He went on to write, produce and perform in the influential comedies Animal House and Caddyshack before his sudden death at the age of 33 . In Caddyshack:The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story film critic for Entertainment Weekly Chris Nashawaty goes behind the scenes of the iconic film, chronicling the rise of comedy's greatest deranged minds as they form The National Lampoon, turn the entertainment industry on its head, and ultimately blow up both a golf course and popular . The days were long, and Kenney's partying continued. User account menu. It took in more than $140 million at the box office, and suddenly everyone in Hollywood wanted a piece of this new breed of funny guy. Amazingly, nothing happened.". Thanks for the suggestion! The minds behind the spoof were Lampoon editors Doug Kenney and Henry Beard, two men who are at the heart of the Caddyshack story. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Now a Netflix original film starring Will Forte, Domhnall Gleeson, and Emmy Rossum. But they got so much good stuff from things everyone else improvised that cut almost the entire script. While at Harvard University, Kenney was a member of the Signet Society, president of the Spee Club and editor of The Harvard Lampoon. In the article, reprinted by The Daily Beast, Walker described their . The cocaine business in South Florida was mammoth, and everyone was doing everything. He recalls Kenney snoozing behind a wall while Chase was filming the improvised rub-down scene with the Lacey Underall character. Yes, Chevy Chases smirk, Steve Martins meta-comedy (comedy that comments on comedy), and Bill Murrays winking takes on show biz hip and cheesy lounge singers were a long way from Leave it to Beaver. Yet films of the same era that emptied the kitchen at the Drafthousefilms like Raising Arizona, Back to School, Beverly Hills Cop, The Princess Bride, and Little Shop of Horrorsnot to mention Tootsie, arguably the best comedy of the 80swere and remain funny in sharp and delightful ways that Caddyshack is not. Or he may have decided he'd just had enough of whatever pain he was feeling, and wanted to run away for good. Warner Bros. Ted Knight brought life to Judge Smails and Chevy Chase played Ty Webb in the 1980 comedy . He was 33. National Lampoon ? Kenney was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, and went to Harvard. Yet many SNL skits could have appeared in earlier eras. Accompanied by a small knapsack, one pair of socks, underwear and a credit card, he fled to California and bunked with Harvard friends Peter Ivers and Lucy Fisher. In the background of the Bushwood Club dinner party scene, Kenney is visible chopping out a line of cocaine for the female guest next to him. Chase and Walker went to retrieve the body, and they visited the site, too. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. They spent a couple of weeks at Vic Braden's tennis camp in California, and then each took a room at the Hyatt Regency in Maui. Things deteriorated. Kenney hand-selected this role for himself as it was the role that fit him best. The high point came with the 1978 film National Lampoons Animal House. Kenney edited the magazine and wrote much of its early material. A week later, Simmons and a bewildered staff received a five-word postcard: "Next time, try a Yalie. He kept sugar bowls full of cocaine in his house and in his suite at the Chateau Marmont. The concept for "Caddyshack" was sold as "Animal House" on a golf course "Animal House" being a still-fresh blockbuster co-written by Ramis and Doug Kenney. His family moved to Mentor, Ohio, in the early 1950s, before settling in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. "Caddyshack," which revolves around the scholarship aspirations of teenaged caddy Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe) at snobby Bushwood Country Club, is ranked the No. The truth? [3] At a press conference, Kenney verbally abused reporters and then fell into a drunken stupor. It was a precursor to todays Alamo Drafthouse. Named by ESPN as " perhaps the funniest sports movie ever made ," Harold Ramis' Caddyshack is one of the most beloved comedy classics of all time. ", Found in Kenney's hotel room were notes for projects he had been planning, jokes, and an outline for a new movie. "But Doug was the type of person who became dis-integrated. "Caddyshack," the film that sparked countless oft-repeated quotes, most of them made up on . Manage all your favorite fandoms in one place! 