Since posting about Rick Meyerowitz’s up coming book on the National Lampoon, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great the other day, I’ve had the Lampoon on the brain a bit. Last night I was adding things to the Netflix queue, when I noticed, to my surprise and delight, that there was a video document of the 1973 Off Broadway production of National Lampoon’s Lemmings, starring a very young John Belushi (23 or 24 at the time), Christopher Guest (25), Chevy Chase (30 and with long hair) as well as Rhonda Coullet (who does a wicked Joni Mitchell) and Alice Playten (who nearly steals the show with her outrageous Joan Baez parody). The show was written by Tony Hendra (the manager in This Is Spinal Tap, who also co-directed Lemmings), Doug Kenney (National Lampoon co-founder and co-writer of Animal House. He also played “Stork”) and P.J. O’Rourke.

The first surprise is that this even exists in the first place. I’ve known the record since I was a kid, but who knew there was a video of this? Well, there is and it’s fascinating, if not exactly all that funny. It’s interesting because it’s got these three great funnymen seen before they would achieve fame a few years later with SNL and also it’s a wild period piece. If this sounds even remotely like something you’d be interested in, by all means get over to Netflix and watch it, but if you don’t expect it to be the best thing you’ve ever seen and don’t expect belly laughs (there are a few) then you’ll be able to appreciate this more on its own, slightly rumpled terms. Comedy doesn’t tend to age well, but that’s not why you want to watch this. One strong disclaimer, though, for younger viewers, most of the references are going to be totally incomprehensible unless they’ve seen the Woodstock documentary.

Although the cheesy titles don’t tell you this, Lemmings was videotaped for HBO as The National Lampoon Television Show. We didn’t know that when we were watching it and wondered what possible outlet there would have been for something with so much swearing in it in 1973? Turns out HBO started the year before, so we had our answer, but still, how odd that they kept something like this out of the public eye for so long.
 

 
The “plot” of Lemmings, as such, is that the audience is supposed to be present for a Thanos-celebrating rock festival: “Woodshuck: Three Days of Peace, Music & Death.”  A Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young spoof (“Freud, Pavlov, Adler, and Jung”) sees the group singing a parody of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” (and their own “LongTime Gone”) but the lyrics have been changed to “We are lemmings”—instead of stardust—and Belushi, as the MC makes constant references and updates about members of the audience killing themselves and snuffing it (“The brown strychnine has been cut with acid.”). Near the end, as the heavy metal group “Megadeath” are playing, Alice Playton (as a groupie) asks “Did you know that pure rock sound can kill? Isn’t that far out? So the thing to do is go over to the amp and put your head there.”
 

 
Above, Christopher Guest performs as a multiple personality version of Bob Dylan singing “Positively Wall Street.”

Below is a clip from near the end as John Belushi pulls out his nascent Joe Cocker imitation (with fellow cast-member, Paul Jacobs as Leon Russell), something he would later infamously do on SNL, crashing the performance of the real Joe Cocker in a legendary moment of kamikaze comedy.
 

As a Lampoon vet and the 18-year old doorman at Lemmings, I’ll try and give some back story.  The show opened in early ‘73 at the Village Gate in NYC with a slightly different cast than shown here, but with Belushi, Chase, Guest, Playten, and Jacobs.  There were two acts - the first being a series of sketches that were good, but not great, the second being the Woodshuck parody of Woodstock that was brilliant. 

The Lemmings video was not shot at the Gate but at a local college, I believe, and while it works as a time capsule, it was an off night for the cast and doesn’t capture Lemmings/Woodshuck at its best.  I may be wrong, but I don’t think it was shot for HBO and I don’t know where you got that info.  The first Lampoon special shot for HBO was Disco Beaver From Outer Space which aired in ‘78/‘79 (I was in it, playing a gay country singer).  Again, I’m going by memory, meaning—ahem—I could be wrong.

Hendra directed (not “co-directed”) the stage version of Lemmings, though there may be an additional video director, I don’t have the info in front of me.  There were other writers in addition to Tony, Doug and P.J. 

You are correct that if one is not familiar with Woodstock lore and rock music circa late ‘60s, early ‘70s, the jokes may not work.  I’m currently writing a profile of Leon Russell for MOJO and I conducted an informal survey of people under 50.  NONE had heard of Leon which shocked me given that in 1973 Billboard named him The Most Popular Concert Act In The World.

Thanks for these Poon posts, Richard.  They take me back to an incredible time in my life when it seemed like everyone in the world was smart, witty, talented, and left-wing.  Of course I was young, idealistic and thoroughly deluded—c’est la vie. 

I’ll forward this to Paul Jacobs.  He may be able to clear up where this was shot and where it was meant to air.

Paul Jacobs, a Lemmings cast member and songwriter, sends these corrections:

This was shot at Queensboro Community College.  Sadly, the crew didn’t listen to me and laid the sound system cables at a 90 degree angle over the lighting cables, resulting in a hum so fucking loud, that we had to turn everything down and the music lost all of it’s feel.  I do see that Doug and PJ are credited with some of the writing of Lemmings, but their contributions were probably in the first act.  They didn’t write any of the songs. I didn’t see Sean Kelly’s name credited, and he was by far, the real star of the writing team.  Every time Tony [Hendra] would come up with something he thought was really good, he’d say…. It’s just as good as Sean….  Sean and I wrote the majority of the songs.

Great post and bonus with additional comments even! What more can one ask.

As for this quote with its wonderful details: “Sadly, the crew didn’t listen to me and laid the sound system cables at a 90 degree angle over the lighting cables, resulting in a hum so fucking loud” - Perfect, a euphenism for that moment in 70s comedy, for all its experimenting it required to think ahead and prepare the ground, otherwise it comes off either powerless or just hum…

I actually saw Lemmings at the Village Gate and never forgot it.  I think I went because I was such a huge fan of the magazine and that night I was introduced to so many astonishing talents.  I’ve been wanting to locate the video of this for years, never thought to search YouTube and so very grateful to you for providing this link and article.  (And I’m definitely ordering the Meyerowitz NatLamp book.)

Very good stuff! What a time.

And who is that gorgeous woman?

That was really good—-I don’t think HBO started ‘til ‘78-79; just to reiterate what Michael Simmons says.