Rewatchables Reference

• Bill (winner): The cafeteria scene – 7 minutes in the middle of the movie where Belushi 'goes to another planet — it's like an all-time takeover.' Eats out of the garbage, goes through the food line stacking everything (the donut falls off the tray, he just keeps going), eats the jello, does the horse / zit sound effect. The 'I'm a zit, get it?' food fight was entirely improvised. 'It might be my most rewatchable.' Bill calls this the new 'Victor Wembanyama Award' for when one performer just completely annihilates 4-7 minutes of a movie.
• CR (winner): The Toga Party with Otis Day & The Knights performing 'Shout'. 'Just the most fun to watch.' Bill's Kid Cudi 'Pursuit of Happiness' Award (most rewatchable scene) for the needle drop / cuts back and forth with the audience / 'a little bit louder now.' Wedding Crashers later directly homaged it.
• Bill's other A+ scene-by-scene rundown: the entrances for Bluto, Otter ('Eric Stratton, Rush Chairman, damn glad to meet you'), and D-Day; the pledge naming sequence ('Weasel, Mothball, Pinto'); the Omega 'Thank you sir, may I have another' counter scene; Flounder kills Niedermeyer's horse with a cardiac arrest, followed by Mayor Carmine measuring the doorway with a chainsaw; the grocery store scene (Flounder catching 15 items, 'my cucumber is bigger'); Otter throwing the dates' coats on the floor; the road trip to see Otis Day; Wormer reading the grades ('0.2 — fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son'); the Bluto 'Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?' speech ('the first hold-on-let-him-cook'); the parade chaos / float car; and the all-time closing-credits character title cards (Marmalard raped in prison '74, Otter in Beverly Hills, D-Day's whereabouts unknown).
• The peeping-tom ladder scene at the Omega sorority – problematic these days but Bill: 'the eyebrow raise to the camera, the ladder falling backwards is just fucking funny.'
• Belushi's stealth 6+ rewatchable lines: 'Toga, toga'; 'Wait'll Otis sees us, he loves us'; 'Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life'; 'You guys playing cards?' (Flounder); 'Major League Yabos' (which Bill's college called boobs because of this movie); 'You mind if we dance with your dates?'; 'My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.'

• Bill's main pick: Smoking pot in a dark room as a secret clandestine event – the Donald Sutherland 'are you afraid you might get schizophrenia from it?' scene. Try the (then-grass).
• CR: The prominence of National Lampoon as a comedy brand. 'It's like an umbrella that was doing all this different stuff and was launching all these careers' – not that different from Vice 30 years later. Bill: 'Like Grantland.' Bill admits he was a Mad Magazine kid; Spy was 'finally a magazine for me.'
• Pinto's girl Clorette revealing she's 13 (covered fully under What's Aged the Worst).

• CR (winner-ish): The way the movie depicts the Smith College / Seven Sisters women's college (Fawn Liebowitz dies in a kiln explosion – 'we were engaged to be engaged'); Belushi destroying the acoustic guitar ('I think of it every time I'd ever go to a party and somebody would be like, there's a guy in the corner playing Dave Matthews and you're just like, how funny would it be to just smash this thing'); and Tim Matheson as Otter – 'unbelievable. He's so good in this movie.'
• Bill: Tim Matheson was 'tremendous' – Bill genuinely doesn't understand why he didn't become a bigger star. Could've been Harrison Ford (was up for Raiders) or Chevy Chase. Got 'market corrected' by Chevy. Otter's trial speech – 'if the fraternity system is on trial, then the entire system is on trial. I won't have you besmirch the United States of America' – he and the Deltas walk out singing the Star-Spangled Banner.
• Bill (other): The Bluto 'Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?' speech became an incredibly impactful jumbotron home-game motivation moment for ~10 years (late '90s through 2000s). 'Like nothing is over.' Bill thinks that whole genre (Rudy / Hoosiers / Animal House clips at games) is essentially over now in favor of in-house custom recuts.
• Bill's 'What's aged the best' slot for music: 'Louie Louie', 'Shama Lama Ding Dong', and 'Shout' all undefeated. Craig: 'I have not been to a wedding where Shout is not playing.' (See Floyd Gondoli below for the full Shout discussion.)
• Bill's last What's-Aged-The-Best: Sarah Holcomb's IMDB. Animal House → Walk Proud (1979, with Robbie Benson made up in dark face and black contact lenses as a Chicano gang member, singing the title track 'Adios Yesterday' himself; the movie was reviled) → Happy Birthday, Gemini (1980) → Caddyshack (1980, as Maggie). Just four credits, then she was out. 'Ties back to them thinking it was a good idea to have a 13-year-old.'

