All language subtitles for Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (2015)

Due to the explicit
sexual nature

of the following
National Lampoon Radio Hour,

it is featured as adult
entertainment

and not recommended
for children's ears

without parental supervision.

Tonight's show will begin
after this brief commercial word.

Good evening, uh,
this is John Belushi

and this is the
National Lampoon Radio Hour.

- Hi, Dad.
- Hello there, son,

how was school today?

Okay. Hey, I heard
a really neatjoke

at recess,
you wanna hear it?

Why, certainly, son.
Go ahead.

Okay. Well, you see,
there was this priest

and this minister and this...
Wait, what do you call it...

Rabbi, yeah.
And they were in this car and--

Hold it right there, son.
Around this house,

we don't make jokes
about religion, do we?

Boy: Aw, but gee, Dad,
it's a really cute joke.

Don't -Aw, gee- me, son.

You start off with
cute jokes about religion,

and you end up
with atheistic trash

like this December issue
of the National Lampoon.

It makes fun of saints and prayers
and money and all that's sacred.

This issue of the National Lampoon
is foul and repulsive,

and this is where your cute
little jokes will lead you, son.

Okay, Dad, I'm...
I'm sorry.

That's all right, son,
you're forgiven.

- Oh, and son?
- Yes, Dad.

Man: You'll be sleeping
with your mother tonight.

It's my turn
with your sister.

David Bowie - Jean Genie

Billy Bob Thornton:
I had this sense of humor

that sort of didn't exist
where I grew up.

After reading that first
National Lampoon,

I went, -Wow, that's what
I've been trying to say.-

National Lampoon
just meant a lot to me as a kid

because it was
what I wanted to do.

It woke me up to the idea
that this was a job.

Fat, drunk and stupid is
no way to go through life, son.

And then you get
all these generations afterwards

of people like me who were
just trying to be those guys.

It was sharp, crystal clear,
and above all funny.

It just blew
the whole shit house up.

The National Lampoon was
defining part of the zeitgeist.

Here was this totally
outrageous voice

that was screaming,
-Here I come.-

Breasts... I would try
to seek out the magazine

on the off chance that
there would be some breasts.

Kevin Bacon: The humor was
a little bit above my pay grade.

The Lampoons
are very intellectual.

Tennessee Williams
and Arthur Miller

could have been part
-of- National Lampoon.

We were taking on
the idiocy

of our own generation.

You know, overthrowing the ageist,
racist, sexist,

corporate pig monster
is a full-time job.

They always had
the best parties,

the best drugs,
the smartest people.

We could sell out more,

and the moment
we do sell out totally,

we'll be dead.

There's a time
in everyone's life,

and it's really
between 17 and 22,

when you talk to people
in their middle age,

they always talk
about their high school

or their college experience
as the, quote unquote,

-Best years of their lives.-

And I'm thinking, -Well, why?-

And ultimately it's because,
when you're 17, 18,

you were expected to function
as an adult, but you're a baby.

Have you ever gone
to a college campus?

Those kids are babies.

But they're adults,

so there's this wonderful
freedom, sense of adventure.

-We can do anything we want!
We're college students!-

And that's really
how the whole thing started.

Fight fiercely, Harvard
fight, fight, fight

Impress them
with our prowess do

Meatloaf:
-What was it originally,

-the- Harvard Lampoon, right?

Well, anybody that
mentioned Harvard,

I just went, -Fuck you.-

The Harvard Lampoon
was one of those famous things

that nobody has
ever seen a copy of.

? Fight, fight, fight... ?

Mike Reiss:
The Harvard Lampoon is

America's oldest humor magazine

started at Harvard in 1876.

John Updike was an editor,

and George Plimpton was
an editor.

Well, that's about it,
you know?

Two famous writers
in 125 years.

And we also had Fred Gwynne, the
guy who played Herman Munster.

It goes
off the table after that.

Fight, fight, fight ?

Harvard Lampoon was just
this extracurricular activity

and was something
you did before you went

into the family law firm
or became a banker.

Doug Kenney and Henry Beard were
in the class after I left Harvard.

They were both incredibly brilliant,

and incredibly funny
and incredibly good friends,

but they weren't the same at all.

Doug Kenney was really the heart
and soul of the Lampoon.

Doug was the, sort of, the complete
social opposite of Henry.

For one thing, he did not come
from an upper-crust family.

Doug's father was
the tennis pro

at a golf club
in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

Have you ever seen Caddyshack?
That's Doug.

- You take drugs, Danny?
- Every day.

Good.

Tony Hendra:
The very first time I met Doug,

he was talking like
William Makepeace Thackeray.

I mean, he was actually
improvising his prose, right?

And it was Thackeray,
it wasn't Dickens.

And about 30,
45 seconds after that,

he was demonstrating that he could
put his entire fist in his mouth.

So this was Doug,
you know?

Sean Kelly:
Doug was a performer.

Doug wanted to be a star.

And he was a smart, funny,

complicated person
who could write.

Now that's, uh, that's rare.

Bruce McCall: Henry was probably
the smartest man I ever met.

He could have been
a nuclear physicist,

he could have been
a Supreme Court judge,

he could have been anything.

I remember the first time
Henry met my first wife.

Afterwards she said,
-I've met Holden Caulfield.-

My father
had graduated from Yale,

and as a...
a bit of youthful rebellion,

I decided to go to Harvard.

Henry is about as private
a person as you'll ever find.

He was mysterious and elusive.

The two of them together were
an absolutely amazing team.

When I was at Harvard,
we got a call one day

from Betsy Talbot Blackwell,

who was the editor-in-chief
of Mademoiselle magazine.

She had seen a parody issue

that the Harvard Lampoon
had put out,

and Betsy said,
-You know, maybe I should

ask these guys
to do a parody of us,

and we'll publish it
in our own magazine.-

She offered us $7,000 which
seemed like nothing even then,

but what she also offered was
a free subscription ad.

We could do anything we wanted
as long as we put the clothes in

and as long as we showed
the models,

which, of course,
led to a lot of good times.

And as a result of that
parody issue,

we got tens of thousands
of subscriptions right away.

She gave us
a national audience.

The discovery is that,
rather than having

to depend on Mademoiselle -to-
make our magazines go national...

...the Harvard Lampoon could actually
publish national magazines itself.

They did Time magazine,
and they did Sports Illustrated

and they did Life magazine.

Beard: Doug Kenney and I decided
to do a parody of Lord of the Rings.

We sent a letter to Tolkien,
who, honest to God,

sent a letter back saying, -Yeah
go right ahead, silly book.-

I like the -Playboy- parody
that they did

where the centerfold girl was more
tan around her bottom and top.

She had reversed tan lines.

Playboy was
a big hit nationally,

and Doug and Henry realized
that maybe there was some way

that the National Lampoon
could exist.

Radio Announcer: Uh-uh-uh,
don't touch that dial.

-he- National Lampoon
will be right back

after this insincere
commercial message

written by some cynical Nazis,

solely for the purpose of
ripping off your parents' money.

I think if you take yourself
back to when you were

in your 20s, all possibilities
appear open to anybody.

You know, you could
go after anything at any time.

Doug and Henry
had gone to New York

in hopes of doing a 50/50 deal
with some publishing group

who would put up the money.

See, we met with some guys
from Time and Life.

I can't tell you how
off-putting they were.

Just saying, -Oh, you guys,
you don't understand anything.

You don't have a chance.
You're toast.

You're just not going anywhere.-

Doug Kenney was not
very happy about that

and said, -You people are
the kind of people

who commute back and forth
from Westport, Connecticut,

in a station wagon.

We have nothing to do
with you.-

I thought, -Holy God-,
but he was right!

And that's how we ran
into 21st Century Communications

and Matty Simmons.

Doug Kenney,
Henry Beard, and Rob Hoffman,

-three- Harvard Lampoon -editors,-

came into my office,
and I was immediately impressed.

Matty belonged
to another generation.

Very much New York,
very much old-school publishing.

Ellis Weiner:
This guy invented

the Diners' Club card,
which was the first credit card.

Janis Hirsch: I think he wished
he was in the Rat Pack.

He, sort of,
always had those bedroom eyes.

You'd be talking to him
about something serious,

and he'd take a phone call and say,

Oh, yeah, darling, baby,
I love you so much, I love you.

Yeah, broccoli for dinner's fine.
Yeah, thank you, good-bye.

He was very full of himself,
knew the business inside out.

Distribution in those days was,
you know,

there were some
criminal elements.

Matty wasn't one of them, but he
had to deal with people like that.

Magazines in the late '60s

were thought to take about five years
before they got into the black.

Rob intuited that this would
either work or it wouldn't.

So he made a bet
when he negotiated the deal.

He did a forced buyout
after five years.

