New York Film Locations



Revisiting Weekend at Bernie’s

22 September 2017

With just one week to go before otsoNY returns to regularly updates, it has been decided that the 80’s classic “Weekend at Bernie’s” be revisited with new high quality screen grabs along with new additional film locations. The movie that was originally released in 1989 sees salesmen Richard played by Jonathan Silverman and Larry played by Andrew McCarthy, two low-level financial employees at an insurance corporation in New York City working the long hot weekend, and whilst going over actuarial reports, discover a series of payments made for the same death.


Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman on the set of Weekend at Bernie's

Richard and Larry then take their findings to the CEO, Bernie Lomax played by Terry Kiser, who commends them for discovering insurance fraud and invites them to his Hamptons island beach house for the Labor Day weekend. Unbeknownst to Larry and Richard, Bernie is behind the fraud. Nervously meeting with his mob partner Vito, Bernie asks to have Larry and Richard killed. However, after Bernie leaves, Vito decides Bernie has been attracting too much attention with his greed and his relationship with Vito's girlfriend, Tina, and orders that he be killed instead.


Film: Weekend at Bernie's

Bernie arrives at the island before Larry and Richard and plans the murders with Paulie, the hitman, on the phone, unaware the conversation is being recorded on his answering machine. Bernie then plants cash and a fake confession note implicating Larry and Richard in the insurance fraud. Paulie arrives, killing Bernie with a drug overdose. When Larry and Richard arrive at Bernie's house, they find Bernie's body. Before they can call the police, guests arrive for a party that Bernie used to host every weekend. To Larry and Richard's amazement, the guests are too engrossed in their partying to notice he is dead, with the dopey grin from the fatal injection and his sunglasses concealing his lifeless state. Fearing implication in Bernie's death, and wanting to enjoy the luxury of the house for the weekend, Larry proposes he and Richard maintain the illusion that Bernie is still alive, a notion that Richard finds absurd. Only the arrival of Richard's office crush, Gwen Saunders played by Catherine Mary Stewart, a summer intern for the company, convinces him to go along with Larry's plan.


Film: Weekend at Bernie's

Later that night, Tina arrives at the house, and has Larry and Richard direct her to Bernie. There, she also fails to realize he is dead. At that moment, Marty, one of Vito's mobsters witnesses the two of them apparently making love. Fooled into thinking Bernie's assassination failed, he notifies Paulie. The next morning, Richard is appalled to discover Larry furthering the illusion of Bernie being alive by manipulating his body's limbs. Richard attempts to call the police but instead activates the phone message detailing Bernie's plot against them. Unaware of the circumstances of Bernie's death, they mistakenly believe they are still the targets of a mob hit and decide to use Bernie's corpse as a prop for protection. Richard and Larry make various attempts to leave the island. All attempts are thwarted, as they repeatedly misplace and recover Bernie's body. Finally, Larry and Richard are forced to return to Bernie's home. Meanwhile, Paulie, unhinged at his apparent failure to kill Bernie, returns to the island.


Film: Weekend at Bernie's

At the house, Gwen confronts Larry and Richard, who confess that Bernie has been dead since their arrival. Paulie then appears and opens fire at Bernie, then turns his attention to Larry, Richard, and Gwen. Chasing after the trio, Paulie corners Larry, who clumsily manages to subdue him with a phone cord and a punch. The police eventually arrive and place Paulie under arrest, taking him away in a straitjacket as he continues to insist Bernie is still alive. Bernie is loaded into an ambulance, however, his gurney rolls away and topples off the boardwalk, dumping him onto the beach right behind Richard, Larry, and Gwen, who run away after noticing him. Eventually, a young boy comes along and starts to play with Bernie, scooping buckets of sand over his body.


Film: Weekend at Bernie's

Twenty-eight years have passed since this movie was released, and a good point to look back at the original cast to see how they changed and what projects they have done since.


