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

by Josh Karp

Overview

Now a Netflix original film starring Will Forte, Domhnall Gleeson, and Emmy Rossum.

Comic genius Doug Kenney cofounded National Lampoon, cowrote Animal House and Caddyshack, and changed the face of American comedy before mysteriously falling to his death at the age of 33. This is the first-ever biography of Kenney—the heart and soul of National Lampoon—reconstructing the history of that magazine as it redefined American humor, complete with all its brilliant and eccentric characters. Filled with vivid stories from New York, Harvard Yard, Hollywood, and Middle America, this chronicle shares how the magazine spawned a comedy revolution with the radio shows, stage productions, and film projects that launched the careers of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Gilda Radner, while inspiring Saturday Night Live and everything else funny that’s happened since 1970. Based on more than 130 interviews conducted with key players including Chevy Chase, Harold Ramis, P. J. O’Rourke, John Landis, and others and boasting behind-the-scenes stories of how Animal House and Caddyshack were made, this book helps capture the nostalgia, humor, and enduring legacy that Doug Kenney instilled in National Lampoon—America’s greatest humor magazine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556527623
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/01/2008
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	550,822
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.89(d)

About the Author

Josh Karp is a freelance journalist who writes for a variety of publications, including The Atlantic Monthly Online, Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Premiere, and Salon.com.

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Midas at the Marmont

1 Hayley Mills in Pleasantville
2 The Most Perfect WASP
3 Here Is New York
4 You’ve Got a Weird Mind. You’ll Fit in Well Here
5 What Do Women Eat?
6 Hitler Being Difficult
7 Show Biz and Dead Dogs
8 Guns and Sandwiches
9 The Pirates
10 The Cultural Revolution
11 Fuck the Proposal
12 Round Up the Usual Jews
13 Pheasant Shake for Mr. Kenney
14 A Year with No Spring

Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Bill Zehme

Josh Karp achieves the unthinkable-he's written an essential American excavation of comedy that is, of itself, very, very, very, very, very, very funny. Doug Kenney would be extremely proud and humbled, if he weren't dead. (Bill Zehme, author, Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman)

Penn Jillette

I got my first copy of National Lampoon and saw that comedy could be smart, scary, challenging, important, strange, and beautiful. . . . This book is as close as I'll come to meeting Doug Kenney. It's close enough. (Penn Jillette, Penn & Teller)

Chevy Chase

Josh Karp has informed us well about one of the funniest and innovative humorists of the last century. Doug Kenny was a great friend of mine and it is a good read. (Chevy Chase, actor, Caddyshack)

Mark McKinney

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

Editorial Reviews

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

Booklist

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

American Way

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

Virginia Heffernan

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

The Capital Times

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

Steve Goddard's History Wire

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.

Publishers Weekly

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

Richard Roeper

Jammed with personalities and capsule histories.

The New York Times

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.

Library Journal

"[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

From the Publisher