Animal House - The Making Of

Animal House was an accident that happened one day Doug Kenney it was one of the creators of the Lampoon came to me and said Maddie I I really have had a night it's been six years now and I just can't handle the deadlines anymore and I I just have to quit and I I was panicky I don't want to lose this guy he was a star Doug was a true genius and and such a he had such an incredible imagination Doug is one of the great unsung heroes of comedy in this century Doug Kenney was one of the great wits I've ever met I'm really a literary and very funny person I just blurted it out you can't leave and he said why and I knew Doug loved show business I said we're gonna do a movie it was just just like that Doug Kenney and I started writing and Doug sidetracked us into a high school movie so we wrote a picture called laser orgy girls with about Charles Manson in high school this was a very we thought this would be over really big we read the first draft and I said you know I don't think this really occurs it's kind of funny but it really way out there I said you know we can't do this in a movie my god you cut them doing drugs and drinking and it's wild sex and this is high school I'll get lynched you know we can't do this but we got to move it to college and that's when Chris Miller came on board because Chris Miller had written these wonderful college based stories I was writing stories for the Lampoon all through the 70s and at one point I wrote some stories based on my fraternity experiences that's how it happened Chris Miller Doug Kenney Harold Ramis we're a team we worked for about three months we just debriefing each other we told every College anecdote we could remember everything we'd ever thought heard felt seen at college every character we knew in my fraternity in terms of mining it for four characters there was an otter there was a flounder there was a Pinto like Pinta or not but I would have to say that where the characters come from an animal house we called them Ark types ie people that everybody knows so if you went to college you knew an otter you knew a Bluto you knew a flounder so it's like we had all this energy and all this creativity and all this desire and all these great experiences to pour into this thing my relationship with Doug and Hale was great it was the most joyous collaboration I have ever been a part of we divided the treatment up into thirds each of us wrote 1/3 and then we switched thirds and rewrote each other and then switched again so we each had worked on each third of the script and that was the basically the first draft of Animal House it was our job really to sort of develop this thing through drafts and drafts and get a good story going until we had really what would became an opossum then eivin gave us paperback copies of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid he said this is how a screenplay looks do that that's all we know none of us had been to film school or even had written in that form before none of us had ever written a script before and so none of us had ever written a treatment before either this treatment was longer than most movie scripts and at that point we were ready to go so he came out here with a hundred and four page treatment Ted Ashley Ted was then the chairman of Warner Brothers read the script himself and said you're wasting your time it'll never make a movie he went around and nobody wanted it out of the blue about a week later a guy calls me up from Universal Studios and he said mr. Simmons I work for Ned Tannen who's the president of Universal Studios and I just wanted to know I'm a great lamp oh and fan and if you would ever have anything I said stop Matty Simmons that I went and had a meeting with Ned tan and I think it was here at Universal and we made a deal in like five minutes they said fine it's a development deal now what I did know cuz this was my first studio experience was that a development deal is like a ticket to hell but Shaun Daniel and Tom out were the two guys at Universal who really loved this project and there's no question that it was the two of them that got this picture made at Universal I recognized in this treatment ton of stuff that was I thought was really funny and really taking some chances with with humor with the culture with the issue of rebellion Animal House was a misunderstood animal if you will throughout its entire history Universal but Ned had a gleeful love for the project he also hated it at the time I was living with a wonderful woman who was also a script supervisor in low-budget feature films at the time her name is Catherine Wooten I was working with John on Kentucky Fried movie a small independent movie should go home she'd say well we had you know a midget in a clown suit beating these naked women blew up a building you know just bizarre you know elephants defecating whatever we were shooting that day I'm working with this very funny guy and talam anecdotes about what was happening on the set and I saw this movie that Katherine was right and this movie had real comedy spirit and it's a wonderful anarchy and really smart ways of doing things and when it was over I said I want that guy he's got the sensibilities he's crazy he's nutty he's a