Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon is a 2015 American documentary film directed by Douglas Tirola. The film is about National Lampoon magazine, and how the magazine and its empire of spin-offs changed the course of comedy and humor.[1][2]
The film features new interviews with National Lampoon staff members and other notable figures who were fans of the magazine, as well as much never-before-seen archival material and illustrations from the magazine, many of which have been animated.
Both of the two posters for the film were drawn by Rick Meyerowitz. One is deliberately reminiscent of the original poster that Meyerowitz drew for the 1978 comedy Animal House, more correctly known as National Lampoon's Animal House, starring John Belushi.[5] In the new film poster, instead of the fictional Delta Tau Chi House, the building portrayed is the National Lampoon magazine's headquarters, which were at 635 Madison Avenue in Manhattan.
Alternate advertising artwork features a reproduction of the famous but controversial cover of the January 1973 "Death" issue of the National Lampoon. Retaining the photo of the man holding a gun to a dog's head, the words "Buy This Magazine" in the original caption "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog" has been changed to "See This Documentary". The cover is also referenced in the above-mentioned poster by an illustration of the dog. However, in this case, the dog is holding a gun to its own head while holding a sign saying "At the end of my trope", a pun on the saying "At the end of my rope".
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 65 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead might not be the definitive doc National Lampoon fans are waiting for, but it's still almost as funny as the magazine in its heyday."[8]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[9]
Ben Kenigsberg of Variety reviewed the film positively, calling it "generous and briskly entertaining" and "a real non-fiction crowdpleaser". He also commented that director Douglas Tirola "pulls it off with style [...] skillfully presenting a huge amount of material, including animations rendered after the style of Lampoon artwork."[3]
John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter called it "a lively, very entertaining look at the Lampoon's unlikely empire".[10]
Paula Bernstein of Indiewire interviewed the director, Douglas Tirola, who commented, "What I liked about the Lampoon was there was no 'going too far'."[11]
