Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - A Futile & Stupid Gesture (2018), Stoned, Drunk, Brilliant, Dead - The Story of National Lampoon

Weird. Uh, don't touch that dial. The 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. 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 think it would go something like this. Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Maloone's Weekly or round Up. I'm Father Malone, in with me as always my own personal norma Desmond, it's miss Ripley Jean.

It's the treats that got small. How was your week? Everyone? Me? I'm praying every day to Cuthulhu, but so far my prayers have gone unanswered.

Not that we haven't all gone insane social commentary, and we've got a themed episode today. Haven't done one of those in a while because we're constantly at the whim of new releases. But you know what I went to see this weekend, not a goddamn thing. I recently came into the possession of an Xbox, which, if this weekend is any indication, this might turn into a gaming show. No, that's not true.

You know what. I spent the weekend playing pinball. The most realistic graphics in human history are available right now with gaming consoles. You can basically immerse yourself in a movie. And I'm playing an electronic simulation of an old cabinet game that had a steel ball slapped around by rubber flippers.

And I'm in Las Vegas. We have the Pinball Hall of Fame here, no virtual reality needed. I think I'm just scared to commit to some long campaign type game. Time is short, people, I can't be spending at dodging reality and existing in some other consciousness. Actually, that sounds pretty fucking great.

Send me your Xbox suggestions. I've got a series X so that's backwards compatible. I guess I don't know. I've been a PlayStation guy my whole life, well, not my whole life. I began with the old twenty six hundred atari.

I need a game you can dip in and out of. Listen, I've already played all of the Arkham games. I love them. I will never stop playing Alien Isolation. That's probably the best adaptation of a franchise ever.

Talk about fucking immersiveness, and it's got a ripley in it, you know, Rip, I've never played that game with you. Something tells me it's going to be a whole lot of barking. You just running around the room trying to warn me of the giant double mouthed thing on screen. Yesterday you were barking at a freeze frame of Martin mull Get out of here here. This will give you my gaming taste straight up.

My favorite game franchise has always been Medal of Honor. That clang as the clip runs out on an m one garrant is almost as satisfying as the howling Nazi. You've just put a whole lot of daylight into Here's where I'm deficient though Star Wars games. My last foray was Jedi Night Dark Forces too. That was on the PC.

That's right, I'm Dark Forces years old. I've dabbled a little here and there is that Cameron Monaghan game. Any good Jedi this, that, and the other. Do you get the fucking Perial shit up in that game? Because that sounds tantalizing at the moment.

Send me suggestions, Father Malone seven to one at gmail dot com or at father Malone on the Insta and the Blue Sky and the threads quick threads of digression. You all know Julie Brown, the Homecoming Queen's got a gun Earth girls are easy, just say Julie Redhead. Hilarious, gorgeous. Anyway, I commented on one of her posts and long story short, she called me and Ripley here cute. I'm sure it was mainly directed at you, miss Ripley, but I'm taking it so if the world ends up, I don't know ending.

I got at least that out of the ride. But it is not ending yet. Oh no. And we've got a new segment, Ripley, new segment. Are you stoked?

I am? Here We go. From a role. That is Paul Rubins and John Moody in the Pee Wee Herman show, there for the Bumper, and we've got actual, honest to the Elder God's correspondence. This week, listener Shane Mackie wrote in to recommend a UK horror anthology series called Inside Number nine.

I had never heard of it. I was going to dive into it this weekend, but you know, Pinball. In my defense, it is a Lovecraft themed table might be the coolest video game adaptation I've ever seen of Lovecraft. I'm sure there are Elder God Necronomicon games out there, but anything with a tentacle these days is considered Lovecraft. Anyway.

Inside Number nine, I'm not gonna say too much about it because it's got nine seasons, which is daunting, and I've only dipped my toe into the pools. From what I've seen, they're going the original original conception of creep Show route, which is have every segment done in a wildly different style in tone. I am stoked to dive in. So thank you, Shane. You are probably going to be hearing about that series right here.

Yes, an actual human being wrote that to us. Andy signed off best to me and you rip. You're included. You're a star. Also, we received a message from Ian Banks, a fellow projectionist, though he's still in the game.