1. So, he suggested to Beard they create a mainstream, professional, worldwide, syndicated version of the magazine. The creative sparks flew immediately. There was no happily ever after. Kenney remained on staff until 1977, when he left the magazine to co-write the screenplay to National Lampoon's Animal House, with Chris Miller and Harold Ramis. His friends remember a running gag in which they'd walk around a corner and find him splayed out, body lifeless on the sidewalk, glasses askew. The story goes that after Beard had read it, Kenney said, "It sucks, doesn't it?" If you havent, you probably havent heard of Douglas C. Kenney, either. "He was a little too slow for my taste," says Doyle-Murray. The plot dissolved into a series of routines. National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook, National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook Parody, Regolian (segment "Captain Sternn") (voice). In real life, Mr. Ramis couldn't bring himself to work on the screenplay with Mr. Murray. So would the Randall Tex Cobb intro in Raising Arizona. All rights reserved. "I said, 'It is a hit in my book. "Animal House" swiftly followed -- Kenney originally partnered with Ramis to write "Laser Orgy Girls," based on the idea of Charles Manson in high school. He preferred to be charming above all else. He might have survived had he stopped. He didn't live to see his $8 million "failure" take in almost $40 million at the box office, or hear its lines of dialogue become part of the American lexicon. He hated that he was working with Jon Peters. That, combined with the studio's hands-off, go-make-your-movie-without . This is the first-ever biography of Kenney--the heart and soul of National Lampoonreconstructing the history of that . The man is 27-year-old Doug Kenney, and the magazine he had co-founded, National Lampoon, is a runaway success. In 1966, the magazine the Harvard Lampoon gained national attention when it produced a parody of Playboy magazine. Let us take the engineering + MBA trajectory for instance. "I think he was so frustrated," says Lucy Fisher, a college friend who was running Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope studios in Los Angeles at the time. The explosion was reported at the nearby Fort Lauderdale airport by an incoming pilot, who suspected a plane had crashed. Kenney died on August 27, 1980, aged 33, after falling from a 35-foot cliff called the Hanapepe Lookout. The film is a slobs-vs-snobs story set at a Florida country club. They were writing for their generation, they were writing about sex and drugs, and they didn't care if their parents didn't get it. Then he passed out. Caddyshack was the fruit of three different influences: National Lampoon magazine, the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago, and the TV show Saturday Night Live. In Caddyshack (1980), cocaine use was rampant on the set. Then Kenney said he and a friend, actor and writer Brian Doyle-Murray, had been thinking about doing a film based on Doyle-Murray's caddieing experiences. But she too had to return to work. He showed up stoned at a press conference where he trashed the film and insulted reporters. There are holes in their boots and they are hungry. As the movie makes clear, Kenney was a tortured soul, and the magazine he founded was a product of its time: overwhelmingly white, male and gleefully boorish. In the wake of all the success and fame he so rightfully deserved, his demons and vices caught up with him. It was a pretty debauched country at the time. "I think I want that car," he says. The final nail in Kenneys metaphorical coffin was the aftermath of his final film But he loved all the accouterments of the game -- the ball marker, the repair tools, the spike tightener.". What followed was a wicked parody of J.R.R. Theories abounded. He spent most of the 1970s in Manhattan, where he co-founded the Lampoon. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. He got into a fist-fight with a producer, lost six-figure royalty checks and hosted drug-addled pool parties with pals that included John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray. "What it turned into was the high school yearbook parody. Lampoon for prolonged periods of time, struggled to maintain romantic relationships and voice his feelings, and eventually fell in lust with Bolivian marching powder (oddly enough, not the cause of his untimely death), apparently introduced to him and enabled by friend and frequent colleague Chevy Chase. "He'd say, 'You know, I just got so tired.' "With him, two and two made 30," says Beard, who today has dozens of books to his name (including The Official Exceptions to the Rules of Golf and Golfing: A Duffer's Dictionary). So does he actually talk like Egon, because I naturally read this as if it was Egon. Ramis (who called the movie his "$6 million scholarship to film