The Delta Tau Chi is a Fraternity that likes to party hard, do pranks and drink a lot. The Deltas are a huge pain in the ass for Dean Vernon Wormer and he wants them kicked out of College. He already has them under probation, but that’s not good enough so he has them under “double-secret probation”.
Blaine: Douglas Kenney was one of the creators of “National Lampoon” and he wrote a lot of hilarious stuff over the years, but he wanted to move on and make movies. Doug thought about doing a crazy high school movie that involved kids drinking, doing drugs and having sex and the producers thought it was a bad idea because kids wouldn’t be doing that kind of stuff in high school, so Doug decided to go with college instead. Chris Miller had written a lot of stuff for “National Lampoon” and he was writing a lot of stories about college based on his fraternity experiences. Doug liked that and so he, Chris and Harold Ramis spent three months writing down their college experiences while developing a script. Each one of them wrote a page for the script and they would go through each other’s writing and gave suggestions on what should be added to them or what needed to be changed. Putting together a script was a real learning experience for these guys because they had never done it before. None of them went to film school and they were given an example of what a script looks like through a copy of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” script. The President of Universal Pictures said something like “Animal House” would never get made and that they were wasting time. A week later, an executive from Universal Pictures called one of the producers saying he is a fan of “National Lampoon” and he was interested in taking a look at the “Animal House” script. So the producers went back to Universal Studios and made a deal in just five minutes.
The next thing to do was find a director. One of the executives at Universal was dating a script supervisor and she was doing a movie called “The Kentucky Movie”. The director in charge, John Landis, was a really funny guy. She suggested that John Landis direct “Animal House”. “The Kennedy Movie” was really funny for the executives at Universal once they saw it. The producers and executives discovered that John Landis was not only a funny guy, but he was a director with a lot of energy after meeting him. It was clear to everyone that no one else could direct “Animal House”, but John. John and the producers wanted to find actors they felt matched the characters who were in the script. John also wanted them to be unknown faces that no one had ever seen before on screen. It took months to find the right people and the actors auditioning had to convince John Landis and the producers that they were these characters. Having movie stars in “Animal House” would have cost a lot. The highest payed actor on “Animal House” was John Belushi. A lot of actors on “Saturday Night Live”, like Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi were getting a lot of attention because they were funny people and everyone loved watching them every Saturday doing something funny on the show. The producers felt they should get someone from “Saturday Night Live” and have them be in “Animal House” and that’s how they got John Belushi. John Belushi felt that “Animal House” was a big movie for him and he gave his performance everything he got.
At one point, John Landis thought they should check out acting schools to see who else could be in “Animal House". Peter Regent had to audition four times and he would read scenes with Karen Allen, who was very nervous because she thought she was doing a terrible job. Stephen Furst was a pizza delivery boy in Hollywood and he always put his picture inside a pizza box as a resume because he wanted to be an actor so bad. Once he heard about “Animal House” and heard it was looking for newcomers, he felt it would be a great way to get into the film business. Stephen’s idea for putting his photo in the pizza box worked because the casting director thought he should audition for “Animal House”. John tested out every actor by asking them if they could do this or that to see if they were right for the part they were auditioning for and every time they did something that he wanted to see, John would get all excited and say “great!” Some of the actors forgot about “Animal House” after they auditioned because they didn’t think they were going to get a part in it. But they were surprised that they got a call saying “the part is your’s if you want it.” John Vernon was the only actor who had suspicions around John Landis. Vernon wasn’t sure if a guy like John Landis was well organized because when he met with him, Landis’ office was more like something a hobo would sleep in because it wasn’t a big room, there was box used a chair and no desk. The studio was horrified when John brought the whole group together after they were cast. They were all unknown actors and the studio felt that no one would see a movie with actors they didn’t know. The studio felt they needed a movie star, so John Landis hired Donald Sutherland to play a teacher in the movie.
Finding a campus to shoot “Animal House” wasn’t easy. No college would let John Landis and his team shoot the movie on their campus. Principal photography was about to begin and they kept getting rejected by colleges. The dean of Oregon State University said “sure come on up here”, which was a surprise because they got rejected by several other colleges and all of a sudden they meet someone who is cool with it. The guy was the dean of another college where some scenes for “The Graduate” were shot. He didn’t believe “The Graduate” would be a good movie, but he allowed Mike Nichols and his crew to shoot there for a few. When “The Graduate” was released and the dean saw how terrific it was, he never had doubts again. The dean was nice enough to allow John Landis and his crew shoot in his own office for scenes where it John Vernon in his office or when John Belushi, Stephen Furst and Bruce McGill put a horse in the office as a prank. Things got crazy while shooting the food fight scene in the cafeteria because the actors were actually throwing food at each other. “Animal House” was shot in the late ‘70s, but it takes place more than a decade earlier. The actors had to party like it was 1962.
