Hendra ranThe National Lampoonmagazine, which was a spinoff from theHarvard Lampoon, during its liveliest period.
According to his Linked In page, he was co-editor-in-chief, sitting astride Sean Kelly, until 1978.
TRUE FACT:Now, when people think ofNational Lampoon, they think ofAnimal Houseand theVacationmovies.
Mikes Mondo VideoproducedNational Lampoon Radio Dinner, Lampoons first album in 1972.
George Carlin asked Hendra to help write his sortabiography in 1993, which they worked on for fifteen years.
He continues to reinvent the outlets that tell us what news is by creating a Huffington Poston nitrous oxide.
Hendra hangs signposts on the side of the road on our descent into insanity withThe Final Edition.
Tony Hendra spoke exclusively withDen of Geekabout staying offensive in a defensive world.
Den of Geek: National Lampoon Radio Hour is putting out their first album in 35 years.
What took you so fucking long?
Tony Hendra: Its actually not The National Lampoon Radio Hour.
I have a website and a radio show calledThe Final Edition Radio Hour.
The Chairman went to jail for four-and-a-half years.
Tell me about the Final Edition Radio Hour cast?
Any breakout stars in your ranks like a Belushi or a Chevy or Gilda?
There is one gentleman called Barry Lank who is a brilliant voice actor.
He does the Bernie Sanders sex tape.
Youll recognize his voice as being very omnipresent on this album.
Hes also a brilliant writer.
Hes in many of the sketches and probably wrote about half of them.
Of all our people, I would say hes the most valuable.
There are a couple of very talented women, one of whom appears on this album quite a lot.
Her name is Jen Dodd.
I think shes got a big future.
Its a hard-working cast of very good voice actors on both coasts, in New York and Los Angeles.
Did Lank have to watchallof the Bernie Sanders porn film?
Yes, to get some tips.
Have you listened to the album?
Yes
Do you like it?
Yes, I especially liked the NYPD dont criticize us and I love the abortion skit.
That was my favorite besides the Elmo cocaine addiction one.
Thats getting a lot of attention, actually, because thats a really well done sketch.
Her name is Ebbie Parker and I think shes very good.
I think our women are quite remarkable actually.
We have half a dozen writers between the two coasts.
We have the cast in LA and the cast in New York.
I think half the cast writes material for the entire cast and for themselves.
We let people come in with whatever they want.
If has to be really lame for us not to record it.
Our records pretty good I think.
Is there anything different about recording all this besides Pro-Tools?
I just adore doing audio stuff.
you could go and do anything you want All you need is sound effects.
Its wonderful to be doing it again.
It really gets inside your head like a comic earworm.
What triggers me mostly is fear of real triggers.
I dont own a gun and I dont like people who do.
They need to worry about the 300 million triggers with itchy fingers wanting to use them.
Are you offended by people who get offended?
No Im not offended by them.
In some ways, I welcome them.
We dont intend to offend gratuitously but its intended to offend the right people.
So when people get apoplectic about a piece, thats all well and good.
Are people more thin-skinned now?
No, I dont think so.
Ive been asked that question a lot.
Is anything off limits and are you sick of people asking whether things are off-limits?
I dont think anythings off limits.
I made a point at theLampoon, and we still do, of being pretty even-handed.
Satires job, in this society, is to keep power from becoming corrupted.
As the old gentlemen said, power corrupts.
I think its a necessary thing in any free society, actually.
Thats something that I think made us stand out.
Who really is the best looking guy youll never see?
It cant possibly be [Richard] Belzer.
Its impossible to tell.
Is it easier to make fun of Mohammed on the radio because you cant see his image?
Thats a good question.
I dont know enough about Muhammad to really make fun of him.
I certainly wouldnt do it just for the hell of it.
You also cant be called a blasphemer if you dont believe in it.
Only believers can blaspheme.
So if somebody tells me that I made fun of Muhammad and its blaspheming.
I say go fuck yourself.
I looked at your Linked In page.
What is it like being UNEMPLOYED after you gig as editor in Chief ofSpymagazine?
Well, I was a fairly successful freelancer before that and I just went back to freelancing.
Actually I preferred it.
I havent really been seriously unemployed until I took upThe Final Edition.
Now Im completely unemployed.
I know everyone always asks you about John Belushi, so tell me a little about Brian Doyle Murray?
I like his voice.
I do too, actually.
I think hes a very talented voice actor and I think that goes without saying.
But I didnt really know Brian at all.
Who were you closest with inLemmings?
I wasnt that close to Christopher.
He was the one I thought was really really just a genius.
I thought that from the beginning.
But I hung out with Chevy quite a bit actually.
We did coke together.
