I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

This has almost nothing to do with this movie, but I am going to post about it anyway because I am stuck in editing room hell this week in the run-up to locking the picture, and it’s interesting for a few reasons:
National Lampoon Chief Faces Charges
1. It’s a shame to see a comedy titan reduced to such levels. There was a day when National Lampoon was THE name for comedy. Now, aside from making complete embarrassments, they are criminals.
2. I knew for years this was coming. Maybe not securities fraud, but I knew they were going to get busted for something because they are fucking crooks. I used to use their ad serving company, and they were the worst kind of business–they’d sneak in pop-ups, ads with sound and all sorts of malware bullshit I specifically told them not to ever put on my site. And I am 100% certain they shorted me on revenue, which is par for the course for most internet ad companies, but they were the worst of any I’ve ever used, and that includes Gorilla Nation (who are getting the shit sued out of them by a bunch of people).
3. Here’s the funniest part, and why I put this on the movie blog: For YEARS their “development” executives have been hounding me to do a movie with them. My inbox has like 50+ emails from various people at National Lampoon about how they want to option the rights to the book, take a look at my script, etc, etc. I took one meeting with them like four years ago, and maybe two years ago Nils and I met with a producer who does work with them, and in both cases I had the same thought: Never have I met a group of slimier, douchier, more incompetent thieves in my life. I left both meetings and took a shower. The best part is that they have no concept of what the market for good material is like. There is a reason no one reputable does business with them. Their offer was an order of magnitude lower than anyone else’s in Hollywood–and they acted like they were doing me a favor. It was comical. Their entire business model is predicated on exploitation of the artist and theft of IP.
Of course, most of Hollywood is smoke and mirrors, so why should they be any different? They’re just not as good at it as the bigger studios.
Slowly but surely, the entertainment world is changing, and corrupt thieves like this are being pushed out by people like us. It won’t happen all at once, but it’s happening. Every day, the lot of the artist is improving.
EDIT: I didn’t mean to imply that the guys who started National Lampoon are the ones responsible for the demise of NL. They are entirely different groups, and I knew this I just wasn’t clear about it. Explained here and here.
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