• CR (Great Shot Gordo): The freeze frame of Niedermeyer's horse mid-cardiac arrest, four legs straight up. 'There's fucking nothing better.' Followed immediately by Mayor Carmine DePasto walking in with a chainsaw, measuring the doorway, and threatening to 'beat your legs.'
• Bonus what's-aged-the-best from Bill: Putting large farm animals indoors as a gag.

• The Toga Party 'Shout' performance by Otis Day & The Knights – Bill's Kid Cudi 'Pursuit of Happiness' Award. CR: 'It's so good that Wedding Crashers was like, let's just do that again.' Bill: in his most-rewatchable-scene category for the way it cuts back and forth with the audience. 'A little bit louder now.'
• Plus 'Louie Louie' (the pledge initiation drunk Bluto) and 'Shama Lama Ding Dong' (also Otis Day & The Knights). Music's great.

• Bill (Butch's-Girlfriend Award): 1962 is now 64 years ago — 'feels like a fucking lifetime.' Generational distance.
• Bill: The Greg / Mandy / Babs love-triangle Omega plot — 'I'm just kind of like, all right, guys. This is not germane to why I'm watching Animal House.'
• CR: The two latex-glove hand-job scenes (Otter / Babs, Greg / Mandy). Craig: 'The hand job scenes kill me.' Bill: 'Why is it soft?'
• Bill's daughter Zoe (home and watched it during recording prep) was on her phone the whole time and thought it was too slow but did enjoy Belushi. Generational tell.

• The 13-year-old Clorette reveal. Pinto goes to drop her off, makes out with her, she reveals she's 13 — and instead of stopping, the bit is the angel-devil shoulder scene with the devil yelling 'fuck her, fuck her.' Bill: 'It's just nuts. I don't understand it.' The actress (Sarah Holcomb) was about 20. CR's hottest take: 'Old School basically does Old School, which ripped off multiple parts of this movie. They do the same thing with Luke Wilson with Elisha Cuthbert turning out to be in high school.' Craig adds: 'When would I have died' award – 'I would have killed myself after that girl said I was 13.'
• The Belushi peeping-tom voyeur scene from the ladder.
• The angel-devil shoulder scene with Pinto and Clorette specifically — the devil saying 'fuck her, fuck her.' Bill: 'It really hits the jackpot of things that would never happen again.'
• CR's broader pick: 'a personal preference thing. I just would love to have seen the Reitman or Ramis version of this movie directed. I think Landis... Blues Brothers and Animal House feel kind of static to me.' Bill: 'There's coaches over the years that get too much credit for the teams they had... I wonder with Landis, the people he had on Animal House. Pretty famous for revisionist history stuff.' Eddie Murphy turned on him after 'Coming to America' too.
• The casual racism (the 'Primitive Cultures' major cuts straight to the Black blues bar with Otis Day) – probably tracks with 1962 setting but still.
• Made-for-TV ABC sitcom 'Delta House' (1979) – Dean Wormer, Flounder, McGill, Widdoes all reprised; Michelle Pfeiffer's debut; Bluto's brother Blotto played by Josh Mostel.

• Bill (CR-thinks-Luke-Wilson-could-have-been-Harrison-Ford hottest take): 'I think this movie caused more copycat damage than any other movie ever made — completely wrecked two generations of college kids trying to basically be Bluto.' This movie gave the blueprint of 'let's go fucking crazy tonight,' the gasoline and the match. Bill: 'I think this movie killed more brain cells than any other movie ever.'
• CR's smaller secondary take (also part of better-with): 'Outside of Animal House and the Greek system, there's some influence of Animal House on interior design in houses lived in by 3 or more men — like, we just put an air hockey table that we found on the sidewalk and hung it on the wall.'
• CR (frame-of-thought): 'Is this movie or is Belushi's career different if he plays Flounder?' What if Belushi didn't do a force-of-nature Bluto and instead played the schlubbier role? Bill: 'He does that in Neighbors, where you sit there waiting for evolution.' Plus 'Tim Matheson does this movie, he's got platonic ideal movie-star looks, was up for Raiders.'