It was, kind of, a gutsy move.

They owned 25-, I owned 75-.

And part of the deal was,
after five years,

I would buy them out.

If this magazine is successful,

I might owe these guys five,
six million dollars,

but I made the deal.

And we started
National Lampoon.

Their first hire was
Michael O'Donoghue,

and Michael O'Donoghue
was not Harvard,

Michael O'Donoghue was Buffalo.

T. Rex -Children of
the Revolution-

Boy, was he an angry bunny.

He probably as much as anyone
gave the Lampoon its tone.

We're doing this in place
of hitting you in the face.

He had this recipe box,
you know the ones that ladies have

with the recipes in them?

-Oh, baked beans...-

But his recipe box was full of things
like battling buses of World War Il.

He just had
hundreds of these things.

Chris Cerf:
He would take any chance.

Even though we were perfectly
happy to do tasteful things,

he pushed the bounds
even further.

Doug did the dirty stuff,
Henry did the brainy stuff,

and O'Donoghue did
the outrageous stuff,

the really
transgressive stuff.

Tony Hendra was
a British comic

as part of a comedy team
called Ullett and Hendra.

He and his partner Nick Ullett
used to be on The Merv Griffin Show.

When you hear the buzz,
it will be the correct time.

It is now the correct time.

Writing for television
was like firing on one cylinder.

Working at the Lampoon was like
firing on all six cylinders.

It was like you could talk about
anything you wanted.

There was absolutely
nothing that was,

-You can't say that, Tony-
-or -That's not funny, Tony.-

He had this extraordinarily
educated-at-Cambridge accent

and was very literate
and worldly

and yet behaved like
a delinquent of 12 or 13.

I was a humble Canadian
schoolteacher.

One day, my upstairs neighbor,
Michel Choquette,

came home and told me he was
interested in starting to write

for this National Lampoon
magazine

that was being
started in New York.

I thought, well, maybe I can
come down to New York

and become rich and famous

and get tremendous amounts
of drugs and sex and things.

None of which panned out.

Sean Kelly actually fixed me up

on a blind date
with Michel Choquette.

And then Michel started
taking me to New York with him

because I was, quote unquote,
Helping him with his work.

I got into comedy the same way

that Catherine the Great
got into politics

on my back.

I was working in a saloon
on the West Side.

One night,
somebody came over to me.

There's a fellow back there
stealing the ketchup.

And I go after him, and I said,

Excuse me,
I know what you're doing.

And then I realize I'm standing
here accusing somebody

of stealing ketchup
from a red rubber bottle.

So this is so sad.

Very shortly thereafter,
Henry offered me a job,

and I gleefully took it.

Doug and Henry had this idea
about bringing in

this very hippyish
art studio called Cloud.

Cloud Studios was
an independent design firm.

That's a generous term to use
for those guys.

We were,
quote unquote, hippie artists

because we weren't out
to be millionaires.

We were out to do
the things we liked to do.

You know, we were turned on,

and I don't mean by drugs,
I mean by the ideas.

Doug liked to hang with people
like Cloud Studio artists.

He like the fact
that they were kind of freaky

and wore costumes
and had beards.

Michael Sullivan: Doug would
come to parties that we had,

and when Doug wasn't in
the office working,

he was probably high as a kite.

Doug wanted to be
a beat or a hippie.

Doug wanted to be trendy
and with it.

I remember Doug asking, -Should I...
Should I be for the Black Panthers?-

And he wasn't kidding.

I saw the first issue, um,
which was terrible.

They had this duck.

And they were gonna keep
the duck as a logo on the cover

like the Playboy bunny.

I said to Henry,
Get rid of the duck.

That's not the Playboy bunny
where, you know,

you can put it on a garter,
make it a pasty or whatever.

Everything they did was,
it had to be funny-looking,

which means it was all sort of
squirrely and hippie-like.

The issues were messy,
they were confusing.

It wasn't bringing in
the readers,

and they weren't getting
the sales on the newsstand.

I told them, -We've gotta
replace your art director.-

Doug was very upset,
he wanted to keep Cloud,

and he argued with me,
but it was my call, I was the boss.

After we did the first seven issues,
I got a call from Doug Kenney.

He said, -I'm sorry, but you're
no longer the art director.-

Great, knock yourself out.

When I brought Michael Gross in,
Doug was kinda hostile.

My first issue when
I walked in the door

was the nostalgia issue,
which was Doug Kenney's baby.

I knew when I was hired,
I was hired against Doug's will.

In the sales pitch that I made,

I referred to an article they'd
done about postage stamps.

I said, -For these stamps to work,
they should look like real stamps.-

You should be fooled
when you look at them.

Therefore the parody
is empowered.

And in that little example,
he transformed the magazine.

After that, Doug came
into my office and said,

You were right about this guy.

As soon as Michael came aboard,
the Lampoon began to look great.

King Floyd's Groove Me

And what the Lampoon
began to be able to do

was to create anything
in any format,

so that it looked like the original.

Michael O'Donoghue: You know,
Ed Sullivan, we kid him a lot,

but Ed Sullivan is one of
the greats of this business,

and I had a funny thought.

What if Ed Sullivan were tortured,
and when I say tortured,

what I mean is,
what if steel needles,

say six inches long,
were plunged into Ed's eyes?

I... I think it would go
something like this...

You could walk into
the Lampoon editorial office

and get high just walking in.

But as long as it stayed
in the editorial office,

and as long as they were doing
the terrific work

they were doing,
I didn't tell them what to do.

In the course of a given day,
it was understood

that the day didn't end
when the office day ended.

Beatts: They would have these
dinner meetings in, like,

some of the worst restaurants
in New York.

There was
a saloon called The Green Man.

It was hot,
it smelled of cat stink.

And they would sit around a table
and drink tons and tons of beer.

This would be paid for
by Henry or Doug.

They would whip out their
company American Express card

and pay for dinner.

That's when we made up
the next issue.

You had to either get Doug or Henry
to react positively to your idea.

Ed Subitzky: The ideas would
come out very rapid fire.

How did he think of that?
And then...

How did he think of that?

How did he think of that?

We all do it the same way,
you get drunk,

you go home,
you get up in the morning,

and you write the piece.

Doug was who
you went to really see

if you had some wild and wacky
brilliant but funny idea.

Doug would go,
-I gotcha, you're in.-

Beard: I mean,
he was a workaholic.

I mean,
he was unbelievably productive.

Like, he wrote
the Letters column every month.

I mean, that's like 2200
very funny words of letters

in, like,
an hour and a half.

I mean, every single time
there was something

that had to be done,
he really was focused on it.

Shary Flenniken:
Doug was valuable in that sense.

Because he would
stimulate your ideas.

So I don't think that there
really was anyone else

who could inspire
other people like Doug.

People would come
to Henry with ideas,

and Henry would say,

-Tempting, tempting.-

Whatever idea you pitched him,
he would say, -Tempting, tempting.-

-Tempting- meant that

that is so awful,
it really blows chunks.

Or, I'm about to have
an intellectual orgasm, it's so good.

Somehow Henry Beard
would take this ragtag

bunch of material and different
types of personalities

and brilliantly
merge it together

to make a magazine that was
surprisingly coherent.

Dave Mason
Only You Know & I Know

It was like we had
an attic full of culture

that had been accumulating
from 1945 to 1970.

And we opened the trap door,
and nobody had been up there,

and we just basically looted it.

Kelly: Michael O'Donoghue's
Vietnamese Baby Book

was an extraordinary
piece of satire.

It was a baby book, but it was
designed to be for a Vietnamese baby,

and so it had things in it like
Baby's First Wound.

Simmons:
It was incredibly dark,

extremely political,
and it was funny.

Michel Choquette came to me
with an idea.

He had run into a guy who looked
just like Adolf Hitler.

The piece was called
Stranger in Paradise

which was about Adolf Hitler
really survived World War Two

and was living on a tropical island
somewhere in the Caribbean.

Simmons: I gave him a budget,
and ten days later

I got a telegram,
it said,

Hitler eating too much,
need more money.

I said, Stop feeding Hitler
and return to New York immediately.

And it was a brilliant article,

which we resold to almost
every foreign country.

Doug Kenney came up with
the photo funnies concept.

Doug insisted that they be us
and some girls we brought in.

I was so opposed.
Guys, we're a real magazine.

We don't need to take Polaroid's
in a fuckin' office.

I was so wrong,
because what Doug recognized

is the audience identified with us.

They went, -These are, like,
a bunch of jerk-offs like me.-

Like, -You and me,
Bernie, look!-

That's Doug Kenney's genius.

They did probably one of the greatest
magazine covers ever done.

Beard: Ed Bluestone came
to the office, and he said,

You're gonna get a dog,

gonna put a pistol to its head,
and you're gonna say

'If you don't buy this magazine,
we'll kill this dog.

