Weekend at Bernie's

For the 2006 album by The Queers, see Weekend at Bernie's (album).

Weekend at Bernie's
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ted Kotcheff
Produced by	Victor Drai
Written by	Robert Klane
Starring	Andrew McCarthy Jonathan Silverman Catherine Mary Stewart Terry Kiser
Music by	Andy Summers
Cinematography	François Protat
Editing by	Joan E. Chapman
Studio	Gladden Entertainment
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	July 5, 1989 (1989-07-05)
Running time	97 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$70,000,000

Weekend at Bernie's is a 1989 comedy film directed by Ted Kotcheff and starring Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman as a couple of young insurance agency employees who discover their boss is deceased. Believing that they are responsible for his death and that a hitman won't kill them if Bernie is around, they attempt to convince people that he is still alive.

Plot

Larry Wilson and Richard Parker are two low-level employees at an insurance agency who uncover a $2 million fraud involving multiple life insurance policies that were issued after the death of the insured. Taking their findings to their boss Bernie Lomax, they are commended for discovering insurance fraud and invited to Bernie's "Hampton Island" beach house for the following long weekend. Unbeknownst to Larry and Richard, Bernie is behind the fraud and nervously arranges with his mob partners to have them both killed that weekend and arrange it as a murder-suicide. The gangsters, however, double cross Bernie and change the plan to have Paulie murder Bernie at his beach house instead, as Bernie's reckless greed has made him a liability, in addition to the fact he is having an affair with the mob boss Vito's girlfriend, Tina.

Bernie arrives at the island early, before Larry and Richard, and speaks to Paulie on the phone. The conversation, accidentally recorded on Bernie's answering machine, pointedly mentions Bernie's alibi once Paulie is supposed to kill the two friends. Bernie then writes a confession and plants cash implicating Larry and Richard in what Bernie thinks will be their later deaths. Paulie arrives, kills Bernie by injection and leaves heroin to make it appear as an apparent overdose. Larry and Richard arrive at the beach house, find their now-dead boss and think he is meditating. While trying to liven him up, they discover a small bag of heroin in his jacket, left as evidence by the killer to suggest that Bernie overdosed. Guests start arriving for a "floating" party that passes through Bernie's house every weekend, as he is immensely popular on the island. Larry and Richard immediately realize that the vast majority of people are too engrossed in their own partying to notice the "host", and even the few appearing to talk to Bernie in passing are too superficial and oblivious to think twice about the apparent lack of response between his eyes concealed behind dark sunglasses and a certain dopey grin (literally and figuratively) from the murderous overdose: "You've never looked so relaxed," someone tells him.

Despite the more conniving Larry's effort to persuade his friend to take advantage of the incredible situation to enjoy the accommodations for at least a while, straitlaced Richard begins to call the police until he spots the arrival of a fellow insurance worker, summer intern Gwen Saunders. Managing to move Bernie's body away from the party with Larry broadly hinting their boss is "dead" drunk, Richard is finally free to court the comely Gwen with Larry's prompting: "Girl, beach, sand, surf, moonlight ... you ever see From Here to Eternity?" After the party has ended, another man from Vito's gang arrives and has reason to believe Bernie is still alive. He immediately calls in this surprising news to Vito, who has Paulie check back at the house the next day. The next morning starts with Larry playing Monopoly with his dead boss, out on the deck. Richard gets flustered when Gwen arrives to thank Bernie for her summer job at the insurance company. To hide Bernie from Gwen, Larry ends up dropping the corpse off the side of the deck, unknowingly on top of Paulie who was spying from beneath the patio. At once shocked and provoked by what he thinks is this sudden attack, Paulie chokes Bernie until he's positive he has no pulse available.

Larry and Richard finally determine to call the police but inadvertently press the answering machine playback of Bernie's conversation with Paulie alluding to their planned murder, which in turn leads them to discover the cash and note left by Bernie framing them. They initially try to leave the island by ferry, dragging Bernie draped over their shoulders to look like he's walking between them. The ferry leaves as they arrive at the wharf and Paulie — who is on the ferry — becomes agitated at the sight of Bernie running alongside Larry and Richard shouting to stop the boat. Paulie is driven crazy by how two murder attempts on Bernie could have failed. Next, Larry and Richard attempt to use Bernie's speedboat to leave the island. Neither knows how to drive a boat, however, and they end up wreaking havoc on various local boats and fishermen. The boat soon runs out of gas, and the duo is forced to paddle on Bernie's back to the beach house.

At the house, Gwen confronts Larry and Richard to pressure them to tell the truth. They break down and reveal that they had found Bernie dead from the start of the weekend. Suddenly Paulie returns, thinking Bernie is still alive, and blatantly fires six gunshots into Bernie in front of Gwen, Larry, and Richard. Paulie then turns the gun on the others, but he has emptied the chamber. Chasing them with another loaded gun, Paulie is caught by surprise when Larry manages to entangle him with a phone cord and knock him out. The police eventually arrive to place Paulie under arrest for first degree murder, carting him off in a strait-jacket as he continues to insist Bernie is still alive. As Bernie is being loaded into the ambulance, his gurney rolls away and down the boardwalk, dumping his body off the gurney and onto the beach yet again, where a young boy comes along and starts to play by scooping buckets of sand over the body. At last, Bernie is buried.

Main cast

Andrew McCarthy as Larry Wilson Jonathan Silverman as Richard Parker Terry Kiser as Bernie Lomax Catherine Mary Stewart as Gwen Saunders Don Calfa as Paulie Catherine Parks as Tina

Eloise Broady as Tawny Gregory Salata as Marty Louis Giambalvo as Vito Ted Kotcheff as Mr. Parker Margaret Hall as Lomax's secretary Jason Woliner as Bratty kid

Reception

Though the film was not a critical success, holding only a 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it was still a cultural icon as well as a financial success, grossing $70 million worldwide at the box office, and was profitable on home video.

The film's commercial success spawned a 1993 sequel, Weekend at Bernie's II.

In popular culture

• The film was parodied during the December 4, 2010 episode of Saturday Night Live in an SNL Digital Short titled: "Party at Mr. Bernard's" with Robert De Niro in the titular role.
• Senator John McCain joked that if Alan Greenspan, then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve, were to die in office, McCain would want to "do like they did in the movie Weekend at Bernie's ... I'd prop him up and put a pair of dark glasses on him and keep him as long as I could." After Greenspan retired from the Federal Reserve, McCain later made the same joke that he would appoint him to a commission to review the tax code even if he were dead: "If he's dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him like, like 'Weekend at Bernie's.'"
• In 2008, in Hell's Kitchen (New York City), the New York Daily News reported that two men tried to pass off their dead friend as alive so that they could collect his social security check.
• Weekend At Bernie's is revealed to be Rachel Green's favorite movie in a season 4 episode of the popular NBC sitcom Friends.

External links

• Weekend at Bernie's at the Internet Movie Database
• Weekend at Bernie's at the TCM Movie Database
• Weekend at Bernie's at AllRovi
• Weekend at Bernie's at Box Office Mojo
• Weekend at Bernie's at Rotten Tomatoes