Reason #275839 why Aaron Sorkin’s mercifully short-lived series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip didn’t work out was its unduly inflated sense of importance. Everyone within the show spoke of the titular comedy institution with a hushed reverence usually reserved for religious figures and new Marvel movies. The characters wouldn’t stop yakking about how vitally subversive and clever and shocking and brilliant the titular show-within-a-show was, more a cornerstone of American culture than mere late-night sketch program. The trouble, of course, was that the actual sketches Sorkin permitted the audience to see wouldn’t have made the cut at SNL, never mind jostle the sensibilities of Americans nationwide.
The non-stop fanfare for classic humor magazine The National Lampoon in the new documentary Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon evokes Sorkin’s comedic hero-worship at times. The difference, of course, is that the Lampoon can actually stand up to its own hype. It’s somewhat irritating to hear the men and women involved with the joke-rag’s production gush about how capital-I Important it was to the United States during its growing-pains period in the 1970s, until the viewer remembers that, oh yeah, they’re right. In its heyday, before Lorne Michaels and the icy clutches of death conspired to disassemble the dream-team staff that made the Lampoon what it was, the magazine was deliriously, shockingly funny.
If only Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead was a fraction as intelligent or entertaining as its subject. Director Doug Tirola chronicles the rise and fall of the Lampoon in the most drearily bland fashion imaginable, delivering a product that feels as artless and identity-free as the magazine was subversive and idiosyncratic. Drunk is a factory-issue doc, as standard as standard can be, a shining illustration of the crucial distinction between a quality film and a poor film with a quality subject matter. Like a concert documentary that succeeds only in making the audience wish they could instead sit down with their favorite records, Drunk generates nothing apart from a desire to revisit the timeless issues themselves.
An offshoot of Harvard’s comedy journal of repute, the Lampoon is framed here as the incorrigible brainchild of comic daredevils Doug Kenney and Henry Beard. In its finest turns, the Lampoon hit the sweet spot between high-minded satire and sophomoric yuks; a single issue might have contained a scathing critique of the casual horrors of Vietnam (a baby book for an infant machine-gunned at My Lai made for one of the darkest, most ingenious issues) alongside the nudity-rich Foto Funnies section. The first half of the film runs through the magazine’s greatest hits, from the cover that infamously threatened to execute a cute puppy if you didn’t buy it to the faux yearbook tracking a dozen students at C. Estes Kefauver High School in Dacron, Ohio. The narration swiftly moves on through the tremendously popular Radio Hour that collected many of the talents that Lorne Michaels would poach for Saturday Night Live, and onto the films, both Animal House and Vacation. The memories are fond until they’re really not — seeing Chevy Chase come close to displaying an actual human emotion when discussing Kenney’s untimely death is probably the greatest treat this doc has to offer.
But getting to that point can be a hell of a trek. The directors break up the reproduced clippings and vintage footage with a series of adulatory talking-head interviews from the likes of acolytes Judd Apatow and his ilk, and the result is not especially stimulating. Add to that the haste with which the film glosses over the magazine’s unsavory history of rosy racism and sexism (“They meant to be racist! That was the point!” is not a satisfying approach), and the goodwill generated from sentimentality wears perilously thin. All of the film’s chuckles come secondhand, pried from the pages of Lampoon like rings from a corpse’s fingers. The cosmic hilarity of the film at hand, of course, is that the writers being lionized would’ve mercilessly mocked the film’s excessively complimentary tone. The National Lampoon parody of the National Lampoon documentary — now there’s a film worth seeing.
How many more comparably flavorless documentaries will it take for filmmakers to realize that they cannot simply cruise through production on the strength of a good story alone? When will the distinction between form and content automatically discard pitches such as Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead’s before they can even make it to the green light? Sorry, Fido: if it comes down to a choice between your head and seeing this movie, well, it’s been good knowing you.
One thought on ““Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon” Is A Flavorless, Unintelligent Trek”
“The National Lampoon parody of the National Lampoondocumentary — now there’s a film worth seeing.” That kind of misses the point now, doesn’t it? If you want to see a parody there’s always “This is Spinal Tap” but this is a documentary. Yes, it’s funny because of the second-hand enjoyment of Lampoon material. That’s as it should be. I would make a parody of, say, Fox News. They’re worth parodying but the Lampoon is something I am more seriously interested in.
On another note, I’ve often wondered, how does it feel to be the only critic (of RT’s “top critics”) to not like a movie everyone else liked? Maybe it’s you.