The Way It Was?

Here's a quick piece of advice that probably no one will need at this late date: Run, do not walk, to the nearest theater showing the National Lampoon's Animal House.

There are a couple of reasons for employing haste in going to see this film, which was coauthored by ChrisMiller '63, if you haven't already gone. Chris also wrote the film's "novelization," which is done in magazine form, and so might better be called a "magazination." This work is currently available at better newstands everywhere.

The first reason to hurry is that the film, which opened in mid-summer, will be nearing the end of its run - and it's not likely to make it to television in our lifetimes. It is rated "R" for rather compelling reasons having to do with some rather delicious displays of frontal nudity, some wonderfully earthy language, and what the prudish might regard as an uncertain moral point of view.

The other reason to go is that it is also wonderfully funny. Bob Greene of the Chicago Tribune apparently saw the film under circumstances similar to those that obtained when I saw it, and reported, "It was the only time in memory that an audience was screaming so hard with laughter that a significant portion of the dialogue was lost."

Also, who ever expected that we would get the chance to see this particular aspect of the Dartmouth experience on the silver screen, in color by Technicolor?

We've all had to come to grips with some of the things we did; and ways we behaved, during the passage from adolescence to maturity that takes place at Dartmouth. (We've all done things that we're ashamed of," as Kurt Vonnegut used to reassure us.) Miller's approach to dealing with all of this has been, no doubt, somewhat different from many of the rest of us. And he is delighted to talk about it.

The movie, he told me, is simply a "celebration of the cheerful, gross" way of life he had enjoyed as a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, where Miller once set a record by remaining drunk for 37 days. He told another reporter that we wanted to "celebrate those preassassination college days, with their lack of responsibility and fun without guilt."

The film skips over the pain that was often a part of the stunts and pranks of college and fraternity life, and skillfully, evades the oc- casional opportunities that crop up to make some kind of substantive comment. But, it also avoids any precipitous decline into raunch or gratuitous grossness. Incredibly enough, it is so funny that it is not an offensive movie.

It is, in short, just what Miller says it was intended to be. "We set out to write the funniest movie we could," he says, "We want people to say, 'it was disgusting, but I loved it.' "

Chris came into the press luncheon at one of Philadelphia's nicer hotels wearing a twotoned, blue-and-silver satin varsity jacket (the same kind that Ray Bob and Jesse wear in TheBuddy Holly Story. One gets the impression that he is lampooning himself, which may not be far from the truth. Another writer described him as a college-age Peter Pan.

He looks younger than probably we're supposed to, although he claims that the years have taken their toll. "At the end of the day when we shot the toga party scene in which everyone danced to 'Twist and Shout' I was really dragging," said Chris, who appears as a fraternity member in several scenes. "At 35, you can't take it like when you're 19."

He briefly sketched in the steps by which he had arrived at his current station in life as contributing editor of the National Lampoon, and, most recently, screenwriter. He had attended Tuck his senior year, and had graduated with an MBA in 1964. (The film is set at mythical Faber College in 1962. The fact that Miller was at Tuck in his senior year, 1963, may have resulted in his being somewhat less conversant with fraternity goings-on that year.)

After graduating he had spent several years writing advertising copy in New York for, among other products, chocolate-flavored breakfast cereal. At the time, Dave Schaeffer '63 was writing commercials for a competing chocolate-flavored breakfast cereal. I told Chris this, and he said that while he hadn't known, he wasn't surprised. "They always gave the cereal accounts to the Dartmouth guys. They figured, 'They're crazy. They'll come up with something the kids'll like.' "

Tiring of pushing breakfast cereals, he quit to go into free-lance writing, and one of his early outlets was one of the new pornographic tabloids that were then proliferating in New York. A girlfriend, he says, had suggested that he try his hand at pieces for the publication, telling him, "Knowing you, you'll enjoy it."

Chris's first effort was a short story involving the goings-on at a motel that very closely resembled one in Lebanon, N.H., and it was a big success, as those things go. He continued, finally perfecting a new short story genre that he calls "the charming gross-out."

More lucrative assignments and writing opportunities followed with Playboy and the National Lampoon. The last two and a half years he has spent on the movie, and hopes to do some more movie work. His next target, he believes, will be a portrait of life in the United States Army Reserves during the 1960s.

Watch for it.

The brothers of the Adelphian Lodge as they appeared in the 1961 Aegis. Chris Miller '63,co-author of Animal House, is third from the left in the fifth row.