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March 28, 2024, 08:20:32 AM

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A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018 - now on Netflix) [National Lampoon Biopic]

Started by Retinend, November 21, 2020, 05:15:36 PM

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Retinend

This is amazing! I am a big Will Forte fan so I don't know how this passed me by for so long. He plays the co-founder of National Lampoon, which is an interesting subject for any comedy fan.

If you are only vaguely aware of National Lampoon, it started as a magazine of whimsical college humour ("The Harvard Lampoon") and fits into a proud American print comedy tradition somewhere between MAD magazine and The Onion.

The brand expanded into film production, releasing classics such as "Animal House" and "Caddyshack", which immortalized the sense of humour that began with the meeting of two kindered souls in comedy in Harvard in 1964: (Will Forte as) Douglas Kenney and (Domhnall Gleeson as) Henry Beard. At the heart of the film, then, is a Lennon-McCartney type relationship of two young men finding their way in the world: a "post-coming of age" story, so to speak.

Highly recommended!

McChesney Duntz

I liked it way more than I probably should have, given the amount of details they get wrong (amusingly lampshaded with an on-screen scroll midway through, but still) and the at-times bizarre casting (embodying the tall, charming and urbane Brian McConnachie in the odd, trollish figure of Neil Casey is strange, and Seth Green as Christopher Guest - ?!?, but I will confess to being amused at Matt Lucas' being cast as Tony Hendra, just imagining how irked Hendra must have been, and there's a soul deserving of much worse than a mere irking), but it's subject matter very close to my heart, so there's pleasure in seeing it played out in front of me. Forte's good, but I daresay Gleeson is the standout as Henry Beard (and Thomas Lennon makes a fine Michael O'Donoghue). Flawed for sure, and there's a whole the-wrong-kid-died subplot that, however true it may have been, really should have been approached differently now that Walk Hard officially made it a risible biopic cliché, but I liked it, by and large.

For a somewhat more realistic take on the Lampoon, I recommend the Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead documentary from 2015, if you haven't checked it out yet. Even if, like this film and most of the biographical works out there, it basically pretends the franchise ceased to exist the minute Kenney did; the story of its decline from irreverence to irrelevance over the ensuing decades is worth telling, if a hell of a lot more depressing than even Kenney's tragic tale.

Retinend

On the subject of "details they (deliberately) got wrong", they tricked me all the way through with that one narrative device that turns out to be totally misleading. I was totally caught off guard. To subvert an old cliche: I cried and I laughed.

It's in my opinion the second best American[nb]specifying "American" because I don't want to decide whether I like these films more than "Shaun of The Dead"/ "Hot Fuzz"[/nb] comedy film of the new century, after "World's Greatest Dad" and before "They Came Together".

Retinend

I checked out the doc and loved it... more convinced than ever that National Lampoon was my sort of thing....

but weirdly when I sat down to watch "Animal House" for the first time ever last night I was well sick of it by the time it ended. It started out really good, with stuff like a 3 panel cartoon come to life... but there just wasn't a good story there.

I'm reminded of being let down by "Caddyshack" when I watched it as a teenager and feeling really dumb for not finding it funny. I feel like I missed out on a lot of the things in life they are laughing at.

But no, there wasn't a good story in "Animal House".

By a leap of logic, I can imagine a novel by Doug Kenney would indeed, as the film implies, be worthless. Luckily he had many other skills, above all winning the hearts of so many people! He seems like he genuinely liked people.

In that he reminds me a bit of Peter Cook in terms of being a publisher first and foremost: a sort of respected insider with a strong public face, but many human weaknesses. Another coincidence.

edit: do caddyshack and animal house constitute examples of cocaine-fuelled humour? Something else I know nothing about first hand...

the science eel

I really like Animal House and was reminded of it by the new Belushi doc I saw last night. But it's let down by the shocking - even for then - racist scene in the club.

