The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie
by Chris Miller
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Book Summary Information
Author: Chris MillerEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-11-01
ISBN: 0316057010
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Book Reviews of The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie
Book Review: The Movie's Reality
Summary: 5 Stars
If you know any American movie comedies of the last thirty years, you know of _Animal House_, or you know some of the uncountable spin-offs that came from that beery and riotous production. But you may not have known that it was a documentary. That stuff really happened! Well, not exactly. Chris Miller was one of the writers of the screenplay and he based the movie on his experiences within Dartmouth, class of '63, at the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house. Now he has written "A Mostly Lucid Memoir" called _The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie_ (Little, Brown, and Company). Like the movie, it is laugh-out-loud funny, and like the movie it is full of bad taste and misogyny, with plenty of scenes that could not have gotten to the screen thirty years ago, nor would pass minimal tests of political correctness now. It might be the factual story of how one particular fraternity disported itself forty years ago, and so we can forgive some of the ancient views on race and women, but the themes of the book are, it has to be said, sophomoric (by definition - the book is set in Miller's second year, the year of pledging to his fraternity). There is little about studying, and there is no demonstration of interest in anything higher than alcohol (other drugs don't seem to have gotten to Dartmouth by 1960) and getting laid. Miller came out of it OK, and seems to have had a really good time; he loved his frat brothers (the book's dedication: "To Family, wherever you find it"). And he went on to become a leading writer at the _National Lampoon_, which defined a generation's comic prose, and wrote a script for a movie that started the screen careers of John Belushi, Tom Hulce, Karen Allen, and Kevin Bacon. Not all of his brothers did so well, as one might expect from the unfettered licentiousness described here, but for better or worse, they did have a blast.
When a bunch of the brothers and their dates went out to dinner, Pinto's date said to him, "Boy, your fraternity brothers sure go to the bathroom a lot," to which he replies, "Maybe it's because they drank so much beer today." Pinto has here expressed a physiological truth; the prodigious amount of beer taken in has to go somewhere. Besides the scenes at urinals, there are plenty of other creative ways that the brothers maintained their water and electrolyte balance. If you remember Bluto's "See if you can guess what I am now!" from the movie, you won't be surprised that one of the brothers does an imitation of a rotating water sprinkler. In another episode, having consumed food dyes one winter evening, three of the brothers were able to color the snow, respectively, red, green, and blue, and Pinto was told they had tried to do a de Kooning. There is another way of getting rid of the fluid, but until I read this book, I had no idea that anyone participated in competitive projectile vomiting. There are many pranks that are fun to read about (or to gag over, if that is your pleasure), and to realize that they happened long, long ago and you don't ever have to be present for them yourself.
The quotation on the plinth of the stature of Emil Faber, the founder of the movie's Faber College, is from Faber himself: "Knowledge is good." It is good to learn that when conservatives long for Eisenhower and the family values of Ozzie and Harriet, not everyone's family had the same family values, and it is good to be reminded that the familiar feeling of "How simple life was back then!" is just a delusion. Like the movie, the book ends with a "Where are they now?" appendix. No, there is no equivalent to Senator Bluto Blutarsky, but there are some doctors, lawyers, responsible businessmen, a CPA, and plenty of others that are now very rich. At least some of the guys doing the grossest stunts in the book are now running significant chunks of our country's status quo. A few are mentioned as doing better since they got sober. One "... died from, uh, alcohol-related causes," and others are lost to illnesses or military injuries. The years move on, but there is nothing sobering (in any sense) about the conclusion. There is a lot of real stupidity in these pages (They drank! They drove! And I just bet they didn't use their shoulder harnesses!), a lot of bad judgement, a great deal of bad taste, and plenty of hilarity and bonhomie. Looking back through the years, Miller has made the lunacy seem sweet and somehow naïve. This is the rowdiest elegy for lost times you are likely to read.
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Summary of The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie
The creator of "Animal House" at last tells the real story of the fraternity that inspired the iconic film--a story far more outrageous and funny than any movie could ever capture.Entertainers Books
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