school") and writers Brian Doyle-Murray and the doomed Doug Kenney, Caddyshack was . Furthermore, the anarchic nature of the new comedy would quickly lose direction if it wasnt guided by a strong directorial hand. Landis was at first resented by many cast members, and he instantly saw problems with the script and casting. Some are quick to realise that they may have made a mistake and change course. The part Kenney chose to play himself was Stork, the weirdo nerd. The photo is a head shot of a striking young man in a tux with piercing eyes and a crew cut. This magazine, founded by Kenney and his fellow Harvard alumni Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman, was a spin-off from the Caddyshack is the subject of a beautifully written and even historically important book. 4. "A gag line that he had left was found: "These last few days are among the happiest I've ever ignored." Murray was broke at the time, and hanging out at the National Lampoon offices, hoping no one would notice him while he waited for Brian to finish work on the "National Lampoon Radio Hour" in a recording studio upstairs. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. "He had gone from being the center of things, and then suddenly he was more or less a hired hand on somebody else's movie. Murray is one of six brothers (including Doyle-Murray, who added his grandmother's surname to his own when he discovered there was already an actor named Brian Murray). Doug's rage was, except maybe to get back at those S.O.B.'s from Chagrin Falls Later, at the National Lampoon, Kenney and colleague P.J. Writer and producer Doug Kenney (pictured, above) began writing at Harvard, where he co-founded the National Lampoon magazine. "There was one guy who kept walking by and talking to me, and he was there after everybody left," says Murray. After working on the Harvard Lampoon as an undergraduate, Douglas C. Kenney co-founded the National Lampoon magazine and the National Lampoon Radio Hour. Nashawaty: When [Kenney] entered Harvard in 1964, grass was a taboo recreational punishable by a steep jail sentence. His death was classified as accidental by Kauai police. And if you havent, then I suggest you catch the film, Chase left soon after. And the three "main characters" wound up with what seems like 7-15 minutes of screen time each. "The National Lampoon," Carney wrote, "was the first full-blown appearance of non-Jewish humor in years -- not anti-Semitic, just non-Jewish. by Chris Nashawaty. On August 27, 1980, Kenney fell off the Hanapepe Lookout, a cliff where he had supposedly gone hiking, and his body was discovered a few days later. I had a 37K YouTube audience, and that's what I earned and learned. I had trouble getting mad at him. He decided to stay with two friends. Press J to jump to the feed. Named after a book by the same name, A Futile and Stupid Gesture will chronicle the life of Doug Kenney, one of the founders of the National Lampoon comedy dynasty. ("Be the ball.") They are tired and muddy from their long march through the night. Kenney worked tirelessly to keep the cast and crew happy, riding around in a golf cart as a sort of self-appointed social director. The drug references, too-broad slapstick, juvenile poop jokes, and characters like Murrays mentally challenged groundskeeper Carl Spackler have become pop culture touchstones. Kenney attended Gilmour Academy which is located in Gates Mills Ohio. Much of the humor in "Caddyshack" is generated by Rodney Dangerfield's over-the-top performance as the boorish Al Czervik. Douglas Clark Francis Kenney (December 10, 1946 - August 27, 1980) was an American comedy writer of magazine, novels, radio, TV and film who co-founded the magazine National Lampoon in 1970. "That's good . Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story Help. But there was a day when he physically fought with Jon Peters and Mike Medavoy -- there were shoving matches. ", "He always apologized for his disappearances," says Simmons, who would buy out Kenney and Beard in 1975 for $7.5 million. Beard nodded, and Kenney dropped it in the wastebasket. Beard (who was originally set on attending law school before co-founding the magazine) and Hoffman (who returned to Harvard to attend business school) cashed out on "We were about to get into an accident. Stork's key scene is in the big parade climax, when he pushes the drum major away and leads the marching band down a blind alley. And no one laughed.". The pair began compiling their ideas in New York, wandering into coffee shops and bars and jotting down ideas on napkins. and Irish Catholic, with a weird strain of Canadian detachment. 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