‘Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great’
“I swear you could hear the synapses of some of the funniest minds of that generation firing like broadsides from a pirate ship.” Not the sort of intro you’d expect from a book with this title, but then longtime National Lampoon illustrator Rick Meyerowitz had a different perspective. This glossy coffeetable collection dedicated to the “golden era” of the 1970s humor magazine serves as origin story and oral history from those still around, painting a more vivid picture of those hazy days. Meyerowitz, perhaps best known for the Animal House poster, is never too nostalgic, mainly because, as his intro attests, working at the Lampoon was electrifying and nothing was sacred – who could forget the Hitler “retirement” pictorial? With gusto and wit, its staff of writers and artists – many of whom went on to Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, etc. – put together a singular advertisement for the disillusioned and angry forward-thinkers of post-Vietnam America. You can see the influence of the magazine in the Stewart/Colbert/Onion house of laugh-think-bite satire, but the Lampoon lived and died by the printed word, and essentially the title’s not an epitaph; it’s physics.
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great
With Rick Meyerowitz; moderated by Jeff SalamonSaturday, Oct. 16, 4:15-5pm, Capitol Extension, Rm. E2.010
This article appears in October 15 • 2010.