12 Intriguing Facts About 'Better Off Dead'

Savage Steve Holland, the creator of the Press Your Luck Whammy animation, wrote and directed Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer, and later directed How I Got into College. He eventually left teen films to pursue writing, directing, and producing children's television shows. Despite a limited release in August 1985 and a wider release in October, Better Off Dead earned less than $10.3 million at the box office. However, it gained a dedicated following through cable and home video. “Those video stores really saved Better Off Dead,” Holland shared with Fast Company. “It was always out at any Blockbuster Video I walked into, and the staff would tell me, ‘You know, people rent it and they never bring it back.’”

The story follows Lane Myer (John Cusack), a heartbroken teenager who is devastated when his girlfriend, Beth (Amanda Wyss), leaves him for the captain of the ski team. With the help of Monique (Diane Franklin), a foreign exchange student, Lane eventually realizes that life is still worth living. Here are some fun facts you might not know about this iconic cult teen comedy.

1. Better Off Dead is inspired by actual events.

Savage Steve Holland wrote the script inspired by his real-life high school experience, where his girlfriend left him for the captain of the ski team. Six years after the film's release, his ex contacted him. “I got a call—I don’t know how she found my number—and she said, ‘I’ve been in therapy because I saw your movie and I had no idea,’” Holland shared with The Sneeze. “Then she sent me cookies and stuff.”

The movie's darker moments, including Lane’s suicide attempt in the garage, were also inspired by Holland’s own life. “I went into the garage, tied an extension cord to a pipe, stood on a garbage can, and wondered, ‘Should I do this? Maybe not.’ Anyway, the garbage can broke under my weight, I crashed through it, the pipe snapped, and water started pouring everywhere. I ended up in a garbage can, drowning. And then my mom came in, started yelling at me for breaking the pipe, which is exactly what any mom would do.” Holland used his own experiences, including these incidents, as inspiration for the movie's script.

2. Henry Winkler played a pivotal role in getting the movie made.

In the early 1980s, Holland’s short film, My 11-Year-Old Birthday Party, was showcased at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Henry Winkler saw it and quickly became a fan of Holland’s work. “Henry took me to lunch and told me that my movie was so funny,” Holland shared with Fast Company. “And I was like, ‘Well, hold on—it wasn’t supposed to be funny. It’s a sad story about my life.’ So he asked if I had more sad stories like that, and I said, ‘Of course I do!’” Winkler then arranged for Holland to have an office at Paramount to write the script.

“Everyone talks about [Winkler] being the nicest guy in Hollywood, and he really is,” Holland told Entertainment Weekly. “He didn’t pay me or anything, but he said, ‘I believe in you, I believe in your twisted vision, and I want to give you an office.’”

3. Holland had to fight to cast John Cusack.

At Winkler’s suggestion, Holland checked out Cusack’s performance in The Sure Thing, a movie Winkler had executive produced. After watching it, Holland knew Cusack was the perfect fit for the role. “I couldn’t imagine anyone else but John,” Holland shared with Entertainment Weekly. “I had a bit of a battle with the studio because John had just appeared in Sixteen Candles playing a nerd, and they didn’t see him as a leading man. I said, ‘Yes, he is.’ They hadn’t seen The Sure Thing yet. I told them, ‘You don’t even realize what you’re getting. You’re going to be so ahead of the curve if you get Cusack now.’ I really fought for him, and they let me have him. I still think it’s the best thing that ever happened to me and the movie—getting Cusack. Nobody else could’ve done what he did.’”

4. John Cusack hated the movie (though he insists he didn’t).

It’s well-known that Cusack essentially rejected the film after viewing it, which happened the night before he was set to begin shooting Holland’s next comedy, One Crazy Summer. Although Cusack had assisted in editing the film, he walked out of the screening just 20 minutes in. “The next morning, [Cusack] came up to me and said, ‘You tricked me. Better Off Dead was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll never trust you as a director again, so don’t speak to me,’” Holland told The Sneeze. “He was furious. I asked, ‘What happened? What’s wrong?!’ He just said I sucked, that it was the worst thing he’d ever seen, that I’d used him, made a fool of him, and much more.” Cusack’s unexpected reaction made Holland reconsider his involvement in One Crazy Summer.

“Once he said all that, it felt like a breakup with a girlfriend,” Holland recalled. “You can’t argue with someone who suddenly says ‘I hate you.’ There’s no way to respond. I felt heartbroken. It was the second time my heart was broken since that girl who Better Off Dead was about, honestly.”

In 2014, Curtis Armstrong told Nerdist that he’d heard Cusack had agreed to sign a Better Off Dead poster. “That was a big deal, because he literally wouldn’t sign anything,” Armstrong explained. “If someone handed him something to sign, he’d push it away. It was like holding up a cross to a vampire.”

However, in 2015, Cusack appeared on the Nerdist podcast and clarified that he didn’t actually hate the film. “It was one of those things where I made it, and I didn’t really know how I felt about it,” he said. “But it was fine. It was good. The issue was that once you’re on the press tour, they want to talk to you about The Sure Thing or other movies, not the one you’re actually there to promote. So it wasn’t that I hated the film or had any issues with it, I just didn’t want to keep discussing it.” He mentioned feeling guilty about how the cast and crew might have thought he disliked the film. “I don’t have anything against it. I mean, I love that line, ‘It’s a shame to throw away a perfectly good white boy.’ I feel bad that the director [thought I had issues with it],” he explained.

Another sign that Cusack has come around to Better Off Dead is a subtle reference in the 2010 film Hot Tub Time Machine, where a kid can be heard shouting, “I want my two dollars” at Cusack in the background.

5. Much like Lane’s mom, Holland’s own mother was known for her adventurous approach to cooking. She once gifted him with TV dinners.

