Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great

by Rick Meyerowitz

From its first issue in April, 1970, the National Lampoon blazed like a comet, defining comedy as we know it today. To create Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, former Lampoon illustrator Rick Meyerowitz selected the funniest material from the magazine and sought out the survivors of its first electrifying decade to gather their most revealing and outrageous stories. The result is a mind-boggling tour through the early days of an institution whose alumni left their fingerprints all over popular Animal House , Caddyshack , Saturday Night Live , Ghostbusters , SCTV , Spinal Tap , In Living Color , Ren & Stimpy , The Simpsons —even Sesame Street counts a few Lampooners among its ranks. Long before there was The Onion and Comedy Central news shows, there was the National Lampoon, setting the bar in comedy impossibly high!

A very similar title, differing only in the subtitle, was used for the 2015 documentary film, Drunk Stoned Brilliant The Story of the National Lampoon , for which Rick Meyerowitz designed the poster, as he also did for the 1978 film National Lampoon's Animal House .

Praise for the documentary Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (2015):

This film looks longingly back at the 1970s when a smart, tasteless joke could make you laugh out loud without worrying about hurting someone’s feelings or being attacked on social media.
—The New York Times

It all looks like more fun than you or I will ever have in our lives, and Chevy Chase and Ivan Reitman are on hand to tell some of the stories.
—Hollywood Reporter
 

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Comedy, Memoir, Biography, Art

320 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2010

Reviews

[James M.]

There were two impressionable stages in my life: my childhood and my teenage years. My childhood was permanently warped by my introduction to the Marx Brothers. As a teenager, I was introduced to The National Lampoon. This made me what I am today: disdainful of authority and able to make fun of just about anything without taboos. This book took me back to what I loved about the Lampoon. Beginning with Doug Kenney’s “Undiscovered Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci” which had the one of the most famous Renaissance thinker developing , among other things, the Whoopee Cushion and the water pistol; to Tony Hendra’s skewering of that most famous document of hippiedom, “Desiderata,” with his own, “Deteriorata” (You are a fluke of the universe, you have no right to be here, and whether you can hear it or not, the universe is laughing behind your back.); all of the cartoons and artwork (Son-O-God Comics, Gahan Wilson’s disturbing but uproariously funny drawings, Rick Meyerowitz’s “Mona Gorilla,” and Wayne McLoughlin’s “Monumental Disasters and Colossal Cover-ups” which had Hoover Dam built twice – once in the middle of the desert because of a surveyor’s error and then in its present residence); the hilarious short stories, parodies and, yes, buxom naked young ladies (but only used for comedic purpose). The writers included some of those who would become rather well known celebrities, including Kenney (who co-wrote “Animal House”), Jeff Greenfield, Anne Beatts, P.J. O’Rourke among a number of other Emmy and Grammy winning artists. The only disappointing thing about this book, besides not including my favorite cartoon character, Cheech Wizard, is that it wasn’t nearly long enough. I’ll have to go out to my storage and find all of the issues of Lampoon which have survived many moves over the past 40 years and read them all again.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some amazing, hilarious pieces and recollections, but too often this is a bunch of older folks smelling their own farts boasting about their faded brilliance.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was much younger, I thought that the National Lampoon was hilarious. After reading this recollection of the writers and some of their most memorable work, I was relieved to find that much of it still stands the test of time.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've forgotten how thoroughly twisted I was as a young lad by National Lampoon magazine, essentially carrying on the process begun by MAD. Damn, this shit's funny!

[Dad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it possible that this stuff has just gotten funnier over the years? Or did they just edit out the weaker stuff? Who cares, it's hilarious.

[Melody · Rating 1 out of 5]

I never thought the natIonal lampoon was funny. I feel the same way about this book. Off it goes to King's Home.

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

For fans of the late, lamented National Lampoon, which was a comic touchstone of the 1970s, this is a fond look back by one of the monthly humor magazine's writers/illustrators. As Meyerowitz tells us, this is not a fully comprehensive review, only a review of his personal favorite artists, writers and some of their best, in Meyerowitz's opinion, work. As a fan of the magazine myself, I found myself disappointed that some of my personal favorite articles and stories were omitted, but the cartoons sprinkled throughout are very funny, and some of the "where are they now" features by Meyerowitz are enlightening and interesting, as is an interview with the (then) young woman who posed for all the comics featuring live photos of a young couple in bed. I also did not recall that long-time news correspondent Jeff Greenfield got his start with the National Lampoon. Mostly for fans, and mostly to be paged through and read in bits and pieces as the sections grab you.

