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1. Who plays Clark Griswold?
Chevy Chase
Chase was on his third tour as Clark after Vacation and European Vacation, and this is the one that keeps the family at home. John Candy had actually appeared in the first Vacation, as the Walley World security guard, but he is nowhere in this one.
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2. What does Clark do for a living?
He designs food additives
Clark works for a food additive company, where his big project is a non-nutritive cereal varnish that stops milk soaking into the flakes. The firm's experimental kitchen lubricant is what he sprays on his saucer sled, with alarming results.
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3. Who wrote the screenplay?
John Hughes
Hughes adapted his own National Lampoon short story, Christmas '59, just as the first Vacation had grown out of his Vacation '58. He wrote but did not direct: that job went to Jeremiah S. Chechik, making his first feature after years of commercials.
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4. Where was the exterior of the Griswold house filmed?
On the Warner Bros. Ranch in Burbank
The house stands on Blondie Street, a set on the studio ranch in Burbank, on the same block as the Murtaugh home from Lethal Weapon, and the snow was manufactured. Colorado is where the production did go on location, for the tree hunt and the sledding.
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5. Who plays Cousin Eddie?
Randy Quaid
Quaid had introduced Eddie in the first Vacation, when the Griswolds stopped at his Kansas farm, and he came back again for Vegas Vacation. Dennis Quaid is his younger brother and has never gone anywhere near the series.
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6. What does Eddie arrive in?
An RV
Eddie, Catherine, the kids and the dog Snots turn up uninvited in a battered motor home that stays parked in the driveway for the rest of the film. Emptying its toilet tank into the storm sewer is what sets up the explosion at the end.
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7. What does Clark plan to buy with his expected bonus?
A swimming pool
Clark has already put a deposit down on the pool, money he does not have until the bonus arrives, which is why the envelope from his boss matters so much. He daydreams about it in the snowy back yard, picturing the lingerie clerk from the mall doing laps.
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8. What does he receive instead of the cash bonus?
A Jelly of the Month Club membership
Bonuses were cut across the company, and the subscription arrived in their place after Clark had already spent money he was counting on. Eddie calls it 'the gift that keeps on giving the whole year', then takes Clark's rant literally and kidnaps the boss.
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9. What is Clark's boss called?
Frank Shirley
Shirley is played by Brian Doyle-Murray, Bill Murray's older brother, which is why that name turns up among the Cousin Eddie options. Eddie delivers him in his bathrobe with a bow on his head, and he ends up reinstating the bonuses with a little extra on top.
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10. How many lights does Clark say he has put on the house?
25,000
By Clark's own arithmetic it is two hundred and fifty strands of a hundred bulbs each, all imported Italian twinkle lights. Nothing happens when he plugs them in because a switch in the garage is off; once Ellen flips it, the display lights up the whole block.
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11. What animal leaps out of the Christmas tree?
A squirrel
The squirrel comes out of the replacement tree, which Clark cut from his own front yard with a chainsaw after Uncle Lewis's cigar incinerated the first one. Snots chases it through the house and it finishes up on the neighbor who comes to the door to complain.
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12. What are the neighbors' names?
Todd and Margo
Their surname is Chester, and their house absorbs most of the collateral damage: a block of ice from Clark's gutter goes through their window and takes out the stereo, and the squirrel ends up on Margo. Their only offense is a house with no decorations.
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13. Who plays Margo?
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Louis-Dreyfus was a few years past Saturday Night Live and a few months short of Seinfeld, whose first full season started the following spring. Lisa Kudrow and Courteney Cox were still years away from Friends, and Megan Mullally from Will and Grace.
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14. What does Aunt Bethany recite when asked to say grace?
The Pledge of Allegiance
Bethany launches into the Pledge of Allegiance and the whole table stands and joins in, hands on hearts. She is played by Mae Questel, for decades the voice of Betty Boop and Olive Oyl, and she also wraps up her cat and a Jell-O mold as presents.
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15. Where does Clark get trapped while hiding the presents?
The attic
The family leaves to go shopping and the hatch is closed behind him, so he passes the day in a lady's hat and gloves, watching home movies of his childhood Christmases. Rusty and Audrey, recast every film, are Johnny Galecki and Juliette Lewis this time.