I said, Ed, that's the most
brilliant thing I've ever heard.

Gross:
It was a huge, huge hit

because it's what every magazine
publisher wanted to do.

All they want to say is,
Buy the fucking magazine!

We realized that artists,
well-known established artists,

people like Arnold Roth,
the great cartoonist Gahan Wilson,

Sam Gross.

Charlotte Rodriguez is
just a wonderful illustrator.

Neal Adams.

They all had to have
drawers full of wonderful stuff

that had been rejected by
more traditional publications

that weren't rejected because
they weren't funny or good,

they were rejected because
they were a little too raunchy,

so we knew we were
that outlet.

It didn't matter
how strange your work was.

It didn't matter if your work
was anti-republican,

anti-democrat,
anti-the-universe,

whatever it was,
you could bring it into them,

and they would not touch it.

And that's one great thing
about the Lampoon.

Never before and never
since had that kind of freedom.

Gross:
If you were smart and funny,

you walked into Henry Beard's office
or Doug Kenney's office,

Hello, can I come
show you some stuff?

He goes like this, he goes,
Brilliant, thank you, you're hired.

We don't pay much,
but we're not gonna edit you.

We're not going to change you.

We're gonna let you be
what you want to be.

We had one problem.

It was losing a lot of money.

Because we couldn't get advertising.

They sold little,
teeny mail order ads.

They needed a pro to come in,
make it bigger, more legitimate.

Jerry Taylor was
an extraordinarily successful

and, sort of,
charismatic ad guy.

We had a difficult
time getting appointments

with advertising prospects.

It was always hard
to be taken seriously,

so I had a dress code.

Three piece suit,
white shirt, vest, tie.

We walked in looking exactly
like the guys from Time Inc.

But still nothing,
zero, nothing mattered.

It was almost like they would
vomit up this hostility on the desk.

And I would say,
Okay, that's cool.

You don't have to buy
a subscription,

but now let me tell you
why I think our audience

is a great target for
your product.

Our readership drank more than
the average adult.

And the first liquor
advertisement that we had

at the magazine was
Jose Cuervo,

and it made other people,
Oh, wow,

they got a liquor advertisement
in the Lampoon.

And then
the snowball started.

King Floyd's Groove Me

Taylor: I had a slogan,
-National Lampoon.

There's nothing funny about
the way it sells.-

Tell me about National Lampoon.
Why do you think it's so popular?

Well, I think they're very witty.

Yes, they're very witty,
but they are designed

to please and flatter

a particular audience of
fairly well-to-do nobodies

who can afford
to be nobodies.

Pacific Gas & Electric
Are You Ready

I honestly think that
the National Lampoon

is the most entertaining
magazine I have ever read.

It's often the only
magazine that a lot of

younger, hip people
today, uh, read.

And why that is,
is I think they trust us.

It looks really good,
it's funny to look at.

It's weird to look at.
And if you read the printed stuff,

if you look at things
that aren't the pictures,

occasionally you find
something really good

which you don't find anywhere
else in the written humor form.

There was a lot
of bad stuff going on.

We'd just
come out of the sixties.

We had the assassinations,
Vietnam, now we had Watergate.

So it was a perfect storm moment
of brilliant comic sensibilities

hitting the culture
in a crisis point.

It was actually
the first time that I realized

that, through humor,
you can tell the truth.

In a mass media way,

this kind of comedy didn't
exist before then.

People weren't that frank

and didn't attack the
establishment comedically.

We're basically
a humor magazine,

and we publish things
we consider to be funny.

It's just impossible to put out
this kind of a publication

and be, uh, completely unwilling
to do something offensive.

I think it's sometimes conscious

and sometimes just instinctive
that we push things

as far as they possibly
can be pushed.

I've always had a bad attitude.

Interviewer: Always?

I'm earning a living off
a bad attitude right now.

Teachers always said
it would get me in trouble,

but it's great,
it's working for me.

In those days,
magazines were a bigger deal.

People very much defined themselves
by the magazines they read.

It was the most popular magazine

on college campuses in America

and was the second
most popular magazine

on newsstands in America,
second only to Cosmopolitan.

The biggest circulation
we ever had was a million.

We had a pass along
of maybe 12 or 15.

So we probably had
12 million readers.

I mean, it was huge.

It's our unerring charm
that makes our readers

swallow it
month after month.

And frankly, that's what
it's all about, isn't it?

Suddenly Doug Kenney disappeared.

When Doug left or disappeared,

it was...
It was a crisis.

One Sunday morning
I came downstairs,

and there was a note
in the kitchen, and it said,

-Henry, I'm gonzo.

I'm out of here, I'm gone,
I'm finished, I'm done.-

And he was gone.

And now the
final question, for $25,000.

Name four famous Mickeys.

Uh, Mickey Mouse.

That's number one.

Mickey, Mickey Mantle.

Number two.

Uh, Mickey Rooney.

That's number three.

Only one more,
and you win $25,000.

Mickey Way.

Mickey Way?

The candy bar,
they'll take that, won't they?

- The judges will take that

Because I had had a previous career
as half of a comedy team,

I had experience in how to write
and put together an album.

And I was paired with O'Donoghue,
who wanted to do this album,

so that's how
Radio Dinner came to be.

But the album itself was
very much Michael O'Donoghue.

So Michael would say, -TV dinner?
What about radio dinner?-

And then he'd go, -Yes,- and
he'd write down Radio Dinner.

And a year later
when someone said,

-Let's do an album,-
he'd go...

-Let's call it Radio Dinner.-

Still one of my favorites
was a parody song

that Michael O'Donoghue
and I wrote

and that Tony Hendra
ended up performing,

brilliantly, I might add.

I resent performing
for you fuckers

Tell me,
what do you know?

A lot of faggot
middle class kids

Wearing long hair
and trendy clothes

I don't owe you fuckers
anything

And all I've got
to say is fuck you...

Cerf:
It was right after John Lennon

had an interview in Rolling Stone,

and we had the idea that if you just
put in an occasional rhyme...

The sky is blue...

You could set the whole
interview to music.

George said
she gave off evil vibes

I should have beat the fucking
shit right out of him

Him with his
fucking Hare Krishna

The album was actually
a great success.

It got a tremendous amount
of airplay.

It was also
nominated for a Grammy,

which was pretty good,
first time out.

It showed that we could more
than simply put out a magazine.

The truth is,
Doug carried the magazine.

If I wrote a hundred words,
he wrote a thousand, every month.

People hadn't really expected
that he would disappear,

but Doug was
not a stable person.

He had an older brother

who was the preferred son,
the favorite son,

and his older brother
died at an early age,

and it was a great loss
to his parents,

and his parents, kind of,
treated Doug as the...

As the -Well, I guess
that's all we've got left.-

It probably did have
some emotional impact on him.

And basically what happened
is he had a nervous breakdown.

And he just couldn't
take it anymore.

John Weidman:
He needed a break.

He was having sort of
a mid-life crisis

at the age of 24, whatever.

He was trying
to figure himself out,

and he picked up and moved
to Martha's Vineyard.

I think he wanted to try
something else before 30.

He's got to do something new.

Hendra: He wanted to write
Teenage Commies from Outer Space.

I went up to Martha's Vineyard
to actually see Doug.

My idea was to take stuff
and develop from the magazine

and then put it on stage,
and then Matty said

it needed Doug's touch.

He looked completely wasted.

He'd obviously been
dropping acid and eating very little.

He wanted to go for a walk
'cause he had something to show me.

And we walked out to where
there's this peculiar,

kind of, mud which runs
right down to the sea.

And he said
it was really groovy,

really groovy in the summer
to slather yourself with this stuff

and just lie in the sun.

So I had pitched my idea,

and he said,
-No, man, I can't do that.

I'm too deep into my novel.-

And it turned he'd written
one and a half chapters.

Aah...

The first album did so well,
we've got to do another album.

Wouldn't it be fun
to parody Woodstock?

We were going to do
a three night show, record it,

edit it, and that would be
the second album.

But it got out of hand.

We are Lemmings!

We needed a cast of
people who could be very funny

and could play an instrument

or, at the very least,
sing extremely well.

Tony Hendra called me
one night, and he said,

-There's a guy here
at Second City in Chicago,

and he's the funniest actor
I've ever seen in my life.

He's incredible.-

So I said,
-Bring him to New York.-

Can I have
your attention please

The theme of Lemmings
Woodshuck Festival

was that everyone's
come together to off themself.

Lemmings are animals that commit
suicide by going over cliffs.

So they were giving advice on how
they might do this along the way

by the announcer,
who was John.

Now we all know
why we came here.

A million of us,

we came here to off ourselves.