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not finish this book. I am not going to finish this book. The Kindle version of this book appears to be a collection of photographs that were taken of the physical book. The print is so small that it is unreadable. There is no option to increase the font size available for this book. You can "blow up" the page to a readable size, then read down a column and move over to the next column and back to the top of the page where you scroll down again. I have never encountered a Kindle (or Nook) book that was done this way. It took 5 minutes to read 1 page. The 1 star rating is more for the format of the Kindle edition that for the content of the book. It sounded like it would be interesting. I'm just not willing to expend that much energy to read it.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 4 out of 5]

the ultimate book if you were interested in how clever tasteless jokes came out of the Harvard meatgrinder

and its tentacles got into odd places throughout the 1970s and 1980s!

---

Sorta like what the world would end up like if Tucker Carlson did Stand-Up Comedy

and you found out that in reading this book that Tucker Carlson ALONE created all of the following:

Saturday Night Live (October 1975)
SCTV (September 1976)
Animal House (July 1978)
Caddyshack (July 1980)
This is Spinal Tap (March 1984)
Ghostbusters (June 1984)
The Simpsons (April 1987)
In Living Color (April 1990)
Ren & Stimpy (August 1991)
Tucker Carlson on Crossfire (September 2001)

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

The text is not funny, it is rather dull, which creates an uneasy contrast with the statement in the title.

[Michael McGuire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty much what you'd expect

[Terry Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't include everything

This is a great book, especially for people around 60 in 2022! Old Lampoons take a certain type of humor appreciation...

[george w. shorago m.d. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not designed to be read on an ebook. I was conned!!

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A victory lap of an anthology from the brand that—as they’ll tell you—sold its soul to produce terrible films. But damn, in the 70s and 80s, they had teeth.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first encounter with National Lampoon was in the mid-1970s, when I was just barely pubescent—age 12 or 13, during one of our family's regular visits to my aunt-and-uncle's home up the hill from our house in Huntington, WV. The grown-ups were somewhere else in the house, talking about incomprehensible adult things like mortgages and gas prices and who said what to whom, as they usually were, or maybe they were out in the back yard finishing up my other aunt's famous mild chili and potato salad... so I was alone in the family room. I put my hand under the couch cushions and pulled out a small stack of magazines. On top was... an issue of National Lampoon.

I don't remember the exact one now. It had a buxom girl in short-shorts on the cover, but that could apply to a lot of NatLamp covers. All I know is that I'd already been subverted as much as I could be by Mad (remind me to tell you sometime about the gym teacher who took my copy and hid it in her desk, then wouldn't give it back after class...). I was ready for something more mature.

Instead, I found the Lampoon, which was just about as sleazy, subversive and hilarious as anything from the "usual gang of idiots"... but the Lampoon also had tits. I was at just the right age for this to be irresistible... but I was an honest kid. I read the issue, oh my yes I did, cover to cover—but then I shoved it back under the couch rather than taking it home with me.

I should've rescued it. It's probably a collector's item by now.


Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is a collectors' item too. Rick Meyerowitz has put together a stunning best-of collection, organized by artist—the writers, painters, cartoonists and all-around humorous types who made NatLamp the tremendously influential incubator it was in the Seventies.

Just a few of my favorite bits from the book:

"The Ballad of Pulp and Paper" by Sean Kelly (pp. 94-95)—what happens when Paul Bunyan, apologist for the forestry industry, and Smokey the Bear, dedicated to protecting trees, meet up and duke it out? Featuring my beloved adoptive Pacific Northwest in the very first line, and illustrated by Rick Meyerowitz.

"Liberal Psalm" by Anne Beatts (p. 150)—with lines like these in pitch-perfect King James prose:

"In a spirit of compromise he breaketh his bread; and lets it fall into the fondue pot."

"Violence without meaning he deploreth, as the avocado without crabmeat; yet peace without honor contenteth him not."

and

"And every street shall be called Kennedy; and every avenue shall be called Martin Luther King."

This comes one page after the infamous Ted Kennedy/Volkswagen Beetle ad parody, by the way.

And "How the World Looks to Children" by P.J. O'Rourke (p.220)—subtitled "Ball-point pens as seen by a twelve-year-old boy." I totally did the same thing when I was that age, and somewhere I have the drawings on graph paper to prove it. Illustrated by Alan Rose.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of what I liked about this book. Pretty much every page has something on it to snicker at, at least. I'm not even mentioning Gahan Wilson, for example, whose decades-long career has made many publications better, not just the Lampoon.

The Lampoon had done its job. If you wanted Lampoon humor, you didn't need to read the magazine anymore.
—Fred Graver, p.291

Like almost everyone else, I'm afraid, I stopped reading National Lampoon well before it actually ceased publication, when I couldn't rely on finding it under cushions anymore. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is a great book, and a great reminder of the way things used to be... but it won't fit under the couch cushions. This is one you'll have to put on the coffee table. Face up.

[Blog on Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Illustrator Rick Meyerowitz – best known for the National Lampoon’s “Mona Gorilla” cover and the poster for “Animal House” – looks at what made the Lampoon a 1970’s comedy institution in “Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead.” Of course, it was the contributors who made the magazine “insanely great,” as the book’s subtitle puts it.

