ROSEMARY JOHNSON | Astoria

When ?The Goonies? came to town, Rosemary Johnson was working in the city of Astoria?s Finance Department and trying to get the community to organize a safer Halloween. ?This was at the time of the razor blades in apples and paper-wrapped moth balls,? she explained. So she became the originator and chairman of the Astoria Monster Bash, with the help of her city coworkers.

She contacted the Goonies crew to see if they would participate. ?They were willing to talk if I could show them a plan for the event that would be successful even without the Goonies involvement,? she said. ?What we came up with was a safe alternative to trick-or-treating. It included store-to-store daylight trick-or-treating, and a parade after that which would lead people to the YMCA location of a free carnival-like event with food, fun and games.?

Now came the clincher. The party would include a guest appearance by the Goonies kids to sign autographs! The crew said it would be a good event for the kids as they were away from home doing the filming and this would give them an opportunity to enjoy Halloween. ?It?s really a neat feeling knowing that I arranged the first autograph party for people like Sean Astin and Josh Brolin who are now big names,? said Rosemary. ?We pulled off the Monster Bash with flying colors.?

?The Goonie kids were overrun with hundreds of local kids and adults trying to get their autographs,? Rosemary recalled.??Approximately 1,500 people attended the event, which eventually expanded into the mortuary parking lot next door due to the number of people that would not fit into the YMCA building. The crowds were so large that the film crew called in some of the adult actors to do autographs to help disperse the crowds.?

The Monster Bash has been a yearly event since then, drawing more than 25 percent of the community?s population every year since its beginning. ?I believe that the Goonie autograph session helped to make the first Monster Bash a success so that it could continue for years to come,? said Rosemary.

JIM BERNARD | Warrenton

As the sales manager for Sunset Ford at the time ?The Goonies? was filming on the?North Coast, Jim Bernard helped arrange for the production crew to borrow or lease several vehicles for the movie. But when they spotted the 1985 red Mustang GT convertible he?d been driving around as a demo, they liked it so much they ended up buying it outright – and it landed the role of rich kid Troy Perkins? car in the movie!

?They were very down-to-earth, very nice people to work with,? said Jim. ?They invited the dealership people to get together with them for lunch.? Though he was happy to have helped the film, Jim was hopeful he might get his Mustang back. ?They were hard to find,? he said.

DAVE LADD | Hammond

Dave Ladd got a job driving the carpenter foreman of ?The Goonies? crew around, especially on the Ecola Park site where they were building the restaurant. After the production crew had gone, they found they needed someone to haul a wind machine and some driftwood down to the soundstage in California. Dave drove the equipment down and got to see the indoor set where they were building an exact replica of the restaurant for shooting the interior scenes, including the caves underneath the building.

As he was talking to some crew members he knew, they asked if he had seen the ship in Building 19. The security guard at that building wouldn?t let Dave in, though he told the guard he was part of the crew … so another crew member walked Dave through the door despite a dirty look from the guard. The ship was still under construction, but Dave recalls it was quite a sight to see.

MICK ALDERMAN | Astoria

At 19, Mick Alderman was an aspiring filmmaker who got permission to ?shadow? the crew during the making of ?The Goonies.? The following excerpts are from his forthcoming memoir, ?Three Weeks with ?The Goonies?: On Location in Astoria, Oregon.?

As fate would have it, [Location Manager] Tony Amatullo?s office called my house first. Not to speak with me but with my father, who was chief of the local volunteer fire department. They needed to procure a tanker truck of a certain size ? with a driver to operate it ? that could wet down streets during filming. Paved roads are often slicked with water in order to reflect lights during night shoots. Although ?The Goonies? would be set in daytime, the story ostensibly took place in the gloom and rain of autumn so they needed a water truck standing by in case Mother Nature didn?t accommodate. The production office had been referred to my dad because his department supposedly had such a vehicle. He assured them that they did.

This was, in fact, a lie of sorts.

The fire department had been intending to replace their aging tanker truck, nicknamed The Monster, for some time. While that old truck would not meet the needs of the production, the replacement my dad?s department had been eyeing certainly would. There was just one tiny problem: The truck they?d been eyeing was at that point a rusted heap slumped in the middle of an overgrown field. The intention had been to rebuild that truck from the ground up, rather than procuring the funds to purchase a new one. ?The Goonies? would begin shooting in a few months and the restoration of the tanker hadn?t even begun.

