A LAST LAUGH
Doug Kenney made America laugh with ‘Animal House,’ but his personal life was a dark, drug-fueled mess
DOUG Kenney was a comic genius — but his untimely passing was inarguably tragic. While vacationing in Hawaii in 1980, the National Lampoon magazine co-founder and OG of snark walked past a warning sign and strolled to the edge of a 30-foot-high cliff. From there, he either fell or jumped to his death. He was 33 years old.
According to “A Futile and Stupid Gesture,” a biopic premiering Friday on Netflix, a note found inside Kenney’s Kauai hotel room said, “These are some of the happiest days I’ve ever ignored.”
Harold Ramis, a screenwriting partner of Kenney’s on 1978’s “Animal House,” dryly commented, at the time, “Doug probably fell while he was looking for a place to jump.”
And yet, at the time of Kenney’s death, his life seemed an unbridled success. “Animal House” not only raked in more than $100 million, it became a touchstone for young American males. Engaged to the beautiful actress Kathryn Walker, Kenney tooled around Los Angeles in a Porsche.
But he also raced through the Hollywood Hills late at night, some say, with his headlights off. He numbed his mind with drugs, made chronically bad decisions and, after his older brother died of kidney disease in his 20s, believed his parents wished he had died instead.
“Doug was lost,” says Josh Karp, author of 2006’s “A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever,” on which the film is based. “The movie industry does not lend itself to helping people who are lost,” he tells The Post.
Raised in Ohio and educated at Harvard, Kenney spent much of the 1970s in Manhattan. He helped put out Lampoon and wrote sidesplitting satire, epitomized by his collaboration with P.J. O’Rourke on the best-selling parody “National Lampoon’s 1964 High School Yearbook.” A Lampoon buyout in 1975 left Kenney with a $2.8 million payday; three years later, he went to Tinseltown. He had indulged in pot, acid and cocaine while in Manhatan on occasion, but in LA his drug use knew no bounds. He kept sugar bowls full of cocaine in his home and in his suite at the legendary Chateau Marmont.
He got into a fistfight with a producer, misplaced six-figure royalty checks and threw pool parties for bizarrely eclectic crowds. “Guests ranged from John Belushi to waiters he met,” says John Aboud, a co-writer of the movie, which stars Will Forte as Kenney. “There was an open door and Doug did not like being alone.”
Drug use raged on the set of Kenney’s second movie, which he co-wrote with Ramis (who also directed) and Brian Doyle-Murray, the 1980 Bill Murray classic “Caddyshack.” Karp believes the film had a cocaine budget: “Somebody told me they brought in more than 80 grams per week.”
So much weed was smoked during editing that cracks around the door were taped shut to keep in the scent. But the final cut left Kenney disappointed. He showed up high at a press conference, ranted at journalists and railed against his own film.
“Didn’t everyone think it was terrible?” Kenney asked.
From then on, Kenney became increasingly unpredictable. He spaced out during a meeting, recalled “Animal House” cowriter Chris Miller, only to refocus by snorting a line of coke that was half an arm long. “I thought, ‘Holy Christ, this guy has gone over the top,’ ” Miller told Karp. He likened Kenney’s brain to shards from a broken mirror: “Each one is very bright but they’re not connected anymore.”
Kenney’s final trip to Hawaii, with pal Chevy Chase in tow, was designed as a detox.
“That didn’t happen,” Karp says. He writes, “Briefly curtailing their intake somewhat, they soon sent to the mainland for cocaine, which arrived, according to various sources, in the center of tennis balls and other packages.” Chase returned to LA, while Kenney stayed on — presumably to scout locations for would-be film projects — before his fatal plunge. Karp hypothesizes about what sent him there. “I think it was subconscious suicide,” he says. “He was not actively looking to kill himself. But something inside him may have said, ‘Let’s keep going.’ And he did.”