The Goonies Breakdown: Hidden Details, Deleted Scenes and the Spielberg Touches Behind the 1985 Classic

The Goonies is a kids' adventure movie, and it is really all in one shot: a pirate ship on the Oregon coast. It was technically filmed at Goat Rock State Beach in Sonoma County, California, but either way it remains a gorgeous contrast, one that makes every kid who sees the film feel they do not have to leave their sleepy neighbourhood to find adventure. It can sneak up on you even in Astoria, Oregon, population 10,000.

"Adventure can be wherever your friends are," and I think that is why this 1980s Amblin classic gave us Samwise Gamgee, an Oscar winner for best supporting actor, and his lawyer. Below I go through the details, the deleted scenes and the Spielberg fingerprints, and I end on a maritime law argument about who really owns One-Eyed Willy's ship.

Why The Goonies belongs in a Steven Spielberg rewatch

This is the final entry in my Spielberg summer series, even though the movie was directed by Richard Donner and written by Chris Columbus. The story is by Steven Spielberg, though, and his style of foul mouthed kids constantly breaking things is totally 1980s Amblin. Throughout this piece I want to make it very clear why the film deserves a place on a Spielberg rewatch list.

The film opens by swooping into a skull and crossbones through the right eye hole, the eye One-Eyed Willy does not have, and we swoop back out of the same eye hole of another skull: the dot on the i of the Goonies title. Jake Fratelli then fakes his suicide to escape the county jail. This is a kids' movie and it opens with an apparent suicide, which is not the kind of joke you would see in a kids' movie today.

The opening chase plants Mouth's plumbing knowledge and Data's James Bond obsession

Jake's brother Francis, played by Joe Pantoliano, and Mama Fratelli lead the cops on a wild chase through the streets of Astoria, nearly running over poor Rosalita and passing a truck for Mad Jack's Plumbing. That company is owned by Mouth's dad, which is why Mouth later knows so much about pipes. Mouth, played by Corey Feldman, has Billy Wilder's 1959 Some Like It Hot on, a movie that also ends on a boat and has my all time favourite final joke in a movie.

The chase passes Data, played by Ke Huy Quan the year after he played Short Round in Spielberg's Temple of Doom, testing his gadgets. His belt buckle reads 007 because the kid is obsessed with James Bond and his concealed tech, and we hear Bond music as he slides in through the window, a move Chris Columbus would later give to Kevin McCallister. Data's accidental reel in also foils him later when he tries his gadgets on the Fratellis aboard the pirate ship.

Lawrence, aka Chunk, sees the chase while pressing his food against the arcade window. Again, this is a kids' movie, but notice how the profanity sits in moments that would be easy for broadcasters to cut or cover with other sound effects, so if you only ever saw The Goonies on TV you would not have heard any of it. Jeff Cohen would grow up to be a prominent LA entertainment lawyer, with Ke Huy Quan as one of his clients.

The Goon Docks are being erased, and pirate imagery is everywhere

The Walsh house has a row of mailboxes with "us" written on one and "them" on all the others, a little detail showing the country club types moving into the neighbourhood and forcing out local families. Our opening shot of Mikey, played by Sean Astin, makes him out to be a bit of a pirate. He has a plastic skull on his chair and peers through a telescope as if spying for Treasure Island. He also has Superman bed sheets, because before this Richard Donner directed Superman.

His brother Brand, played by Josh Brolin, is something of a pirate himself, with a bandana around his head. These were Astin's and Brolin's first film roles. The Goon Docks is the origin of the Goonies nickname. It referred to a poorer part of Astoria now being overtaken by rich developers. Their lives are being erased from the map, their worlds are ending, and they are forced out into adventure. The living room is full of pirate imagery, a ship in a bottle and sailing ships printed on the sofa cover, because Mr Walsh is obsessed with the town's pirate history.

Chunk's Truffle Shuffle was pure spontaneity

Chunk shows up, a kid destined to meet his soul mate, Sloth. Mouth makes him do the Truffle Shuffle, and Jeff Cohen improvises those wild noises. Richard Donner said in 2015 that it was just Jeff being told to do whatever. That is why the Truffle Shuffle lives on. It is not a dated reference, it is pure unfiltered spontaneity, and every kid can connect with it. Reportedly the young actor had chickenpox during the shoot, and you can see a few bumps on his skin, but he did not want to lose the role, so he came to work anyway.

