Weekend at Bernie's

Weekend at Bernie's (1989)

Timing: 1:37 (97 min)

6.374/10
981

7.299/10
15055

6.4/10
68000

All about film

Video 1

Photo 20

Actors and characters

Release date

1989-07-05

Country

United States

Production

20th Century Fox, Gladden Entertainment

Genre

Comedy, Crime, Horror

Budget

$6 500 000

Revenue

$30 218 387

Website

Director

Ted Kotcheff

Actors

Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Catherine Mary Stewart, Terry Kiser, Don Calfa, Catherine Parks, Eloise DeJoria, Gregory Salata, Louis Giambalvo, Ted Kotcheff
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Victor Drai, Bruce McNall, Robert Klane, Malcolm R. Harding

Operator

François Protat

Composer

Andy Summers

Artist

Audition

Lynn Stalmaster

Editing

Joan E. Chapman
All team (36)

• 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.
• The series "Friends" (1994) states that this film is Rachel Green's (Jennifer Aniston) favorite.
• 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.
• 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).
• When the heroes are dealing with a corpse inside the house, Richard is sometimes barefoot and sometimes wearing shoes.
• The recording of the phone conversation between Bernie and Polly differs from the original. Polly’s phrase “Aha!” is missing.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 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 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Bernie occasionally winks and shows other signs of life.
• The unconscious man in the bathroom positions his legs to allow the door to be closed.
• Bernie's hair is revealed to be a wig when vacuumed, but throughout the film it doesn't look like a wig at all.
• When the guys are transporting Bernie from the golf cart to the boat, you can see Bernie's hands clenching and unclenching.