ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with National Lampoon’s Vacation star Dana Barron about the movie’s 40th anniversary and working with Chevy Chase (watch and read more interviews). The film is now available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and digitally.
“Everything is planned, packed – and about to go hilariously wrong,” reads the movie’s synopsis. “The Griswolds are going on vacation. In the driver’s seat is Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase), an Everyman eager to share the open road and the wonders of family togetherness. Myriad mishaps, crude kin (Randy Quaid), encounters with a temptress (Christie Brinkley), financial woes, Aunt Edna (Imogene Coca) on the roof, one security guard (John Candy) and 2,460 miles later, it’s a wonder the Griswolds are together. There’s never been a family vacation like it. Except maybe yours. And that helps explain why National Lampoon’s Vacation remains so popular… and so very funny.”
Tyler Treese: What’s wild is National Lampoon’s Vacation still holds up to this day. I just watched it again and it’s still so beloved. Why do you think it’s resonated beyond generations?
Dana Barron: Because we all have families and families have stories, and families have things that go wrong. And Vacation is like the quintessential American family that has gone wrong, but yet survived and eventually had a great time. So when we go on our family vacations — and now that it’s summer, people will have their stories. I do Comic-Cons, and fans come up to me and tell me their horrible stories.
I’ve written a book, 40 Years on Vacation, that will be coming out soon. I’ve collected their stories and there are some stories in the book [that are] such great stories — their family tragedy about their vacation, like Vacation. So that’s why I think it resonates, because it was the 80s and there was a nostalgia that people have and they looked back going, “Oh, I remember my dad who was bugging me so much when I was on that trip and we couldn’t do anything, but I loved my dad, and yet I loved that vacation, even though at the time it stunk.”
Chevy Chase was in top form in this movie. What stood out about working with him and getting to see that top-notch comic timing on display?
Well, mind you, I was a teenager and Anthony Michael Hall — we call him Michael — was very up on who was who back then. Like, “Oh, Eddie Bracken, John Candy, Imogene Coca — all these great stars. And he schooled me all the time. Mind you, I don’t know if you remember, Anthony Michael Hall was also on Saturday Night Live eventually. I never asked, [but] something that I can ask him — we’re still very close — [is] did he do Saturday Night Live because of Chevy being on the shoot or not? I don’t know. So he was on the top of his game.
It was fun because we’d be driving through a town, and he would roll down the window, goes, “Hey, I’m Chevy and you’re not.” I guess that was his signature thing that he would do all the time. But being a young kid, I’m like, “Ooh, oh, is that okay?” It was fine. It was fun.
You mentioned Anthony Michael Hall, and in this movie, you just have such a great rapport together. You’re playing off each other back and forth. How was it establishing that relationship? You really feel like siblings throughout.
We did. That’s very, very good to note that, because at that time, our audition scene was a sibling rivalry fight. Rusty’s eating peanut butter cups stuck all over his teeth, whatever. We would fight back and forth. And during the film, when he was 14, and I was a little older, I was supposed to be the older sister, and he became the older brother because he grew by the end and he was much taller by the end.
We did have that rapport, and we’re still very close. He lives seven minutes from where I am. Literally, just last week we hung out. So we’re still very, very close. But there’s that. It was just a natural rapport with everybody in the cast. It was magical. It was so much fun.
So much of this was filmed in the car. What stood out about filming in such an enclosed area?
I don’t have issues with claustrophobia or anything. When you asked me that, there’s a certain smell … we did a vacation on vacation, so we traveled a lot and there’s different cars that we had depending on the shot, but it all had this kind of interesting desert dusty smell and it squeaked a little bit. I don’t if you can hear in the original one, you’ve got to listen for that squeak that it has naturally. So the Truckster was its own character in itself. It was kind of like our Millennium Falcon in Star Wars. It was kind of our star vehicle.