He listened to that round up about the Scott dereckson Flick the Gorge and he seesed on my hatred for Miles Teller's character's poetry, pointing out that he lives in Dundee, Scotland, which holds the distinction of being the home of William Topaz McGonagall, long considered the worst poet in the world, and he is. Actually it's more complicated than that. But before we all have a laugh at the complete lack of understanding of either meter or rhyme, I'd like to say this about mister William Topaz McGonagall. The Topaz was a practical joke played on him where he was inducted into the fictitious Holy Order of the White Elephant Burma. It was meant to humiliate him.

Instead he adopted it as his actual title. That's fucking badass, that being said in the mid to late nineteenth century poetry scene where there was Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson and Lord Byron. Yes, he is the worst poet in the world. His infamous poem is the tay Bridge Disaster. In eighteen seventy nine, a storm collapsed a stone bridge that was carrying a train with seventy five people on board.

All died. He memorialized them with lines like I must now conclude my lay by telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay that your central girders would not have given way. At least many sensible men do say had they been supported on each side with buttresses. At least many sensible men confesses. The stronger we our houses do build, the less chance we have of being killed.

Whoo incompetent and insensitive way to go, Topaz, The title is well deserved, though one might argue, if you wanted to put him up against mid to late twentieth century poetry, you might have to give up that title of overall worst in history? Have you read the works of master thespian Richard Grico. Here's a taste Child of Hollywood, cocaine in her dresser drawer satisfaction ten minutes away. Just a sniff and she'll be blown away. Child of Hollywood just needs a friend, A lonely girl's life made up of pretend, always glassy eyed, with no means to an end.

Child of Hollywood in a red Porsche. Another sniff and everything's all right, flies off a cliff on an endless flight, at peace, at last, without a friend and without a pass. Child of Hollywood alone at last. Now, comparatively, who's worse? Thank you?

Ian for reaching out that Son of a Bitch has a sixteen milimeter print of draculas. During Jack Palance, written by Richard Matheson, I have a fervent desire to visit the UK. Consider that a threat Ian, though it might not be wise to travel internationally these days. I might not be allowed back in the country. Oh no, then I'd be stuck in the UK.

What a drag. Speaking of the UK, check out the latest episodes of A Year in Horror podcast. That's Paul Waller's podcast. He's tackling the year nineteen eighty nine this month. It's a four parter and I make an appearance on one of them, talking about pet cemetery.

I've appeared once before on A Year in Horror, but it was the Patreon channel, So this is one. You can all hear A Year in Horror nineteen eighty nine, and you can hear Paul on this show Midnight Viewing. We've had him on twice, wants to talk about creep show and then again to talk trick or Tree. Check those out as well. I am beyond proud to be associated with that fella.

Speaking of pride, here's the last bit of business before we get to tonight's theme. I'm in the desert now because I'm old and frail. Can't handle the cold. Not the cold, the chill, that wet, slow motion throb that seeps under the first few layers of skin and slowly turns your bones into ice that comes in early spring. That's the thing I can handle.

But I've always been proud to have been born and raised in Boston. Say July fourteenth, seventeen seventy six, all you fucking want, but the spark was April nineteenth, seventeen seventy five, Lexington in Concord. Fuck your tea, fuck your taxes, and fuck coming here and try and take it over, motherfucker. Much has been made of Boston's racism, and yeah, it's there, but it's way more complicated than whitey hates brown and vice versa. It's Clannish in the Scottish sense.

I'm talking about Sicilians shunning Northern Italians. You think lace curtain Irish kids were beloved by some of these roughneck donkeys in Southey. My point is everyone hates everyone in Boston, and you form clubs based around mutual hatred. It's an all encompassing phenomenon, and I'm convinced it's weather related. My hatred is much more specific since leaving Boston.

But I'll be happy to come back. I'll jump on a plane right now. Actually with the FAA and tatters. Maybe not. I will jump on a horse and come back in a heartbeat.

Speaking of heartbeats, I grew up a heartbeat just north of Boston, just across the Mystic River. My hometown is named for the crazy motherfucker who jumped on a horse and sped around the countryside warning of an impending invasion. Everyone knows that about Paul Revere. Do you know what he did during the war. He and Sam Adams, whose legacy is beer but was a true fucking patriot.