terrific crashing but he's he he feels a Lampoon I met him and liked him very much and thought he had absolutely the right attitude and energy for this film and because of his great successes particularly with the second film the Kentucky Fried movie he was hireable we thought the way to make this picture was with Landis and the script while it was terrific still needed refining we thought John could help with that without the right director this movie was not gonna happen sat down with John and his take on it what he's how he saw it and what he thought it should be was in fact exactly what it would be at it in its best form there's there's dialogue humour and sort of drawing-room humor and bedroom humor and the the level of sophistication of the gags rise and fall and it's a very traditional movie I think it has a very traditional story people being bullied and then striking back they're very kind of the outrageous group Michael Jim insisted the casting director that was sort of handed to us by Universal Studios he's very simpatico and very apathetic and got it right away I understood it right away and he was extremely instrumental in giving that extraordinary cast we were basically just looking for the right match you know somebody who had talent and had the right physical characteristics had a way about them the casting here was impeccable Stephen first is flounder Peter Regan is wonderful Tim Matheson it's hotter and so forth he did a very good job in terms of finding unknowns that we could audition and of course we auditioned for months and months until we put together this wonderful ensemble cast I really felt strongly I wanted characters that you would believe as these characters they had to be unknowns because we had no budget and the highest-paid actor in the movie was Belushi we've got $40,000 you know I had a lot of help that was very collaborative effort John Ivan everybody was involved in every step of the way and it was very helpful and and because of all the enthusiasm and brain power and and raw talent and youth that went into this project it just sort of you know got lucky so we went about finding a bunch of basically unknowns Peter Riegert Kevin Bacon Karen Allen Tommy halls I think I got Animal House after about four auditions I remember correctly one it might have been a reading with Landis then I had an audition with Tim and then with Karen I think I'm in love with a retard - bigger than me and Peter and I read together and I think I was very nervous and I felt as I had given a terrible audition I was delivering pizzas in Hollywood and I thought it would be cool and a good way to get into the business if I put my picture and resume on each Pizza John let's have this idea that maybe they would find some you know kids from acting schools and he said we're looking for preppy freshmen wet-behind-the-ears I'll never forget that that was the quote when they opened the lid to the pizza box there was my picture staring them right in the face and I was discovered by Matty Simmons I went over to meet with the head of casting for Universal and then she called me back to meet with John Landis and right from the start I became suspicious his office at that time was in some dingy old hall very little light this is the truth I don't know they were setting me up for one his desk was a couple of cardboard boxes there might have been a chair or two I don't know so I came in and I got to audition with the Peter Weir and we hit it off and we were improvising and having fun with this you know it was a great character a great story and great script and so we just you know we had a lot of fun in the room when I read this script and knew that they were asking me to read for this part of Boone I knew this guy was I mean it was basically me I came back and auditioned again and Landis did the only time the directors ever done this to me he took me outside after the second audition he said we're gonna hire you we love you are great we're gonna hire you now don't say anything to anyone because you know then I'll deny this because they I think for negotiating purposes you know you don't want to tip your hand so of course they immediately call my agent I went in for that part in John I think probably made up his mind instantly that I wasn't right for that and he started asking me if I'd ever ridden a horse and I didn't know what he was talking about or why he was talking about this and I lied to him and said of course I was born on a ranch in Montana I've been riding horses since I was a kid as I walk in I meet John and I said I have to sit down I can't tell you how sick I am I must have had some bad food at this lunch and can I do you mind if I put my feet up on your desk I mean I behaved in a way that I never would have if I hadn't been so sick John said to me yeah can you be smarmy and I have no idea what that word meant but there's by the sound of it I kind of had an idea I kind of made this face he said that's great that's great do that again and I got back on the plane almost immediately and flew home thinking oh well you know that's a learning experience I'm sure I won't be cast in this and then I think I got a callback where I just made the face again and then I forgot about it I didn't have an