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July 10, 2017 11:45 PM

Can Anyone Repair the National Lampoon? Vanity Fair dives deep into the sordid (and ongoing) fate of the National Lampoon brand – a story that begins with Kenney, O'Donoghue, and the vanguard of 1970s comedy, and ends with multiple FBI raids, the 'Madoff of the Midwest', and a long, desultory history of tasteless movies and tie-ins.
posted by workingdankoch (38 comments total)

In junior high in the late '70s I loved this magazine, it was extremely outrageous, and to a small town BC native, the political humour was eye opening. By the early '80s, I stopped buying it because it had become depoliticized under the execrable ass clown P.J. O'Rourke, whom I will always blame for National Lampoons eventual downfall, when he made it all about bare breasts and beer.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 1:10 AM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]

Am I a bad person if I liked Van Wilder?
posted by Samizdata at 2:10 AM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

I say, ‘Where’s the sex in Animal House?’ ‘Huh? There’s lots of sex in Animal House.’ ‘No, there’s not.

As a guy who just watched Animal House with his 11-year-old, let me just stop you right there and say, yes there is.
posted by escabeche at 2:58 AM on July 11, 2017 [13 favorites]

If it wasn't for NL magazine, I would have never survived adolescence. Yes, slight exaggeration but it certainly took the edge off. The hours spent reading the very small print were worth it. I bet I could pick up the "NL 1965 High School Year Book" and still find things I missed. Same would be true for any issue. Too bad my brother stole my collection and sold them at a flea market.

I was all grown up by the time the movies came along. Other than the "Vacation" movies, I wasn't much impressed.
posted by james33 at 4:22 AM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

As funny as it could be, National Lampoon is definitely a product of it's era, which, for better or worse, is not the current one.
posted by jonmc at 4:24 AM on July 11, 2017 [18 favorites]

I didn't read the magazine much, and wasn't attracted to the movies, but The National Lampoon Radio Hour had a bunch of us glued to the radio on the nights it was on, and a lot of the political material is as relevant today as it was then.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:32 AM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

The Vacation movies—no sex.

The European Vacation film has a long subplot around a sex tape the Griswold parents made (not to mention Beverly D'Angelo topless in the first one). I think the point of that paragraph is that the dude has never actually seen any National Lampoon film products.
posted by AzraelBrown at 5:05 AM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]

Although the article covered the recent disastrous era, I wanted to dip a little deeper into the past and found the cover of every issue of National Lampoon magazine, which awoke my nostalgia for days gone by. Now I need to make time to watch the 2015 documentary: Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon.
posted by fairmettle at 6:01 AM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Looking through the covers, it looks like I was buying it in the late 70s. I really loved it and remember checking regularly checking the variety store for the new issue. I loved the comics a lot, too. Good times.
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:21 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

I really only continued with NatLamp for the comics, as they introduced me to the weirdness that is women comic artists, such as Shary Flenniken and the wonderful M. K. Brown. I also have the classic Poster Collection, which one day I shall frame and mount. One day...
posted by arzakh at 6:33 AM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

Someone else here who thought that NatLamp was the shiznit in high school, and outgrew it some time before it stopped regular publication. I cringe a little to think that I used to believe that stuff like O.C. and Stiggs [pdf] was cool, instead of being a rationalization for bullying. (Fun fact: O.C. and Stiggs became the basis for Robert Altman's worst-reviewed movie, as well as being, ah, liberally borrowed-from by Alan Moore for D.R. and Quinch.)

Really, I think that Animal House, as successful as it was both in its own right and in establishing NatLamp as a brand, was also their downfall. They could have gone in two directions following the film: they could have worked harder on the social commentary (probably my favorite part of AH is when the guys go out to the club where Otis Day and the Knights are playing, on the basis that they're friends or something since the Deltas hired them to play their party) and maybe established themselves as the American version of the Monty Python film franchise, or they could have taken the easy route and just doubled down on the lowbrow humor. It's pretty obvious which way they went.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:35 AM on July 11, 2017 [10 favorites]

There were records too.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 6:37 AM on July 11, 2017

Hell of a story. I'll be amazed if someone doesn't make that into a Netflix series.
posted by Zonker at 6:44 AM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Zonker: Hell of a story. I'll be amazed if someone doesn't make that into a Netflix series.

I think you just saved National Lampoon right there! National Lampoon's The Story of National Lampoon!
posted by SansPoint at 6:49 AM on July 11, 2017 [11 favorites]

I bet I could pick up the "NL 1965 High School Year Book" and still find things I missed.