They built a powder house. They made a gunpowder for the Continental Army. That's the local hero I looked up to. In fact, Schoolhouse Rock, a national cartoon broadcast for everyone, had a segment specific about his ride shot heard round the world. Remember that now, think about this.

The Mighty Mighty Bostones have a song about how much Boston hates outsiders. They came to Boston on their vacation. They came, they saw, they annoyed me, saw it all. What Faniel Hall, It's best if they just avoid me. Good luck to anyone going to Boston.

Revolutions are circular. It's the very definition speaking of Boston. You know what they have there, Harvard, And whenever you have a Harvard, you're invariably going to have a lampoon. And as we all know, any local lampoon will eventually go national. We're talking national lampoon.

That's the theme. And we've got two picks that tell you the same story in very different and very similar ways. Starting with a biopic. This is from twenty eighteen, based on the book by the same name, and that title is culled from a line in Animal House, which the film subject co wrote. He's Doug Kenny.

This is a futile and stupid gesture. You just introduce yourself. My name is Doug Kenny. I started the National Lampoon. What if you say I was the man who changed comedy forever, but I couldn't change myself.

Really blow me. If we're running our own magazine, we can do anything we want. We can prob us knock knock, jokes, knock knock. Who's that me? Be me?

Not doing the magazine that can go an issue. What it's a total failure. We're selling less than half our print run. You're not gonna hurt him? Right?

No? What are you doing? I don't think there's any bullets in The. Mormons are protesting the feminist tatus. What do we do to the Catholics?

Why some and Nelly we are being sued by Disney. Maybe it wasn't such a hot idea to have many mouse flashing her teths. She has pasties on. A ready Girls three two one. Cat, I'm the woman you're heading on.

Doug Kenny Chagrin Falls, Ohio from New York. It's Saturday night. We're barely able to put out a magazine, don't us barely be able to do something else? The first national lampoon movie Lazier Orgy Girls. Doug Kenny Chagran Falls, Ohio.

One are the riders of Animal House Food. We call this. Success mostly an excuse to party. You ruined this company. We can't come back a failure.

I do care about you, Doug laugh, God damn it. You need to see someone in that that buglow. Some of the creators of Animal House are working on their next movie, Caddie Chaft and I'm sure it's gonna be. Just as crazy, Doug. We need to decide as it clears jerking his dick off.

Here, Yeah, because we can make it higher or lower depending on the size of my dog. These actors don't look exactly like the real people, But come on, do you think I look like Will Forte when I was twenty seven? Yes? You think Will Forte is twenty seven. This is for the magazine right.

When people talk about comedy and they say, oh, you couldn't do that nowadays. In the case of Lampoon, I agree, not because of some invisible line of taste that we can no longer traverse, but, as co founder Henry Beard pointed out, the actual difference between then and now is they had thirty years of popular culture that had remained largely unexamined comedically, at least without the ferocity that the Lampoon would bring to bear. You can't do it now because it's been done to death no other reason. There is an aspect of revolutionary culture that seems damned near impossible to portray effectively in any biographical film. You can dramatize every event leading up to the creation of a piece of art, but showing its impact is dicey.

Too often it's random shots of random people huddled around radios or televisions, laughing too hard or acting mortified, as if seeing someone shocked equals making the material shocking and irrelevant. It doesn't, but that is a minor problem here in a futile and stupid gesture. There are only a couple of instances of biographical films that hit every wrong step, as far as overly familiar territory or downright cliche plot points. I hate films that try to tell someone's whole life. I hate narration, I hate meta commentary, and they do all of that here, and I love it.

This is a movie as the most comfortable set of clothes I've ever worn. It's not great, believe me, it's not, but it's not trying to be again. Ordinarily that would drive me out of my mind, but here it becomes its greatest asset, the genial. We know, we're comedians portraying some of the funniest people in human history, and it's a lot to live up to, and we're not going to get there, But can you just play along? Attitude is as winning here as I've ever seen that's most likely due to the director, David Wayne.

