KAREN     WHOOPI     KATHERINE     ROSIE     DOLLY     JOE BOB     DODGERS  Interview with Chris Miller

Also check out Chris Miller's own website Chris Miller was one of the three writers of Animal House along with Harold Ramis and Doug Kenney. He has now released a new book about the awesomely depraved saga of the fraternity that inspired the movie. His experiences as a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity at Dartmouth from 1960 - 1963 make up the foundation of the movie. Now, in The Real Animal House you can read the true stories about individual acts of perversion so profound and disgusting that decorum prohibited including them in the movie.
Q	In The Real Animal House you cover only your sophomore year. Do you plan to write other books to cover your Junior and Senior years?
A	No additional writing planned about college. Maybe ever. I need to graduate. In any case, the best stories from both before and after the year of the book are included, so you aren’t missing anything.
Q	I know Doug and Harold each contributed some experiences and that some of the stuff in the movie was probably just made up, but wasn't most of it based on your days at Alpha Delta Phi?
A	I can tell you that in a very real way all three writers worked on every word in the script; and plotted the thing out in a group way; and came up with a lot of the jokes jointly. It was really a collaboration. Having said that, I have to admit that not [much] of the script was based on real incidents that happened at Dartmouth. No horse in the Dean’s office; no parade destruction; no courtroom hearing; no pot smoking with a professor; no midnight peep by Bluto or anyone else; and no one ever took away our bar or our cow. But of course the whole premise was based on my fraternity’s exploits, so in that sense the fraternity itself is my contribution. The Fawn Leibowitz incident is based on something a guy named Turnip did at Smith. (Although the girls’ school in Animal House is meant to be Bennington—another of my contributions. They were going to have it be just a normal girls’ school, without the folk music and black leotards.) The whole road trip/Dexter Lakes Club sequence definitely feels like my school days, unlike most of the movie, which is set in a generic [coed] college that is nothing like all-male, Ivy League, frozen-tundra Dartmouth. The AD house never threw a toga party. Never. The house ethos was anti-theme parties of any kind. Considered the height of bullshit, to dress up some way for a party. Assholes, it was felt, were the only ones who did shit like that. But the band and the dancing—that feels right. The toga party I went to, that caused me to come up with the one in the Animal House script, was at Columbia Law School, where my friend Froggie was laboring. As for the characters, they too are group creations. We made them archtypes instead of individuals. Everyone has known an Otter, a Flounder, and a Bluto. So while some of the names are from Dartmouth—Flounder, Otter, Pinto—they weren’t necessarily like the actual guys. Otter wasn’t awesomely handsome—he looked like an otter! Our Flounder was a Charles Laughton-like rich guy from Oklahoma, nothing like the Animal House one. Pinto is more like me, but I swear I was never that innocent. Or was I? Oh, and Bluto? Belushi's character is a composite of several AD's described in the book including Alby, Bags and Seal. There was a Bluto at Dartmouth, a '69 named Bruce, but he did not behave like movie-Bluto. He was called Bluto because he looked like the character from Popeye—big body, small head. Even then, he was a sweet guy. All I took from Bruce was his nickname. I'm told he used the connection to get laid repeatedly, but cannot confirm this.
Q	What role did Ivan Reitman play in developing the script? Some claim he came up with the idea for the toga party.
A	No, Ivan was not the source of the toga party. I was the source of the toga party. Ivan was not contributing material to the film. He was reading what Harold, Doug, and I had written, then giving us detailed. well-thought-out notes. He was reactive, not pro-active.
Q	In this book, you are Pinto. Didn't I read somewhere where you said Pinto was you as a sophomore but Boon was based on your experiences as an upperclassman?
A	Yes. Nobody planned it that way, but the Boon character reminded me more of myself than any of the other upperclassmen brothers. As the years passed, I became “cool” and sometimes wore shades indoors. I dug rock ‘n’ roll. I hung out with the guys in the band. I didn’t take anything seriously. Kinda like Boon.
Q	You were really into the music back then, as portrayed by Boon in the film. Tell us more about that.