More than 50 years later, and they still haven't unmasked the Mad Crapper.
posted by slkinsey at 6:59 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

when i was a young slaw, one of my father's friends clipped out the fartman comic from an issue of the lampoon and sent it to him, knowing that it suited his sophisticated sense of humor. i asked him what he was laughing at, and he showed me, and to my young mind it was the funniest of all possible things and i asked him if i might keep this precious vessel of overflowing hilarity.

he said i could have it, with the proviso that i never show it to anyone because it was, strictly speaking, not appropriate for someone of my tender age to possess.

needless to say, the first time one of my friends subsequently came over to my house, i showed him fartman and we both laughed so hard that my dad came in to see what all the ruckus was, and i was so busted. flustered and red-faced, my dad seized fartman and banished him from my sight forever.

anyway, that's how national lampoon ruined my childhood
posted by murphy slaw at 7:18 AM on July 11, 2017 [17 favorites]

As funny as it could be, National Lampoon is definitely a product of it's era, which, for better or worse, is not the current one.

I don't know, we definitely live in an era where Cracked is more relevant than Mad. Admittedly this is because they stopped trying to imitate Mad and instead started running essays with numbered paragraphs.
posted by Merus at 7:24 AM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]

(Fun fact: O.C. and Stiggs became the basis for Robert Altman's worst-reviewed movie,

Huh. Big Altman fan and I've never heard of that movie.
posted by octothorpe at 7:24 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Obligatory link to Nathan Rabin's spirited defense of Altman's 'O.C. and Stiggs'.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 7:38 AM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

I discovered John Waters not from his movies, but from the pieces he wrote for NL in the 80s, that were mostly about whatever John Waters happened to be doing in Baltimore.
posted by lagomorphius at 7:46 AM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

More than 50 years later, and they still haven't unmasked the Mad Crapper.


SPOILER - It was the principal. Read his statement in the year book.

And yes I miss the original Lampoon. Not the later one...
posted by njohnson23 at 8:02 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's not terribly complicated. Get actual comedic talent on board, give a shit about the scripts, and focus on what made the magazine great -- brutally savage, dark, dark, DARK humor.

Michael O'Donoghue being dead may complicate that somewhat, as he was pretty much the definitive article.
posted by delfin at 8:04 AM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]

I felt that it was all downhill after Bored of the Rings.

But that was befo--

Exactly.
posted by Herodios at 10:03 AM on July 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Michael O'Donoghue being dead may complicate that somewhat . .

Not necessarily an impediment for the NatLamp brand.
 
posted by Herodios at 10:06 AM on July 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Lots of nostalgia being expressed here, however:

Can Anyone Repair the National Lampoon?

Having now RT whole F sordid A, I say "Who cares? stick a fork in it."

Having had plenty of time in prison to analyze his Lampoon experience, Laikin said he now regrets not focusing more on content earlier. He acknowledges that he was a deal junkie . . . He still thinks National Lampoon has potential waiting to be unlocked.

WHERE?! Going by this article, "National Lampoon" is now just a name attached to a shady business on the fringes of the entertainment business. Apart from the "pink-cased iPhone of the office momager", there is no there there. Deals -- no content. No creative geniuses. No social commentary. And no Lorne Michaels to ride back to the rescue, à la SNL 1985. It has less meat on it than the skeleton of a chicken mcnugget. It has less power of creative autonomy than an angler fish's testicles.

And it currently has no more to claim on the National Lampoon magazine of the 1970s than do the living descendents of the dog on the cover, even if they were named Pinto, Otter, D-Day, and Bluto.

Stick a fork in, I say, it's done.
posted by Herodios at 11:13 AM on July 11, 2017 [9 favorites]

Good riddance to bad rubbish.
posted by tommasz at 11:34 AM on July 11, 2017

I think it is possible to turn the brand around. I always remember Cracked as MAD's poorer cousin and now they have a huge community and content driven website.
posted by Calzephyr at 11:44 AM on July 11, 2017

In theory, you could get a bunch of people together with both enough funny ideas and talent to resurrect the brand, and enough perspicacity to recruit good talent when they ran out of funny themselves. But why would they bother with reviving National Lampoon, rather than simply starting their own brand? Even if you're generous enough to extend NatLamp's glory days all the way to 1991 (when J2 bought it and ceased regular publication of the magazine), it's still been a hollow imitation of itself for most of its history. I'm with the numerous other people who have said that the story outlined here would make for a great movie or miniseries, and I'd like to see that much more than National Lampoon's Gosh We're Sorry About All That Shit Put Out Under Our Name, We're Funny Again, Honest.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:18 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]

I always remember Cracked as MAD's poorer cousin and now they have a huge community and content driven website.
Cracked's content is frequently, but not consistently, good, with 4-5 articles and one video every day (and anyplace that occasionally features the work of Winston Rountree has its existence justified for me). They are very slowly outgrowing the "listicle split between two pages" format, but at least they never committed the crime of a page for each item.

