Movie Review: Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (Magnolia, 2015)

When you think about Harvard, you generally think of a high class Ivy League university. You expect doctors, lawyers and Wall Street businessmen to emerge after graduation. Hell, our president and first lady are graduates. That makes sense. What most people don't realize is that Harvard gave us a comedy institution, and while not all of it's members came from the famous college, The National Lampoon founders Henry Beard and Doug Kenney did.

I really didn't know much about the Lampoon as a magazine. For my generation, its legacy lies in movies such as Animal House, Vacation and even Van Wilder. Those of us that grew up in the eighties or nineties were more prone to reading Mad or occasionally Cracked. I don't even remember seeing The National Lampoon at newsstands. That could have something to do with the tits. There were so many tits. See, before the internet, we had to find pictures of naked people any way we could. That probably sounds odd to a generation that has seen nudity leave Playboy, but in those days, it was a legitimate selling point. Oh, and they had funny jokes and parodies to go with all of that.

TV on DVD Review: The Great American Dream Machine

                       Reviewed by:

                        James D.
                       
                         






The Great American Dream Machine more than likely inspired Saturday Night Live and maybe the direction National Lampoon and films like The Groove Tube went into. This show created by PBS’s own Alvin H. Perlmutter what a very thought provoking and at times funny variety show that only lasted from 1971 to 1972. Who would have guessed at one time PBS was so daring to air a show like this. This show seems to remind me of The Daily Show, it has a humor to it but it also has such an odd way of getting its point across. The show has an earnest feel but yet at times seems to struggle with fully getting its point exactly out there without some comical moment that feels thrown in. There are no 2 episodes that are like each other. This show has such an unpredictability that you are not even sure what they are going to throw at you.

The show is very uneven and at times come across as a cluster, but the fascination really provides the base that people could be invested in what is happening. This show does a great service at showing us how this country was at the time, where we meet people like an Evil Knievel or a Mel Torme. This film is also a mixture that works to an extent of music, personal opinion pieces, performance art and short films.