America's only adult humor magazine is now a comedy empire
Eight years ago, three newly graduated Harvard Lampoon editors had a wild and crazy idea: Why not start the first modern national humor magazine for American adults? They took the idea to a middle-aged entrepreneur—the publisher of Weight Watchers magazine, no less—and National Lampoon was born. The rest is history, or if not history, then at least hilarity.
Today National Lampoon, the brainchild of Douglas Kenney, Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman, is a show-biz empire of comedy. Not only has the magazine been a huge success (circ. 600,000), but it has also launched popular spinoffs: books, records (three Grammy Award nominations), stage revues, a radio show. Better still, the Lampoon has nurtured a new generation of comic talent. Many of the creators of NBC's Saturday Night Live, including Michael O'Donoghue, the Chief Writer, are Lampoon alumni. That show's Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time-Players Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray first hit the big time in Lampoon revues.
This summer is the Lampoon's balmiest yet. Last month the magazine published its Sunday Newspaper Parody, an eight-section, $4.95 send-up of Middle American journalism that is starting to hit trade-paperback bestseller lists. This week the magazine's first film venture, a college satire titled National Lampoon's Animal House, opens in 600 theaters nationwide. Bolstered by good reviews and Star, John Belushi, the movie is already playing to smash business in New York City and should return a hefty profit on its modest $2.7 million production cost.
Though the Lampoon has become big and rich, it has never lowered its scathing comic voice. "What we do is oppressor comedy," is the proud claim of Lampoon Editor in Chief PJ. O'Rourke, 30. "Woody Allen says, I'm just a regular shmuck like you.' Our kind of comedy says, 'I'm O.K.; you're an asshole.' We are ruling class. We are the insiders who have chosen to stand in the doorway and criticize the organization. Our comic pose is superior. It says, 'I'm better than you and I'm going to destroy you.' It's an offensive, very aggressive form of humor."
Every Lampoon fan has his own favorite outrageous moment. One occurred in January 1973, when the magazine's cover photo of a puppy with a gun to its head was accompanied by the headline, IF YOU DON'T BUY THIS MAGAZINE, WE'LL KILL THIS DOG. Off-Broadway audiences recall The National Lampoon Show of 1975, in which Gilda Radner playing Patty Hearst machine-gunned Steven Weed. Lampoon writers routinely savage Kennedys, Nixons, Third World peasants and American capitalists. No one, alive or dead, is sacred. The Lampoon's last issue included a fictional letter to the editor in which "Larry Flynt" referred to himself as "the George Wallace of porn." With this kind of animus, it is no wonder that the Lampoon's first movie has a richly deserved R rating.