National
Lampoon
National Lampoon was an American humor magazine
begun in 1970 as a offshoot of Harvard Lampoon. It reached its height of popularity
in the 1970s, but has had a far reaching effect on American humor / humour, spawning
films, radio, live and television comedy shows.
History
National
Lampoon was started by Harvard graduates and Harvard Lampoon alumni Douglas Kenney,
Henry Beard, and Robert Hoffman in 1969. They licensed the Lampoon name for a
monthly national publication. The magazine's first issue was dated April, 1970.
After a shaky start, the magazine grew in popularity during the 1970s, when it regularly skewered pop culture, counterculture and politics with recklessness and bad taste. Notable cover images include:
The court-martialed Vietnam War murderer William
Calley affecting the guileless grin of Alfred E. Neuman, complete with a catch
phrase, 'What, My Lai?" (August 1971);
A iconic image of Argentinian
revolutionary Che Guevara, being splattered with a cream pie (January 1972);
A
dog looking worriedly at a revolver pressed to its head, with the famous cover
blurb "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog" (January
1973). (In 2005, the American Society of Magazine Editors selected this magazine
cover as the seventh-greatest of the last 40 years.);
A replica of the starving
child from the cover of George Harrison's charity album The Concert for Bangla
Desh, rendered in chocolate and with a large bite taken out of its head (July
1974).
Like the Harvard Lampoon, individual issues were devoted to a particular
theme such as "The Future", "Back to School", "Death",
"Self Indulgence," or "Blight". The magazine also took a cue
from Mad by regularly reprinting its material in a series of collections.
The magazine produced and fostered notable writing and comic talents, including (but not limited to) Kenney, Chris Miller, P. J. O'Rourke, Michael O'Donoghue, Sean Kelly, Tony Hendra and John Hughes. Many important cartoonists and illustrators appeared in the magazine's pages, including Neal Adams, Vaughn Bode, M.K. Brown, Shary Flenniken, Edward Gorey, Jeff Jones, Bruce McCall, Rick Meyerowitz, Joe Orlando, Arnold Roth, Ed Subitzky and Gahan Wilson. Hendra's 1987 book on 1950s-1970s humor, Going Too Far, contains information about the magazine's early days.
The magazine also spun off an off Broadway hit (Lemmings), a series of popular
record albums, a radio show (The National Lampoon Radio Hour), several hardcover
books (the most successful of which was a faux high school yearbook), and a line
of motion pictures, most famously Animal House in 1978. One National Lampoon movie,
National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), spawned a series of several sequels, including
National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
(1989), and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure
(2003). 1997's Vegas Vacation was not released under National Lampoon imprimatur.
Four of SNL's first eight Not Ready For Primetime Players — John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray — first gained attention as part of the Lampoon's stage and/or radio shows.
A parody of Les Crane's 1971 hit Desiderata was recorded and released as Deteriorata, and stayed on the lower reaches of the Billboard magazine charts for a month in late 1972. The gallumphing theme to Animal House rose slightly higher and charted slightly longer in December 1978. Several comedy LPs were released throughout the 1970s. In the 1990s, a CD boxed set of recordings from The National Lampoon Radio Hour was released by Rhino Records.
National Lampoon's fake Volkswagen Beetle print ad mocking Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick
incident, was a known.
The Lampoon's commercial heyday was roughly
1973-75, with its national circulation peaking at 1,000,096 copies sold of a single
October 1974 issue. The Lampoon's 1974 monthly average was 830,000. Former Lampoon
editor Tony Hendra's book Going Too Far includes a series of circulation figures.
While the magazine was considered by many to be at its creative zenith during this time, it should also be noted the publishing industry's newsstand sales were excellent during this period. The Lampoon's circulation height coincided with sales peaks for other magazines such as Mad, Playboy, and TV Guide.
1975 to the
end of the magazine
Most fans consider the glory days to have ended in 1975,
when the three founders took advantage of a $7.5 million dollar buyout in their
contracts. Also, some of the magazine's contributors left to join the NBC comedy
show Saturday Night Live (SNL) around the same time, notably O'Donoghue and Anne
Beatts. Even so, the magazine still made money and continued to be produced on
a monthly schedule throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, although the magazine
was on an increasingly shaky financial footing from the mid 1980s on. Beginning
in 1986, the magazine was published only every other month.