If you read the Lampoon back then, chances are you first picked it up because there were naked women inside (a few) or maybe because top Batman artist Neal Adams was drawing the adventures of someone called Son-O-God. Those obvious lures aside, the Lampoon held so much more to amuse readers that it would go on to become one of the great magazines of the decade.

Meyerowitz presents this rogues gallery of contributors according to when they began working for the Lampoon. Along with personal recollections from Meyerowitz, who seems to have known everyone, the book reprints – in glorious color, sometimes better than the original printings – key articles that capture these creators at their best.

There are intellectual writers like Doug Kenney, Henry Beard, Michael O’Donoghue, Christopher Cerf, Tony Hendra and Gerry Sussman, responsible for articles from “Law of the Jungle,” a densely written code of law for animals to a shockingly funny parody of the Yellow Pages. There are deranged cartoonists like Charles Rodrigues, the mind behind “The Aesop Brothers,” talky miminalist Ed Subitsky, Sam Gross, whose gag panels lived up to his last name, and Gahan Wilson, whose comic “Nuts” made “Peanuts” seem positively upbeat. Along with them, there are deadpan illustrator/conceptualists like Michel Choquette, Bruce McCall and Wayne McLoughlin, who imagined Adolf Hitler vacationing in the Caribbean and a world where zeppelins still dominated air travel and trains were raced like stock cars. There are storytellers like Shari Flenniken creator of the sexually precocious “Trots and Bonnie,” and M.K. Brown, whose characters seems happily trapped in a bygone era. And, of course, there are the designers, who pulled everything together in a polished, slick package.

The Lampoon’s heyday ended too soon; by the late 1970s it was eclipsed by Saturday Night Live, which gobbled up several key Lampooners, and then replaced by Spy Magazine, Airplane!, The Simpsons, The Onion and even Family Guy, each turning on different pieces of the Lampoon’s sensibility. “Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead” stands as a delightful, dark reminder of where our comedy revolution, our culture of snark, was invented and perfected.

[Jennifer Didik · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this back in March and forgot about it. Not because it wasn't entertaining or, god forbid, funny (in fact, I'd been looking to buy it for about a year before I came across a cheap used copy). It's just not something you sit down and read in one sitting. As the large format suggests, there is a lot of original content from the magazine reproduced here. If that's what you're looking for, then absolutely check this out. Background, bios, context? Not so much. Though shortly after I flipped through this I read Ellin Stein's THAT'S NOT FUNNY, THAT'S SICK, which is a very deep backstory. The two titles complement each other pretty well, so I'd recommend reading them side by side.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sort of a Best of The National Lampoon collection. What we have here is a representative sample of the work of just about every major contributor the Lampoon ever had. Cartoons by Gross and Wilson and Rodrigues. Articles by Kenny and Beard and O'Rourke. Among other things, this book makes me wonder why the complete run of the magazine isn't available on DVD-ROM or something. I know I'd buy one and I doubt I'm the only one. Until that glorious day, this book is probably the next best thing. In addition to the reprints there are also reminiscences about the glory days of working for the magazine. All in all, a fun and funny book!

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

If, like me, you grew up during NatLamp's heyday (late 60"s early 70's) this is an excellent walk down memory lane. The compilation features many classic pieces along with profiles the writers, the best of which is a tribute to the late great Doug Kenny. Kenny is one of NatLamp's founders but most folks remember him in the role of Stork in Animal House. One of the better coffee-table books to keep around.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a beautiful book, but much of the humor that's included, while I am sure it's as brilliant as everyone says it is, is really dated/obscure. Would have liked to see more of the timeless stuff. Still, I got it for cheap on amazon, so I'm satisfied.

There's a reason the Pubescence issue was the biggest seller ever.

[Jd · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is funny as hell. It's easy to forget the influence the National Lampoon had on comedy. This isn't a biography, just a highlight of some people and some of their work for the magazine. I recommend if you like reading or reading about comedy.

[Jeff Lewonczyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll be honest; I mostly read the cartoons; the boomer back-patting of the insterstitial text was skim-only, and some of the comedy writing doesn't age all that well, but still, there's a trove of wonderful stuff here.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alternate title "The Coffee Table Book of Bad Taste." But very funny. A must have for "National Lampoon" fans.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly well compiled and there are some amazing pieces, but as with all pre-90's humor, you had to be there.

[LaLa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt so lucky to get to experience the National Lampoon's magazine since I missed it the first time around. This shit is funny.

[Sara Block · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could marry a book I would... Maybe

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insanely brilliant

[Mark Leffler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must have collection for any fan of the magazine.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Selection from the Natioanl Lampoon. Despite being sophomoric, most pieces have aged pretty well.

[Jeff Wetherington · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about the founders of National Lampoon, their lives, and especially the look back at some of the funniest articles, graphics and cartoons that made me laugh in my latter teen years.