• Initial wish list: Chevy Chase as Otter, Bill Murray as Boon, Brian Doyle-Murray as Hoover, Dan Aykroyd as D-Day, Belushi as Bluto. Chevy turned it down for 'Foul Play' (Goldie Hawn). Aykroyd said no because both he AND Belushi flying back from SNL would hurt the show (the Lorne-wouldn't-let-them story is, Bill thinks, retroactive spin – Lorne never actually blocked anyone from a movie).
• Ramis wrote Boon for himself, but they decided he looked too old (Landis call; Ramis pissed). 'Funny because half the people in this movie look too old.'
• Landis wanted Jack Webb (Dragnet) and Kim Novak as the Wormers. Webb didn't think the script was funny. (Bill / CR / Craig riff: Craig has no idea who Jack Webb is – 'two generations removed.')
• Reitman wanted to direct but had no directing skills; was told no thanks (and produced instead).

• Bill: Stephen Furst (Flounder) – everybody knows him as Flounder, fewer people know his actual name. Plus he ends up as Chuck Norris's sidekick in 'Silent Rage' (1982), which Bill repeatedly pitches as a one-for-us-month feature: 'we tried to time with Netflix — hey, so I'm not sure how you're going to promote this in the carousel, but it's it's one for us month.'
• Bill: Mark Metcalf (Niedermeyer) – then was in Twisted Sister's 'We're Not Gonna Take It' video doing the same shtick (yelling at Dee Snider). 'He just became Niedermeyer.' The category Bill argues should exist: 'Can you escape this character?' For Mark Metcalf, no.
• Bill: Peter Riegert (Boon) – That Guy for years; was Animal House for years; now (per Bill) 'Sopranos eventually overtakes Animal House' as the thing he's most known for (he's Hesh's son-in-law / dates the Russian hooker, gets beaten up by Tony). Plus 'Local Hero' and 'Crossing Delancey.'
• Bill: Bruce McGill – 'You wouldn't have any idea he was D-Day in this. He became like the legendary middle-aged character actor 20 years later.'

• Bill (Dion Waiters Award): Donald Sutherland (Professor Dave Jennings) in 2.5 scenes for $25K. 'It's like a classic Dion Waiters of I'm in two scenes — everybody's like, that's Donald fucking Sutherland, he's in MASH.' Pretty much wears the same outfit / hair / mustache as 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' (filmed around the same time). The full options list Bill offers: Sutherland, Dean Wormer's wife ('you can get your finger out of my ass'), Otis Day (DeWayne Jessie), or Shelly Dubinsky / Lisa Baur (Fawn's roommate). Bill's pick: Sutherland.
• Bill (alt): Marion Wormer (Verna Bloom) — drunk witchy. 'I love a drunk witchy.'

• Re-casting director: Bill and CR converge on Ivan Reitman as the alternate director — both because Reitman wanted it AND because both Bill and CR think 'a Reitman or Ramis version of this' would have been less static and more dynamic than Landis's. CR's longer take: 'Blues Brothers and Animal House are like a little too static for my tastes. I like what he did with Trading Places, so it's not like I don't like any John Landis movies. But these two...'
• Recasting an actor: Tim Matheson was a market-corrected Chevy Chase. Hilarious sidebar – Matheson then plays the GUY who hires Chevy Chase in 'Fletch' (the murderer). 'It's funny to watch him be Chevy Chase's straight man in Fletch, but he's just doing Chevy Chase in Animal House.'
• Today-equivalent for Donald Sutherland's two-scene cameo (the level of 'this is needed to make the movie'): Bill suggests Ryan Reynolds level — 'somebody at that level. He was famous enough that it was a big deal he was in the movie.'

