What kind of a host invites you to his house for the weekend and dies on you?
Released July 5th 1989, the dark comedy that is Weekend At Bernie's was overshadowed at the box office by Batman, Lethal Weapon 2, Licence To Kill, Ghostbusters II, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (man, 1989 was a brilliant year for film) and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (meh) to name just a few of the blockbuster hits released around the same time. But once Weekend At Bernie's arrived on home video it soon became a cult classic and spawned a (not very good) 1993 sequel.
So, on the anniversary of its release, here are five fast facts about Weekend At Bernie's. Oh, and here's one for free - the actor playing Bernie wasn't actually dead!
1. No, Terry Kiser, who played Bernie, certainly wasn't dead but he didn't have it easy acting as a corpse for the vast majority of the film. Having an even harder time was Kiser's stunt double who suffered multiple broken ribs. They occurred during the filming of the scene in which Bernie falls from the back of a speedboat and is dragged around the surface of the ocean, bumping into several metal floating obstacles.
2. Weekend At Bernie's starred Jonathan Silverman as Richard Parker and Andrew McCarthy as Lawrence "Larry" Wilson, but before the film was cast it was considered a potential vehicle for Corey Haim and Corey Feldman.
3. The film's director, Ted Kotcheff, made a cameo as Richard's father (the man who comes out in his underwear and blows his cover).
4. In Weekend At Bernie's, Larry & Richard uncover an accounting fraud and take it to their CEO, Bernie Lomax, unaware that he's the source of the fraud.
In 2014, director Ted Kotcheff and writer Robert Klane alleged in a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox and MGM that they were victims of a similar fraud. The pair claimed their contracts for Weekend At Bernie's included a percentage of its profits, which would amount to millions of dollars, of which they had not seen a penny.
It's unknown if Fox/MGM then invited them to the Hamptons to spend the weekend at their Long Island beach house!
5. Weekend At Bernie's was not a hit with reviewers, but is often referenced in popular culture. In the Friends season 4 episode "The One With the Embryos" Weekend At Bernie's is named as Rachel's favorite movie after a trivia contest. The film is also mention in season 1 when Chandler says "We don't have to watch this. Weekend at Bernie's is on Showtime, HBO, and Cinemax" before his mom Nora appears on The Tonight Show.
Weekend at Bernie's is also referenced in many episodes of the TV series How I Met Your Mother. Notable is the "Weekend At Barney's" episode in season 9 in which Barney imagines himself in the role of Bernie.
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