He made the character into this,
kind of,

manically agreeable
murderous lunatic.

If your buddy is too stoned
to off himself,

do him a favor.

Roll him up
in his sleeping bag

and drag him over to where
the tractors can run him down.

Chris Guest did a James Taylor
that was genius.

Farewell,
New York City

With your streets that
flash like strobes

Farewell, Carolina

Where I left
my frontal lobes

Hey! Chevy!

Hey! What's your
name again?!

- John.
- John, hey!

There was a sketch
where John and I

were two high school
or college guys

at urinals, just talking.

I can't even remember
what it was about,

but I do remember that
they were laughing all through.

And it became clearer
and clearer to me

that they were laughing at John,

whether he was saying
anything or not.

I'm like this, talking to John.

And finally after, like, a week,
I have to look over at him

to see what the hell
is going on,

why are they always laughing?
And he's like this.

Never knew it,
never told me.

The little bastard
just took me.

It was so good.

It was decided, because
the ticket sales were so brisk,

that we would simply
leave the show open.

And at that point,
from a record project,

it actually become an
off-Broadway show.

It was in this little
tiny club in the Village,

but it was an underground hit,
it was a cool thing to go see.

Well I'm standing here

Singing my song

Well, there ain't nothing
to do, all my friends are gone

I had sunshine
and a country home

I've been on the cover
of Rolling Stone ?

But it lonely
Yes it's lonely

When we were with the actors,

it got more rambunctious.

Because that was
when actual uppers and downers

and nose candy,
and things, entered.

What about the acid?
You gonna open the acid?

What acid?

What do you mean,
-What acid,- John?

- What acid?
- The LSD 25, man.

You mean the LSD zero?

Tony would go
to Matty and say

he needed X bucks
to buy marijuana for the cast.

And then Tony, of course, would
immediately buy cocaine with it.

I mean, everybody can buy
their own marijuana.

Hey! Hey,
you gotta get up!

Hup! Hup!

Whoa!

What would you do

If I sang out of tune?

- One, two, three!
Lonely at the bottom

Lonely,
lonely, lonely

Lonely at the bottom
I said my baby's lonely

I said she lonely,
I said she lonely

I said she lonely,
I said she lonely, I said...

Henry Beard's
office door hardly ever opened.

Henry Beard sat there
and typed.

Pull it out, pull it out.
Pages, pages, pages.

Genius, brilliant,
intellectual and otherwise pages.

That's it.

Suddenly I was working
a hundred hours a week.

You know, I would
go home and go to bed

and then wake up
the next morning

and go to the office
and start writing again.

Henry, really,

had become
the leader of the magazine.

When Doug was still there,
it was a partnership,

and when he left,
Henry was the only person

who could actually, sort of,
be the final authority,

and he had done that very,
I think, grudgingly.

So when Doug sidled back
into the office,

sort of saying, -Hi, I'm back,-
no one had much patience for Doug.

He came back humbled,
deeply humbled.

Deeply, sadly humbled.

Tail between his legs.
He knew what he had done.

Doug brought the novel back,

and Henry looks at it and goes,
-Jesus, this is awful.-

He... I... I read this thing,
it just made no sense.

It was a complete nothing.

And what he did was,
he opened up the window

on Madison Avenue and just
scaled the whole thing out.

Gross: There were people
not talking to him.

And people were, like, doing this.
They didn't even want to see him.

I was pissed at Doug,
and I said,

-Doug, you know,
you fucking let me down.

You let us all down.-

- Julius: This is Julius...
- And Ethel...

Rosenberg.

Julius: Did you know that
the majority of dead people are Jews?

Mm-hmm. 85- of all
dead people are Jewish.

So remember,

if you persecute Jews
when you're alive,

boy, are you going to get it
when you're dead.

Doug had just gotten back from
being AWOL for about a year,

and I had just been hired.

And Michael O'Donoghue,
in the early Lampoon,

wrote a brief parody
of a high school year book.

Matty Simmons had the idea
of turning this

into a special edition
of doing a yearbook.

Matty gave us the job because,
basically, we couldn't say no.

Doug was still in the doghouse,
and I was a fresh hire.

Simmons:
They weren't hot about the idea.

But I wanted to do it,
and I pushed them.

O'Rourke: We're sitting around,
bemoaning our fate.

-This is such a stupid idea.

How are we gonna
talk him out of this?-

And we just started talking
about high school.

And we started
talking about how, really,

there are only a dozen people
in high school.

Well, there's
the beautiful frigid girl,

there's the stupid jock,

there's the exchange student
from -Absurd-istan.-

You know, there's only a dozen,
18 people in high school.

Chuck Berry -School Days-

Bingo.

O'Rourke: This is how you do it.

You cast these 18 characters,

and you spin out a year
of their life,

and you can get
a whole book out of this.

Hirsch:
When I got to the Lampoon,

Anne Beatts and Emily Prager
were the only two women writers.

So I was desperate
to work on anything.

And so I said to Doug Kenney,
-I volunteer.

I will do anything
you want to help you.-

I walked with crutches,
I had polio as a kid.

He said, -Oh, well, you know,
there's always a handicapped kid

in every school.

Can we borrow
your crutches?-

And I went,
-Well, not without me, you can't!-

And so he said -All right,
well, will you be in it?-

And I was
Ursula Wattersky.

I think P.J. was
the women's gym teacher.

Brian McConnachie doing
the optometrist club,

and they're all,
sort of, listing to the side.

It was a wonderful experience.

It was like producing
an independent movie.

It was perfect for Doug
because he had simultaneously

been just a regular high school guy
and Doug Kenney,

super brain,
watching from on high.

He wore his high school jacket
all the time, Doug.

That was his natural costume.

Doug used his own picture
as the dead student

that the yearbook
was dedicated to.

It was a work of
true satirical brilliance.

There were 50 storylines

woven through it in all the different

sections of it.
It was really a comic masterpiece.

Doug was the personality
of National Lampoon.

He understood...

...people.

Simmons: Michael O'Donoghue
in the office was like a time bomb.

You never knew
when it was going to go off.

Michael O'Donoghue was... Seemed
to be the world's angriest guy.

And he would scream and yell,

and he would throw
telephone books.

And the phone,
he'd rip the phone out

and throw it across the office,
narrowly missing people.

He was prone to,
when you're stuck,

you turn around, you wanna
get angry at somebody.

And you hit
the people closest to you.

You start slapping
them around.

Hendra: Michael was like
a bundle of dynamite.

For some reason, we hit it off
when I first came to the magazine.

And we were friends
for a while.

As everybody was
with Michael, for a while.

Beatts: Michael had gotten
into a giant feud with Tony

over the fact that Tony had slept
with Michael's then-girlfriend, Amy.

Michael marched into my office
and said, -You gotta fire him.-

And he told me what happened.
I said, -Michael, the one thing

I never want to do is get
involved with the personal lives

of the people who work here.-

Matty gave Michael
the National Lampoon Radio Hour

as a compensatory thing.

Like, okay, they have Lemmings,
you can have the Radio Hour.

Who is it?

Tom the Baker, here.

Oh, Tom. Come on in.

You're not
Tom the baker!

Watch out, he's got a knife.

Who are you?

I'm Bob the rapist.

- Oh, Bob.
- Oh, Bob.

Come on in,
have some coffee.

Good to see you.

In the beginning of the Radio Hour,
I guess it was envisioned

that the editors
would be the writers.

Michael had just sort of
written Lemmings off

and everybody in it.

One day, Chris Guest was
supposed to come in and do

a Peter O'Toole imitation,

and he called up
last minute to cancel.

And I said,
-John can do Peter O'Toole.-

And that's how
everybody in Second City

entered the Radio Hour.

Gilda Radner: Hi, I'm your
host person, Gilda Radner,

and I am going to read you
the people who contributed.

John Belushi,
Brian Doyle-Murray,

Bill Murray, Gilda Radner,
Harold -Rahmis-

- Ed Subitzky.
- Harold Ramis:It's Ramis.

- Gilda: What?
- Ramis: Ramis, not Rahmis.

Hirsch: These guys were
all Second City guys,

and they learned a craft,
which is writing sketches.

- What's the point, Coach?
- The point is this, Shnobble.

There are winners
and losers,

but some guys don't even get
to finish the game.

Yeah?
What are you talking about?

There's a big coach
somewhere in the universe,

and he's taking
one of us up.

- Stefanski, you got Leukoplakia.
- Huh?

The doc says you might
not last the season.

I suppose that one of us
ought to say something, Coach,

and as the defensive captain...

Harold: Wait, that's not all.

Luciano has
Huntington's Chorea.

Shaffer and Collins,
you two have

sickle cell anemia, highly advanced.

Thomson, Carson and McNulty,
spinal meningitis.