• $3M budget; made $141.5M ($120M initial + $21M from a 1979 re-release riding Belushi's fame).
• Belushi paid $35K plus a back-end bonus. Designed Bluto as Harpo Marx + Cookie Monster.
• Filmed at the University of Oregon for $20K — Oregon asked NOT to be mentioned in the credits at the time, and now runs a tour of the filming locations. Black extras had to be bussed in from Portland. Shout still gets played between the third and fourth quarters of every Oregon football game.
• On-set frat-party brawl: James Widdoes (Hoover) threw a beer at hostile football players, McGill got a black eye, Widdoes lost some teeth. Belushi (just back from SNL) had to be physically restrained from going to find the football players. Widdoes spent the night with a girl whose dad was a dentist; got his teeth fixed at 8 AM.
• Belushi triple crown — winter of 1978, all simultaneously: #1 movie (Animal House finished 3rd for the year, biggest comedy ever), #1 album (Briefcase Full of Blues), and #1 TV show (SNL, biggest it'd ever be). Bill's frame: 'as white-hot famous as anyone we've ever had.'
• Lorne called the post-Animal-House SNL audience 'the undeserved audience' — the Animal House surge made the show bigger than the writers wanted.
• Donald Sutherland: $25K for two days OR 2% of gross. Took the $25K.
• Universal's Ned Tannen wanted to cut the Black bar / Otis Day road-trip scene fearing riots; Landis sent the script to Richard Pryor, who sent back: 'Animal House is fucking funny. White people are crazy.'
• Belushi-discovers-the-blues anecdote: while filming, went to local nightclubs in Eugene, found a musician named Curtis Salgado in sunglasses who loved the blues — the seed of the Blues Brothers.
• Stephen Bishop (charming guitar guy): met Karen Allen on set, dated her for years, then wrote 'Separate Lives' (the Phil Collins / Marilyn Martin duet from 'White Nights') after their breakup.
• DeWayne Jessie didn't sing in the movie (vocals were lip-synced) — but he bought the rights to the Otis Day name afterward and toured the country for decades. Landis only found out 25 years later.
• Almost-sequel: a 1967 Summer of Love-set reunion at Otter's wedding. Stalled when 'More American Graffiti' bombed; then Belushi died.
• Bruce McGill and Tim Matheson reunited for 'Black Sheep' (1996). Per Bill's research, they're the only actors to have been in both an Animal House movie and a Chris Farley / John Belushi movie.
• Paramount-tried-to-ride-the-wave TV: ABC's 'Delta House' (1979) reprised Wormer / Flounder / McGill / Widdoes; Michelle Pfeiffer's acting debut; Bluto's brother 'Blotto' played by Josh Mostel. CBS countered with 'Co-Ed Fever' (one episode). NBC tried 'Brothers and Sisters' (three months).
• There's a National Lampoon yearbook parody printed before the movie that has Larry Kroger, Mandy Pepperidge, and Vernon Wormer in it — basically Larry's yearbook with notes scrawled in.
• The good National Lampoon documentary 'Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead' (2015) — both Bill and Craig recommend it.

• Belushi: yes. 'You can call this the moment.' The triple crown winter (Animal House #3 for the year, Blues Brothers album #1, SNL biggest it'd ever be).
• Tim Matheson: yes, in terms of 'world is his oyster.' 'After this movie, yes.'
• Cafeteria scenes in cinema: yes, the food fight is probably the best food fight ever filmed (just barely edges everything else).
• John Landis: no — Bill says 'Trading Places' personally. CR concurs.
• Hand jobs in movies: 'Why is it soft?' Bill leaves it open.
• Stephen Furst as Dorfman: yes — 'goes on to play Dorfman again multiple times.'
• Peter Riegert: probably — but Bill thinks 'Sopranos eventually overtakes Animal House.'
• College movies as a genre: yes — Animal House basically invents the modern college comedy. The genre proper takes flight in the '90s with PCU, Kicking and Screaming, Old School, Road Trip, Everybody Wants Some.
• Toga parties: yes. Craig actually threw one at his frat sophomore year and another senior year.

Bill: Spielberg. 'He basically tries to do this in 1941 to some degree, right?' Scorsese would be 'there's cocaine, there's all kinds of shit going on.' CR: 'It's like when Belushi's on the ladder, he's just like, staring' (which is a perfect Scorsese impression of the scene).

• Bill: Why does Dean Wormer have to dig into the school's constitution for double-secret probation when these guys clearly have a 0.0 GPA? 'Just fucking kick them out.'
• Bill: A lot of the actors are way too old to be college freshmen. ('I think that's part of the joke.')
• Bill: Wouldn't Mandy hear Bluto on the ladder? Or see him? He's moving a 12-foot ladder over and could you actually do that? Could you jump it up and move it like that?
• CR: If Flounder's brother had been in the frat, wouldn't he understand his car getting destroyed on a frat road-trip weekend?
• CR: Why is Boon being such an idiot with Katy (Karen Allen)? 'Guy, Karen Allen, man, look, what are you doing?'
• Bill: Mrs. Wormer goes to the Delta party? 'It's insane. There's no way that happens.'
• Bill: Fawn dies in a kiln explosion — 'I just need more information.' (CR offers a real answer about how kilns work and Bill still wants more information.)
• Bill: Why didn't we see Flounder puke on Dean Wormer? 'I think if this movie's made 20 years later, we see the puke.' Big mess.
• Bill: Can you really just buy 10,000 marbles? 'Think how many marbles that is.' Could a store right now have 10,000 marbles? Craig: 'I love that that scene is literally one second long. 10,000 marbles, please.'
• Bill: How did they see out of the parade float car? It's completely covered with float stuff and McGill's just driving around like it's a tank.

