While the National Lampoon's Vacation franchise has celebrated 31 years of operation, with various destinations and family members along the way, one of its most memorable incarnations has to be the 25 year old hit Christmas Vacation. There's just something about Christmas that makes the typical dysfunctions of the Griswold family that much more hilarious - and to celebrate, an oral history of the film's rise to fame has been prepared. In fact, earlier today we brought you one of Johnny Galecki's best Vacation stories. But thanks to the same source, we've got another really interesting story that involves Juliette Lewis and her then boyfriend.
As the story goes, courtesy of Rolling Stone's first class history lesson, Lewis brought her at-the-time boyfriend on the trip to shoot Christmas Vacation on location in Colorado. You would think that with his girlfriend being in a major Hollywood picture, Juliette Lewis' then boyfriend would be smart enough to drink the experience in with his crush. If that's what you actually think, however, then you'd be ever so wrong, as Lewis recalled that during filming she caught him talking to another girl on the phone. You can read the rest of what happened in the blurb below.
"I didn't even tell him that I heard him, I just asked who he was talking to. He lied and I said, 'Oh, by the way. You’re leaving tomorrow morning.' I booked his flight and then he left, and then I went to go film."
Heart breaking aside, Juliette Lewis would go on to deliver one of her career's most important performances, and it was something that was pretty clear to all involved with Christmas Vacation. Reading through the comments that fellow Griswolds Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, and Johnny Galecki were making about their time co-starring with Lewis, it's clear to see that she was a lot warmer, and a lot more fun to work with than her character would have you believe.
Yet that could have all went south if she didn't dump her boyfriend at the moment that she did. In fact, it sounds like she did it relatively early in the shoot, which is even better because his infidelity didn't have time to distract her from the real goal at hand. Considering that she not only dumped him but sent his sorry self back home on a plane the next morning, it's safe to say that at 15, Juliette Lewis had her head on more of an even keel than Randy Quaid probably did at the time (Not a hard achievement, but it still counts for something).
Of course, next year marks the latest reboot of the Vacation franchise, which means that the role Lewis helped build will go on to another actress – this time seeing Leslie Mann filling the legendary vacancy. But no matter what, Christmas Vacation is always going to stick out as one of the best.
Christmas Vacation, of course, is available on both Blu-ray and DVD, though if you leave your TV tuned to ABC Family you'll run into a censored version of it soon enough. Meanwhile, you can see Juliette Lewis next on Wayward Pines, which debuts on May 14, 2015 on Fox. She'll also be playing an undisclosed role in the upcoming Jem And The Holograms, but knowing her she'll probably be rocking out in whatever she does.