Mikey triggers his elaborate gate opening device involving a bowling ball, a balloon, a startled chicken laying an egg and a sprinkler. On the chicken coop is written "Rube G 83", a nod to Rube Goldberg, and of course One-Eyed Willy would use the same kind of devices. When the others mock Chunk's tall tales about Godfather's Pizza, Corey Feldman originally said Straw Hat Pizza, but that chain refused to license its name, so the line was dubbed.

Another sequence often cut from TV airings is Mouth mistranslating Mrs Walsh's directions to Rosalita, claiming the drawers hold drugs and the attic contains torture devices. Hidden in it is key exposition: Mr Walsh does not want anyone in the attic. I find it interesting that Mrs Walsh wants the house clean when they tear it down, because she does not want to be judged a bad homemaker. After they glue the broken piece back on the statue of David, with Chunk doing it upside down, I love Rosalita's side eye, as if she is wondering whether these people are all deviants.

Spielberg reined in the chaos, and the map carries One-Eyed Willy's lost backstory

Both Richard Donner and the actors have recognised Spielberg's importance on set, and much of it was dealing with the rambunctious kids. Everyone is shouting, and when Mouth and Chunk run past the camera it shakes, but they left it in because The Goonies would not be what it is without this authentic chaos, reined in by Spielberg. That knack for breaking things is how the kids stumble onto the adventure: Mikey wipes dust off a frame, finds a treasure map, and hands it straight to Chunk, knowing he will drop it, because that is what Goonies and pirates do. They break things.

The production designer aged the map by burning it, staining it with coffee and smearing his own blood on the edges. The film's storybook gave One-Eyed Willy a backstory as a one eyed court jester from the Spanish Netherlands in the early 1600s, banished for his practical jokes, who formed a pirate band that raided hundreds of King Charles I's ships. His flagship, the Inferno, was chased to the Oregon coast, where he hid in the caves and was sealed in by English cannon fire, guarding his treasure with jokey booby traps.

The character was meant to be a lot like Mikey. The original idea was that Willy was also asthmatic before anyone knew what asthma was, and Mikey would have found an old handmade inhaler among the skeleton. The newspaper photo of Chester Copperpot that Chunk finds is actually of an actor Richard Donner originally planned to cast as Perry White in Superman.

Brand and Mikey's headlock is really a hug

When the buyers drop by with paperwork, Mikey looks out over the neighbourhood that is about to be erased. Brand, after dismissing his little brother in front of his friends, allows him a quiet moment of grief and consolation once they are alone, and Mikey latches into the hug, letting Brand put him in a headlock and drag him inside. As a little brother myself, I can tell you sometimes you bait your brother into wrestling so you can kind of hug him.

The four boys tie Brand up with his own spring chest expander, and I think my favourite gag in the film is Rosalita dropping her groceries when she sees it. Mrs Walsh's habit of repeating herself shows where Mikey gets his "that's what I said" habit. Brand then takes Data's little sister's bike, and Troy, in a country club visor, practically tries to kill him. A brief shot of the bike going over a ledge is framed just like Spielberg's shot of Elliott and E.T., but Brand has no extraterrestrial in his handlebars.

Mikey lines up the doubloon with two rocks, the lighthouse and the restaurant, which we are willing to accept in a kids' movie, though it felt pretty strange when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker tried it with a dagger. To get the doubloon in close up with the kids behind it, Jeff Cohen, Ke Huy Quan and Corey Feldman were plated in over a separate background.

The Fratellis' restaurant and the pirate game the kids win

Chunk was going to describe bullet holes the size of matzah balls, because Chunk is Jewish, and in the novelization Chunk's family adopts Sloth and throws him a bar mitzvah. Mikey sees Jake singing Puccini's Madame Butterfly while throwing food at his brother Sloth, played by former Oakland Raiders defensive end John Matuszak. Sloth initially wears a Raiders shirt, and the Raiders mascot is a pirate, so it all fits. Matuszak spent five hours in the makeup chair, and the deformed eye was mechanically operated, along with his wiggling ears.

Mama's complaint about kids is, I think, the root myth of the film, but really kids are pirates. This movie is a pirate game, a thought experiment in game theory where a captain must play the other pirates against each other. Mama fails because she does not value Sloth, who allies with the most undervalued Goonie, Chunk. "Kids win this Pirate game because they have no limit." They smash and annoy, wearing the adults down until they emerge victorious.