In the movie, Lane’s mom (Kim Darby) prepares bizarre dishes from Ladies Home Journal, like a “bacon” creation, and a gooey concoction with raisins that seems to move on its own. “My mom would get McCall’s magazine and find these strange recipes to make, always having an excuse for why they didn’t taste quite right—she’d forget something or not have all the ingredients,” Holland shared with Entertainment Weekly. On one birthday—not Christmas—she gave him TV dinners as a gift. “She said, ‘I got you these really cool frozen dinners because you like the peach cobbler in this one’ or something. And I was like, ‘Wow. Really? This is my life.’”

6. Test audiences were delighted by the claymation hamburger scene.

The hilarious scene occurs at Lane's job at Pig Burger, where a hamburger comes to life and starts playing a guitar. Holland shared with Entertainment Weekly that his inspiration for this came from his first job at McDonald’s.

“There was this rumor that a rat fell into a vat at a chicken place and someone ended up being served fried rat,” he recalled. “That was in my original script. The producer thought it was just too disgusting and not funny at all.” Holland then explained how he found inspiration in a funny claymation short film by Jimmy Picker called Sundae in New York about mayor Ed Koch. “I thought, ‘If I could create something like that and still tie it into a hamburger scenario.’ Then, I added the Van Halen song, and the combination was so bizarre and silly that everyone was worried about it. But when we tested it, it turned out to be the highest-rated scene. People loved it!”

7. Diane Franklin convinced Dodger Stadium to let her sing the National Anthem.

At the end of Better Off Dead, Monique and Lane share a kiss at Dodger Stadium, and Lane serenades her with his sax. To promote the movie, Franklin had her manager reach out to the stadium to propose a signing event. “I thought it would be fun for fans if they saw me at Dodger Stadium—it’d be a cool spot for them to come meet me,” she said.

The ballpark turned down the signing idea but invited her to sing the anthem instead. “What was odd, though, was when they introduced me. I thought they’d say, ‘Here’s Diane Franklin from Better Off Dead,’ or ‘Here’s Diane Franklin from Bill & Ted,’ or something like that. Instead, they just said, ‘And here’s Diane Franklin.’ And I thought, ‘Who knows Diane Franklin?’ It was hilarious.”

8. Yuji Okumoto studied Howard Cosell videos, only to have his voice dubbed by Rich Little.

Yee Sook Ree is one of the two Asian sportscasters who challenge Lane to drag race them. (Holland based these characters on a high school friend whose natural voice resembled Cosell’s.) For his audition, Okumoto immersed himself in Wide World of Sports footage. “I walked into the Better Off Dead audition feeling prepared,” Okumoto said. “Since the character learned English by watching Wide World of Sports, I figured I’d try doing Howard Cosell with an Asian accent. The producers and director loved it, and I got the role. However, before the film premiered, a producer called to tell me that they had brought in Rich Little to dub my voice. They said it was to ensure the audience could understand the dialogue. It was a little disappointing, but, hey, it’s their movie.”

9. Curtis Armstrong was cast because of his role in Risky Business.

Risky Business was released two years prior to Better Off Dead, and Curtis Armstrong, who portrayed Tom Cruise’s friend Miles in the film, made such a lasting impression on Holland that he immediately reached out to Armstrong’s agent and offered him the role of the JELL-O-snorting Charles De Mar. “I hadn’t seen a character like that in years—a second banana character that completely stole the show,” Holland told Moviefone about Armstrong’s portrayal in Risky Business. “I thought, ‘If I can get someone like him to play Charles De Mar, my movie will be a success.’” Armstrong went on to star in Holland’s One Crazy Summer and How I Got Into College, and lent his voice to the Savage-created animated series Eek! The Cat.

10. Aaron Dozier insulted Holland before he auditioned.

Dozier plays Roy Stalin, the ski captain and Lane’s rival, who’s a bit of a jerk—but a skilled skier. “When I walked in, I didn’t know who ‘Savage’ Steve was at first,” Dozier told Moviefone. “I looked at one guy and said, ‘Who’s this chubby kid?’ Turns out, he was the director.” Holland remembers Dozier interrupting him as he watched the dailies. “Suddenly, this pompous jerk walks in and says, ‘Hey, who’s the fat surfer?’ And I’m like, ‘Wow, who is this guy?’ And they go, ‘Savage, this is the guy for Roy Stalin.’ And I said, ‘You’ve got the part! You’re perfect.’”

11. The paperboy looked tough to land the role.

Demian Slade was just 12 years old when he earned the role of the real-life paperboy Johnny Gasparini, who relentlessly chased down Holland, demanding two dollars. For his audition, Slade wore a leather jacket and adopted a serious look. “I approached it like I was a serial killer, not intending to make it funny,” Slade told Entertainment Weekly. “I brought in a headshot of myself in a leather jacket, looking menacing.” During the car wash scene, he accidentally broke the windshield with his newspaper. “It was an accident, but I was pretty proud of it,” he told Facebook. “They had to replace it. It’s not easy to crack a windshield with a newspaper, especially when you’re just a kid.”

12. Holland believes Better Off Dead probably wouldn't get made today.

Following the success of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, studios were eager for more teen films. In an interview, Holland shared that the studio, Warner Bros., had faith in him. “I could never get that movie made today, but I just wanted to pack everything I knew about filmmaking—cartoons, claymation, everything—into it, because I knew it would be my one shot. Nowadays, the comedy police would shut me down,” he said. When the film was released and failed to achieve success, Holland felt he was placed in “film jail.” “And I’m truly thankful for the opportunities I had, but there comes a point where I thought, ‘Alright, I’d like to try making another movie,’ and everyone just said, ‘I don’t think so, mister. Hold on right there.’”