Retinend

Yeah I was trying to work out what it was saying. It wasnt direct racism but as a modern person one wouldn't think twice about entering a "black" club... one would hope.


Small Man Big Horse



McChesney Duntz

Quote from: the science eel on November 28, 2020, 03:13:30 PM
I really like Animal House and was reminded of it by the new Belushi doc I saw last night. But it's let down by the shocking - even for then - racist scene in the club.

There are dodgy moments in it - particularly the cut from the girl saying her major is "Primitive Cultures" right to Otis Day and the Knights going "a-oo-mow-mow" - but I still think it's one of the funniest parts of the picture. Somebody at Universal, very nervous about that scene, showed it to Richard Pryor, who gave it the thumbs up. Why? "White people are funny." So there you go.

I mean, the look Peter Riegert's character gets when he calls out "OTIS! MY MAN!" kinda says it all for me. It walks a line, undoubtedly. But you could pick up any issue of the Lampoon from the same period and see just how much worse it could have been.

Retinend


McChesney Duntz

At the time? I did steal the odd glimpse of it off the newsstand or from one of the copies my dad had, being eight, nine years old. One of my earliest memories, in fact, is being petrified at Tony Hendra's screams at the end of "Magical Misery Tour" (still one of the greatest, most brutal rock-icon parodies ever; thanks, Michael O'Donoghue) off my dad's copy of the Lampoon's then-current Radio Dinner album, so it's in my DNA and my PTSD.

Now? I've got a fairly comprehensive collection of the mags from their debut issue in 1970 to the end of '81, with scattered issues thereafter. So I can trace their triumphant rise and sad decline quite easily. The bloom was off the satirical rose by '76, I think, though there were still strong talents associated with the mag until the mid-80s, after which it became well-nigh unreadable.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Didn't the National Lampoon do a Monty Python spoof? I'd like to read that.

McChesney Duntz

Go here - http://www.luckyfrogfarms.com/cook/NL/1970's/1976/1976_03.pdf - and scroll down, then (page 91 or so). Warning: there's a lot of really (visually and comedically) ugly stuff in this issue; some truly offensive and very NSFW material. And the Python "parody" was mostly written (anonymously, the fucking coward) by a clearly bitter Tony Hendra (who was at Cambridge and in the Footlights at the same time as Cleese and Chapman) with a whole punnet of chips on his shoulder and some weird ideas about comedy (unless you agree that Python's biggest problem is that they never made fun of the IRA). Enjoy?

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

There's some fucking horrible stuff in that magazine, even by N.Lampoon's standards. P. J O' Rourke is such a vile little creep. And, yeah, that Python spoof ain't all that( despite making one or two valid points- the repetetiveness of series 3 is one of the reasons Cleese left); as you say, the obsession with Northern Ireland/ The IRA is just plain weird.

Still, at least I've read it now, cheers for putting it up.

phantom_power

How can you tell what is article and what is ad? There are so many of them

Retinend

Isn't that the point of an advert, though? to blend in?


edit: interesting to see "Camel" cigarettes still being marketed as exotic and eastern (hence "Camel", duh!) rather than funky and individualistic.
the stuff with the midgets stuff is borderline degrading - I think, like Crumb, the writers for this magazine have a heavy vibe of sexual frustration - and they excuse excess/self-indulgence/plain old creative masturbation as being "from the id", therefore deeper than it really is. This sort of 70s sexual "liberation" is absolutely a turn-off for me (at least, beyond mere titillation). If this makes me a prude I guess I'm a prude. I'm sure the models had fun on set, but yeah... the film was right to gloss over this kind of humour.

Shaky

Definitely check out the Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead doc, if anyone hasn't. They show a lot of classic Nat Lamp stuff and most of it is very funny, so you do get a good idea of just how revolutionary it would've been. The magazine itself (or the pdfs, at least) I find horribly laid out and almost impossible to read.

McChesney Duntz


Retinend

It's a good thing that adverts only get better with age (the more obsolete, the better). They are one of the best things about reading old magazines.