In 1989, the magazine was acquired in a hostile takeover by a business partnership headed by actor Tim Matheson, who had initially gained fame by portraying Otter in the 1978 film National Lampoon's Animal House. During Matheson's tenure he instituted a policy banning frontal nudity in the magazine; frequent full frontal female nudity had previously been a staple of National Lampoon's style of humor. Facing mounting debts, Matheson sold National Lampoon magazine to J2 Communications in 1991 in order to avoid bankruptcy. J2 was previously known for marketing Tim Conway's Dorf videos.
Throughout the 1990s, the number of issues per year declined precipitously. Two issues were released in 1992, one in 1993, five in 1994, three in 1995, and for the last three years of its existence, the magazine was published annually. J2 Communications was contractually obliged to publish at least one new issue per year in order to retain the rights to the Lampoon name. The magazine's final print publication was November 1998, after which the contract was renegotiated. In a sharp reversal, J2 was then prohibited from publishing issues.
Since the death of the magazine, National Lampoon Inc. continues to, in the words of its prospectus, "develop, produce, provide creative services and distribute National Lampoon branded comedic content through a broad range of media platforms." These include film projects, a website, a wireless service for mobile phones, and the National Lampoon Network, a two hour block of weekly programming broadcast to various colleges. As of yet, none of these projects has achieved the same level of mainstream or critical success as the early years of the magazine.
Though National Lampoon exists today only as a logo and a trademark for licensing purposes, its comedic influence on a previous generation of writers and performers was seismic. As co founder Henry Beard described the experience years later, "There was this big door that said, 'Thou shalt not.' We touched it, and it fell off its hinges."
National Lampoon movies
Disco Beaver from Outer Space
(1978) (TV)
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
National Lampoon's
Class Reunion (1982)
National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
National Lampoon
Goes to the Movies (1983)
National Lampoon’s Joy of Sex (1984)
National
Lampoon's European Vacation (1985)
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)
National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon (1993)
National Lampoon's Last Resort(1994)
National Lampoon's Deadly Sins (1995)
National Lampoon's Senior Trip (1995)
National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation (1997)
Golf Punks (1998)
Men in
White (1998) (TV)
Van Wilder (2002)
Repli-Kate (2002)
Blackball (2003)
National Lampoon's Gold Diggers (2003)
Dorm Daze (2003)
National Lampoon's
Barely Legal
Thanksgiving Family Reunion (2003)
Christmas Vacation 2:
Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure (2003)
Going the Distance (2004)
Adam
& Eve (2005)
Strip Poker (2005)
Teed Off (2005)
Pucked (2006)
National Lampoon's Pledge This! (2006)
Last Guy On Earth (2006)
Van
Wilder 2 (2006)
Dorm Daze 2 (2006)
TV: The Movie (2007)
Teed Off Too
(2007)
The Robert Altman film O.C. and Stiggs was based on two characters
which made several appearances in National Lampoon, including an issue long story
from October 1982 called the "Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of
O. C. and Stiggs." The film was completed in 1984, but not released until
1987 in a small number of theaters, without the National Lampoon name.
Following the success of Animal House, MAD Magazine lent its name to a 1981 comedy titled Up the Academy. But unlike the earlier film, which was co produced by the magazine's publisher Matty Simmons and co written by the Lampoon's Doug Kenney and Chris Miller, Up The Academy was strictly a licensing maneuver with no creative input from MAD's staff or contributors.
Other Media
National Lampoon's
Class of '86
This show was performed at the Village Gate in 1986, aired on
cable in the 80's, and is now available on VHS. It was a sketch-based satire of
1980's culture, told against a frame story of Galahad and Dewdrop, two hippies
who took LSD in 1969 and woke up in 1986. The sketches lampooned yuppie culture,
health food, the Reagan Administration, airplane hijackings, and psychotherapy.
National Lampoon's Strip Poker
Released on pay per view in 2005 after being
filmed at the Hedonism II nudist resort in Negril, Jamaica. The one hour episodes
featured various Playboy, WWE, and pin-up models competing in strip poker match
ups. The company has announced plans to film more.
National Lampoon's
Knucklehead Video
A video sharing and social networking site featuring viral
video content of extreme sports bloopers, "drunken debauchery" and the
self explanatory 'show us your butts'.
National Lampoon Comedy Radio
Added
to XM Satellite Radio in October 2006, this comedy network has licensed the name
from National Lampoon, Inc.; distribution/sales are conducted through Clear Channel
Communications.
Flight
Las Vegas Nevada - Click here to find one
They have a website- http://www.nationallampoon.com/
National Lampoons European Vacation
http://www.abominablesnowman.co.uk/