Okay, that's pretty good.
You can go on to the next one.

Danny Abelson: For human nerds, the
National Lampoon is like an obscure

record label that first recorded
Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.

You, sort of,
can trace extraordinary talent

back to this one
little record label.

But we do a fair amount
of music on the radio show.

We do, um, often performed
by us because we're so awful,

that we couldn't ever get
professionals to sound

as bad as we wanted
the thing to sound.

I wish I was a Negro

With lots of Negro soul

So I could stay true
to my ethnic roots

And still play rock'n'roll

If I was a funky Negro

Eating soul food barbecues

I wouldn't have to sing
the middle-class liberal

We get some reaction
from people accusing us

of being racist or anti-Semitic,

or we even got complaints
from the Nazis

that we were
anti-Nazi or something.

Kenney: All of the editors,
I think, to a certain degree,

are unbelievable racists.

You ask,
-Are we anti-Polack?-

Of course, we're anti-Polack,
they're so dumb.

Interviewer: What about racism
being dealt with

in the way
it is in Lampoon?

Oh, I suggest simply
the hotter the issue,

the more they cool it
by hilarity.

Why does one laugh? Laughter is
entirely a defense mechanism.

Laughter is a defense
against hostility,

a replacement
for hostility,

a, uh, a defense mechanism
against guilt, embarrassment.

Michael did a thing about
Kentucky Fried Chicken,

except, of course,
the Colonel was serving

Kentucky Fried black people.

And you think, well,
that's beyond tasteless.

Except it's, sort of, true.

We're a good,
humorous say anything which is true,

which you would do
anything to deny is true.

Kelly:
So I wouldn't say the

Kentucky Fried joke was
a racistjoke.

It was a joke against racism.

Judith Belushi: We had a very
disgruntled sponsor who dropped us.

And I remember the memo
we got after, it was from Matty.

-You can make fun
of poor people,

you can make fun of Indians,

you can make fun
of anything you want,

but do not make fun
of the Jews.-

It is the job of a satirist, okay,

to make people in power
uncomfortable,

really uncomfortable.

To the point where they go,
-This has to be stopped.-

In the National Lampoon,
what really gets people angry?

What do they...
What do they sue you about?

Probably the most famous suit
we ever had was the Volkswagen suit.

We had a picture
of a Volkswagen.

We said if Teddy Kennedy
had driven a Volkswagen,

he'd be President today.
Which is true, of course.

Teddy Kennedy
would be President

if he drove a car that floated.

Well, the first thing we did,
and this was Matty,

he sent out
a news release,

along with the ad,
nationwide,

saying that
Volkswagen was suing us.

It got picked up in
every newspaper in America.

They ran the ad,
and the issue sold out.

I had let them get away
with things that even shocked me.

One day, I got a call from
the Vice President at NBC.

He said, -We have been talking about
doing a Saturday night satire show.

Would you be interested?-

We had all sorts
of things going on.

We had live shows
on the road,

we had the magazine,
we had a book division.

It was the biggest radio show
in the country.

It was on 600 stations.

We were the humor empire
in the United States.

I said, -I really appreciate it,
but it's too demanding.-

National Lampoon was
just a magazine, you know?

But suddenly, it was records
and actors and musicians.

Abelson: There wa
an extraordinary change

in the sense that the spotlight
was suddenly being shared.

Well, I remember Chevy
coming to the office

and John Belushi coming
to the office, and those guys

had an energy to them
that was very exciting.

And you felt that it must have
been difficult for editors

who'd been around for a long time
to not be a part of that group.

The more famous
and the more popular we got,

the more people's egos
were doing this.

Kelly: Michael and Tony were

heading in their
different directions.

It was very difficult,
especially because you couldn't

work for both of them
at the same time,

or they would consider you
a traitor and a Mordred.

We don't need this,
and this is supposed to be

fun and happy and what not.

We're getting paid to be
as silly as we can.

Simmons: We're talking about
the smartest,

most curious,
free-spirited people.

These were not
cageable people.

And people started
leaving the Lampoon.

O'Donoghue,
his girlfriend was Anne Beatts.

Beatts: Matty had given
Michael Simmons my desk,

and I was furious.

It had taken me all
that many years to get a desk,

and then suddenly I didn't
have it anymore.

He called me up
one morning, and he said,

-I gotta talk to you,
Anne Beatts must have

an office at the radio show.

If you don't do this
I'm gonna quit.-

Matty said, -Well,
if she doesn't like it, she can quit,

and if you don't like it,
you can quit.-

And Michael said,
-I quit.-

And he quit.

And that was it.

Michael left,
never came back.

Gross: I had been with
the magazine four or five years.

Rock'n'roll is
the best analogy.

You know, it's a band that
just started to go bad.

So it was just time
for me to move.

Bill Murray: Bless me Father,
for I have sinned.

Brian Doyle-Murray:
And how long has it been

since your last confession,
my son?

Murray: About four months,
I guess, Father.

Doyle-Murray:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Murray: Uh...
And I fucked this girl...

Uh...
Excuse my French, Father,

Uh... I went all the way
with this girl.

Doyle-Murray:
Don't be embarrassed, my son.

I've heard it all before.

I've heard much,
much worse than that.

Murray: You heard cunnilingus?

Doyle-Murray: I hear that from
second graders.

Murray: Wow. Wobbly warhead,
you heard that?

Slam the warhead at her?

Doyle-Murray:
Years ago, years ago.

Murray: Low clearance clit?
You heard that?

- Doyle-Murray: Dwarf cock.
- Murray: Bosom burger?

- Doyle-Murray: Scrotum breath.
- Murray: Albino beaver?

- Doyle-Murray: Iguana tits.
- Murray: Madam ovary?

- Doyle-Murray: Slime slit.
- Murray: Mashy nipple lick?

- Murray: Bug nuts.
- Doyle-Murray: Cock nose?

- Doyle-Murray: Vagina.
- Murray: Oriental crack?

Doyle-Murray: Superdome pussy.

Murray: Afterbirth on toast,
it's pizza.

- Doyle-Murray: Punk piss.
- Murray: Hillbilly snatch.

- Doyle-Murray: Boob puss.
- Murray: You heard Rhino Clit?

Doyle-Murray: Rhino Clit?
That's disgusting.

That's terrible.

Nice mouth, you kiss your
mother with that mouth?

You eat with that mouth?

Garbage mouth!

Man: Well, the Nat Lamp,
as it is affectionately called

by both its friends and enemies,
has taken its anarchism off its pages

and put it on the stage
in revue form.

They are the cast of the new
National Lampoon show,

which opens this Friday
at the new Palladium Cabaret

at 120 West 51st Street.

I've given up a life
of comfort and wealth.

Surely you can send something.

A dime, a dollar,
a pair of socks,

some 50 caliber tracer bullets
or whatever you can to...

The Symbionese
Liberation Army.

That's the SLA in L.A.,

418 Tishman Building,
Los Angeles, California.

I was reading
the magazine.

I was very impressed
with the writing in it,

so I looked up
on the masthead

and found Matty Simmons'
name and called him.

He had seen the
National Lampoon show in Toronto.

Matty decided to do
another stage show,

using Bill Murray,
Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis,

and much of the same talent
in the Radio Hour.

So I said to Ivan,

-Why don't you come in
and run it in New York?-

And now the National Lampoon
Radio Hour single's bar of the air.

Your opportunity to meet some of
today's most beautiful, bright,

talented, sensitive, and unattached
young men and women.

Will that
perfect mate be you?

Hiya, fella.

Nice weather, isn't it?

I used to believe
in ethical culture,

but then I switched
to Zen.

My hobbies are plants,
and once I had an ant farm.

Ivan Reitman: I showed up to one
of the early rehearsals,

and there was,
kind of, a discussion

about some little thing
that's going on.

And I just naturally say,
Well, wouldn't it be better

if you...
I made some suggestion.

And suddenly the whole
group stopped,

and they looked at me,

this outsider, and wondered,
-Did he just say something?-

Did he have the nerve to actually
open up his mouth and direct us?

Bill Murray,
always the bravest of the group,

sort of walked up
to me very calmly,

put his arm around me
and patted me on my back,

got my winter scarf and wrapped it
very slowly around my neck.

And said, -Hey, thanks for
dropping in, we'll see you.-

And he patted me,
and he ushered me out of the room.

It was very,
very embarrassing.

Better luck next time.

Rehearsal warm-up!

Let's take first
to the right eyebrow.

Ready, and one and two

and three and four
and five and six.

Now left, and two.

Come on! Up! Down!

And halt.
Cross, and...

Reitman: Belushi was this sure
great performer.

He was the center
of The National Lampoon Show.

He, basically,
acted as the director.

What are you doing here?

- Who me?
- Yeah.

