Delayed Reaction: Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead

The Pitch: Remember when the National Lampoon wasn't just mediocre movies*?

*The early movies were great. I'm referring to the mediocre ones more recently.

The story of the National Lampoon, from its founding and rapid success, to the major tragedy and slow decline that ended it.

It turns out I didn't need both this and A Futile and Stupid Gesture. Both that and this documentary tell the National Lampoon story. A Futile and Stupid Gesture focuses on Doug Kenney more. Drunk, Stoned Brilliant, Dead follows the magazine's story a little longer. Ultimately, they are the same though. DSBD is probably the better of the two for what I wanted. By nature of it being a documentary, it filled in a lot of blanks that I wanted. I don't know much about the National Lampoon. I want to know the players, the timeline, the events, the causes, etc. The strength of AFASG is that it's about showing, not telling. It attempts to recreate what it was like there. I came away from AFASG loving Henry Beard in a way that DSBD couldn't accomplish, for example. And, with DSBD, there wasn't all the self-aware stuff that got tedious in AFASG.

In other words...

• If you've seen neither: watch Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead first.
• If you've seen only Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead, you know everything you need to. See A Futile and Stupid Gesture if you like the cast (Will Forte and Domhnall Gleeson in particular).
• If you've seen only A Futile and Stupid Gesture, only if you really liked that and want to know all the details you can, see Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead.

DSBD succinctly and efficiently explains everything you need to know about the National Lampoon. It's amazing to think about a time when a magazine like that could have such an impact. The Onion has approached it at times, and even that's a stretch. The way that social media works these days, there isn't a way to reproduce it fully though. Something as anarchist and inappropriate as the magazine couldn't succeed on anything with a Comments section. There's a different appetite for shock humor these days. Not for better, not for worse. Just different.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend