The Remote Island

Anyone else catch The Biography Channel's way-better-than-we'd-hoped documentary "Animal House: The Real Story" last night? Holy mashed potatoes, how great was that? Not only did they talk to the writers, director, and crew, they talked to, like, all the surviving cast members and everything. (Well, almost all of them; we're looking at you, Amadeus!)

Well, if you didn't get a chance, check it out when they rerun it the billion times they're gonna later on. It will leave a big, giddy grin on your face, even in the light of the tragic deaths of the film's legendary star and screenwriter.

And in the meantime, here's the top ten things we learned about the movie Time Out New York's David Fear calls "The Ten Commandments of T&A comedies."

Hey, actually, here's a bonus thing we learned, free of charge:

The Biography Channel is really really afraid of profanity
They muted out a lot of stuff that we thought wasn't so bad, like, 'bastard' or something. Weirdly, though, they left in the word "nuts" from a clip from the John Landis/Zucker Brothers epic Kentucky Fried Movie, which is -- as you may have surmised -- a reference to the male scrotum. Jeez, we don't get censors.

10. We need to get a copy of Lemmings, the off-Broadway show that launched the careers of Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Christopher Guest.
They showed some clips of it in the doc -- and it just looks crazy.

9. Kevin Bacon did not have any fun.
First he got shut out by the guys playing the Deltas, because they'd had a week to bond and rehearse before shooting. (Smart, John Landis!) Then he never got invited to the parties afterwards and always felt like an outsider. And finally, he couldn't get into the movie's New York premiere. Yeah! It's a wonder the guy kept at it, right? Maybe getting gutted in a hammock in Friday the 13th was a better experience.

8. "Sex Room" Explained!
So, as screenwriter Chris Miller explains in the doc, the story was inspired by his experiences at Dartmouth in the early sixties. And apparently, his frathouse basement included a sex room, which, um, you know, is what it sounds like. (Couldn't get girls in your room, apparently, so a novel and unhygenic solution was necessary.) Which, if you've ever caught the fleeting and unexplained references to the sex room in the movie and been all like "what are we missing?," now you know. A dank, grody, beer soaked room filled with mattresses in a basement. Just like you suspected.

7. Belushi was clean the whole shoot.
Apparently director Landis took John Belushi aside early in the shoot and demanded that he not do hardcore drugs on the set. So, by most accounts, he didn't. Hang on, we don't mean totally clean; weed and booze don't count, right? We're thinking not, even if that whiskey bottle was actually filled with tea.

6. That haircut Bruce "D-Day" McGill has in the movie is called a "Chicago Boxcar."
Just so you have something to tell your stylist.

5. There is no Otis Day and the Knights...
Like Stephen "Flounder" Furst, we kind of thought that Otis Day and the Knights -- y'know, the guys that sing "Shout!" -- were a real band, or at least were playing a real band that we'd just never heard of. This was not the case. The guy who played Otis Day, DeWayne Jessie, was an actor who had appeared in Car Wash and Darktown Strutters; in his fake band was a young Robert Cray.

4. ... except now there totally is.
After the movie had been a hit for a while, DeWayne Jessie knew where the money was and formed a touring version of the band. He plays frat parties to this day.

3. So that's what Donald Sutherland is doing there!
The studio wanted a movie star before they'd greenlight the project. And they got one. For, like, 4 minutes.

2. Richard Pryor saved the most racist scene in the movie.
You know that sequence where they're on the roadtrip and they meet up with those big black dudes who steal their girls. Well, we're not the only ones who've felt a little weird about the "black people are scary" thrust of that scene. Apparently the studio hated it, feared rioting in the streets, and wanted it out before they started previewing for audiences. But then they showed the movie to Richard Pryor, who according to John Landis basically said "The movie is funny; white people are crazy" or something similar and the studio was satisfied.

1. We're not the only ones who love Karen Allen.
Apparently all the writers and a bunch of other people fell in love with her the second she came on set. Of course they did! How could you not?