Well, I'm a congressman
from Cleveland

I took kickbacks
all the time

Now I'm stuck here
in prison for them

Doing 99
- Years?

- No, hours.
- Wow.

Ramis:
I'm a white collar criminal

My wife's a debutante

I'm stuck in prison farm
for as long as I want

Whoa...

Hendra: What was really
remarkable about John was that

he was the rock'n'roll
of humor.

I mean, he represented those
two things in perfect combination.

You know,
we gotta eat caviar

Yeah!

We got a chauffeur
and a car

Whoa!

We got a church
and a school

We got a sauna
and a pool... Whoa!

Six months
on prison farm...

He was very focused on
the business side of it as well.

He was the one who
would call me up every week

and say, -Hey, you're not
advertising enough-

or -We should put
these quotes on.-

My honey

Told her to save
my tennis things

Hirsch: I think it was
Sean who said to Matty,

put him on retainer.
Give him $500 a week

just to keep him here.

And Matty didn't do it.

Let's begin.

Repeat after me.

- I would like
- I would like

to feed your fingertips

- to the wolverines.
- to the wolverines.

- Next, I am afraid
- I am afraid

- we are out
- we are out

- of badgers.
- of badgers.

- Would you accept
- Would you accept

- a wolverine
- a wolverine

- in its place?
- in its place?

Live from New York,
it's Saturday Night!

Most of the cast
of Saturday Night Live

was taken right from
the first company

of The National Lampoon Show.

Announcer:
Starring the Not For Ready

The producer of Saturday Night Live
watched our show for about a month

and then hired
the people in the show.

Tom Snyder: You're talking about
Lorne Michaels, who produces?

Oh, yeah,
I forgot his name.

Lorne Michaels...
No, I know his name.

- Are you mad at him?-
- No, I'm not mad at him.

Since he has most of my actors
and many of my writers.

You could almost feel
the energy

sucked out of the magazine
and into that show.

It was written
by some Lampoon people.

It was starring some former
Lampoon people.

And it was very glamorous,
and it was a huge hit,

from the beginning,
and I gathered pretty quickly

that if I liked
Saturday Night Live,

I should keep it to myself.

Rick Meyerowitz: Suddenly,
what the Lampoon offered

was available
to a much larger audience.

The Lampoon lost its exceptionalism.

What would ya do

If I sang out of tune

Would you stand up
and walk out on me?

Oh, baby,
I get high

With a little help
from my friends

? Oh, yeah, whoa... ?

I've described the Lampoon as the
hippest place to be to write comedy.

And it was,

until the hippest place
to be to write comedy

became Saturday Night Live.

Chevy Chase came over
to the Lampoon offices,

and, chuckling, he said,

-Nobody gets laid writing for
the National Lampoon anymore.-

This friend of mine
tells me that Michael Gross

is leaving the Lampoon,
the art director,

and I should apply for the job.

And, I walk into the conference room,
and Doug Kenney says to me,

Well, I have three questions:
Can you get us drugs?

Can you get us nude models?

And do you have some place
where we can go

with the drugs
and the nude models?

And I thought very seriously

and I said,
-Yes, yes, and yes.-

And Doug looked at me and he says,
-Well, I have no further questions.-

King Floyd's -Groove Me- plays) ?

Abelson:
Peter had very little pretension

in terms of art,
as did Michael Gross.

Totally different kind of person
but he got it, you know,

and that's the thing
that mattered.

He was a great looking guy who
was not afraid to approach

people of the opposite sex
and suggest

that they might get
to know one another better,

which was somewhat fascinating
to all of us.

Every 30 days we were putting out
this 100-page magazine.

Didn't matter how dirty,
or how vile, or how perverted,

or how sexual, or how twisted
or violent it was.

If it was funny,
and if Doug liked it, it was in.

Simmons:
We knew all along that Doug

and Henry Beard and Rob Hoffman

would ask us to buy them out
after five years.

However, the buyout said
that they would buy it out

at 21 times earnings,
which was outrageous.

They stood to make
a nice piece of change.

I owed them seven and a half
million dollars.

So we met with them
and we sat down and we talked.

For whatever reason,
any reasonable alternative

to the buyout was rejected.

So when push came to shove,
we shoved.

I don't think Matty
was prepared.

I don't think Matty Simmons
really thought Doug and Henry

would go through with it.

And they did.

Henry hinted a few times that,
you know,

this could be good for you guys.
Meaning Sean, Tony and myself.

O'Rourke: Other people apparently
felt that they were stake holders.

And, um, you know,
they weren't.

They all thought Henry had
promised them a lot of money

and he walked out of that office
the day the check was cashed.

He stood up on a desk and said,
I hated every minute of this.

Fuck you! Then left.

Kelly:
When Henry got up and told us

that he was never going to talk
to any of us again,

it was such a shattering
experience for all of us

because he was the one
we were trying to please.

I think the culture changed.

And you know, people grew up.
It had a lifespan.

Radio Announcer:
Never send care packages

to the so-called starving families

in Europe because they're not
starving at all.

Can you afford to live in Europe?
No.

You can't even afford
to visit Europe.

And do you know what they do
with the care packages you send?

They whack them
with their polo mallets

and kick them into
their swimming pools.

The first time I saw Doug
after the buyout,

I said, -What are you going to
do with all of this bread?

That's so great!-

And Doug said,
-I'm going to Disneyland.-

Doug was going to quit.

He was wealthy now
and he was going to quit.

And Matty was smart enough
to know that

Holy shit, if I lose Doug,

I'm going to lose the heart
and soul of this company.-

And so he said,
-Well, don't quit Doug,

we're going to make a movie.-
And Doug went, "Really?"

Once I told Doug we were making a
movie, we had to make a movie.

Ivan then started coming up
with ideas with Harold Ramis.

Reitman: I knew that the
High School Yearbook

was the most popular thing

that the National Lampoon
had ever put out.

So I called up Doug Kenney
and said,

-Hey, why don't you help Harold
write this high school movie?-

They started writing
a screenplay that was

Charlie Manson and his followers

back when they were still
in high school.

There was so much sex
and drinking and what have you

involved with it that I said,
-We can't do this in high school.

We'll get lynched.-

So I spoke to Matty about shifting
away from high school to college

and we were thinking of using
Chris Miller's stories.

Simmons: Chris Miller was the
most popular short story writer

in the history of the Lampoon.

Reitman: He specialized in stories
based on his Dartmouth years.

Chris Miller:
My stories were about college

and getting loaded
and living a wild life

and sex, drugs and rock'n'roll,

or the absence of those things.

Doug Kenney went crazy over it

because they didn't do
shit like that at Harvard.

Simmons:
Ramis, Kenney and Miller worked

for a full year on what became
a 114 page treatment.

The biggest treatment
anyone's ever seen.

And so, that really
became Animal House.

After the buyout,
we bumped along until P.J.

took the title of Editor-in-Chief

The Hombres
Let It All Hang Out

I went to work as Matty's assistant
but I wound up as Editor-in-Chief

because I had had some prior
publishing experience.

I actually knew what on time
and under budget meant.

The era of P.J. being
the Editor-in-Chief,

it was less high-brow
and more approachable.

Editorial meetings
were way different.

Before he was editor,
editorial meetings were hanging out

and trying to one-up each other

and consisted of
this free-flow of ideas.

When P.J. took over,
he was the chair of every meeting.

He had an agenda on his legal pad.

He would read us things
that he had written

that he thought were
particularly funny.

P.J. was one of those people
that really worked hard.

It was not an endearing quality.

It needed a grown-up,
but frankly, it stopped being fun.

-How to talk your wife into oral sex:

Beg, wheedle, plead,
moan, groan and whine.

The object being to have
her grab it in disgust

and perform the dirty deed
to shut you up.-

By John Hughes.

Apatow: I was always an
enormous fan of John Hughes.

He did all of this humor
about families and growing up

and then really funny,
dirty stuff.

When I was running the magazine,

he was the best person
I had working for me.

John could hue within,
sort of, one degree of reality

and make it hilarious.

Peter Kleinman: On the surface,
he was all-American, you know,

almost like this nice family guy.

And then you'd start
reading his stuff,

and it was the most sick,
sexual, depraved,

deviant stuff you've ever read.

P.J. O'Rourke and John Hughes
and the kinds of articles they liked

and wrote and edited
were politically different

and culturally and socially different
than the stuff we had done.

And the kinds of readers
changed also.

Simmons:
I knew no one in Hollywood,

but this is one of those things
that has to happen.

You have to have luck
to go with talent.

I got a phone call about a week
later from a guy who said,

-Mr. Simmons,
I am the assistant to Ned Tanen

at Universal Studios,
and I just want you to know

that I'm a huge Lampoon freak
and if you ever want

to do a movie, please call me.-

We met with Ned Tanen and he said,
-I hate this.