And MAD Magazine has been having it own little crisis lately. When semi-parent company DC Comics moved from NYC to Burbank, everybody was wondering when they'd lose their iconic "MADison Avenue" office. Well, that's happening at the end of this year and almost none of the editorial staff (some of whom have been there for DECADES) is moving out west - but when they announced the new Editor in Chief, Bill Morrison, who ran Matt Groening's Bongo Comics and several other entertaining projects, may sighs of relief were heard. And several of the artists/writers not located in the abandoned headquarters are continuing on. And their website has a daily 'blog' feature that mixes professionally designed and anti-Trump current humor with highlights from the mag's past. So keep up your "what, me worry?" attitude.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:27 PM on July 11, 2017 [7 favorites]

I always remember Cracked as MAD's poorer cousin and now they have a huge community and content driven website.

Yeah, but that situation was the polar opposite of this. Jack O'Brien is a genuinely funny human being with a great curatorial sense who got his hands on that name because it was worth nothing.

The only way that would work for NatLamp is if they just gave up and gave it to some young hungry comedy writer that had a 50/50 chance of blowing it but was desperate to make content.
posted by lumpenprole at 2:48 PM on July 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

The hours spent reading the very small print were worth it.

The fine print was swell, and that nice attention to detail in the art direction & photography. The classic era National Lampoon style also convinced me that every print magazine should have some funny pages in the back end. I still believe this, actually. But like the classic era Creem Magazine, it was just a unique late 20th Century time and place, now lost.

(My fave throwaway was a small note in the bottom of a news section that Steven Spielberg's next big project was 'Turbine', an epic about the workers in a Chinese industrial factory striving to exceed their production quotas. I've always wanted to see this film.)
posted by ovvl at 7:15 PM on July 11, 2017

But like the classic era Creem Magazine, it was just a unique late 20th Century time and place, now lost.

boy howdy, was it.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:17 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

Speaking of "unique late 20th Century" magazines, Penthouse Global Media is reviving its "Science is Sexy Too" magazine, OMNI as a full-fledged paper publication this fall!
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:49 PM on July 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'd argue that the NL parody Doon is actually better and funnier than Bored of the Rings, though I guess I'm pretty safe in making that claim since it's hella out of print.

This realization focused within him in a sudden sparkflash computation, and in the clear brilliance of that illumination, the boy Pall understood a profoundness. His life, hitherto a child's plaything, devoid of direction–seemingly!

Or had there in fact always been a plan–a plan within a plan within a plan (whatever that meant (whatever that meant (whatever that meant)))?–was now encompassed by a terrible purpose.

He knew the meaning of the word terrible, and he knew the meaning of the word purpose. And therefore he understood deeply the meaning of "terrible purpose" Unless he, in the solitude of his deeply brain-filled mind, misunderstood this revelation, and was in fact confronted with a "terrible papoose." »
posted by Sebmojo at 9:45 PM on July 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

I think you just saved National Lampoon right there! National Lampoon's The Story of National Lampoon!

This is happening!

Kind of. It won't go up to the modern day collapse, but Netflix is currently making a movie about the early days of the National Lampoon, featuring a fantastic cast. Plus it's being written by Michael Colton and John Aboud of The Modern Humorist, which you could make a pretty good case for being the spiritual successor of National Lampoon. I'm psyched about it.
posted by yankeefog at 4:31 AM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

I think you just saved National Lampoon right there! National Lampoon's The Story of National Lampoon!

Please. National Lampoon's Down in Flames. An eight part Netflix mini-series written by Dan Harmon (or someone else good at making unlikable characters sympathetic).
posted by suetanvil at 11:25 AM on July 12, 2017

OMG, that link that yankeefog put up about the movie:

Joel McHale as Chevy Chase

you guys

YOU GUYS
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:04 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

This was the weirdest part to me:

Erica Taylor was there at the time, as was the now deceased character actor Edward Herrmann, who shared the car bug with Durham.

The guy from the Dodge ads?!?
posted by Chrysostom at 10:06 PM on July 28, 2017