He was a member of the State That MTV Sketch Comedy Group. He was a director on that series and directed Wet Hot American Summer. He did the very funny Role Models and a ton of Children's Hospital, and he pulls off an amazing feat here, juggling nearly two decades of set decoration and costume changes in makeup, all while handling a script that is as fleet as foot as you're likely to encounter, labeling out story and character and yes, at times, exposition, all the while trying its damnedest to give us a flushed out portrayal not just of Doug Kenny, but the very real relationship at the film's heart. That's the one between Doug and his partner, Henry Beard. Will Forte, who has always been an interesting writer and performer, is shocking no one the perfect guy to play Doug Kenny.

Forte possesses his own weirdo energy, and he's able to funnel that in to Kenny's giving a strong central performance that grounds the whole movie while remaining its funniest element. And almost everyone in the supporting cast is vying for that funniest title. Like other the State veterans Thomas Lennon, Joe Latrulio and Carrie Kenny Ucb and VEEP superstar Matt Walsh, there's Chris Redd and Matt Lucas and Seth Green and John Daly and Jackie Tone and we get another portrayal of Paul the Shiv Schaeffer, this one by Paul Sheer. The other was Paul Rust as the Shiv in that Saturday Night movie from Jason Rightman. That's a biopick that does everything right as far as how a biopick ought to work, And yet is this film's inferior in every way.

One thing Saturday Night did get right is it's Chevy Chase played by Corey Michael Smith. That was a surprise. Way more surprising is the portrayal here. It's absolutely equal in quality. But Joel McHale worked alongside Chase on Community for years and years, dealing with all the worst parts of the man, and here, years later, takes a role that reminds us of all of his best qualities.

There are also dozens of other cameos of Lampoon Luminary sprinkled throughout the best being Martha Smith as the Universal Studios tour guide Babs. She played Barbara in the original Animal House, and that was her character's post film career. According to the subtitles, Oh and it has Martin mull I mentioned him earlier because Ripley when apeshit every time he came on screen. He also plays Doug Kenny in the film. He plays the older, wiser narrator, leading the audience back through his life.

On occasion, he shows up in scenes and addresses us directly. It's a trick that mostly works. Look, I'm not spoiling anything. Even the lamest Google search will let you know. Doug Kenny died in nineteen eighty.

This isn't the first time we've had a narrator from beyond the grave. I referenced Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard at the very beginning of the show that had undead William Holden commenting on the action. I don't know if they're trying to fool the audience and then surprise Hawaii. It's another unnecessary layer, but it does manage to separate the narrator voice from the leads and allows for all the meta textual commentary Your heart could desire, and in that area this movie shines. Finally, Meta is fucking useful, allowing a scene where a rogues gallery of some of the wittiest, raunchiest, most influential American writers are introduced and summarily dismissed because there's just not enough room for them, while owning up to the magazine's total lack of perspective beyond young white male in its early days, there were exceptions, the main one being the legendary and beats of Lampoon and SNL and square pegs y'all always never quite right, played here with appropriate attitude by Natasha Leone.

I'm generalizing by the way in the way the film generalizes with no ill intent. But all of this, the historical recreation, the witty barbs, the unnecessary and terrible Beard on their John Lenda's stand in, which is weird because landis in every scrap of animal house behind the scenes footage is clean shaven for seemingly the only time in his life. All of it does not compare it to that central relationship I mentioned between Kenny and Beard. Henry Beard was everything Kenny wasn't upper crust aerodite, an aged man and a young body, which in this case made him the perfect partner, and they found the perfect actor to portray him. For all the sketch comedy giants filling every frame of the movie, The funniest and simultaneously most heartfelt performance comes from Donald Gleeson.

Step aside Scar's guards, them Gleasons are just as talented. Obviously, everyone on Earth loves his dad Brendan Gleeson, matt I Mooney and Monk Eastman himself. And if you haven't seen his brother Brian Gleeson series Frank of Ireland, you are missing out. But doneal my god, man slowed down. You cameleonic bastard.

