"Everybody Thought the Stork Was Brain Damaged": The Douglas Kenney Thread

I'm in the process of reading "Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story". Between this book, the fairly-recent biography "A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever ", and the Netflix film it inspired, "A Futile and Stupid Gesture", it seems like Kenneymania is running wild. So I thought I'd start a thread - What the hell was I supposed to do, ya *****?



The Stork in action: Animal House Marching Band Scenes

This "Making of Caddyshack" documentary (The Making of Caddyshack (1980) ) explains Kenney's unhappiness with the finished film which led to (or exacerbated) his depression. He died the month after the film was released.

I haven't seen the Netflix film. Anybody?

 

What tha hail we 'sposed ta do, ya mo-ron?

 

Douglas Kenney -
Just one of the brilliant comedic minds behind The National Lampoon

 

Kenney is like the James Dean of writers/producers. Two iconic films ... premature death ... and endless "What might have been?"

 

Poking around imdb, I was surprised to find Kenney (along with Harold Ramis and Chris Miller) listed as the writer of the pilot episode of "Delta House" (the 13-and-out TV version of "Animal House"). That's their only writing credit in the series. A number of episodes after that were written by John Hughes!

 

Interesting!
I assume that as the NatLamp staff branched out into “more mainstream” entertainment, they’d recommend and bring on board their writer colleagues onto the projects they’d landed.

It’d be amazing to see a family tree chart of all the National Lampoon Magazine, Radio, and Record Label talent, including writers, editors, comedians, illustrators, artists, actors, etc.

Obviously branching into the eventual huge success of SNL, and movies.

 

I'm about a quarter of the way through the Caddyshack book, and it's actually not a Caddyshack book (no complaints for me though). It traces the evolution of the Harvard Lampoon -> National Lampoon founders, and then expands out into the Lampoon radio show and theatrical shows, and finally the interactions with Second City and SNL. It seems like every name that comes up in someone who did something influential in comedy in the 70s or 80s.

 

I saw the recent "A Futile and Stupid Gesture," too and enjoyed it a great deal. I was a big National Lampoon fan while it was published. Have you watched "Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant and Dead: The Story of National Lampoon?"

During college (late 70s early 80s) I'd get a new issue and go over it picking out the best parts and read them aloud to my friends while we'd gathered to drink. I read them "Vacation '58" long before it became a movie. We all used to get a big kick out of it.

I also remember reading them a story as we drove from Long Island into the city to see Nanci Griffith at the Bottom Line in the mid 80s. The story was about when Superman's costume -- for some reason -- was unavailable and, since he couldn't do his crime-fighting without disguising his identity, had to find another costume. The best thing he could find was a clown suit. So for a day or two he had to fly around and fight crime in a clown costume. It was pretty funny.

I doubt Doug Kenney wrote that feature so I realize I'm straying off-topic, but I'm just thinking of the National Lampoon and how much I enjoyed it.

Also, I think "Animal House" has some true genius comedy elements in it (which I wrote about in another thread recently).

I still have a big box old issues -- I could never bring myself to throw out a single copy.

 

Ironic that his depression and eventual suicide following what he perceived as failure regarding "Caddyshack" was so short-sighted. I wonder what he'd say if he'd known "Caddyshack" would soon become a seminal and all-time comedy classic.

 

His last actual credit was executive producer on "Modern Problems", Ken Shapiro's not so great follow up to The Groove Tube

 

A bit of Animal House trivia: except for Belushi, most of the actors were not well known. They brought in Donald Sutherland to lend a little star power to the film, and gave him a choice of $50,000 versus $35,000 plus 15% of the film's gross. He thought the film was stupid, and took the $50,000-- a mistake that cost him about $20 million.

 

Thanks for the heads up on the National Lampoon documentary - I wasn't aware of it.

I was not quite the right age for the seminal period of the magazine. I'm pretty sure I became aware of the magazine after the film ("Animal House" came out the day after my 14th birthday - I actually saw it with my parents!) By the time I got to college (1982) the movie was already iconic (frat houses showed it during rush to draw crowds) and the magazine was everywhere.

 

It seems like Kenney had issues above and beyond losing control of the movie he was producing, or the poor reviews it got. But those things probably didn't help matters.

 

It is pretty astounding that Sutherland got $50,000 for 2 days work while Belushi got $35,000 for the entire film. I didn't know (until today) that the Jennings character was added after Sutherland signed on, and Kenney wrote the two Jennings scenes (well, three I guess, if you count the one with Katy) while on the set.

 

A couple of weeks ago I watched the Netflix film "A Futile and Stupid Gesture" and then, glad to see "Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant and Dead" was also there, I followed up with that take.

I think "A Futile and Stupid Gesture" has some clever ideas, but it feels like a typical biopic in a lot of moments. After "The Big Short" it's not as surprising to see a true-life story call out where it has been fictionalized, but I still enjoyed a bit which listed the true facts of several scenes in the film via a speedy crawl, including "Everyone was a lot more racist and misogynistic than they appear." The doc version interestingly addresses that kind of material's place in the magazine and the social context of it. Of course, the free-wheeling boundary-pushing nature of the 1970s is hard to fathom in today's context. So much so that the dramatized Lampoon story feels like it pulls punches.

Both films do give a strong sense of how game-changing National Lampoon was in the 70s. As the years have passed, It seems the magazine and the Radio Hour have slipped out of consciousness for most people. The National Lampoon brand wasn't ever tied to Doug Kenney for most of my life. I think a lot of people would immediately think of the iconic films bearing the logo and then wonder what went so wrong that the same logo adorns bargain-basement dreck like "Dorm Daze" - not even realizing there was once a magazine.

 

I watched both the documentary and the "Futile" drama last night. I definitely preferred the documentary. The drama was at its best, I thought, when it was self-referential and making fun of itself. That blurred the line between what was intended to be ridiculous, and what was unintentionally ridiculous (such as whether Brian Doyle-Murray actually wore his Lou Loomis costume to Kenney's funeral!)

 

I suspect that Kenney still would have been upset over "Caddyshack", simply because his original 'vision' had been altered to the point where it was no longer recognizable to him.

 

I saw both films, and when I ran across the NL 1979 10th year anthology in a box I thought "I'll throw that in the bathroom, it'll be a fun read". It really hasn't turned out to be so - most of it doesn't hold up that well for me when you remove the "outrage" factor. Which to their credit they pioneered, it's just that it doesn't speak to me any more, even as nostalgia. I'll take Will Cuppy, thanks.