Whenever John Landis showed up on set, everyone would hide the alcoholic beverages they were drinking just like the scene in “Animal House” where the fraternity is hiding their beer when Dean Vernon Wormer shows up. But John Landis is not a serious guy. John Landis is the fun type who likes to be funny and is full of energy. John shouts out what is on his mind like if no one was doing a good enough job with acting in a scene. John had several ideas on how to make people funny in the movie. That was one of his talents. The actors were invited to a fraternity party one night and the place was packed with people. A lot of the frat boys were not happy that the actors were there and the actors themselves felt uncomfortable being there. The frat boys were giving the actors a hard time, so they decided to leave and as they were about to head out the door, one frat boy said “so long ass holes”. One of the actors lost it and smacked the guy in the face. The actors had left with a few cuts and bruises from that party.
John Landis only had one composer in mind to do the music score for “Animal House” and that was Elmer Bernstein, a famous composer best known for “Magnificent Seven”, “ The Great Escape”, “True Grit" and “The Ten Commandments”. John had known Elmer since he was a kid because he and Elmer’s son went to school together and were good friends. The studio couldn’t understand why John Landis wanted a dramatic composer to do the score for a comedy. John had Elmer take a look at the film. It was all finished, but it just needed a music score. Elmer thought it was funny and like the studio, he couldn’t understand why John wanted him to compose a score for something as crazy and humorous as “Animal House”. John had several ideas going on his head that he even knew how he wanted the music score to sound. He wanted Elmer to score the film like as if he was scoring a serious film. John wanted a very straight underscore and Elmer thought that was an interesting idea.
The first cut of “Animal House” was two hours and fifteen minutes, but it had to be cut down to an hour and forty nine minutes. The executives at Universal studios didn’t think “Animal House” was a funny movie and that made them believe no one would like this movie. They decided to do a preview for an audience to get a second opinion and a lot of people that showed up were frat boys. Everyone in the theater was going insane for “Animal House” and they laughed so hard that the studio thought “maybe we have something going on here”. They were relieved people liked “Animal House”. No one had ever made a comedy about college before “Animal House”, but it was more thought of a John Belushi film when it was released because he was becoming a huge star and everyone else who starred in it people didn’t care about. People didn’t even care if John Landis directed it and he didn’t start getting attention until two years later when he made “The Blues Brothers”.
My rating on “Animal House” is four out of five stars
The Simpsons
Plot: Bart’s dog, Santa’s Little Helper, must show that he can be a responsible dog by passing this test.
Plot: Homer has to go back to college if he is to keep his job at the nuclear power plant. He expects college to be like “Animal House”, where people food fight in the cafeteria, party hard, wear a toga and listen to the song, “Louie Louie", but everyone is more focussed on school. Homer needs tutoring and three nerds help him so he can pass his course. Homer feels these nerds need to party more so they can enjoy their youth while they still got it. Homer and the nerds kidnap another college’s mascot, a pig, as a prank. The nerds get caught with the pig and get expelled from college. Homer thinks of a way they can get back into college by saving the dean’s life. Problem is not everything goes according to plan. The nerds were supposed to push the dean out of the way so that he wouldn’t get hit by the car, but they kept delaying. Homer ends up hitting the dean and the dean gets badly injured. At the hospital, Homer apologizes and confesses that he’s to blame for everything, including kidnapping the pig. The dean decides to put the nerds back in college as long as they forget everything that has happened. Homer has a big test coming up and the nerds help him study hard. Homer fails the test after studying so hard. Homer is concerned because if he doesn’t pass he’ll lose his job. The nerds decided to change Homer’s grade to an A using a computer. Marge easily figures out that Homer’s grade was changed by a computer and Homer has to take the test again if he is to set a good example for Bart and Lisa. Homer must go back to college and he’s not going to give up on teaching his friends how to party down. During the end credits, the song “Louie Louie” plays.
Futurama
Plot: Bender visits his old fraternity house, but it’s not the same as it used to be. It is now run by three nerd bots. They ask Bender for help because he did a lot of crazy stuff during his college years and they want to be cool. Bender accepts. Bender and the nerd bots go peeping at a girls’ fraternity, but their eyes are targeted on a computer because robots are more turned on by machines. Robot House manage to get themselves in trouble. Bender and the nerd bots are sent to the dean’s office. The dean of Mars University hates the Robot House fraternity because they are nothing but trouble. The dean has them put on dodecatuple secret probation. One of the nerd bots, Fat-Bot, eats the dean’s most prized possession, a model ship, because he eats when he is nervous. Robot House makes a run for it. Later, Robot House participates in a fraternity raft regatta so that their probation can be lifted. Who ever wins the race the dean will have no choice but to honor that fraternity. The dean puts a bullet in Robot House's raft to make sure they don’t win. Robot House manages to get the raft floating again and take a short cut to get to the finish line. The raft falls down a water fall and Robot House hits the bottom. Another Fraternity is almost at the finish line, until Robot House rises from the water and crosses first. The dean is very upset about it. Robot House celebrates with a parade with an unhappy dean leading it. Bender tells everyone to party down.