I think those Star Wars films trying to use him for laughs as general hucks, But to me he was the scaredious thing in any of those flicks, particularly the first one, on the total opposite end of the sci fi universe and performance scale. Check him out in Dread as that Mama Clan techy trying to thwart Dredd and Anderson. Here he's in the grounded straight man role and yet he pops every time he's on screen. This is a duo you like almost as much as they like each other. A lot of Kenny's more outrageous behavior and comedy are normalized thanks to the austerely demeanored Beard.

I'm a sucker for creative pairings, particularly when their roles are as well defined as they were here. I mean, yeah, we all love the Coen Brothers, but I'm mystified as to who does what here, Kenny as editor, Beard as executive editor, Kenny turning out volumes of work and Beard wrangling it. That's an oversimplification, just like the movie. But you should see it. You'll understand immediately a futile and stupid gesture.

Yes, it is a concept I'm familiar with. What's your big gesture? Hold on hit it, HP, Thank you HP. You know several Night Night writers got their start at the Lampoon. It's a fact, and ripspick is the mirror image of a futile and stupid gesture.

This is a weird phenomenon, and it happens more frequently than you think. A documentary comes out that's just great, and then some lam o says, we need a fictionalized version of that so we can make a lot of money, And then a man on a wire becomes the walk Grey Gardens becomes Well Grey Gardens, Life and Times of Harvey, Milk becomes Milk Dogtown, and z Boys becomes Lords of Dogtown. And in every case I would recommend the documentary. But with Doug Kenny in the National Lampoon, Yeah, it's the same thing. Watch the documentary.

It's called a drunk, stoned, brilliant Dead. Here was this totally outrageous voice that was screaming. Here I come for. Reading that first National m I went, Wow, that's what I've been trying to say. We'd just come out of the sixties.

We had the assassination Vietnam, now we had water Gate. There was a lot of bad stuff going on there. It's oftome the only magazine that a lot of younger people today read. And what that is is I think they trust us breasts. I would try to seek out the magazine on the off chance that they would be some bressed.

Tell me about National lamb Who why do you think it's so powerful? Well, they aren't designed to platter a particular audience. Fairly well to do. Nobody's It was incredibly dark, extremely political, and it was funny. Man.

My first week in the National Lampoon, we were getting drunk in a part. There was a man secretly living in his office. It was a crazy place like nothing I'd ever seen before. I can tell him what to do. We were taking on the idiocy of our own generation.

Was like, we had an attic full culture from nineteen forty five. To nineteen seven, and we just looted. It is the job of a centrist to make people uncomfortable, really uncomfortable, to the point where they go, this has to be stuck. He was so upset by that he called the FBI. I think Matty said something like, well, this is nationally because National Lampoon was imagining.

But suddenly it was records and actors and musicians. We're going to make a movie. Like I said, hey, why don't you write the high school movie? There was so much sex. You can't do this in a high school.

We'll get lynched. So that he became adapass. And from that moment on we went from being criminals to heroes. What we did in anticipate was that Hollywood would take away all of our creative talents. The lampoone is the hippis place to be the right comedy until the hippis place to be the right comedy became Saturday in Our.

Bond, The Lampoon lost its exceptionalism. You knew you are you never going to see people like that again? They became all of modern comedy. By the fucking magazine. This documentary is actually based on the book of the same name by Rick Myerowitz from twenty ten.

It is an exhaustive and exhaustively researched chronicle of Lampoon from its Baress conception to its ultimate demise. And I'm holding into my hands now as it was a gift from this show's composer and frequent collaborator HP. Thank you again, HP. I treasure it and you should treasure this documentary. Fictionalized films are great for filling in all the gaps you can't begin to reach through simple reminiscing or recreation.

What they're not great at is simply aping their subject matter. The most egregious there was Man on the Moon, the Andy Kaufman film. So much of that film is just watching Jim Carrey go through Andy Kaufman's bits from beginning to end. In the documentary, I'm from Hollywood exists, you can just watch Kaufin do it himself. Why you waste your time.

