Read John Hughes' original National Lampoon short story "Christmas '59," which inspired "Christmas Vacation," here.
The new Vacation movie that hit theaters Wednesday seems to be pretty much the same as the 1983 original. You've got a bumbling dad in Ed Helms as a grown-up Rusty Griswold just trying to take his family on an epic vacation, Chris Hemsworth filling the eccentric distant relative role originated by Randy Quaid's Cousin Eddie, and the series' original leads, Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo, reprising their roles as Clark and Ellen Griswold.
But there is one huge difference between the two films. The official title of the 1983 feature is National Lampoon's Vacation, with the name of the well-known humor company right there in the title. National Lampoon's name isn't included in the title of this new Vacation movie, which is not only an attempt to restart the famous franchise but also marks a new beginning for the comedy company. However, National Lampoon President Alan Donnes said he still thinks the brand's legendary style shines through in Vacation.
“I think it’s a hit. It’s good, summertime fun, which is what the original one was. The original grew to be iconic just because there hadn’t been one like it before. The folks at New Line and Warner Bros. are experts, and I think the writers and directors they brought in did as good a job as you can when you’re not John Hughes and Harold Ramis," Donnes said during a phone interview with T-Lounge. "You grew up with [the Griswolds], you spent Christmas with them, went to Europe with them. America — and maybe it happens in other countries, too — gets very possessive of those characters, and everybody has their opinion of what Audrey would’ve grown up to be or Rusty would have grown up to be. They chose to do it this way, and I don’t think it’s far off of what John Hughes would have written himself."
It's true that National Lampoon hasn't been the Animal House-producing, dog-threatening, comedy star-making vehicle it rose to fame as in the 1970s for quite some time. In some ways, National Lampoon is lucky to still be around today.
When Donnes took over as president of National Lampoon in 2011, the company had fallen on hard times. Its CEO Daniel S. Laikin was charged in 2008 and later sentenced to 45 months in prison in 2010 for attempting to artificially increase the company's stock value. National Lampoon's next CEO, Timothy S. Durham, was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2012 for defrauding investors of an unrelated company. National Lampoon agreed to pay a $3 million settlement in June for a lawsuit that alleged Durham had transferred millions of dollars from the swindled investors to the entertainment company.
“Immediately when we came in, when we took over National Lampoon, the phones were turned off. They were being evicted from the building they were in. We stablized all of that immediately," Donnes said. "Then there was some debt, some judgments that the company had. Checks were coming in and were being seized. We were able to renegotiate our deal with Warner Bros., and we were able to generate some cash. We were able to stabilize the company where there are no, like as of today, there are no outstanding lawsuits."
Donnes was not only met with financial and legal issues when he took the reins of National Lampoon. Perhaps the biggest challenge ahead for him and the company was turning around National Lampoon's reputation.
National Lampoon famously started out as a humor magazine in 1970 founded by Harvard Lampoon alumni Henry Beard, Robert Hoffman and Douglas C. Kenney. The magazine would go on to amass more than 1 million subscribers and launch the careers of the likes of Saturday Night Live's first head writer Michael O'Donoghue, Simpsons executive producer Al Jean and director of beloved coming-of-age flicks Hughes, who would later turn his National Lampoon short story Vacation '58 into the screenplay for the 1983 Vacation movie.
The magazine would spawn the live stage show National Lampoon Lemmings and a weekly radio show, which provided a launchpad for the careers of Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Christopher Guest. Eventually, National Lampoon made its foray into film with 1978's Animal House and the Vacation franchise in 1983.
But for many, that's as recent as their knowledge of National Lampoon's ouevre goes. That's probably because the company started to lose its way during its heyday in the mid-to-late 1970s as the founders exited the company and writers and performers left for other projects, such as Saturday Night Live.
Since then, National Lampoon has had a difficult time finding its footing again. The company was sold to J2 Communications in 1990 and, amid some debt, it sought to revitalize its image by cleaning up its act, increasing the number of issues published annually and embarking on a new series of films, late-night TV specials and comedy cruise acts, according to a 1990 New York Times article. After continuing to lose money on the magazine, the "Failure Issue," published in the fall of 1998, was National Lampoon's final installment.
After that, National Lampoon functioned somewhat as a licensing company, lending its name to all sorts of ventures in the world of on-screen and live entertainment. National Lampoon's Van Wilder, released in 2002, was part of a licensing deal and was really the last big-screen hit to which the company was attached, grossing more than $38 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. For many, National Lampoon has become synonymous with seemingly low-budget raunchy movies – many of which had limited releases in theaters or were sent straight-to-DVD – such as Dorm Daze, Cattle Call and Stoned Age. However, when Donnes took the helm of National Lampoon, he put an end to the licensing deals and pulled the company out of the projects he could.
