A Futile and Stupid Gesture (Netflix National Lampoon Biopic)

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Never read the magazine but I love this cover.

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Pretty much nothing in Nation Lampoon would fly today for a lot of reasons.

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I mean, there's your Anthony Jeselniks of the world, but he's notable for how he stands out.

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In early 1976, Susan Devins, who'd just completed her master's degree in library sciences, was hired as an assistant copyeditor at National Lampoon. Early on her first day she received a phone call.

"Cheeseface is dead," the caller said. "Cheeseface the dog is dead."

Someone had tracked down the black-and-white mutt from the January 1973 cover at the farm where he lived and shot him. After initially thinking the call was a joke, Devins realized the bizarre event had actually taken place and that indeed Cheeseface had been assassinated. She burst into tears, thinking, "Oh my god, what have I gotten myself into."

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The film was met with generally poor reviews upon its original 1980 release. Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "Caddyshack feels more like a movie that was written rather loosely, so that when shooting began there was freedom—too much freedom—for it to wander off in all directions in search of comic inspiration".[13] Dave Kehr, in his review for the Chicago Reader, wrote, "The first-time director, Harold Ramis, can't hold it together: the picture lurches from style to style (including some ill-placed whimsy with a gopher puppet) and collapses somewhere between sitcom and sketch farce".[14]

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