Otherwise, brief digression. There are now three separate versions of Michael o'donne Hugh's Wolverine sketch from Saturday Night Live Living in the World Today. There's the original with him and Belushi, the recreation with Thomas Lennon and John Gemberling in a futile and stupid gesture, and again with Matt Wood and Tommy Dewey and Saturday Night that's weird anyway. The book and documentary are saturated with interviews by all of the major players minus Kenny and John Hughes for obvious and funereal reasons, and allows for a deeper exploration of not only the greater array of talent that were present at the magazine, but also is way more upfront with how unflinchingly awful the content could be.

Did you notice on the SNL fiftieth anniversary special in their in Memoriam Maya Culpa segment that they left out that Dana Carvey Chinese character, you know, the one who loved his chicken. It was a recurring character, and Carvey still defends it because he knew a guy that talked that way. Okay, that makes it all right, So Anyway, if you cross reference Drunk, Brilliant, Stoned to Dead, and a futile and stupid gesture, you get a lot of the same material. It's not one for one recreations like the films I've already mentioned. But it's curious how many articles get the spotlight in the dock and then become moments in the film.

It wouldn't be weird generally, it's just that that film is based on a whole separate book. I don't know. I'm not giving the biopic grief. I just think it becomes striking if you watch them back to back, which I'm encouraging, but in this order they do compliment one another nicely, but you might be a little off put if you do it the other way around, and I don't want that because the doc is phenomenal. I went to USC in the early nineties.

Boston to La was a culture shock, one I was unprepared for. So I did what I do best, retreat to the library stacks and what a fucking library they had, including every issue of National Lampoon. From day one. My college career was spent at the movie theater that was across the street from campus. In the arcade, but mainly studying National lampoon and yes, decades of old daily varieties in Hollywood reporters.

But my god, the sheer volume of the written word. Even that doesn't come across in the documentary. You get it a bit more in the book. But I don't expect HP to give you all your own copy. So check out this documentary.

It's streaming for free on a bunch of services. A futile, stupid Gesture is on Netflix. I don't have anything more trenching to say about it, and quite frankly, I hear a pinball table calling my name. So we're going to sign off here. Forgive the lateness of publication, though technically this is a Monday show.

And of course, if you're listening in the future, hell I might be dead, so apology rescind it. If you want to support us, it's easy, like the show, give us all the stars, share it on the social media, tell your mom about it. She loves a rambling loaner and his dog. Or if you have any extra money what you can get all the episodes early and commercial, free and bonus series over at patreon dot com. Slash fatherm alone.

Every dollar spent is a dollar towards more books and blu rays and future episode reviews and deeper examinations, or maybe I'll get a well deserved coffee. Thank you for joining us here on the Roundup. Join us again Friday for midnight viewing. Mike White and I are taking a look at the next two episodes of Tales from the Dark Side Season three. I'm gonna leave you with my favorite part of a feudal and stupid gesture.

It's a completely made up exchange between Ed Helms as Tom Snyder and Will Forte as Doug Kenny. The interview happened, but Snyder wasn't adversarial, and no one said anything like this. It doesn't matter. It makes me laugh every time. But before we do that, I just wanted to point out this weird confluence of events, given that I grew up in a town named for Paul Revere and we've been talking about the National Lampoon.

Anyone remember this bit of the song from the Beastie Boys. WoT you take away and take away me? All right? Get off the bus, Wild Wild, that's insane. You're stupid.

Huh. You should sleep late, man, It's just much easy on your constitution. That's Mark on the bus. That sample comes from a National Lampoon album. Here it is, you're not east to getting up early.

I'm not here yet. What time do you usually get up? I usually get up when the sun is warm, like one thirty two o'clock in the afternoon. I like to get about six thirty. That's insane.

You're stupid. Huh. You should sleep late, man, It's just much easy on your constitution. That's mister Rogers interviewing a bass player. The bass Players played by Bill Murray.

Anyway, back to Doug Kenny, is there such a thing as over the line? To you? A lot of people think your material goes too far. A lot of people voted for Nixon. Mister Kenny.

It's a fine line between being clever and defensive, isn't it. Look if I could just say something in defensive National Lampoon for one moment, please, We come from a tradition of truth tellers. A long time ago, there was someone else society found defensive. They thought that what he did was was radical, dangerous, persecuted him and eventually killed him. Of course, I'm referring to Dracula.