Violet Ramis's Tribute to Her Father's Humor
National Lampoon’s Vacation was based on “Vacation ’58,” a story written by John Hughes that appeared in the Lampoon magazine. As Lampoon alums and fellow Chicagoans, my dad and John knew each other, but weren’t really friends. Hughes’s short story was focused on the experiences of the thirteen‑year‑old son, but my dad was more interested in the father’s character, “the guy who wants to be a good dad, wants to be a good husband, but only has two weeks a year to do it.”
My dad is not credited as a writer on Vacation, but he and Chevy did a lot of work on the original Hughes script. Of that time, Chevy said, “My favorite thing about Harold was when we were rewriting ‘Vacation.’ I’d sit there with a yellow legal pad and he would sit and do two New York Times crossword puzzles. We’d agree on the basic writing and I’d say, ‘Okay, I’ve got it,’ and hand it to him.
"And he’d just say, ‘No.’ And he’d re‑do it, to my chagrin. I’m doing the writing, and he’s doing the puzzles, and then he’d change it, after we already agreed. It’s not something that bothered me, it’s just funny. It points out the looseness about him.”
During the filming of Vacation, in 1982, my dad pulled me out of Montessori school and took me with him on location. The cast and crew traveled across the southwest United States for two months like a Gypsy caravan, covering fifteen cities in four states.
My seventeen‑year‑old cousin Pam was my babysitter, and lucky for me, she was very irresponsible. Pam was not much older than Dana Barron and Anthony Michael Hall, and we spent hours plotting various pranks against each other. Beds were short‑sheeted, notes were stashed in cereal boxes, and wet toilet paper fights were waged in motel hallways late at night.
I was over‑the‑moon excited to be cast as Daisy Mabel, also known as the Girl Without a Tongue. I thought it was going to be my breakout role. The truth is, I got that part specifically because there were no lines, so I didn’t have to be paid or credited. Also, I was a pretty terrible actor because I totally stick my tongue out during the scene. Something in me just couldn’t resist, or maybe I was worried about getting pigeonholed as that young actress without a tongue; either way, my acting failure is there on camera for all of eternity.
Buy the book Ghostbuster’s Daughter: Life with My Dad, Harold Ramis
My dad was both proud of and a little embarrassed by Vacation. The (mostly) tidy narrative showed his growth as a director, but there were moments in the film I know he wasn’t satisfied with. They shot a few different endings and I think it never quite pulled together the way he wanted it to. He was also genuinely distressed by the “lost in St. Louis” scene and used to cringe and apologize every time it came on. Still, Chevy and the supporting cast were fantastic and it remains, in my mind at least, the quintessential family road trip movie.
Dad and I would often quote lines from Vacation to each other because so much of it captures the ridiculousness of family dynamics. The franchise continued without him, but I have to admit I’ve never seen Christmas Vacation or the recent reboot.
Watching Vacation with my kids when they were young, it was as if things had come full circle. Now I’m the idiotic but (hopefully) endearing parent pointing out silly landmarks and doing everything in my power to give the kids memories to last a lifetime. Walley World, here we come!
Excerpted from the book Ghostbuster’s Daughter: Life with My Dad, Harold Ramis by Violet Ramis Stiel. Copyright © 2018 by Violet Ramis Stiel. Reprinted with permission of Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.
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