agent or anything so I thought you know I was it's a long shot anyway and Michael chin it who was casting it just said they wanted me to do Niedermayer a few months later the casting director called me up and said hey you got the movie I was like wow and they wanted to cast me in the film which you couldn't have surprised me more he said if you want to do it it's yours and I nearly fell over and he said you're getting scale and I said okay great I didn't know what scale was and I don't they not that I didn't know how much scale was I didn't know what the word meant I just figured out of yeah get on a scale we're gonna weigh here before the picture starts or something I didn't really know the studio was pretty horrified by my choices they were really distressed I think one of the things that's a testament to why the movie was as wonderful as it was was because they did just a great job of casting us right for our strengths I don't think you can fully judge a fraternity without looking at the positive qualities of the people in it it was so well passed that I said to Peter weigert as Steven first or now semi flounder I said don't look now but there's Bette Midler standing right over there by the luggage and he looks over there goes yeah I know he says that's my girlfriend you know because Steven at that time was such a pathetic guy he was so easy to crush the studio said to us you know we're not making this picture you don't have a star you know this is who are these people so Donald Sutherland finally agreed to be in the movie and that's what got the movie Greenland luckily John was enormous ly enthusiastic energetic smart and had a real handle on the picture and it was hugely fun casting it you can see that this was going to work especially the casting of Dean wormer and John Vernon and his wife Verna blew him up at the balls that's what I'm gonna do you could tell that these these people were larger-than-life characters and the tone was right people say I was flounder or I knew deep you know that d-day was my best friend in college they related to the characters and that was again one of the beauties of an analyst no cost nothing I made the comment that in the center of any great animal house is a great animal and the three of us looked at each other and said Belushi gentlemen John Belushi was an incredible talent I'm just an amazing talent they had a cartoon face he had a real animated face his eyebrows could express all kinds of things ladies and gentlemen intense fear more intense much more terror absolute very confident extreme hey mr. big man on campus how I anger really because I recall as always the intention that John would be the star this was a vehicle for him and that and that he would represent me I'm who in a certain way faith real faith man to true fan true free but wait a minute what's he doing he's pulling out a gun and he was very committed he he had a feeling that it was a very important movie for him and he was really giving it everything he had and he's an extraordinarily talented guy and so when he was focused that way great things were gonna come from it he was a delight because he was so gifted and so funny you know he was funny John was just funny he looked funny you know and he he knew what was funny and when he played things he didn't leave anything in the bag you know he just went no college would let us shoot the movie on their campus we were getting closer to a start date we'd begun to crew up we've begun to finish a cast we still had no place to shoot it the Dean of the University of Oregon in Eugene he said sure come on up film here we were really his story was that at one time when he was the president of another school I guess the producers of the Graduate had sent him the script because they wanted a shoot there and this guy read the script and hated hated the Graduate said this will never make a good movie and of course when he saw the movie and saw it was great he came to the conclusion that he doesn't he doesn't know how to read scripts anyway so when we came around he decided just to take us on our face value thank God because we were early that was the last one available he even let us shoot in his office the dean's office was there is the dean's office and Eugene and we put a horse in there I mean they let us shoot the whole animal has mob stayed at a place called the roadway in I had the deltas come up a week early five days early to Oregon so that we could rehearse and basically hang out I thought that was the most incredibly smart idea as simple as it may sound and I think there was a huge camaraderie and we all sort of started playing that there are parts at that point we didn't associate with mark Metcalf or Kevin Bacon too much because they were of the other fraternity oh poor mark Metcalf and Jim Totten and Kevin Bacon's just a point to exclude the Omegas and they hung over you know they stayed away from his if they walked in the dining room just there was instant there's like these three actors show ups like gosh were on location they make this table of hostility that's him that's the asshole so immediately I felt like outside this group and they would be sitting at a table by themselves and the deltas would be sitting at a table by themselves