As is typical of a rural department, the team of volunteer firefighters included engine mechanics, auto body specialists and all manner of craftsmen whose job skills could be called upon to resurrect the tanker. They set to work rebuilding the engine, restoring the chassis and painting the cab. A larger-capacity water tank was ordered to replace the original and a new pump installed. By the time filming began, The Goonie ? as the new tanker had been christened ? was ready to roll.

The morning began at the Lower Columbia Lanes, Astoria?s bowling alley, located on the corner of Eighth Street and Marine Drive. In the movie, it wasn?t depicted as a bowling alley but as a video game parlor from which Chunk witnesses the Fratellis? Jeep being chased by the police.

Richard Donner arrived as the crew was completing the setup. He sat down behind the camera to preview the shot. The camera was supposed to dolly forward with Chunk as he ran toward the window to watch the car chase. It was a dry run; Jeff Cohen had not yet been summoned to the set. Everything seemed to be looking good.

Suddenly Donner exploded, screaming curses at no one in particular. Everyone froze, hoping they weren?t to blame for whatever had set him off. [Director of Photography] Nick [McLean] rushed to the director?s side to find out what was wrong.

Locations for a movie are selected months in advance. The bowling alley had been chosen because the building was uniquely situated such that the southwest corner window presented an unobstructed view straight down Marine Drive, with the iconic Astoria Bridge visible in the distance.

Unbeknownst to them at the time they?d made their decision, a McDonald?s restaurant was under construction on Seventh Street and Marine, one block west of the bowling alley, and in the intervening months the restaurant had been completed and its distinctive sign erected. The famous Golden Arches were now plainly visible, smack dab in the middle of the shot. Since the production had negotiated an exclusive promotional campaign with a competing franchise, a McDonald?s sign featured so prominently in the shot was a potential deal-breaker. Nowadays, of course, the sign could be digitally erased without breaking a sweat. In 1984, however, no such technology existed.

Donner explained the problem to Nick, who thought for a moment, then grabbed a flyer from a nearby bulletin board and taped it to the window, obscuring the sign from view. Donner immediately calmed down, asked, ?That?ll do it??

Nick assured him it would.

?Let?s shoot this thing!? Donner called out, to everyone?s relief.

As it turned out, the flyer proved too distracting and was removed. Instead, the shot was lined up so that Jeff?s hand, clutching a slice of pizza, blocked the sign.

The lighthouse restaurant was constructed by Production Designer J. Michael Riva?s crew on a hillside overlooking the ocean. The Ecola set was used strictly for exterior shooting; restaurant interiors were built on a soundstage and were among the first scenes filmed when the company returned to Los Angeles. Looking through the windows, all I could see inside were bare plywood walls. The outside had been ?distressed? ? or artificially aged ? so realistically that it fooled tourists ? and even a few locals ? into believing it was a genuine old building.

Riva?s team had also arranged mounds of various types of rusty metal and wood detritus around the outside of the restaurant set. When viewed from a distance, the placement of these seemed oddly symmetrical. I was later informed that the mounds were meant to disguise the picnic tables, which were bolted in place on concrete foundations. Despite the producers? assurance that everything would be restored to its former state, park officials had forbidden the crew from removing the tables.

PATRICIA WILLIAMS Warrenton

Patricia Williams and her late husband Bud thought it would be fun to go be extras in a scene of ?The Goonies.? If you look very closely, you might see them in the first Cannon Beach scene in a crowd standing under umbrellas, watching the race start. ?It was an experience, just being there and seeing how long it took to get a scene done!? Patricia said. ?We were there one whole day. They gave us lunch, and then it was more standing and waiting, and finally they shot the scene and that was that!?

MARION LINDROS | Astoria

Marion Lindros? granddaughter, Laura Lindros Riat, was a senior at Naselle (Wash.)?High School when she won The Daily Astorian?s contest with her picture of ?What Is a?Goonie???The prize was a day with the cast of the film.

Most of the young actors were ?just kids at that time,? said Marion, now 91. ?It was a blustery day right before Halloween,? she remembered, ?and Laura went on a bike ride with Corey Feldman. He saw that her hands were cold, so he gave her his gloves.? Laura also got to enjoy dinner on the set, though she didn?t get to meet Steven Spielberg. ?He was resting,? Marion said.