The Real Story Behind the PEOPLE Issue Featured in a Memorable National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation Scene (Exclusive)

First released in cinemas in December 1989. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation has become a holiday classic – with fans young and old frequently re-watching (and now streaming) the film starring Chevy Chase as a father whose attempts to host a good old-fashioned family Christmas go increasingly and hilariously wrong.

Over the years, many revelations have been made about the genesis of the hilarious comedy written by John Hughes and directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik. But PEOPLE had one important unanswered query about a significant cameo in a scene featuring Chase and Beverly D’Angelo’s characters.

In a new interview, Chechik reveals how the issue of PEOPLE magazine first appeared Christmas vacation created — and what he remembers about shooting that particular scene.

The cast National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: Where are they now?

Beginning almost 11 minutes into the film, Chicago couple Clark (Chase) and Ellen Griswold (D’Angelo) are seen lying in bed discussing their vacation plans. After their ordeal with cutting down the Christmas tree, the couple wonders if they are taking on too much by hosting the family, including their parents, Clark Sr. (John Randolph) and Nora (Diane Ladd), as well as Art (EG Marshall) and Frances (Doris Roberts). .

After Clark — who is covered in sap from getting stuck in their tree in the previous scene — is unable to turn the pages of the PEOPLE magazine he’s reading without sticking to his fingers, an exasperated Ellen suggests “it’s not too late to change our plans.”

And an unfazed Clark responds by saying it’s “great” that everyone is coming to visit, prompting his wife to remind him “how hard it is” to have so many people under the same roof for the holidays. “All I ever wanted was a big family Christmas,” Clark says.

During all this, the cover of the PEOPLE issue featuring a mustachioed man in a suit and glasses with the headline “The New Wall Street” is clearly visible.

Beverly D’Angelo and Chevy Chase in ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’.

Warner Bros.

While the cover itself is a fake rendering made for the film, the man in the picture is Chechik, the director confirmed to PEOPLE. “Yeah, that’s me,” he says.

Despite some previous claims that the photo of Matty Simmons, the late National Lampoon executive and producer on Rest film series as well as National Lampoon’s Animal HouseEllen Hamilton Latzen (who played Clark and Ellen’s niece, Ruby Sue Johnson) was the first to dismiss the rumor in an interview with HuffPost.

“I want to set the record straight [lists] I saw this claim that the person on the cover of PEOPLE was the producer of the movie, but he wasn’t,” Latzen said at the time. “It was Jeremiah S. Chechik, the director.”

So how did he end up as the cover star? Chechik tells PEOPLE, “I think it was the easiest thing for me to get permission to do.” Not only was it easier to accept myself as a prop, but it was also a fun way to appear in the film. “It was a fun way to get Hitchcock into the film without doing any walking,” he says.

Additionally, the director confirms that the style of the cover and the title are a reference to the 1987 film. Wall Streetwhich featured footage of Michael Douglas’ character, Gordon Gekko, in a fake edition Wealth reading the magazine, “King of Wall Street”.

Beverly D’Angelo and Chevy Chase in the movie ‘Christmas Vacation’.

Warner Bros.

He explains that “the inside joke is that anyone who knows me knows that I’m kind of the opposite of that. So there was a little inside aspect of ‘The New Wall Street,’ which couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Why LJUDI was used instead of another publication is because it was the most relevant at the moment, says the director. “It’s the kind of magazine that people would read at the time,” he explains, noting that “PEOPLE magazine was the Twitter of the era.”

Chechik also says he remembers shooting the scene “like it was yesterday.”

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Shot from above, it gave the moment between D’Angelo and Chase’s characters “a kind of formal tone,” he explains, capturing “the kind of intimacy that two married people would have with such ease.”

Of course, the juice is also a callback to the Christmas tree scene, “which led to some fantastic physical comedy with the lamp, of course, and everything else.” The director adds, “Chevy was a master of physical comedy at that point. So it was a fun scene to shoot.”

To achieve the juice effect that causes Clark’s fingers to stick to the pages, as well as the lamp and Ellen’s hair, the director says the props team used Elmer’s glue to make the actor’s fingers “sticky, but not super sticky.”

Chevy Chase reunites with Christmas vacation Costars Beverly D’Angelo, Randy Quaid at Christmas Con 2023

As for the back cover of the magazine, the ad for Wade’s Wintergreen tire was a frequently used prop that appeared on the back of other fake magazines seen on screen, including scenes from The first of April, Malcolm in the middle, Married… with children and Masters of sex.

According to British designer Craig Oldham, who has posted some great X (formerly known as Twitter) threads on film prop design, Wade’s Wintergreen was “the favorite bubblegum of top production designers in the 1980s”, noting that the ad appeared in the newsstand scene from the John Carpenter film They live.

Beverly D’Angelo and Chevy Chase in ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’.

Warner Bros.

Christmas vacation was Chechik’s first feature film. “Up until then, I had shot a lot of sexy, very moody, atmospheric commercials,” he told za Rolling stonerevealing that after he started working with Warner Bros., “they started sending me scripts — and one of them sent me Christmas vacation. I laughed out loud when I read that.”

Admittedly, the director was unaware of the film — which was a box office hit and the highest-grossing installment in the original Rest series — would become a classic for more than three decades.

But he tells PEOPLE that he went out of his way to make choices in the film “that were kind of timeless,” which he believes contributed to its lasting legacy. “I just wanted to make a great movie,” says Chechik.

Of course, there have been other memorable versions of the PEOPLE magazine issue that have appeared in every issue since Don’t trust B—- in apartment 23 to Taxiwith Jeff Goldblum notably playing a sex-obsessed PEOPLE reporter Great cold and the number of magazines that led to a rift among friends at Big Bang Theory.

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Source: HIS Education