and so we would throw things at them and like look the other way and stuff like that Belushi jumped up grabbed some food and yellow we'll all be 80 and say I remember when we had a food fight great I heard eltis the worst house on campus bruce mcgill had somehow stolen the piano and his room became party central he and I and maybe Riegert or somebody else we kept passing this upright piano that was in the lobby nobody ever played it you know I'll never miss this you know come on come on let's take em move in with that piano and this little guy is trotting along saying I don't think you should be taking the piano they got all right here you know it's like we're not gonna want to put it in the car and steal it I'm working all the time these guys are hanging out a great deal of the time if we could get to Bruce Miguel's room it was always a lot of fun just cuz well boost out a piano and a bar and then people brought whatever else they wanted a brain after where everybody went to sing and dance and play the guitar and do all that 60 stuff but also to drink and get drunk and do all that 70s stuff to know the social life at the time the late 70s you know there was it was there was no AIDS cocaine was okay oh my god it was amazing because we were all sixties children equally everybody plays guitar to some extent or the other you know we all know those half a dozen chords that one needs to know competitive playing most of the songs yeah we had many good times at the Y and staying up until all hours and still getting up at 6:00 in the morning just trying to say it was no good but it was great mm-hmm it was a bad time it was great they were sincerely unhip and so we just try to get them into that real kind of SS mold I mean if we could have put we could have put iron crosses on them we would have put hardened crosses on them everybody I talked to says a meg is the best but I hate to seem you know pushy it was hard to stay away from it but I had to because that was my job and I busied myself with spit polishing my shoes I wanted to hang out with them but they wouldn't hang out with me I mean I was annoying you know I was 18 years old a 19 and you know kind of chubby and you know pain in the ass I got the hotel to move my room to write above McGill's room so that I had to listen all night long or as long as it went on to this noise to this joy what's going on guys hey guys where you going guys and they really don't have one have anything to do with me that sense of alienation and that sense of this is the enemy these people down there before and all the spit polishing becomes a plotting and you know what am I gonna - I near they got mint the more of their heads I was crushing that I would want to go at Bruce's world but I was never actually invited so they gave me a place to live and a place to go because that's that seemed to me to be the relationship we are in which is about 15 or 20 miles from Eugene Oregon and the University of Oregon thank you the parade sequence thank you for National Lampoon's Animal House opening August 1978 at a theater or driving you know the scene in Animal House where the Dean walks into the Delta house and everyone hides their beer okay look what just creeped in well well well looks like somebody forgot there's a rule against alcoholic beverages in fraternities on probation that was sort of like me I mean when I showed up everybody was like ditch the joint because I was like the principal he's the type of guy that you desperately want him you know you want him to like you he's a very kind of magnetic person you just take on his energy he had a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm I thought John really captured the tone that was intended he really was true to the period the right director at the right time I mean he was just brilliant John Belushi admired plants skill and talent and trusted him very troubled man he's funny he's got as much if not more energy than anybody else in the room he would do anything for anybody he gave us all medals when we arrived John zem a jokester and an imp you know and he's a he he keeps things lively and fun you'll hear when people do land us they all talk like this because he's very animated Landis looked at all he said you were all terrible there was only one of you that was any good and I'm not gonna tell you what that was that's not funny what did you do again thank you sir may I have another thank you sir having that sucked that was terrible stop stop don't do that follow the script the script is great read the script 38 setups 38 setups in one day which is fast for even television and but and the work didn't suffer I mean we were getting it and getting it good you know John is very self-sufficient and he knows what he wants he has an idea of how the scene is gonna work in his mind that's why he shoots it he shoots what the pieces he needs to make it work and his films are really pretty easy to put together John was great I mean he would just he'd do things like take off his down park and just kind of hit people across the shoulders and say be funny be funny before we start a scene John created this atmosphere that allowed everybody to to kind of go beyond what they might have anyway you know and to really be outrageous