"People would come to us to finance $4 or $5 million movies where National Lampoon would get a pretty decent check. We’d read the scripts, and they were not only not funny, but they were all T&A movies or just not anything I personally wanted my name on or that I wanted the National Lampoon brand on," Donnes said. "It’s really tough to turn down deals that would generate cash, but we believe long-term, it’s more beneficial to the brand. There’s a reason you can’t buy a Rolls Royce for $25,000. It’s because Rolls Royce is Rolls Royce. And, you know, we are to an extent, the Cadillac or Rolls Royce of comedy. And we just need to get back to it.”
National Lampoon hasn't completely gotten away from licensing its name out to projects, but in recent years, it has focused on attaching the company name to parodies, such as the Saved By the Bell spoof Bayside! The Musical!, which will have its final performance Off-Broadway Aug. 8 and be replaced by the fellow National Lampoon-endorsed Full House the Musical! opening Sept. 10.
In speaking about National Lampoon's overall vision for the brand in the future, Donnes hopes to bring back this spirit of parody on which the company was founded, since that's what lampooning is really all about. Donnes will attempt to convey that with an upcoming National Lampoon film titled Dead Serious, which he will direct and which will star Jerry Lewis. Dead Serious will spoof the funeral home business, featuring gags like making pizzas in a crematorium, delivering them in a hearse and themed funerals.
"That's the kind of stuff we want to do. We take real life and then turn it on its head," Donnes said. "And if you can attack the bad guys, do that, too."
As the company moves forward, it will continue to set its sights on developing new content as part of an effort to rebrand National Lampoon. This includes a rebooted website launching Sept. 1 that will feature new articles and an iHeartRadio channel also launching Sept. 1 that will play classic content from the National Lampoon Radio Hour.
National Lampoon has also garnered renewed interest from Hollywood. In addition to a new documentary about National Lampoon's origins and legacy called Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead being released Sept. 25, "two major producers" have expressed interest in two short stories written by Hughes for National Lampoon, and the company has also inked a deal with 20th Century Fox for an animated National Lampoon show about college.
"Everybody in Hollywood and in this business is waiting for somebody else to take a gamble with you. I can tell you, even though there hasn’t been a public announcement, there’s a signed contract with 20th Century Fox TV for an animated National Lampoon college show. I can’t tell you the writer’s name, but I can tell you he’s one of the biggest writers in animation. Twentieth Century Fox TV, if you check and see what animated shows they do, they’re among the very best if not the best in animation. It took months and months to put it together, but 20th Century Fox is willing to take a gamble on us [and it] is huge for us. And like I said, now that there are major producers that want to do business with us, yeah we’re in a good spot. We just need to continue and not take the low-hanging fruit of cheap offers and T&A movies,” Donnes said.
Donnes said he sees finding fresh, young and funny talent as essential to elevating the brand moving forward. National Lampoon has offered a series of free improv classes to aspiring comedy performers and is taking submissions for new content to feature on the website, content which could have the chance of being developed into a movie or TV show, Donnes said.
"I think as a company, we need to find the next John Hughes, and we need to find the next John Belushis and Chevy Chases and Chris Guests," Donnes said. "We need to find and identify those new, young talents and move them along. I don’t want to retread somebody else making a movie that just has the National Lampoon name glued on it. I want to find the hot, young directors, writers and actors that can come up with the new stuff that is National Lampoon for this generation.”
That, of course, might be more challenging today than it was in 1970, a time before Saturday Night Live, Comedy Central, YouTube and a countless number of other outlets were available to young comedy writers, directors and performers to showcase their work and make it big in the industry. Donnes said he sees the new Vacation movie as a way to remind those wanting to break into comedy to not overlook the company.
"The competition to get good talent is fierce," Donnes said. "I knew that the way to get the most eyes on the company was to get a movie, and the inherent publicity that comes with the movie. I'm sure the Warner Bros. people know that the P&A they're spending on the movie reminds people of National Lampoon, and this company could not have afforded the publicity that, you know, they're giving us, people thinking of National Lampoon again."
Vacation has helped bring the National Lampoon name back into public consciousness with a respectable $3.8 million debut in theaters, according to Variety. However, projections show Vacation may fall short of an opening week in the $30 million range, and it has also received mostly negative reviews with a Rotten Tomatoes score currently at 27 percent.
Still, Donnes seemed optimistic about the future of the company during the interview, which took place before Vacation's debut box office earnings were released.
"You can do business with National Lampoon again. The same people are at the wheel. We knew it would take some time to pay our dues. I think we’ve paid most of them," Donnes said. "There aren’t many brands in comedy, but we’re the biggest. And every Christmas, everybody tunes in to our Christmas Vacation movie. And this summer and last summer and the summer before, they watched our Vacation movies. One hit movie and a hit television show, and the sky’s the limit."
National Lampoon just has to hope Walley World isn't closed when it gets there.
Correction: This article originally stated the name of Chevy Chase's character in National Lampoon's Vacation is Gus when his correct name is Clark. Tech Times regrets the error.
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