Let there be lights
Back to the Griswold house, one of the main reasons it sticks in people’s minds is due to the dazzling lights that were put all over by Clark Griswold, played by Chevy Chase. So one of the main questions you may have; were the lights real?
“I believe there are couple of matte paintings in the show, but we actually put all those lights on the house. We designed a series of large wire frames that held the lights. The picture was shot out of sequence, so sometimes we needed the light on the house and sometimes we needed them gone.
“Chevy Chase had suffered a lot of injuries over the years and he didn’t like heights, so we built a piece of the Griswold exterior house on another part of the lot just for his pieces on the roof and atop the ladder.
“It was quite warm in LA that spring, and at night the actors in their winter gear suffered with temperatures sometimes in the 90’s. It didn’t help that the plastic flakes used as snow reflected the heat making it even warmer on set.”
Moose Mugs
Another endearing feature of Christmas Vacation is the humour. Aside from the obvious puns, pranks and sometimes slapstick nature of the comedy, there is a humorous undertone running throughout. It’s those little touches, perhaps not immediately evident to the casual observer, that help make it work so well.
From singed cats to identical presents for Griswold’s boss that sat on an office sideboard. Stephen recalls how some of them came about.
“The gifts in Shirley’s Office was a joke by our director, Jeremiah Chechek, I still think it’s funny.
“My joke was the horribly burned plastic wreath on the front of Eddies RV and the ‘splayed out’ pose for the electrocuted cat under the tree. Nasty but funny.”
It wasn’t only the crew having fun creating things as the production moved on, the cast also used some creative freedom when it came to drinking eggnog in the Griswold’s front room. The infamous Moose Mugs – replicas of which are available to buy online if you a nice chunk of cash to spare – weren’t originally meant for drinking out of.
“We had glasses lined up for the scene, but Chevy and Randy saw the moose glasses and grabbed them.
“We were horrified because they were just set dressing and we had no backups if they got broken. The scene worked very well though. We sometimes had problems shooting some of these scenes, our camera operator would shake with laughter and so would the camera.”
The Griswold Family Christmas Tree
At the beginning of the movie, the Griswold family is travelling out to the countryside to find a Christmas tree for the season. They eventually find one while knee-deep in snow and in the middle of nowhere. Little would we know, there were a lot more than one or two versions of the tree used to film the movie.
“We had a lot of Christmas trees to make.” Stephen recalls.
“The first tree in the ground was real. The tree with the rootball on the Griswold car is fake and we had a stand-in for the ‘second unit’ car that made all the shots not involving our actors.
“Then we had the tree on the car in Burbank Ranch facility, the mechanical tree that knocks out windows, the ‘pretty tree’, the burning tree, the burned tree by the trash.
“All these trees had to match. Dark green doesn’t register well on film so we had to paint them all a lighter colour and make sure they all matched all the time.
“I believe there were 21 trees all together, to create the illusion of one continuous tree!”
A career in the movie industry
Stephen retired from the movie industry last year and now lectures part-time at the Western Carolina University. He looks back on his career fondly, describing Cool Runnings as one of his favourite movies he’s worked on.
“Cool Runnings is one of my favorites because Dawn Steel was our Producer and she was just wonderful to work with.
“Also John Candy was the nicest person I ever met in show business, a lovely man. It was very cold in Alberta Canada, and very hot in Jamaica and I spent a lot of time flying back and forth.”
Stephen’s path to Hollywood Production Designer actually started right here, in England, and as an actor. He looks back on his time in an often brutal industry.
“The film industry is a very rough and tumble kind of life and I am lucky to have survived it for the last thirty or so years! I always enjoyed making pictures but the politics are hard work.
“I originally started in England as an actor, and moved to Los Angles in about 1975. I got work as a ‘stop frame animator’ and model builder and worked my way up through prompter and storyboard artist to Art Director.
“One day I was working on a small show and they fired the production designer, I was made the designer and the rest is history.”
One of the final movies Stephen worked on prior to retirement was another Christmas movie, albeit a lot less prominent than National Lampoons Christmas Vacation.
Christmas in Conway was a straight-to-TV movie released in the US in December 2013. We are awaiting confirmation from our friends at Christmas 24, but we suspect this will be aired in the UK in December of this year some time.
Speaking about the picture, Stephen said: “It was a fun little picture to make. We had to import a Ferris wheel from South Carolina and set it up in a back garden. I enjoy working in Wilmington NC and my crew were splendid.”
Speaking of Christmas, Stephen expects to enjoy a quiet Christmas with friends this year, while his favourite festive movie is the classic It’s A Wonderful Life.
I’d like to say a huge thank you to Stephen for taking the considerable time to answer my questions and for giving us an insight in to the fascinating world of the movie industry, and this classic Christmas film!
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Stephen also told us about the role of a Production Designer in general, and the process for which they are involved in making movies.