Last we heard about the Vacation reboot starring Ed Helms as grown-up Rusty Griswold, writer/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein were hoping to get Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo to cameo in a scene they had written for Clark and Ellen Griswold, the original parents. The assumption was always that Chase would be difficult, but we learned from Mrs. Griswold herself, Chase is in. Today I spoke to Beverly D’Angelo about her role in Bounty Killer, out next week. We’ll bring you the full interview next week, but she told me how she sold Chase on coming back for the new Vacation.
“I called Chevy, I said, ‘Have you read it yet?’” D’Angelo said. “He goes, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘Read it and then call me back.’ I said, ‘Do you realize the way that they popped in on us, we could answer the door in towels or smoking a joint, just insane. We just could have gone berserk in the meantime. There’s some freedom here.’ He was laughing but we haven’t gotten to that state. We’re certainly not shooting it.”
That’s the good news. The bad news is that we now have to wait for a new rewrite of Daley and Goldstein’s script. “I know that in June it looked like it was really close,” D’Angelo said. “They got Christina Applegate, they closed the deal with her, they closed the deal with Ed. Then Chevy and I went in to negotiations and the next thing we heard was they’re rewriting the script so we’ll see what happens. Chevy and I want to work together no matter what, somehow, someway and maybe this’ll be it.”
I’m an optimist. I’m hoping that the rewrite means Clark and Ellen are no longer just a stop on the road, but now they’re along for the ride on the Vacation. This is all speculation at this point, but D’Angelo said she’d be up for a full role in a fifth Vacation.
“Look, let’s face it, if it’s going to be a Vacation movie, it’s gotta have Clark and Ellen. It’s certainly got to have Clark and you can’t have Clark without Ellen because Chevy isn’t Clark Griswold without me.”
Die hard Vacation fans might be interested to know there was supposed to be a fifth Vacation movie to follow Vegas Vacation, though it only got to the joking pitch stage. “We talked about Griswold Family Robinson or something like that, I don’t know. I thought we should go to the moon. To Chevy once, I said, ‘I think we should get on that trip to the moon.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, and then we miss the bus back, the rocket ship back.’”
The world is most certainly worse off for not having a Griswolds in Space movie in it. We’ll be back with more on Vacation as soon as we pick up Aunt Edna.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
