When Ron Fugelseth and Patrick Radcliff hit their mid-20s a year ago, it's possible they began to feel their youth had slipped away. They were, after all, working long hours as co-owners of Oxygen Productions in Santa Cruz, Calif., designing Web sites, creating video presentations, always under the gun.
"Most weeks we spend at least 60 hours together," says Patrick, 27. "There's a lot of pressure."
Taking a break one day, Ron, 26, cruised the Web. "Now that I'm getting a little bit older," says Ron, "I'm starting to look back at things that make me nostalgic."
In particular, Ron was nostalgic about the movie he loved as a 10-year-old. "I was totally into 'The Goonies,' " says Ron, who loved "the comical characters. And also, it was exciting to see kids my age go on an adventure like that."
In the 1985 film, shot mostly in Astoria, a group of stock kid characters -- the funny fat kid, the brilliant Asian kid, the mouthy kid, the earnest young hero -- go on a treasure hunt, foil a family of murderous thugs, find a legendary pirate's treasure and save their homes from the wrecker's ball.
Patrick loved the movie as a kid, too. "We had one of those old Betamax VCRs, and it was one of the three movies we had. I remember watching it all the time."
Ron and Patrick weren't alone in their nostalgia, Ron discovered. There were "The Goonies" Web sites all over the Internet; many gave the addresses of locations in Astoria where the film had been shot.
"Then the DVD came out," says Patrick. Ron and Patrick loved the DVD, which included cast members, now young adults, swapping funny stories about making the film. "I'm a pretty nostalgic person," Ron says. "I loved the old Pepsi cans and the funny 1980s clothes; it really captured that era."
Encouraged by their wives, who knew they needed a break, Ron and Patrick decided to make a pilgrimage to Astoria to find the locations that director Richard Donner and producer Steven Spielberg used 18 years ago.
Ron and Patrick hit the road last August in Ron's Chevy S-10 pickup, their camping gear in the back, driving 12 hours straight from Santa Cruz to Astoria. They took along a Handycam, Ron says, "to shoot a funny video for our wives." They also brought a laptop on which they could freeze-frame shots from the "The Goonies" DVD. Ron had addresses of Astoria locations from "Goonies" Web sites. He'd also noted sites others had been unable to find -- but not for a lack of trying. One coffee shop clerk told them a couple hundred people come to Astoria every month looking for "Goonies" locations, says Ron. The Astoria office of the Oregon Coast Visitors Association agrees.
Early the next morning they began their search. "The first thing we found was the county jail," says Patrick. After watching the scene on the laptop, the two re-created the jailbreak scene for their Handycam. Then they crossed the street to the Flavel House Museum and pretended to be the hero's father in the film, taking down the American flag.
Then came a greater challenge: finding the bowling alley in the opening of the film. "No one had found it before," says Ron. "We bought an Astoria map and scoured it for this funny intersection" visible through a window when they freeze-framed the shot. "We used landmarks in the background, especially the bridge."
They finally found it. "There was a uniquely shaped lamppost in exactly the same spot," says Patrick, "and you could see the faded crosswalk lines in the right place." For their video they re-created Chunk's famous cry: "A police chase! Bullets!" Then it was on to other sites: the "Goonies" house itself, perched on a residential hilltop; the convenience store, now a coffee shop.
It's unlikely that most "Goonies" visitors to Astoria see all the places Ron and Patrick found. Tracking down long-gone gas stations, missing quickie-marts and obscure alleyways wasn't exactly a walk in the rain.
The hardest site to find was an old restaurant, which in the movie is on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The two knew from their research that the rock in the water was Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach. In the film, says Patrick, the hero "takes the doubloon and lines it up with a lighthouse and the rock, and it points right to the restaurant." They knew the restaurant was a set built and later torn down by the film crew, but they figured "if we found Haystack Rock from that vantage point, it would point to the restaurant."
They spent half a day in Cannon Beach, unable to find anything but Haystack Rock. "We were driving all over," Ron says. "Finally we stopped in the information center. We felt like idiots." But the woman behind the counter consulted with others in the office; someone said the restaurant had been built in Ecola State Park, farther north.
"As we drove up, it started looking really familiar," says Patrick. "The perspective started making more sense. We were excited."
In the end they realized Haystack Rock had been blue-screened into a shot at Ecola State Park, miles away. They found the field where the restaurant had stood; again, they re-created their favorite lines and moments from scenes shot there.
And so it continued, as they worked their way through the film shot by shot. "It's like we were on a treasure hunt," Patrick says, "re-creating the treasure hunt the kids went on. It was fun."
The two left for home the next morning with plenty of video, which Ron edited, intercutting their shots with scenes from the film; he even edited himself into a romantic moment near the end.
Ron and Patrick screened their 15-minute video, "The Goonies Vacation," for friends and family and put it on their company Web site for far-away friends. Other "Goonies" Web sites began putting up links to their film. "As we saw people's reactions, and the numbers started going up, we decided we should do a 'Goonies' Web site," featuring their movie, Ron says.
The site went up three weeks ago at http://thegoonies.org. Since then thousands of "Goonies" fans have watched Patrick do the "truffle shuffle" outside the "Goonies" house. Fans from Russia, Italy and Germany have watched Ron and Patrick clamber over the same rocks, gaze at the same coastline, escape from the same jailhouse featured in "Goonies."
Ron and Patrick plan to return to Astoria soon; they like Oregon, and they want to find a few more locations. " 'The Goonies' was so much a part of my childhood," says Ron, "visiting these places is like going back in time."