Everybody's a drunkard, a womanizer,
they're doing drugs.-

But he had two assistants:
Sean Daniel and Thom Mount,

who had always thought
this project could work.

And they were pushing it.

As a National Lampoon fan,

I just thought this is hilarious.

Not everyone thought it was
as funny as I did.

In fact, it was held
in total contempt.

My deal was that if any part
of the National Lampoon show,

which I produced, sort of,
led to what was going to be

a National Lampoon movie

then I was going to have
the opportunity to direct it.

But the only film I had directed
up to that point

was, uh, Cannibal Girls.

Announcer:
They love every man they meet.

First to death,
then for dinner.

Universal said, -Well, you can
produce it but you can't direct it.-

My girlfriend at the time
was working as

a script supervisor
on Kentucky Fried Movie.

She said to me
you have got to get to know

the director of this movie,
John Landis.

Sean approached me and said,
-Would you be interested

in making a film at Universal?-

And I was like,
-Duh-, and, uh,

he gave me
the script to Animal House.

Ned Tanen took me
into his office and said,

Look, a lot of people
around here hate this

and don't think
we should be doing it.

But if you believe in it,

go away and bring us back
a movie.

You can't spend your whole life
worrying about your mistakes.

You fucked up!
You trusted us!

I had never done a comedy,

and I just was so over
where my career was.

I was like,
I have to be in this movie.

Thank you, sir.
May I have another?

Bacon:
I auditioned for John Landis

and he said,
-Yeah, this guy is smarmy,

he's a smarmy guy.
Can ya do that?-

I had no idea
what the word smarmy meant,

so I just, kind of, made this face
and he was like, -That's great!-

My kid can't see, is it all right
if he stands in front of you?

No!

Landis: I really wanted
the writers on set.

Universal of course,
this is a low-budget picture,

told me to go fuck myself, so...

What I did, was I said,
-Look, get yourself to Eugene

and I will hire you
every day as actors.-

Chris and Doug
being there was important.

And Doug Kenney,
really important because,

you know, we made up a lot
of stuff shooting.

What the hell
we supposed to do, you moron?

Doug was always the smartest guy
in the room,

And the one with the drugs.

So, it was a real special time
because it was a chance

to meet all these people
that I had always revered.

You know, the Lampoon
and that Doug had founded it

and was as smart in person
and funny in person

as the magazine was.

Landis: I know that for Doug,
he was in heaven.

He had the time of his life.

But Ned Tanen was very upset
about it and very concerned

and really we were in trouble
for a while.

When he saw the movie he just...

He didn't like it and, uh,
didn't find any of it funny.

Sean Daniel:
Came time to preview the movie

in front of
an actual paying audience,

the president
of the corporation came,

who had been one of
the non-believers.

And all of
the executives were there.

The time has come for someone
to put his foot down,

and that foot is me.

It was, you know,
you're sitting there very nervous,

-How will they like the movie?-

They went nuts.

Suddenly the studio went,
-Oh, my God, this really worked.-

Landis:
And from that moment on,

we went from being criminals...
Suspects to heroes.

I remember seeing it with my mom.
It was the first time I saw

women's breasts
in front of my mother.

I literally can remember how
many people were in the theater

and what it looked like
and my red shamed face.

And you have to remember that
Animal House created a genre.

Bobby Lewis
-Tossin' and Turnin'-

So we figured,
-Wow, this is awesome.-

Everybody's going to love
the magazine now

and see that we're more
mainstream because of this movie

which was a huge success.

What we didn't anticipate

was that Hollywood now would
rear it's voracious head

and take away all of our wonderful,
creative talent.

The second it came out somebody
hired me to write about

college kids drinking
and having sex in cars

and everybody wanted
to have a meeting even if...

And I had nothing to do
with the movie.

I just worked at
the Lampoon for a while.

Chris Miller:
Doug came out to Hollywood

and the search forjoy
and for ecstasy

was a major fact of life.

It was what we did.

Bobby Blue Bland
-Turn On Your Love Light-

Beard: I realized that this is
what he wanted to do.

I mean, Doug Kenney
should be writing movies.

He was a producer.

He seemed to be running
the whole show.

He was the engine that was
making the wheels turn.

Doug was just
an upward road to fame.

Beverly D'Angelo: I remember
going to Doug Kenney's house

when I first came to Hollywood.

They were having
the most fun in town.

They were what was
going on in town.

Belushi: There was that part of him
that enjoyed being a star.

Kleinman: Doug and Chevy
had this great chemistry.

They could start going
and you'd just sit back

and just watch the party.

He considered himself the most
handsome man in comedy.

He'd be in front
of the mirror and say,

-Look the most handsome man
in comedy.-

And then I'd stand behind him
and go, -Almost.-

Hendra: Wherever Doug was
would be a party.

Just full of people,
studio heads and guys from Denny's.

You know, I mean,
just anyone he met.

And it would go on for hours,
sometimes days.

Kleinman: Doug's career was
really taking off,

and meanwhile back at the ranch,

everyone was making
Disco Beavers From Outer Space.

Disco beaver

From outer space...

There was a giant beaver
walking around

throughout everything
eating the floors.

So in the middle of the sketch,
the floor would collapse

and this beaver, who had eaten it,
would pop up.

Do I really have to talk
about Disco Beaver

Disco beaver...

Somebody at the Lampoon
called me and said,

-Look we have a whole bunch of
kids coming in from Harvard...

...and we'd like you to come
to the magazine

and just, kind of,
tutor these guys.-

I thought, okay,
that sounds like fun.

Reiss: My first week
at the National Lampoon,

we were getting drunk at a park
with bagpipers there.

I saw a fistfight.

There was a man secretly
living in his office.

It was... It was a crazy place,
like nothing I had ever seen before.

And, you know, for a guy just
out of college this was a dream.

You know, you were able to
actually write comedy for a living,

which was astounding to me.

One thing that Mike and I did early,
was these articles

about how to write. And we did
one that Thurgood Marshall,

the Supreme Court Justice did,
How to Write Dirty,

where he instructed you
how to write pornography.

I had the thought
that Thurgood Marshall,

he would never see this article,
but if he did,

I thought maybe he would
even enjoy it, right?

He was so upset that
he called the FBI and said,

-What can I do to them?-

And the FBI said,
-Well, there's a thing

called Freedom of Speech,
Mr. Justice, it protects them.-

McConnachie:
After Animal House,

Harold and Doug went up to
Florida and made Caddyshack.

Caddyshack
was not a Lampoon movie,

but it was a Doug Kenney movie
and Doug Kenney was the Lampoon,

so obviously it was
a Lampoon movie.

I mean, it may not have been
officially a Lampoon movie

but with Chevy and Billy
and Doug and Brian,

I mean, it was a Lampoon movie.

That was the spirit
of the Lampoon.

Doug was the producer
of Caddyshack

but it all seemed
a little disorganized.

There was a kind of
haphazard quality

to the way in which
the film was created.

Stop thinking.

Let things happen
and be the ball.

Danny? Danny?

It was only, like, my second movie
or something, I don't remember.

Everybody was smoking pot.

It's a little harsh.

It was a very nocturnal,
uh, movie.

Kenny Loggins
-I'm Alight plays

Cocaine was just always there.

Matheson: Cocaine wasn't bad for you.
You'd do this and you'd go,

-I can't believe
this isn't bad for me!-

You know, 'cause it wasn't
considered, at that time,

to be a bad thing...
for a while.

He's got a beautiful backswing.

That's...
Oh, he got all of that one!

Judd Apatow: I remember
when Caddyshack came out,

-Newsday- gave it
two and a half stars,

and I'm like, -What?
This is like the best movie ever!-

Caddyshack- is not about the
Mikado's daughter-in-law elect.

It's about as rotten a movie as has
slopped the screen this summer.

Tim Matheson:
Doug was very distraught

and upset that Caddyshack
wasn't as big as Animal House.

I said, -Jeez, you know,
-Animal House- is a homerun.

So let's just say -Caddyshack- is a
double or a triple. But who cares?-

Chevy Chase:
But I was at Dangerfield's

with Billy and maybe Harold

promoting the picture
and somebody came up to me after

and he said, -You know,
Doug is really...-

And I could see that Doug
was like asleep on a table

back there starting to get
loaded at noon or whatever.

I had seen him depressed before
but this was like

he had achieved a level of
depression that was impressive

to me and I'm good
at being depressed.

And it was about the movie.

He'd spent a year and a half of
his life or something on this thing

and what I got is like
a talking gopher for Christ's sake.

It actually did fine, it kind of
hit the mark a lot of films do.

It just wasn't his mark.

