National Lampoon

It's just like, what the fuck is this noise? It's

a National Lampoon's movie.

Just think of even a Mel Brooks movie.

It's how crazy this

And sometimes it was a little bit frustrating at first.

Like when I worked at a bigger company like Palm star, they also were the parent company to national lampoon, like the iconic comedy brand.

And, and, I feel like that was right when the business completely changed.

Palm Star was very much the old school method where you would make a film and it'd come out in theaters and streaming really wasn't even a thing.

And then the plan was to do that same thing for National Lampoon.

And it just didn't fully translate because it was an entire new era of people making podcasts and movies coming out on different streaming platforms.

And at first it was a little bit frustrating, but I got to see exactly what goes into that.

I mean, if you're going by the old films, they didn't do that well and they weren't really that well regarded, so maybe they need to go in a new direction, right?

No, they didn't, but there were elements of this that looked like fucking National Lampoon's Resident Evil.

It was like...

i fucking love that oh that'd be amazing

Thank you so much for having me.

You're very welcome, and I wanna begin with talking about Unseasonably Cold, because I've heard you talk about it being inspired by the death of Doug Kenney, and for those who don't know who Doug Kenney was, he was a co-founder of the National Lampoon and a writer of such comedy classics as Animal House and Caddyshack, and in 1980, he fell off a cliff in Hawaii, and police ruled it an accident.

So Amy, how did this almost 50-year-old tragedy inspire you now to write this book?

I think that, I think there's something about an unexpected death that's different than one where someone's sick and you kind of can assess it, and it was so unexpected, and Doug was also, for me, the kindest person in the entire world.

I could not be in a restaurant and a check would arrive, and it would've been paid, was paid.

I never went out with him.

We were co-writers at the National Lampoon.

That's how I first met him.

Um, sometimes on a whim I'll buy something like this.

Uh, I was clicking through and I saw that he's gonna be at a theater, well, like, it's a Q&A, and then also, um, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is gonna play.

Oh, cool.

And one of the traditions at our house is sometime during the holiday season we all sit together and watch Christmas Vacation.

... he's, that's one of my favorite scenes.

Yeah.

The National Lampoon.

And-

I absolutely, uh, am, am just fascinated by it.

I'm fascinated by the whole scene that came out of the '70s, you know, with its Second City or, um, the Groundlings or, uh, what was going on with like National Lampoon and the Lemmings Radio Show-

Right

... which Christopher Guest was on and, and like SCTV.