A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever

by Josh Karp Narrated by Chris Lutkin

Overview

This ultimate biography of National Lampoon and its cofounder Doug Kenney offers the first complete history of the immensely popular magazine and its brilliant and eccentric characters. Relying on wonderful stories about the comedy scene in New York City in the 1970s and National Lampoon's place at the center of it, author Josh Karp chronicles how the magazine spawned a popular radio show and two long-running theatrical productions that helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Gilda Radner and that went on to inspire Saturday Night Live. That history along with interviews conducted with more than 130 people connected to Kenney and the magazine-including Chevy Chase, John Hughes, P. J. O'Rourke, Tony Hendra, Sean Kelly, Chris Miller, and Bruce McCall-and behind-the-scenes stories about the making of Animal House and Caddyshack help to capture the nostalgia, humor, and popular culture that National Lampoon still inspires.

Editorial Reviews

The Capital Times

A story that sheds welcome light on some of the funniest material of our age.

Steve Goddard's History Wire

Filled with anecdotes that will send tears streaming down the readers' cheeks.

Booklist

"Karp's account of Kenney's death is as moving as the excerpts from excellent NL articles are hilarious."

American Way

"Karp makes a persuasive case for Kenney to be considered among the key architects of post-World War II humor."

Virginia Heffernan

Plenty of goateed comedy writers, Harvard Lampoon veterans and Hollywood people in Brioni suits still mist up at the memory of Kenney, the raffish humor whiz who helped start National Lampoon in 1970, helped write "Animal House" and "Caddyshack" and then fell or jumped off a cliff in Hawaii in 1980. He definitely had one blowout decade. But from his parodies and japes, which have dated unevenly, as well as his life's erratic plot points, it's hard to get exactly why people thought he was so cool. Even A Futile and Stupid Gesture, Josh Karp's painstaking argument for his supergenius, doesn't close the case.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Screenwriter Kenney (Animal House; Caddyshack), co-founder of National Lampoon, was one of the gifted gagsters who ignited the 1970s revolution in American humor. Journalist Karp (Playboy; Premiere) delivers an iridescent, polychromatic portrait of the humorist, framed within an amusing anecdotal history of National Lampoon. To chart the magazine's rise and fall, Karp conducted 150 interviews, mapping every avenue of business decisions, feuds, romances, cocaine use and bizarre pranks. It all began at Harvard, where wild wit Kenney and misanthropic Henry Beard became "symbiotic creative forces," revitalizing the Harvard Lampoon. When they teamed with publisher Matty Simmons, National Lampoon was born in 1970, filling the "gigantic void" between the New Yorker and Mad. Success led to heightened hilarity as the brand expanded with posters, products, theatrical productions and recordings. The 1973 National Lampoon Radio Hour cast resurfaced in 1975 on Saturday Night Live, but the anarchic Animal House in 1978 catapulted Kenney to Hollywood-as Karp writes, "He had transformed himself from nerd to preppy to hippie and now to unassuming millionaire artiste." 16-page b&w photo insert not seen by PW. (Sept. 1) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Richard Roeper

The definitive profile of Kenney's brilliant comic mind and his too-short life.
— Chicago Sun-Times

The New York Times

Jammed with personalities and capsule histories.

Library Journal

For the multitude of baby boomers coming into full adolescent bloom in the 1970s, the National Lampoon was the cat's ass. With comedic masterpieces like the 1964 Kefauver High School Yearbook parody and the transcendent January 1973 cover of the buy-this-magazine-or-we'll-shoot-this-dog issue, the Lampoon imprinted American popular culture forever. The Harvard-educated mastermind behind the Lampoon, as well as the movies Animal House and Caddyshack, was Doug Kenney, whose story and intersections with other star-crossed geniuses like Michael O'Donoghue, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and P.J. O'Rourke are wonderfully told in this interview-driven, behind-the-scenes account. Readers are immersed in the comedy scene in 1970s New York City as well as the birth of the Lampoon and its spin-off media. Karp, an experienced journalist, conducted 150 interviews, so it's understandable that the story's cadence is at times more staccato than fluid. Like a cultural joyride in a 1975 Cutlass 442-fun, fast, and furious. Larger public and academic libraries should purchase.-Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

From the Publisher

"[Karp has] written an essential American excavation of comedy that is, of itself, very, very, very, very, very, very funny." —Bill Zehme, author, Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman



"A must-read for the curious, comedy aficionados, and subversively shy teenagers everywhere." —Mark McKinney, actor, Kids in the Hall



"The definitive behind-the-scenes account of the man and publication that all but defined the comedy zeitgeist of the last 35 years." —Rob Siegel, former editor, The Onion



"This book is as close as I'll come to meeting Doug Kenney. It's close enough." —Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller



"The definitive profile of Kenney's brilliant comic mind and his too-short life." —Richard Roeper, film critic, Chicago Sun-Times

"Jammed with personalities and capsule histories." —The New York Times



"Karp makes a persuasive case for Kenney to be considered among the key architects of post-World War II humor." —American Way



"The sharpest analysis yet of how success, self-doubt and drugs led one of his generation’s wittiest minds down a blind path." —Philadelphia Citypaper

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175547512
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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