So I guess that's probably part
of what happened to Doug,

just feeling it should
have done better...

...he could have done better.

Sean Kelly: At that point
the magazine was on the skids

in terms of its sales,

and it was believed
by management

that the way to get it back to being
a best-seller was to have more tits.

Al Jean: They had this mandate that
every sixth issue or second issue

or every issue had to be
a sex issue.

And we couldn't
afford B-List tits.

We had like D and E-List tits.

And the more tits and ass
we put on the cover,

the more 7-11's and everybody
put it under the counter

so it didn't matter
what was on the cover.

Then the phone rang and they
said, -Do you want to quit

your job and come to Hollywood?-

And we said,
-Yes, who is this?-

The kids left to go
write -The Simpsons

and every other thing
that's huge.

We were in something
of a death spiral.

Chris Miller:I was working on
a movie called- Club Sandwich.

We had to have a meeting
with our producers

and that was Michael Shamberg
and Allen Greisman and Doug.

And in comes Doug,

and behind him
comes this coke dealer.

And, um, Doug says,
-I'll be right with you guys!-

He lays a rail of this coke
along his arm, and he goes...

And the entire amount of cocaine
goes up his nose.

And then he says, -Okay,
we're having a meeting now?-

And, uh...

I had been as big a drug abuser
as anybody,

and I had hung around
with Doug a lot.

I had never seen Doug do
something like that at 9:00 a.m.

when a business meeting
was about to be held.

Tim Matheson: You know Hollywood
is one of those things.

They don't care what you do.

Just as long as you show up
to work and you're okay then.

Whatever you do on your own time,
that's what you do on your own time.

Man: Hello, this is
a recorded message

from your suicide
prevention phone.

Now first of all why not stop,

take a deep breath
and think for a minute.

Can things really be all that bad?

Sure, the road of life can be
pretty bumpy sometimes

but isn't thatjust part in parcel
of that rich tapestry we call living?

You know, a wise man once said,

-Today is the first day
of the rest of your life.-

Peter Kleinman: I mean,
you know, I'm not a doctor

but I guess Doug was an addict.

He had the disease of addiction,
right?

Doug couldn't not be high.

Coming out to L.A.
was very bad for Doug, I think.

The cocaine out here was
everywhere and, uh...

Doug just went for it, uh...

as hard as anybody
has ever gone for it.

Doug wasn't...
He wasn't as happy

as I thought I might be
if I had, you know,

that kind of success

and that kind of notoriety
and money.

He was sort of, an emptiness,

like, there was like a sadness.

He was having trouble.

And they said, you know,
take him away, or...

for a week or something.

So Doug and I
went off together.

I took him to Hawaii.

I think that he and Chevy were,
at that time, um...

battling their
attraction to drugs.

I remember at one point
we were at the hotel

on Maui on like the 15th floor.

I went to his room,
and I told him

I just couldn't take it anymore,
I was so depressed.

Then I went back to my room
and I took my boots off

and left them right by the fence,
the terrace,

and then just went,
-I got, uh, ah!-

The sound of somebody falling
from the terrace or jumping.

And he came running and,
of course, I'm hiding

and for a second he really
actually looked.

I'm telling you
all this about Doug

because I miss him very much,
he was my best friend.

I had to come back
to work finally,

back to California,
and I left him in Hawaii.

I got a call
from Doug's girlfriend, um...

And he was missing and did
I know where he was

and I had no idea.

One day I was talking to him
and the next day he was missing.

Doug being missing
wasn't that unusual

but this time
it didn't feel right.

I flew back out.

We found Doug but he was
at the bottom of

what they call
the Grand Canyon in Kauai.

John Weidman: I don't
want to suggest for a minute

that what happened
to Doug was expected.

It was awful
when I got the news,

but it was not entirely incompatible
with the life he had been living.

It was a tragic loss.
He was the first person I knew

that I considered a drug casualty.

John Landis: Was he stoned
and fell off the cliff?

Was he suicidal
and jumped off the cliff?

Or was he in fact murdered
in a drug deal,

which is what a lot of people think.

They said that there was a sign
at the cliff where he died,

that said,
-Do not go beyond this point.-

And as soon as I heard that
I just saw Doug read it and say

-You mean here?-

He wrote me a chatty letter
from Hawaii,

and told me he looked forward to
seeing me when he came to L.A.

He wanted to talk about something.

So I don't think he was...

I don't think he killed himself.

He was never a guy
to take his life.

And having thought about it
all this time over the years,

I think that he...
he slipped.

Which is stupid.

And, um... uh, it killed him.
So... that was that.

I've heard every version
of this and I have no idea.

Chris Miller very brilliantly said,

-Doug was looking for a better place
to jump from when he slipped.-

Henry Beard: Had he lived,

Doug Kenney would have
been kind of force

in American movie making,
directorial force

that John Hughes was,
the kind of movies he made.

Dad, whoa!

Walley World!

Matty Simmons: John Hughes wrote
the short story Vacation '58.

I called him in,
and I said,

-John, I'm gonna make
a movie of this.-

I think you're
all fucked in the head.

We're ten hours from the fucking
fun park and you wanna bail out!

Judd Apatow: Vacation was my family.
I went on those trips,

and it was that heinous,
you know, every single time.

Chevy: We're all gonna have
so much fucking fun

we'll need plastic surgery
to remove our goddamn smiles.

You'll be whistling Zip-a-Dee-
Doo-Dah out of your assholes!

It was rated R!

Dogs are being killed,
adultery is being flaunted.

There's elderly abuse, incest,
masturbation, kidnapping.

That's a lot of stuff that
you wouldn't think of as

being present in what has become
like a beloved family film.

- Good talk, son.
- Good talk, Dad.

I think Matty said something like,
-Well, this is National Lampoon.-

Peter Kleinman:
If there was a golden age,

and a silver age,
and a platinum age,

this would probably be
the moldy rye bread age

of the National Lampoon.

We were doing this horror
and fantasy issue

and we were trying to come up
with the most horrible,

gruesome, funny ideas.

And I said, -What about
a baby in a blender?-

And everybody was like, -Aah,
that's so funny, baby in a blender!-

There was supposed to be
a satire of a famous old saying

that went something like,

-It's a worse mess
than a baby in a blender.-

So, we decided we would do it.

And I took a picture of a baby crying
and took a picture of a blender

and we actually
stripped them together

so it looked like the baby
was in the blender.

And we put Satan's finger
on the puree button.

Matty Simmons: There was a group
called the Christian Coalitio

which hated us because
we made fun of groups

like the Christian Coalition.

They organized a group
of right wing zealots

and they sent letters around

and we lost almost
all our national advertising.

And it went downhill from there,
and I'm gonna end it on that note.

David Bowie -Changes- plays

The things that happened to us
when we are young

just seem so much more important
than other things

because they're happening
for the first time.

Anne Beatts:
You know, looking backwards

is always a dangerous position.

You could really
throw your neck out,

but when I do look back
at all of this,

I feel lucky.

Ivan Reitman: The National Lampoon
really changed my life.

It introduced me to this
extraordinary group of performers

that were really the finest
comedic actors of their generation.

Tony Hendra: Some people might think
this is an egregious comparison,

but I would say that
my years at the Lampoon, um,

were not unlike the Paris
of the twenties

that Hemingway describes
in A Moveable Feast.

Wherever two or more
Lampoon people got together

in those years,
something explosive happened.

Janis Hirsch: I felt like I
snuck in some magical clubhouse.

With those people there,
you knew you were never

going to see people
like that again.

Sean Kelly:
At the end of the year

when I'm talking to students
who are about to graduate,

I say I wish them,
that they get maybe five years

in their whole working lives

like the five years I got,

where you're doing something,
frankly, you would pay to do,

except you're getting
paid to do it.

Henry Beard:
It's a time of dial telephone.

There's no Internet,
there's no computers.

There wasn't that much
that was shared,

but what was shared
was shared by everybody.

They absolutely
had everything in common

and in a way that never
will happen again.

Michael Gross:
I'm just so super proud

of that period of our life,
not to mention blessed.

I somehow was part of
the greatest band of an era.

Really what is important,
I think, is just those people.

They became
all of modern comedy.

Doug always had a predilection
for sticking his dick in girls' ears.

Uh, it was something that
he would surprise everybody

by doing in the middle of
a cocktail party or something.

There would be Doug with
his dick in some girl's ear.

And he used to say to me,
-Chris, I hope that somehow

I'll go to heaven and I'll be
able to stick my dick

in the ear
of Eleanor Roosevelt.-

And so when Doug died, I figured
he definitely got into heaven

and probably,
probably even right now,

he's sticking his dick
in the ear of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Lindsay Buckingham
-Holiday Road-

You've been listening to

The National Lampoon
Radio Hour.