In 1968 Helen North Beardsley–a widow with ten kids who met Admiral Frank Beardsley, a widower who had eight of his own and together formed a family of 20–wrote a book appropriately titled Who Gets the Last Drumstick? Little did the Breadsleys know Hollywood would be calling–twice.
The original feature film 1968 adaptation of Yours, Mine and Ours starred Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. Now 37 years later, in true Hollywood fashion, a remake has been born with a modern, up-to-date take starring Rene Russo as Helen North and Dennis Quaid as Frank Beardsley, as the two widowed single parents who tie the knot. Between them, they have 18 children who try to sabotage their relationship, and along the way, they realize that marriage and raising children isn’t as easy as it once was, especially when they have differing views on parenting.
Though the filmmakers strayed from the original just a little, writer David Kidd said, “The studio wanted a movie that you would see today without losing all the great stuff the original had. At the end of the day, you want to keep the spirit and excitement that everyone got from the first one.” Some of the changes in the remake include the history Helen and Frank had in high school, as well as more focus on Frank’s career as an admiral.
Frank is a strict father who sticks to rules and prefers order in the lives of his children, while Helen is an eclectic free-spirited purse designer whose life is somewhat of a mess. She has a pig that runs around the house like it’s another child. She is unfamiliar with order, rules, and cleanliness and though there is a strong romantic connection to Beardsley, as soon as they move in together, chaos erupts amongst the children of the two households and the sabotaging begins.
“I am definitely not the admiral. I have rules, but I would consider myself somewhere in the middle,” said Quaid, about his own parenting tactics. The actor was pleased to appear in the all-ages film. “It’s a romantic comedy, but with kids so everyone can enjoy it. It has something for the whole family…The trouble with some family films is that the parents don’t enjoy them and they are there merely for the kid’s enjoyment…Some of the movies I take my son to, I have a nice nap. This movie isn’t like that because it appeals to people of all ages.”
Helen and Frank have immediate chemistry, even though they differ in how they raise their children. The film chronicles the obstacles families go through such as discipline, cleanliness and respect. From paint fights in the house to disorderly conduct, the children are trying to drive their parents apart. While doing so, they end up forming relationships with their new found siblings and realize that they do actually like one another.
According to Drake Bell, who plays Helen’s 16-year-old son Dylan, “The message is to be able to tolerate people who are different from you. The film portrays people who are so different yet come together and respect each other and come to enjoy each other’s company.”
Director Raja Gosnell set out to make a fun family film that had something in it for everyone. Gosnell is no stranger to the family comedy genre, having directed such films as Mrs. Doubtfire, Miracle on 34th Street and Rookie of the Year starring Quaid, but this was even more extreme than his part experience overseeing young actors.
“Directing 18 kids was massive chaos! They were all brought on the set at once!” he said. “I don’t usually direct in clumps. I just dealt with them like I would deal with any actor. I would talk to them individually and try to explain to them individually what I needed from them. That seemed to work pretty well for the most part. I have four kids of my own, so having that kid language was very helpful.”
“For some of the kids it was their first movie, so I had to help coach them and fool them into doing their lines,” said Quaid. “I told the director, to keep the cameras rolling after he said cut, because that’s when we got some of our best stuff.”
The menagerie of young performers immediately embraced the pratfalls and broad comedy the script envisioned, especially a raucous paint fight. “I definitely loved filming the paint scene the best!” said Katija Pevec, who plays Christina Beardsley. “We were just let loose! There were no limitations; they just told us to have a paint fight! There were feathers being sprayed, paint being thrown, just everything. It was fun to not know what was going to happen and just go for it. That particular scene required four days to shoot and we had to keep changing clothes when we had to re-do it. We were all there together so it wasn’t embarrassing at all.”
“I like doing comedies. Sometimes you don’t want to be deep,” Quaid explained about the allure of the slapstick action. “Comedy is hard because it all has to be choreographed. The thing about slapstick is that you want to see the reaction on the face which is why I didn’t use a body double for a lot of my scenes. My character took a lot of abuse!”
That included a scene in which Quaid finds himself locking lips with the family’s pet pig. “Don’t knock it until you try it!” he laughed. “I had to do that 35 times! We needed to get all different angles and sometimes the pig wasn’t in the right place. They put some type of substance on my mouth so the pig would be attracted to my lips. The worst part is that the pig had really bad gas!”
“I hated that pig!” added Sean Faris, who plays Quaid’s son, William. “I did not get along with it at all. That pig was such a diva. If it didn’t want to do a take, it wouldn’t do a take.”
Gosnell agrees: “Fiona [the pig] was such a diva. It had to have special food, special trainers, and it would only give me two takes, so we had to be productive.” But the swinish attitude notwithstanding, he insisted “all the kids were definitely harder to direct! The pig was just happy when it got fed. The pig was actually very smart. Directing 18 kids was sometimes just massive chaos, particularly when the little kids wanted to know where their mark was and where they were supposed to stand and how they should say their lines exactly.”
Quaid was pleased to be working with a whole new generation of screen actors. “I am most grateful that I am still here. I have been doing this for over 30 years and there are a lot of people I started out with and I don’t know where they are anymore. I feel very lucky and I also have perseverance to go along with that.” That longevity has resulted in the actor being honored at last with his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a milestone his kid co-stars can aspire to. “It’s kind of unreal,” he explained. “I remember the second day I was here, I walked down on Hollywood Boulevard and I was like, ‘Who the heck is that?’ Now people can say the same thing about me!”
