Weekend at Bernie's
![Watch film Weekend at Bernie's — Weekend at Bernie's (1989) Original Trailer [FHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nt4qeydCH3Y/sddefault.jpg)
Short description
Two junior employees at an insurance company, Larry Wilson and Richard Parker, stumble onto evidence of fraud in the firm's books: several payouts were collected on a single policy. They report their finding to their boss, Bernie Lomax, who lives well beyond his salary and is in fact behind the scheme. He invites the pair to spend a weekend at his beach house on Long Island, where he has arranged for a mob associate to have them killed. The plan goes the other way when the mob boss, whose girlfriend has been seeing Bernie, orders the hit carried out on Bernie instead. Larry and Richard arrive to find their host dead, and rather than explain the situation, they keep up the appearance that he is still alive and hosting his own party.
Ted Kotcheff directed the film, which followed Switching Channels in his filmography and was released in 1989. Robert Klane wrote the screenplay, and Victor Drai and Bruce McNall produced it for 20th Century Fox and Gladden Entertainment. Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman play the two employees, Catherine Mary Stewart appears as Gwen Saunders, and Terry Kiser plays Bernie Lomax. The film cost about 7 million dollars and took roughly 30 million worldwide, a strong return on its budget. Audiences are lukewarm on it: it holds 6.4 out of 10 on IMDb from about 68,000 votes, and the same 6.4 on TMDB from around 1,180 votes, while a critics' rating of 5.3 out of 10 from 27 reviews places reviewers slightly below viewers.
What's left behind the scenes
- In the restaurant, Tina eats an olive from a martini glass. In the next shot and throughout the following scene, the olive is visible in the glass.
- While Larry and Richard are eating at a diner, they see Bernie enter a building with a sign reading East 70th Street. As Larry and Richard start walking down the street, the sign behind them reads: 52nd Street. They must have extraordinarily good eyesight to have spotted Bernie from eighteen blocks away.
- When Larry and Richard first arrive at Bernie's beach house and talk to the lifeguard, no wooden walkways are visible near the house. But then they appear.
- The recording of the phone conversation between Bernie and Polly differs from the original. Polly’s phrase “Aha!” is missing.
- The series "Friends" (1994) states that this film is Rachel Green's (Jennifer Aniston) favorite.
- After Richard knocks out the man Bernie fired, he tells Larry, "Now you can come out, Rambo." Ted Kotcheff also directed "First Blood" (1982). The gardener in the film (George Chung) wears the same suit as one of the villains in "Rambo: First Blood Part II" (1985).
- The unconscious man in the bathroom positions his legs to allow the door to be closed.
- On the roof, at Larry and Richard's workplace, Larry sits in an inflatable pool, takes off his socks, and throws them on the ground. Then the right sock shifts, and in one shot it disappears completely.
- When Gwen is in the building lobby for the last time, Larry is holding a cigarette. When Larry and Richard follow Gwen into the elevator, Larry no longer has the cigarette.
- Andrew McCarthy was supposed to play Richard, but when he read the script, he fell in love with the role of Larry, which he ultimately landed.
- Bernie has a house on Hampton Island. In reality, there are no private homes there. It's a wildlife preserve in North Carolina. The filmmakers were allowed to build a house set there on the condition that it would be torn down immediately after filming.
- Kotcheff appears in the film as Richard's father.
- Bernie's hair is revealed to be a wig when vacuumed, but throughout the film it doesn't look like a wig at all.
- Richard wears a wedding ring throughout the film. From the story of his courtship with Gwen, it's clear that he is not married. However, he may have been married once, but either his wife died or he divorced, and he simply kept the ring.
- When the guys are transporting Bernie from the golf cart to the boat, you can see Bernie's hands clenching and unclenching.
- Bernie is dropped from the wooden deck opposite the house, and then washed away by the tide. Later, in shots of the dunes between the ocean and the house, it can be seen that the waves don't reach that high along the shoreline.
- When Bernie falls overboard from the boat, Larry turns just in time to see him fall. But when he looks back a few minutes later, he is surprised to find Bernie is missing.
- Bernie occasionally winks and shows other signs of life.
- When Gwen and Richard are lying on the beach and kissing, they are washed over by a wave, and Gwen’s hair gets wet. When she sits up, her hair and clothes are dry.
- When the heroes are dealing with a corpse inside the house, Richard is sometimes barefoot and sometimes wearing shoes.
- When Larry goes to the kitchen to make himself coffee, Bernie’s head falls onto Richard’s shoulder. In the next shot, Bernie’s head is upright and then falls onto Richard’s shoulder again.
- When the ambulance crashes into the wooden deck, the stretcher with Bernie on it begins to roll towards the beach. The stretcher is empty during the impact.
- When Polly is in the house pursuing Richard, Larry, and Gwen, Gwen’s hat disappears from her hands and later lies next to Bernie’s body.
- Terry Kaiser's stunt double broke several ribs during filming, especially during the scene where Bernie is dragged across the lake surface and collides with floating metal obstacles.
- When Larry and Richard arrive on the Hampton Island ferry, the ferry is moving quickly when they jump up. In the next shot, the ferry has already come to a complete stop.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
