Everyone has their Animal House, I suspect. By that I mean a movie you adore and have probably watched one million times. I'm guessing you saw it first as a kid, and if you watched it now for the first time, it might not make the same impression. It doesn't matter, though, because you have been watching this movie FOREVER. Maybe it's Stripes or Airplane or Kingpin or Zoolander. Oh right - this is not an Academy Award type movie, it's more of a guilty pleasure. But you would fight anyone who says this is not a quality movie - and you would quote a half dozen lines - extremely witty ones - to prove your point.
When we were kids, my mom and dad thought TV would rot the brain, so we had an antenna only and one lone TV in the house. At some point my dad wanted to watch something, so he got cable for the family room. I would say this was about 1979. We lived in a little podunk town, but basic cable came with HBO and a brand new show called MTV. What more in life is there when you're 13 or 14?
So before my parents got home, my brother and I would sit down and watch HBO. Animal House came out in 1978, and we were right in time. (Remember, video was still very new and I didn't know anyone who had it.) Animal House was amazing. It was raunchy and filthy and I didn't get half the jokes and I thought it was probably the best thing I'd ever seen.
Fuck her - fuck her brains out.
Eight years of college down the drain!!
I have a husband named Dean Wormer at Faber.
(By the way, Kevin Bacon is in this one.)
I remember my dad coming home one day and sitting down to watch with us. He was appalled. He said - You kids can't watch this! We looked at him and said - you're a little late. We know every line by heart. To his credit, we got to keep watching it. I don't remember if they monitored us after that. Maybe they took HBO away? Don't remember. I just remember Otter and Pinto and Flounder, Bluto and Neidermeyer and Greg Marmalard, and of course, Mandy and Babs. (That boy is a P - I - G pig!) I honestly think Tim Matheson (Otter! - with that bachelor pad!) peaked with this movie. I could live with that if I were Tim. I know I could.
So what is your Animal House?
My Animal House is Napoleon Dynamite. I laughed until I cried. My husband Dale looked at me in horror. He said he didn't think it was nice to make fun of misfits. What? He went upstairs to read Clive Cussler. I rewatched the entire movie with director comments. Different strokes.
ReplyDeleteI totally get it!! I made my mom watch Napolean D with me - what a film! However, I have stopped making friends watch Animal House. They never love it like I do, which TEARS ME APART!!
ReplyDeleteMake fun of misfits??