Posted on 04/08/2012 4:50:27 AM PDT by jimbo123
O, Bluto, it wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.
But it almost never began.
“National Lampoon’s Animal House,” the rowdy blockbuster that launched a thousand campus toga parties and reinvented the college comedy, barely found a studio backer.
Warner Bros. passed. Universal Studios boss Ned Tanen said, after eyeing the outline, “Everybody is drunk, high or getting laid. I hate this treatment. I’d never make this movie!” He didn’t change his mind until producers promised to bring it in for less than $3 million.
Even after the green light, a series of power struggles, casting choices and pressure from the studio easily could have made “Animal House” a much different film. Picture this: Chevy Chase, as ladies’ man Otter, pitches a football to Harold Ramis’ Boone, who follows a couple of Delta blockers past the snobby Omegas but fumbles into the muddy end zone where it’s pounced on for a touchdown by John Belushi. The Deltas hoist Belushi onto their shoulders, hollering his frat name: “Hydrant! Hydrant! Hydrant!”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I remember pledging to a NJ University in 1962. It had similar Frat houses. Didn’t study and flunked out by spring 63’. Of course I had to pay my father back. Lessons learned.
"Over? Did you say over? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the German's bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! And it ain't over now! Cause when the going gets tough.. The tough get goin'. Who's with me?"
My best friend and I first saw this movie when we were 12- my legs stuck straight out from the seat I was so small. We knew it by heart and must have seen it 40 or 50 times. It was an R movie but there was a certain innocence to it. It was certainly not like the trash children are exposed to now with the profanity, raw sex and extreme violence.
My best friend was brutally murdered several years ago and I will probably never watch this movie again.
???Nancy Pelosi??? ; )~
I was too young to see this when it originally came out in 1978. I was 9 years old at the time, and while I was a regular theater gore (I went to the movies at least once a week), I was unable to get into the R rated movies due to my age unless I was accompanied by an adult.
I would first see this a couple years later or so when it debuted on network tv, but then it was heavily edited. I would finally get to see it uncut, unedited in the early 80s when I saw it at the apartment of the older sister of a friend of mine. She had WHT, an early form of cable tv at the time. You paid a monthly fee for the one single channel, but you could see movies uncut and uninterrupted by commercials. My friend and I were over there alot. It was there I got to see animal house, among many other movies, completely uncut. Being so accustomed to seeing edited movies that were always interrupted by commercials, it was a culture shock to be able to see movies on tv, sometimes with the foul language and nude scenes intact, and without commercial interruptions.
Today that scene in that night club during the road trip wouldn’t have survived the first edit.
So sorry to hear that.
I hope you do see the movie again.
Thanks for the belly laugh. Good one!
Gee, I guess we’re supposed to be glad that this gem was added to our cultural heritage.
“Well, you can do what you you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!”
I saw the movie when it first came out, and then again, in the 90’s, I watched it at home with my then two teenage daughters. I was laughing pretty much all gthrough the movie, and at the end, one of the girls turned to me and said “Were you that bad in college?” Since I’ve always believed in being honest with the kids, I told her..”No, we were much worse”..I was at NYU from 64-68, in Greenwich Village, and looking back, I am struck with awe and wonder that I and nearly all, of my fraternity brothers managed to survive the 60’s...lawdie, lawdie..the stories I could tell..even I, looking back now..shake my head...
Looking back at it today, it's sort of cheesy and I can't believe it was as popular as it was. I was a big SNL fan as well back in the day and seeing some of those old 1970s episodes on Netflix recently, they are definitely not as funny as I remembered them being.
Harold Ramis would have made a great Boon, especially because he probably was Boon in real life (ZBT, Washington University, St. Louis...using the ROTC guys as a driving-range target? Yeah, he apparently did that.). Dan Aykroyd, who I understand they originally wanted for D-Day, would have been great. That said, Peter Riegert and Bruce McGill were excellent. And Bruce could play the “William Tell” Overture on his larynx.
On the other hand, Tim Matheson was perfect as Otter in a way I’m not sure Chevy Chase could have been. And Mark Metcalf supposedly read for Otter, but let’s face it, he was the perfect Doug Neidermeyer. In fact, it’s hard to imagine most of the rest of the roles played by anybody else. And John Belushi was just indispensable.
Great flick. I won’t say I ran out right after I saw it and joined a fraternity (I was 13 or 14 when it came out), but it definitely put the idea there for when I did go to college. It probably did that for so many college guys (and girls, maybe?) that the NIC and NPC (the national interfraternity and intersorority conferences) should probably give Landis and the cast and crew an award, even as they give them an earful about the havoc it’s inspired.
There was a sit-com based on the movie. I think it was called Delta House. It only lasted one season.
I only remember one episode. The Frat was on the verge of shutting down and “D-Day” was going to join the Army. He was rejected because of some bizarre ankle issue.
Blues fans: That’s Robert Cray playing bass in Otis Day and the Knights.
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