A	We [always] got the best bands [for our parties]. We pioneered the appearance of black R & B bands appearing at houses. We really did have the Flamingos, the Five Royales, Lonnie Youngblood, and Carl Holmes. We also had Joey Dee and the Starlighters. Probably mainly forgotten now, they had their fifteen minutes of fame in the early sixties, when they were the house band at the Peppermint Lounge in midtown Manhattan, during the height of the twist craze. One summer night in '62, a bunch of drunk ADs partied at the Peppermint Lounge. One of us had "discovered" the place and turned the others on to it. Bags claims it was him. I claim it was me. Who the fuck knows, y'know? Anyway, Joey Dee was very cool in a New York way, and we all dug him. We got to his agent and the next thing you know he was playing weekends at the AD house. For one Green Key Weekend, we arranged to have Joey Dee play Saturday night, and then Chuck Berry play for the frenzied, weekend-ending Sunday afternoon party, with Joey Dee as his backup band. Chuck Berry. It would have been great. Alas, it was not to be. The inside word was that Chuck, who had been playing a gig at Amherst the night before—Saturday night—wound up sharing his hotel room that night with a pleased Mount Holyoke girl, who was pleased to accept his long rock 'n' roll dick into her music-loving wazoo. Yes, ahem, well, anyway. The upshot was that Chuck the Fuck Berry did not arrive at the AD house until the party had ended, like around 5 o'clock. He said he thought the party was that night. Yeah, right. Joey Dee and the boys played the three sets and then, shrugging, went home. So that's the true story of Chuck Berry's glorious non-appearance at the AD house. I did get to at least see him. That was cool.
Q	When the Delta House is being emptied, John Belushi chugs a bottle of whisky. What was really in that bottle?
A	That's the most often asked question [I get]. Sorry, it was water colored with tea. Maybe you should print the legend: "It was really J&B, but John didn't know it was coming. To keep his cool image, he had to drink the whole thing. He had to spend a week at a spa afterward, to regain his ability to walk in the human world, but, damn, he sho' drank that bourbon. Fuckin' A!!!"
Q	There's a scene where Pinto (played by Tom Hulce) throws rocks at Clorette's window to get her attention. When she opens the window, she asks, "Tommy?" Did she flub a line and call Pinto by his real name?
A	No. Tommy was just the name Harold wrote in the script, long before Hulce was on board. Just a coincidence. Speaking of Clorette, we were in about the fourth or fifth week of shooting the movie. There was a group of collegial souls who used to like to hang out and do substances together. Doug [Kenney] was one. D-Day [Bruce McGill] was one. Well, everyone was getting high in those days. It wasn't all that far outside the box. So here was poor little Sarah Holcomb, just, I don't know, 16 or so [she was 18]. Thrown into this world of drug-using comedy weirdos. She wound up, after AH was done, working again with Harold [Ramis] and Doug on Caddyshack. She became Brian Doyle-Murray's girlfriend. Everyone was doing coke. It was the seventies. Sarah got in over her head. I don't know the details, but she supposedly wound up in some home for poor, fucked-up young women. After the shoot was over, I saw her once or twice in NY, with Brian. She didn't look so good. And that's the last I ever heard of her.
Q	There's a scene where Pinto (played by Tom Hulce) throws rocks at Clorette's window to get her attention. When she opens the window, she asks, "Tommy?" Did she flub a line and call Pinto by his real name?
A	No. Tommy was just the name Harold wrote in the script, long before Hulce was on board. Just a coincidence.
Q	One last question: In your book it seems all Adelphians are extremely well endowed. Didn't any of your brothers get the nickname "Pee-Wee"?
A	As for our dicks, we were all supermen and had to wear them in holsters that ran down the sides of our legs. No, no, just the normal run of dicks, I suppose. Scotty and Coyote were particularly well endowed.
Q	Thanks for answering all my questions. What are you working on now?
A	I've begun work on my next memoir. It's set ten years later, exactly. From September '70 to June '71. In it, the protagonist now lives in NYC. He deals weed to keep ends together while trying to get his writing across. Around the end of book I connect with Doug [Kenney] and get my first story in the [National] Lampoon. Lots of drug tales and great sex stories. Business as usual.

Copyright © 2007 Patrick Spreng.