driving skills. lndeed she would ride nowhere unless Flock was at the wheel.
There were no further problems until the cast and crew moved west to Monument Valley in Arizona.
‘You see,’ Flock explained. ‘All drivers for the movies are members of the Teamsters Union. Well, you’re not allowed to work outside your state. Colorado drivers can’t work in Arizona. I was told I had to go.
When Coca was told, she said, ‘If Mel goes, I go.’
While everyone wondered what to do, a production assistant asked, ‘Aren’t we on the Navajo Reservation?’
They were. A phone call certified the fact that Navajo, not Arizona law, applied on the reservation. Union rules didn’t apply either.
Coca made two more movies after National Lampoon’s Vacation — Nothing Lasts Forever in 1984 and Buy and Cell in 1989.
Chevy Chase, of course, went on to make a number of other movies — including two others with Beverly D’Angelo also inspired by National Lampoon — National Lampoon’s European Vacation in 1985 and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation in 1989.