• Bill: A sequel could have worked if Belushi hadn't died. The 1967-Summer-of-Love reunion-at-Otter's-wedding sequel actually got drafted. (Stalled when 'More American Graffiti' bombed, then Belushi died.) Bill: 'I think a reunion thing would have been really funny.'
• CR: 'I think they could have just made this a franchise where they kept making animal houses set throughout the decades.' Bill: 'We had four American pies.' Counter: yes, but in 1978 once Belushi was gone, the Bluto archetype was gone with him.

• CR's running impressions in the Wayne Jenkins / Zane Lowe / Jimmy Lee Lewis sweepstakes — at one point he riffs Zane Lowe interviewing Boon: 'Boon, here you are man. Higher education, but we find you at an all time low committing statutory rape, binge drinking, not taking a study seriously. My, my Zane is rusty. Where do we go from here? And where's your 13-year-old child bride going to go with you?'
• CR also does 'we've been spotted by Jimmy Lee Lewis' as a bit.
• Bill: His own Doctor Charles Nichols character (the running Bill thing) – 'You'll have to excuse my friend John Blutarsky, he's not feeling well.'

Bill: Probably for Belushi. CR: 'Yeah, sure.' Probably the answer for once.

• Did this movie create the term 'double secret probation'? Bill is going to say it did not exist before this movie. CR: 'Maybe it was taken from their college experience.'
• CR: Did this movie invent not only the sex comedy but the college comedy? And what were these guys majoring in?
• Bill: 'Was Greg gay?' Two of the hottest girls at that school (Mandy and Babs), was against premarital sex, could barely get it up for a hand job in the car, was really really interested in feuding with the Deltas. 'Something's going on with him.' Craig: 'Very repressed.'
• Bill: Did the Omegas create the Illuminati? Their hazing room is pretty Eyes-Wide-Shut.

• CR: The fishbowl boobs from behind the bar (the Karen Allen / Boon glass-distortion gag).
• Bill: The college sweatshirt Belushi wore. 'You can buy that — I was actually going to try to speed-rush that to wear for the party. Couldn't figure it out.'

• Bill (Coach Finstock): 'Don't get mad, get even.' (Otter's plan to take the Omegas down once they're on double secret probation.)
• Bluto's reverse Coach Finstock: 'Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?' Hell no.

• Bill (only-young-ones double feature): Old School. 'Old School basically does Old School, which ripped off multiple parts of this movie.'
• Bill: Revenge of the Nerds (Craig has never seen it). 'As soon as it's streaming again it's going to be a Rewatchable. Come on, Ted Sarandos, do the right thing.'
• CR: Project X (Bill's son Ben actually had a Project X-style party at their house two months ago). Plus 'Neighbors' as a great college-adjacent companion.
• Bill (one-for-us): Animal House → Silent Rage. The Stephen Furst / Chuck Norris pairing. 'It would be an amazing collection of films.'

Bill: Belushi. CR: Belushi.

• Craig: 'I love this movie. I like it more now than I ever have. I had an absolute blast. It's such a great hang because it's a hang movie, which is rare now. There's not a lot of hard jokes / punch lines in this film — it's more like dirty Dazed and Confused.' CR: 'It's just short stories — until the last 30 minutes there's basically no coherent plot. It's like, here's all these funny things that happened to these guys in college and then at the end it's like they have to stay in college so there's gonna be a parade.'
• Craig: 'It's actually quite well acted — I think it's underratedly well acted across the board for how dumb this movie seems like it is.' Plus 'comedies back then... like, even though this movie is about a lot of stupid stuff, there are commentaries on society and what's going on across the country. Now I think comedies are more siloed in what they're trying to say.'
• Craig also defends Universal-imposed guardrails: 'Sometimes when you have to work within parameters the movie gets better. The script was apparently way, way, way raunchier — Universal kind of putting guardrails on the movie ends up making it land in the middle and that's sometimes the best outcome.'