you didn't have to improvise I mean they were they threw me wonderful curves but they wouldn't let me see Belushi until the actual take mr. blue mr. blue toski zero point zero so that you know you couldn't really get too engrossed and you know being nervous or get too engrossed and like you know what is my motivation you can't just improvise a movie script there are things you can improvise but you it has to be very structured I think John shot most of that movie with a single camera it's very very tough to to cut stuff when people improv if you don't have two or three cameras going because you can never imagine anything it was extraordinarily faithful and and the script was really crafted I have to say so of course that was great it's never happened to me again since every word have never written since has been changed I think I like the idea of a couple of the students invited us to a fraternity party on the Saturday night before we were gonna start shooting on Monday we went to the Delta house type party and they were very gracious and fun and then we went to the Omega party and we didn't know them they didn't know us but they knew the girls so you know we got deep into this house and there were a lot of drunk preppy types around and look eyeing very suspiciously and angrily these interlopers from out of town and from New York and from LA and we were probably hitting on their girls Tim had started almost to instantly hit on one of the sort of main frat brothers girlfriends Mandy Pepperidge well I haven't seen you since we go away I'm sorry I can only stay a minute so I'm walking around and I'm looking at things and the next thing I know we've gone into this fraternity house and there's some stairs leading upstairs to where the party was going on and then there's this very sort of imposing hallway this entryway and everybody goes upstairs and I'm just sort of following looking around and all of a sudden I get to the entryway to these stairs and basically two guys put their hands up and say where do you think you're going and I said what kind you know Here I am Robert Hoover I'm just um I'm just gonna join my friends they've you know they've just gone upstairs to your nice party and you know we don't want to really make a problem or anything like that and they and they basically said no you can't go up there and if if in fact you do have friends who are upstairs once they realize you're not there they'll come down and get you and Tim came over to me and he said I don't think we ought to be I'm getting a really bad feeling about this place and it was really clear as what he said that to me I kind of looked around the room and people were not happy that we were there there's a vibe that you could just feel in the room one that were not welcome and that we better get out of there right away so I quickly sense that Tim was right and I said you're absolutely right it was like lines out of the movie if I was in your shoes so everybody's everybody's filing out and finally this one guy who's standing by the door sir who had been downstairs with me the whole time giving me all this crap as I get to the door he says something like you know you know bye asshole or bye you know or whatever something like that and he's whole there's a cup of beer here and I just took my hand and I popped it right in his face well Wow the beer explodes all over the guy's face and before you can snap your fingers there were 300 fraternity brothers down the stairs on top of these guys I mean it was like a wave hit us and we were out the door I like that it was just like that there goes Peter Riegert airborne smash there goes the girls aren't thrown out but they're now screaming stop Jamie don't what he's gone tim matheson in the back i see him in undated on this front porch with these kids who were crazed they've got Tim they've got Tim and then I saw Bruce charging back in to get Tim Tim was down like this and everybody was getting this kicked at him as like 19 guys started swinging at me and I could feel these you know blows glancing off my the top of my head and I sort of got knocked down and crawled out to the lawn I see Tim crawl out on all fours and about the time I reach the top step still saying like the great peacemaker we're leaving now we're leaving there's no problem man somebody Sunday punches me from behind I go off the top step and crash in the middle of a sidewalk I'm looking over there's Tim Matheson also in the middle of the sidewalk and for some reason we decide we need to get up and walk away with dignity so they won't chase us so I don't know how we agreed there but I know we were on the ground with people around and crying at us when we did so we get up and both of us start walking boom bang they're pounded in the back of our heads we're down again I look over I say Timur we're gonna have to run he says yep so we just took off and and we got away actually about a block later we gotta win I think Jamie widows had a chipped tooth and Bruce had a black eye and you know I had some cuts and scrapes and thankfully we survived Jesus Christ what happened you look grotesque well some of the Omegas do a little dance on my face who was it uh Greggy and dougie and some of the other Hitler Youth why what'd