Andrew McCarthy as Larry Wilson

Andrew McCarthy, who played Larry Wilson got his first breakout role in the 1983 comedy film “Class”, after which he involuntarily became a member of the '80s Hollywood group of young actors known as the ‘Brat Pack’, with appearances in such as films, ”St. Elmo's Fire” and “Pretty in Pink”. Though Andrew is probably best known to many for his role in the 1987 film “Mannequin” alongside Kim Cattrall. Since then, he has appeared in several films, television shows as well as the sequel to “Weekend at Bernie's”.


Actor Andrew McCarthy

Jonathan Silverman, who played Richard Parker is best known for his roles in the TV series “Gimme A Break!”, as well as in the films “Brighton Beach Memoirs”, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, “Caddyshack II”, and “Weekend at Bernie's”.


Jonathan Silverman as Richard Parker

He made a guest appearance on “Friends” in the episode ‘The One with the Birth’. He also appeared briefly on “The Bold and the Beautiful” in the early 2000s. More recently, Silverman appeared in the New York television shows “White Collar” and “Elementary”.


Actor Jonathan Silverman

Catherine Mary Stewart played Gwen Saunders, the love-interest of Richard. Stewart began her career as a dancer and moved to London to study at age 18. There she landed a role in “The Apple”, a 1979 low-budget musical science fiction film. After moving to Los Angeles she obtained a role on the soap opera “Days of Our Lives”, playing the original Kayla Brady In 1984, she starred in two science fiction feature films “The Last Starfighter” as Maggie Gordon and in “Night of the Comet” as Regina Belmont. She later played a leading role in the teen comedy “Mischief”.


Catherine Mary Stewart as Gwen Saunders

In the mid-1980s, Stewart appeared in two highly rated miniseries, “Hollywood Wives” and “Sins”, where she played the younger version of Joan Collins's character. She also made guest appearances on television series such as “Knight Rider”, “Hotel” and “ The Outer Limits”. In 1989, she appeared as Gwen Saunders in the comedy film “Weekend at Bernie's”. Since raising her family throughout the 1990s, Stewart has returned to the small screen, and has expressed an interest in directing.


Actress Catherine Mary Stewart

Terry Kiser, who played Bernie Lomax is a life member of The Actors Studio, and was a regular on several soap operas, “The Secret Storm” and “The Doctors”. He has also appeared in several short-lived sitcoms and as well as some low-budget films such as ”An Eye for an Eye”, “Six Pack”, “From a Whisper to a Scream “, and “Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood”.


Terry Kiser as Bernie Lomax

Kiser is best known for his starring role as the corrupt insurance executive Bernie Lomax in “Weekend at Bernie's”, and later reprised the role in “Weekend at Bernie's II”. In more recent times, Kiser has appeared in the 2013 festive film “A Christmas Tree Miracle”.

Other actors to have appeared in “Weekend at Bernie’s” include Catherine Parks, who played the cheating girlfriend of Vito; Don Calfa, the assassin Paulie, and the Playboy model Eloise Broady, who made her brief entrance as the bouncy bikini-wearing Tawny. The Texas native made her first screen appearance in “Songwriter” before gaining credits in “Weekend at Bernie's”, “Grand Champion”, “Don't Mess with the Zohan”, “Wall Street (Money Never Sleeps)”, and “Wild Hearts”.


Film: Weekend at Bernie's featuring model Eloise Broady

Eloise has also appeared in the music video for Kiss’s “Reason to Live”, playing a love sick girlfriend, who spends much of the video lying on a bed in 80’s leg-warmers before turning up at her ex-boyfriend’s home with a can of petrol in a low cut black pencil dress ready to destroy his posh sports car, and then later seen dancing in front of her bedroom mirror in little more than a red towel. Besides acting Eloise was widely recognised as the spokes model for Paul Mitchell Hair care products in television and printed adverts.


Eloise Broady

Updates for Weekend at Bernie's begin next week and will include new locations as well as a complete new set of high quality screen grabs.



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