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By/Sept. 19, 2016 3:35 EDT/Updated: Feb. 27, 2018 10:54 am EDT
The Goonies is a classic '80s movie, but it's endured for more than 30 years because it's also timeless—the rip-roaring story of a tight-knit group of friends fighting land developers and criminals in search of treasure and adventure. Put on some Cyndi Lauper, tear open a Baby Ruth, and never say die as you uncover some things you may not have known about The Goonies.
The kid who played Chunk had a hard time on set
Just before filming was scheduled to begin, Jeff Cohen (Chunk) came down with a nasty case of the chicken pox. But he reported to the set anyway, fully ready to work. He feared that if he delayed the production with his sickness, the director would just recast his role. He kept the pox hidden until he had to lift up his shirt to do the 'Truffle Shuffle' for the first time—which revealed the telltale spots. Cohen's health improved, but he still had a hard time on the set of. He was self-conscious about his weight, made worse because his character was almost always eating. Cohen particularly lamented the scene in which Chunk says, 'I'm so depressed' and shoots whipped cream into his mouth. The actor estimates that he had to do 50 takes of the bit, which meant 50 mouthfuls of cream.
The Goonies - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Cass, Album, Dol).
The blood on the treasure map is real
J. Michael Riva served as the production designer on the film. The prop department had lovingly crafted the movie's vitally important pirate treasure map, but Riva thought that it looked too 'new.' SInce the movie was shooting on location in Oregon, he was limited in terms of the materials he had on hand to age the paper, so he started by dumping coffee on it. That made it look old, but he still thought it wasn't authentic enough. It was missing something that would make it look truly like a pirate's treasure map: blood. The prop squad didn't have a shade of red he liked, so Riva literally took matters into his own hands: He cut his own finger and sprinkled the blood that came out onto the map. 'You do these crazy things,' Riva later said. 'You get so into it.'
Sean Astin apologized to Cyndi Lauper
Huge '80s pop star Cyndi Lauper was a music consultant for The Goonies, which meant the movie included a Cyndi Lauper song, 'The Goonies 'R' Good Enough.' The main child cast of the movie appeared in the video for the song, and it was shot after a long day of filming. The kids, particularly Sean Astin, seem noticeably less than thrilled to be there. In 2007, Sean Astin publicly apologized to Lauper for his and his castmates' 'low energy' performances. 'We'd all worked a nine hour day…and we were gonna do the music video after work. So all the kids, we were wiped out. We were passing out,' Astin recalled. 'It seemed to me that Cyndi's feelings were hurt.'
There's a deleted scene featuring an octopus attack
When the Goonies reunite with their parents at the end of the movie, Data (Jonathan Ke Quan) excitedly tells his folks about he fought an octopus and won. That doesn't make a lot of sense to viewers, because there is no octopus-fighting sequence in The Goonies—except there was, but it ended up on the cutting room floor. While trudging through waist-high water, Stef (Martha Plimpton) thinks Mouth (Corey Feldman) is trying to cop an underwater feel…only for them both to realize that it's a giant tentacle from a giant octopus doing the grabbing. The monster drags Stef underwater, only to have Data save the day: He chokes it out by shoving his Walkman into its mouth.
There were other songs on the soundtrack
Cyndi Lauper's 'The Goonies 'R' Good Enough' wasn't supposed to be the only big hit off the soundtrack. REO Speedwagon contributed a single called 'Wherever You're Goin' (It's Alright),' but it failed to gain much traction, and there was also a dance track called 'Eight Arms to Hold You,' credited to Goon Squad (a studio-only band created just for the song by producer Arthur Baker). It was ultimately only issued as 12-inch vinyl single for dance club play, and a major release and music video were canceled. A possible reason: 'Eight Arms to Hold You' was the song playing on Data's Walkman when he shoved it into the octopus's mouth. When the scene was dropped, the song was no longer prominently featured in The Goonies, and so its marketing plans were scrapped.
The pirate ship was a little too impressive
The pirate ship that looms large in The Goonies is called The Inferno. As big as a real seaworthy vessel, it was modeled after the ship in the classic Errol Flynn swashbuckler The Sea Hawk. The Inferno was more than 100 feet long, with sails made up of more than 7,000 square feet of fabric. Some of the riggings were recycled from Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which was being remodeled at the time The Goonies was in production. It took two-and-a-half months to construct The Inferno, so the hype about what it would look like was a feverish discussion topic on set. Director Richard Donner made sure that none of the main cast saw the ship until the exact moment their characters did—he wanted the reactions of excitement and awe he filmed to be genuine. Josh Brolin (Brand) was indeed impressed—when he saw The Inferno for the first time, he broke character and said, 'Holy s—!' The take was ruined, and another not-quite-authentic reaction shot was filmed.
The Goonies brought the Coreys together
Before License to Drive, The Lost Boys, and the reality show The Two Coreys, teen idols Corey Haim and Corey Feldman were just individual Coreys, going about their business as child actors in Hollywood. They were often up for the same roles in the same movies—such as The Goonies. The storied Coreys actually met each other for the first time in the waiting room of at Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, the company producing the movie. Both Coreys were up for the part of Mouth. Feldman got the part, and Haim did not—but at least he made a friend.
Kerri Green didn't want to film the kissing scenes
The movie called for a kiss between older teen Andy (Kerri Green) and young Mikey (Sean Astin). In reality, Green was also older than Astin, by a difference of about four years. She dreaded the kiss, not because there was anything wrong with Astin, but because as a 17-year-old woman she felt creepy having to kiss a 13-year-old boy. It wasn't much easier for Green to film her kissing scene with the more age-appropriate Josh Brolin either. She later said that she found the experience kissing her hunky co-star 'humiliating.'
A sequel exists
A sequel to The Goonies has been buzzed about almost sinceThe Goonies was released in 1985. Although another Goonies adventure has yet to make it to the big screen, there is a sequel out there…sort of. In 1986, Konami released a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System called The Goonies II. The premise of the game is that the Fratelli gang is on the loose and has captured almost all of the kids and trapped them in their hideout (they're also holding a mermaid named Annie captive). The player controls the sole non-kidnapped Goonie, Mikey, as he works to find and free his friends.
There's more story in the novelization
Today, re-experiencing a favorite film is easy. All you have to do is wait a few months, and you can watch the DVD or stream it to your heart's content. Not so for the early VHS era—the mid-'80s, when The Goonies was released. A VHS copy of a movie could be expensive; a novelization of the movie was cheap. The story of the movie told in the form of an easy-to-read storybook, novelizations were once a major part of a movie's promotional arsenal. But to make sure they were on shelves when a movie was in theaters, novelizations were written when the movies were still in production. Novelization writers often wrote from an early version of a screenplay, before scenes are cut out of the finished movie entirely. In the novelization ofThe Goonies, there are some big extras that didn't quite make it to the screen, particularly a lengthy epilogue. Only in the book is it revealed that Chunk's family adopts Sloth. They even throw him a bar mitzvah.
. Rettenmund, Matthew (1996). Totally Awesome 80s: A Lexicon of the Music, Videos, Movies, TV Shows, Stars, and Trends of that Decadent Decade. P. 149. she was up front about why not all of her biggest hits were represented on her 'best of,' Twelve Deadly Cyns. And Then Some.
With characteristic frankness, she grimaced when speaking of her number-ten movie theme hit, 'The Goonies 'R' Good Enough': 'I hated that. It was terrible.' .
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