How much was Clark Griswold’s Christmas bonus in “Christmas Vacation”? -The Hollywood Reporter
Chevy Chase in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” 1989
Warner Bros./Everett Collection Courtesy
It’s the week before Christmas. The trees are decorated with tinsel and lamps. Mistletoe was hung in strategic locations. Gingerbread cookies are baked, decorated, and eaten.
Naturally, the Internet is abuzz with cost-analysis calculations about the exact amount Clark Griswold earned for his annual bonus in 2015. National Lampoon’s Christmas Holiday.
Glory is a newborn holiday tradition: Find out how much classic Christmas movie characters earn and spend.
On December 20, New York times I published a story titled “How Rich Are the McCallister Family in ‘Home Alone’?” Reporter Amanda Holbusch invested an extraordinary amount of shoe leather in search of an answer, even consulting with economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The calculations are largely based on the cost and mortgage payments of the home Home Alone — a large red-brick Colonial building in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country — and the answer the bank’s experts came up with was that the McCallister family earned about $305,000 a year in 1990 dollars, or about $665,000 in 1990 dollars. .2022.
But even before times A dig into Kevin’s family finances began, and curious movie fans on Reddit were putting on green eyeshadow and calculating exactly how much Clark Griswold was expecting to receive from his vacation bonus — you know, the one that was supposed to cover the cost of the pool he was planning to install In his backyard. In a thread that started around December. 12, dozens National Lampoon’s Christmas Holiday Enthusiasts crunched the numbers and came up with a consensus figure of about $20,000 in 1989 money, or about $49,000 today.
“Clark had a direct interaction with the CEO of the company (a cereal manufacturer in Chicago, possibly Kellogg),” a poster named Atelhart concluded. “But the CEO didn’t care enough to remember Clark’s name. So I’ll put Clark at the C-suite or director level. I bet he was making $77-$80,000 in 1989, so his bonus was probably about 25 percent… $80k salary, 25% bonus would be $20k.
A poster called Spunkadoodle bolstered the argument in favor of Clark’s fat bounty by helpfully adding the following: “He also made a breakthrough in non-nutritive grain varnish… mentioned several times in the film.”
In more than Home garden, Meanwhile, some light has been shed on Keira Knightley’s financial situation Love, indeed. A December 15 article reported that the house where Mark Andrew Lincoln declared his love for Juliet Knightley (by standing in her doorway and dropping a series of oversized cards) had been put up for rent. The asking price is £2,700 per week, or £10,800 per month, which is approximately US$13,700. Adjusted inversely for inflation, that’s about $8,320 a month in 2003 dollars, which is still a lot of money for an interior designer, which is what Juliette apparently did for a living, at least according to the film’s director.
Of course, when it comes to the greatest Christmas movie ever made, there’s little mystery about how much money was spent. Hans Gruber played by Alan Rickman estimates that a bearer negotiable bond is trying to steal it from the safe in the Nakatomi Building in 1988. Die hard It was worth $640 million, or about $1.6 billion today.
