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It was the Deltas against the rules... the rules lost!
Following a screening of the original film, there was a question and answer session with director John Landis, co-producer Matty Simmons, writer Chris (Hardbar) Miller, and cast members Karen (Katy) Allen, Verna (Marion Wormer) Bloom, Steven (Flounder) Furst, Bruce (D-Day) McGill, Peter (Boon) Reigert, Martha (Babs) Smith, John (Dean Wormer) Vernon, and James (Hoover) Widdoes. A private cast reunion party capped the evening's events.
Here are a few of the anecdotes shared during the Q&A session that followed the screening of the film:
- Co-Producer Matty Simmons: The script treatment for Animal
House was shopped around to several studios (including Warner Bros.) all of whom
turned down the chance to make it. However, a few days after taking the script to
Universal Pictures, they got a call-back and, within five minutes had a verbal agreement
to start production.
- John Vernon: Landis wanted Vernon to play Dean Wormer after seeing him as a
bad guy in Clint Eastwood's Outlaw Josey Wales. A notable ad-lib of John's was,
"...like shit through a goose!" Vernon's other credits include
Dirty Harry, Airplane II, and Ernest Goes to Camp!
- Stephen Furst, on one of his first film auditions, entered the room,
sat down, and asked, "Am I supposed to read all the parts or just my part?" Landis
looked at the others in the room and, as one, they exclaimed, "Flounder!"
- Martha Smith auditioned initially for the role of Mandy, but when she saw the
part of the script where she should "begin masturbating" (during Belushi's Peeping
Tom scene), she decided for reasons of propriety to audition for Babs instead. Her best
ad-lib in the film was spelling out the word "pig" in "That boy is a P-I-G pig!"
- Verna Bloom was quite sick at the time of her audition. She still managed to win the role
of Mrs. Marion Wormer on the strength of her earlier role in Medium Cool. She has also
appeared in High Plains Drifter, Honkytonk Man, and The Journey of Natty
Gann.
- Pete Reigert and Karen Allen auditioned together. Pete had to read his lines
while holding the large dildo that Otter carries in his black bag.
- Karen Allen: In the scene where Boon catches Katy with Professor Jennings
we see a brief glimps of Karen's naked buns. On the day of shooting that scene, when John
Landis asked Karen to reveal a little flesh, she refused saying, "That was NOT in the script
and I absolutely refuse to do it." Donald Sutherland watched from a distance as John and
Karen continued to argue about this. Finally, Sutherland walked up and announced, "I'll show
my buns if you'll show yours." Karen says she laughed for an hour, and no longer had the
strength to refuse. Thus, the scene as it exists today.
- Bruce McGill: Bruce read the Animal House script while standing in line
at the unemployment office. John Landis had the actors who played Deltas report to
Oregon five days earlier than the rest of the cast, in hopes they would bond with
each other. They not only bonded, they became a team. One evening some of the guys
met up with a few sorority girls and went to a frat party at the SAE house, to
absorb the atmosphere and gather information about playing their roles as students.
The local Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter didn't take kindly to their arrival, however,
and they managed to get into a brawl with "drunk football players dying for blood."
The melee that ensued left McGill with a black eye and James Widdoes in a dentist's
chair at eight on a Sunday morning to repair a broken tooth.
- James Waddoes: Jim told everyone about the night he started reading the
script for Animal House. Suddenly the lights went out. That was July 13, 1977,
the night of an electrical blackout in the northeast USA during the summer of 1977. It
was several days, after electricity was restored, before he could finish reading the script.
- Universal Pictures President Ned Tannen: When shown the initial cut of Animal House, Ned stopped the film during the scene where Otter arrives at the Rainbow Motel and is beaten by a group of Omegas. "Is this supposed to be funny?" he asked. "Well, no..." responded Landis. Ned exclaimed, "Why am I paying you to make comedies that are NOT funny?" and stormed out of the screening room without seeing the rest of the film.