Underground, Spielberg directed the pipes scene himself

Mikey previews his big speech, the kids use Chunk as their Hulk to smash a door, and Andy and Stef join, giving us the older kids, younger kids dynamic Stranger Things would later use. Stef is really the smartest one in the room, and her line about babysitting without pay could be the filmmakers talking; Richard Donner felt he was babysitting too. In the chaos it is easy to miss someone shouting "Josh" instead of Brand. In the freezer, where the kids find the man the Fratellis killed, the score mixes in strings echoing Hitchcock's Psycho. Captured, Chunk improvises a Hebrew prayer translating to blessed are you, God.

The scene of the kids banging on pipes was one of a few directed by Spielberg, and the humour is unmistakably his. The pipes connect to the Astoria Country Club, where one man in the shower wears an eye patch, pirate versus pirate, and Troy's toilet geysers skyward. By breaking things, these pirate kids unknowingly advance their interests. A deleted scene had the banging free zoo animals, with two gorillas stealing Troy's car, which may have been too much.

Chunk's confession to the Fratellis was mostly improvised by Jeff Cohen, who does have a sister named Edie and an uncle named Max. The fake puke he brought to a movie theatre balcony is a prank Spielberg was apparently involved with as a kid in Arizona.

The wishing well is the heart of the film

Spielberg also directed the wishing well scene, the most heartfelt moment of the film. These kids' hopes are being challenged by their worlds ending. They threw pennies in that well praying their homes would not be taken, and Mouth voices the heartbreak by taking his wish back. It gives the heroes a chance to turn back.

Mikey repeats his speech because Brand and the girls were not there the first time, and he knows they have their best chance of survival together. You can see why Peter Jackson thought this kid could bring the heat for Samwise Gamgee's speech in The Lord of the Rings, a line that always gets me. Samwise, played by Sean Astin, is the true hero of The Lord of the Rings. Andy then sends up the bucket with only Troy's letterman jacket.

Sloth and Chunk's friendship, a bone organ and a deleted octopus

Sloth's TV shows the 1935 Errol Flynn film Captain Blood, which inspires his heroics, since he later slices down the pirate ship's sail with the same move. Chunk gives him a Baby Ruth, and Sloth breaks his chains to share it. Chunk's sheriff call about creatures that multiply in water references Gremlins, the latest Spielberg and Columbus collaboration before this. Then Andy tries to kiss Brand but kisses Mikey by mistake.

Crossing the boat mast shows Willy built these passages from his ships, and Data's slick shoes show the kids winning by playing Willy's game. The bone organ allows a few errors because Willy, a jester, knew people make mistakes. Andy's flat worry is just a setup, but A sharp and B flat are the same note, and her notes do not match the sheet music on screen. The water slide was real, on Warner Bros. Stage 16, flooded with over 900,000 gallons, and the Inferno was a real life size ship built so the young actors would be blown away. A deleted giant octopus, sent off with a cassette player in its mouth like Brody's air tank in Jaws, explains Data's closing line about the scary octopus.

Mikey's inheritance from the first Goonie

Mikey cries in the treasure room, connecting with Willy, the first Goonie, and Brand finally understands. Being a Goonie was not an insult from rich kids; being an outcast is their birthright. That spiritual bond is, I think, the only explanation for why Mikey knows not to take the gold from the scales. He fills his marble bag with jewels, and marbles became a key prop again in Spielberg's Hook. Sloth's "Hey you guys" echoes Rita Moreno on The Electric Company, his shirt rip nods to Superman, and Francis swims clutching the toupee he denied having. Donner cameos as a ranger, and after the wrap Spielberg flew the young cast to crash Donner's Hawaiian vacation, filming it himself.

Chunk's mom is played by Jeff Cohen's real mother, Data's father calls him his greatest invention, and Data tells everyone in Mandarin that Sloth is a big strong man. I like the idea that Rosalita did not keep the jewels because she thinks the family is psychos.

The scale trap triggers a device that frees the ship, so anyone worthy enough to reach the gold would captain it. The Fratellis jumped because they were unworthy; they just followed kids. Technically, under international maritime salvage law, rights go to whoever first brings something off a vessel, so if anyone ever tracks it down, the entire ship would belong to Mikey, "a rightful inheritance from the first goonie to the bravest goonie", setting up an adventure to track it down someday.

Do you think Mikey would ever find the Inferno again?