The Main Writer Was a Tortured Genius
Matty Simmons, head of National Lampoon, decided to make ‘Animal House’ for a few reasons. It wasn’t just for publicity – it was also partly to make sure one man stayed on the magazine’s writing staff. That man was Doug Kenney, the one who drew the rats on the paintings. In 1978, Kenney was National Lampoon’s main writer and basically held the magazine together. Terrified that his main star was about to jump ship, Simmons came up with the movie project to keep Kenney aboard.
A child prodigy, Kenney had more than regular talent. He was able to pick any book off a shelf, read a passage aloud, and continue reading in the style of the book, making up the plot as he went along. He later invented the style of comedy that the National Lampoon became famous for. Kenney could put on and take off personalities the way people do with clothes. And he took this intense brain to create comedic films about sex, drugs, and vomit.
But in 1980, two years after Animal House made him a hot commodity, Kenney fell to his death from a cliff off the coast in California. The death was ruled accidental, but his friends figured otherwise.