Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon

“It will remind you how much we owe to a few irreverent misfits at Harvard.” — Hollywood Reporter

They became icons of modern comedy … the legions of writers and performers who spun out of the National Lampoon empire to “Saturday Night Live,” “The Simpsons,” major movie careers and TV dynasties. It all sprouted from a college humor magazine and warped staffers, Douglas Kenney and Henry Beard, who made it explode into America’s culture with its middle finger jammed up the establishment. How do you sell advertising to corporate suits for a vulgar magazine that prints art like the “Baby Blender?” Then came Animal House. It’s all here, from Kenney’s depression over the awful movie they had just finished called Caddyshack, to the huge buyout that made them rich. Director Douglas Tirola unearths never-before-seen archival footage and brilliantly weaves it together with the magazine’s beautiful and often shocking art, reliving National Lampoon’s meteoric rise from go-to magazine of the counterculture to a brand synonymous with Hollywood’s biggest comedies. Energetic, revolutionary, gently perverted and often hilarious.

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