you do no they're just animals I guess it helps when you start the whole thing off by a bunch of you getting the kicked out of each other together that that was probably yeah so I guess basically quite unconsciously I'm responsible for the camaraderie I'm responsible for the success of this movie John Matty Ivan no kidding I've known Elmer Bernstein since I was a kid and went to school too son Peter and over years ago when they were little boys we had take them taking them to see a Beatles concert The Hollywood Bowl so that's how long I knew Elmer and Albert Bernstein's famous for scores like the 10 commandments the Magnificent Seven The Great Escape you know all the John Wayne movies and the big incredible jazz scores like sweet smell of success man with the Golden Arm guys got an astonishing career I got a call from John who said I'd lucky to come to see a picture I've just directed I said well what is it and he said what's the thing called animal has well I said what about Albert Bernstein to do the music it was nuts they really so much of what I wanted to do they really thought I was crazy and the studio just didn't understand why John would want a guy who was noted for his create dramatic scores he said the job John it's very funny I still don't understand why me said John says well I have an idea about how to do this and I must credit John with this because it was John's idea he said I want you to score this film as if it were a serious film he wanted the score to be basically a very straight under score that would lay the framework for all this stuff that went on I thought that was a very interesting idea and that's what I did and actually it became a seminal thing because it became a way to score comedies and it wasn't deep very funny and I mean I think it's just absolutely wonderful score that Elmer did and job is absolutely right Alma wrote really quite a lovely score for the movie that was very very influential I remember running into Lew Wasserman on a lot one day and a nice to Lou then what do you think of this who said and Lou said to me I guess it's the future he was right I watched the dailies of course every day they set him down I did I watch him and and then we'd go in there and cut them together and they they they were very funny in the raw form when we started shooting the dailies just sort of left off the off the screen that you could see that something great was going on this stuff was really funny and all of a sudden people began to show up and stick around the first real cut that we had where everything with everything was in it but it was still cut pretty Wells about a hundred and seventy five minutes so we just we just took George Roy hill suffice who came in and screened the movie with us one afternoon and we're not into the evening because at that point the movie was pretty long and he said Johnny just have to take that movie just grab it like you're grabbing a tree and just shake it just shake it and all the stuff that's not important it's gonna come right out we have our first screening for the studio so there's Tom out on the phone Sean Daniel Ned talen who's like the important guy and George falls he and I George falls to the editor Ivan I think was in Canada and Maddie was in New York so we showed the movie and Ned sits watching the film there comes a point in the movie deep into the movie where otter has been set up by Babs and he walks into this motel it's mr. thoughtful with a dozen roses for you into 3d full well looks like we're gonna make a couple flowers short so some of you boys are gonna have to shoot med says that's not funny and John sort of looks over at me like what and I said it's not intended to be funny so John says yeah it's it's not funny because it isn't intended to be funny I'm never good at mangos oh we're making comedies here that aren't supposed to be funny and he walks out and that was it it's the only comedy made and we didn't really know what exactly the two about it cuz it was kind of a story point so we decided we need we just go on and get to the preview we had our very first public preview and sort of everybody showed up this was my first big studio preview and I'll never forget it it was really one of those great great screenings there was a fraternity convention of some kind in town so the theater where we had our snake was filled like 80% with frat guys and so we had a screening that was like a Firebird they ripped the seats off they went insane it was like the most incredibly successful screening ever by the middle of the film they were stomping their feet I had never been in a movie theater with that kind of reaction I audiotaped it I'll never forget because I went to lobby and called Belushi in New York because it was incredible riotous and then the studio thought gee maybe there's something here it was a fantastic preview I mean the laughs worked and let's just say that everybody was convinced you know when you see an audience react to a picture like this that this one reaction that they had to the movie you just knew that that this was gonna be a huge hit it began to have this buzz I mean they talked about buzz and there began to be a little buzz about it about this is really hilarious movies very gonna be very hot very