Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon

Written by Douglas Tirola & Mark Monroe

Directed by Douglas Tirola

USA | UK, 2015

The new documentary Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon takes us back to the birth of the ultimate problem child, the National Lampoon magazine. Arrested development and controlled substances aside, the Lampoon crew shepherded comedy from its antiseptic television roots through the youth counterculture and back into the mainstream again. It was unfiltered anarchy; vulgar, subversive, and hilarious. Get ready to laugh, feel ashamed for laughing, and then laugh some more.

The list of alumni from National Lampoon reads like a who’s who of comedy royalty. Belushi, Chase, Ramis, Radner, Guest, Murray… and those are just the performers. That doesn’t include all the writers and illustrators toiling behind the scenes of each fevered edition. Writers like co-founders Doug Kenney and Henry Beard,...