How Did This John Hughes Short Story Become an All-Time Summer Movie Classic?
Think of John Hughes, and you probably think of classic 1980s films like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
But Hughes, who passed away on August 6, 2009, wasn’t always a successful filmmaker. In fact, he didn’t even start out in film. He was a successful advertising copywriter before becoming a writer at National Lampoon magazine. One of Hughes’s short stories became the basis for one of the most beloved summer comedies of all time, National Lampoon’s Vacation.
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One of those short stories was entitled “Vacation ’58;” Hughes based it on a family road trip he had taken. The story was told from the viewpoint of the son, Rusty, and covered all the misadventures of the family on a cross-country trip from Michigan to Disneyland. In the story, the Griswold family arrives at Disneyland only to find it closed. Frustrated, Clark, the father, tracks down Walt Disney and shoots him in the leg and ends up in jail.
How did this become the classic movie?
The original screenplay
After National Lampoon published Hughes’s story, publisher Matty Simmons was in search of a new movie project, saw the story, liked it and had Hughes draft a screenplay.
Rewriting the screenplay
Director Harold Ramis and actor Chevy Chase, cast as Clark, started rewriting the script, changing the viewpoint from Rusty to Clark and making it about Clark’s obsession with having the perfect vacation. This gave the film a different comic feel, fueled by Clark’s increasing desperation.
Changing the original dark story ending
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Ramis decided that the original ending with Clark ending up in jail was too dark for a mainstream comedy. The vacation destination was changed from Disneyland to the fictional Walley World, and the climax was rewritten. In the movie, Clark buys a BB gun and, after finding the park closed, takes a security guard (John Candy) hostage and forces him to let his family experience Walley World.
The film spawned three sequels, National Lampoon’s European Vacation and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, both of which were written by Hughes, and Vegas Vacation, which did not involve Hughes.
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