A 1988 American comedy movie “Funny Farm” is well-known for its beautiful and popular filming locations. Starring Chevy Chase and Madolyn Smith, the movie was an adaptation of a 1985 comedic novel of the same name by Jay Cronley. Directed by George Roy Hill, the movie was released on June 3, 1988, and was loved by a huge mass audience. Film’s screenwriter Jeffrey Boam said that he was in love with the comedic novel “Funny Farm” and claimed it was the exact kind of movie he always wanted to write. “It needed a lot of work because it wasn’t told in the fashion that could be filmed, but I loved the idea of working with Chevy. He was a comedy hero of mine and still is,” said Boam.
The tone of the movie was to be light-weight and funny, but the tracks were changed a bit when George Roy Hill signed in as the director for the film. Boam says, “George wanted to do a much classier version than I ever imagined it to be. I imagined it to be a little cruder, more low-brow humor, rougher, and more like the movies Chevy was doing at the time, but George was a classy guy, and he wasn’t going to do that. He does what he does. He made the movie classy, and I think a lot of Chevy’s fans were let down because it wasn’t as raucous and vulgar as they might have expected.”
Funny Farm: Filming Locations
Funny Farm was filled in a popular Hollywood destination known as “Vermont” in the 1980s. The destination attracted many filmmakers with its scenic beauties. The movie rolls through all four seasons in the small town of Redbud, Vermont. The film is one of the most popular among the ones filed in Vermont. The “Hall House” is now located on a hill above the village of Grafton at the end of a road just past the village fire pond. It’s located at 198 Fire Pond Road, Grafton, Vermont.
Grafton Village, Vermont.
The postman scene is one of the hilarious ones in the movie. On the screen we see the postman comes all way past the house on his rounds but in reality, he would have had turned around just off-screen. The house still exists and is declared as a private residence, as per the Grafton Historical Society. When we talk about the look of the house then both interior and exterior are the same in reality as they were in the movie shots.
Funny Farm, backyard
The covered bridge is the one just a little way past Downer’s Four Corners in Weathersfield if coming from Dowers. The pond is in Windsor, VT.
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Funny Farm: Plot and Settings
The film portrays Chevy Chase in the role of Andy Farmer and Madolyn Smith in the role of Elizabeth Farmer as married couples who make a decision to move to a small New England town. The decision was made to help Chevy write as he is a sports writer. He thought that he could write his novel with the typewriter placed just exactly right next to the big open window on the second floor overlooking the lawn will; be the perfect condition to boost the development of a best seller.
Though, things don’t go as planned. They face many problems, which include the lighting speed of the mailman, snakes in the lake; and the corpse buried in the garden, and it costs 20 cents to make a call from the payphone in the kitchen. By winter, Chase is not in a very good condition with drinking heavily and sleeping past noon; while his wife has sold a children’s novel about a city squirrel who move to the country and has the same name as her husband.
There is so much happening in the film that cannot be written here and explained. The screenplay is much better than it looks while reading the plot. Aside from Chevy and Madolyn, Mike Starr was starred as Crocker, Glenn Plummer as Micky, Joseph Maher as Michael Sinclar, Bill Fagerbakke as Lon Criterion, and many others in the film.
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