big I came back to New York I spent the money from the movie in about a week and a half and I was back waiting tables again and the picture came out and there was a I was very excited obviously because you know here's something I'm in this boat big movie and I got an invitation to the premiere hey pre Meriden it was a very successful premiere everybody was you know wildly applauding and everything so I get in I get into the movie theater and I've got the wrong ticket I got the ticket that says I got to sit in the back I don't have like the you know like the good tickets and the guys like you can't sit here I'm like yeah but I'm in the movie I'm um um you know with those guys he's like you can't sit here so then I go down to I think it was maybe the Village Gate we had the party I think down and down in the village so I'm figuring well now it's after the movie right so everybody seen it so now I'll be styling you know I swear to God I walked around that party and I tried my best to try to convince every woman that I saw that I was actually in the movie and nobody believed me you know for a time the movie was nanny and Ivan's and then the movie was Harold Doug and Chris's and then for a long time the movie was mine but once it got out in theaters the movie was John Belushi's some of my funniest memories are of just watching John Belushi at work and watching you know the relationship between him and John Landis Biggs work bigger than big you know but he also had the side to him which was very sweet and quiet and I remember just feeling a lot feeling very kind of affectionate towards him John was an adorable guy he was a great guy he was a sweet guy everybody liked John when it was all over getting in a van to go to the airport and me sitting in the back and looking at the back open windows of the van at Doug Kenney who had really enjoyed himself doing this movie and was so sad that it was over he just it had been such a group experience that had been like all of us living in this frat house for 35 days whatever and I actually felt a little tinge and was sort of sad because it was rank sort of drizzling and he just like waved goodbye like that and it was the last I saw of dead Kenny I miss Doug Kenney I miss John Belushi and and I miss the people who made that movie special but they're there they're made immortal by garetty's rolling but when their going gets tough a tough get going let's go no one had written the definitive college movie for our generation and we thought this was it no one was in a better position to do it this thing was going to out gross every comedy ever made and I was sort of in a state of shock about that and greatly enjoyed reading our reviews and reading the weekly variety this is once again at the top of the list there but it was really the first one and so it's very dear to my heart and it's one of those movies that people always come up to me and say you know it was just so much I recognized all the guys in that fraternity is it has so much to do with my own life I mean this was the first movie that I had that I had done that really was a big hit that was a big studio movie didn't start out to be a big studio movie but because of the nature of its popularity became a big studio movie and I think it really it really cemented my relationship with John Landis and it was very important for my point of view because and led me into ten years of comedies as a first commercial screenplay to have that kind of success it just opened a door for me that was you know tremendous and really allowed me to work and provided you know associations with people that were you know that I treasure I made friends that I still have and they become sort of my college pals you know and and so and it really was sort of a a kickoff for my adult career you know I obviously was just thrilled to be a part of it and it's you know have a real warm spot in my heart about it so it's a really wonderful gratifying thing if what you decided to do with your whole life is you know tell you know tell stories it completely surprised me and what it did for all of us really is it just you know doors just opened to us it became part of our culture it was an historical moment for us along the way and it has stood the test of time and I think it gave me and it gave everybody work on it it's unforgettable lesson that then it's worth it and the movie can be everything you ever wanted it to be I'm proud of it I am very very proud of it I you know I've I've done a lot of different things but certainly in this in movies this is something that this is the thing that will always stay with me you know Animal House was such a success and such a boon to everyone's career and such a positive experience basically for everyone you

Channel: Seth Laird

Views: 638,716

Rating: 4.8045845 out of 5

Keywords: animal house, animal house movie, john belushi, zero point zero, naitonal lampoon, national lampoon, kevin bacon, john landis, harold ramis, college, food fight, seven years of college down the drain, the making of, the making of animal house, animal house the making of, the making of a movie, behind the scenes, behind the scenes of animal house

Id: Lvi4FtJExNo

Length: 45min 18sec (2718 seconds)

Published: Mon May 02 2016