But its not a good idea to get close to a cast if youre the director and producer.
It can cause all sorts of politics, so I kept aside from that.
But, I really loved John.
I mean professionally but I also had a great deal of affection for him.
There was something very vulnerable and baby like about John which I thought was the secret of his appeal.
One of my favorite skits was Im a Woman with Gilda Radner.
Again she wasnt someone I knew very well at all.
She came in from Second City in Canada, Toronto I think.
But she was gorgeous, just gorgeous.
I always loved that thing she did with Bill Murray called Evil Santa or Nasty Santa.
How does sex play into comedy?
Is it all because you want to joke people into bed?
Are you saying funny people get laid?
I know funny people get laid.
But not as often as not funny people.
Beautiful people get laid.
Funny people sometimes get laid, by mistake.
I find that very sexy.
I find funny women very sexy.
And I find funny guys sexy, in their way, but theyve got to be really funny.
That kind of out of control funny.
When youre out of control, who knows what can happen?
You started with Graham Chapman-
Yes, I did.
David Frost had been in the same group, which was called Footlights, the year before.
The year before that Peter Cook was in it and the year before that Jonathan Miller.
We had an amazing generation of people.
Graham and I started doing a comedy team at Cambridge.
We would play nightclubs, things like that.
Eventually we went down to London.
We were quite successful for about 5 or 6 months.
The only time in my life I ever played the straight man.
Graham eventually decided he wanted to become a doctor, because thats what hed been studying to do.
Is there any way to compare the trajectories of what came out ofMonty PythonandNational Lampoon?
No, I dont think so.
They didnt really do satire in the same way that we did.
They didnt connect with issues or actual events the same way that we did.
They kind of created their own wonderfully absurd world.
I dont think the content itself, oh I hate that word, was similar at all.
Then either they go under or turn into rotten vegetables for a while before they pick themselves up again.
If youre talking about a real trajectory, I think that happened to both of us.
I dont really watchThe Simpsons, although I love animation and I certainly likeThe Simpsonsa lot.
What they do satirically, when they do it, they do quite well.
Its longevity is just extraordinary.
The way they keep it fresh and keep it going, Im very impressed by that.
But the same is true ofSouth Park.
Maybe it doesnt happen on television.
Do you watch shows likeThe Daily Showor Bill MahersReal Time?
I know your stuff is skit-oriented, but where do they connect?
I watchedThe Daily Showwhen Jon [Stewart] was doing it was doing it.
I was a pretty dedicated fan.
Im not sure that what Jon was doing is satire.
I think what Stephen Colbert did was certainly satire, in the classic sense.
It seems to me that what Jon was really doing was what you might call ancient Roman satire.
It was serious commentary on present events.
A lot of it was really television about television.
His most frequent target was Fox and the way that cover the news.
That was a great deal of his thrust.
I dont like doing television about television but he did it extremely well.
You took on Elmos coke problem.
Yes we did do that.
Of course, its not really his fault.
You wrote the George Carlins memoir with him, what was it like working with him?
We had a lot of conversations.
Every time we got together.
He was an immensely intelligent and intellectual and curious guy, George.
He didnt finish ninth grade, I dont think.
He was really really smart as well as being hilariously funny.
We had a great time.
We were great friends actually.
It was a actually a Catholic School, Corpus Christi.
They obviously recognized talent early on.
He was always very happy about the nuns that had taught him.
He loved them and stayed in touch with them.
It came out in his humor.
The catholic part, certainly.
He was a great person to be around.
Do you get Michael ODonoghue PTSD flashbacks?
He had this strange stance that he adopted when he was really beside himself with fury.
He would take his glasses off.
So he would hold them away from him so you couldnt break them.
Then he would crouch down like feral animal.
It was really odd.
Every time I see a picture of him, I remember that crouch.
It was quite something, hilarious in its way.
He was a very nerdy guy trying to be very very violently, powerfully angry.
It was funny in itself.
The only time Donahue was every absurd.
Im obviously a longtime fan, but Magical Misery Tour literally changed the trajectory of my life.
I hope it changed you for the worse.
Yes, so you owe me.
I dont care youve said it a million times, you havent told me.
Well, the genesis of that performance, as Im sure you know, was two things.
ODonoghue just wanted to somehow get that out there.
He didnt know if it should be a song or something else.
So that was the genesis of it.
But then we couldnt find anyone to do John Lennon.
The only person we had was Christopher Guest and he seemed to have reservations about it.
So did everyone else that we asked.
It seemed like they didnt want to attack Lennon.
And I have to say Id never done anything like this before.
I had never parodied anybody and it was very strange channeling Lennon that evening.
It was kind of eerie and wonderful at the same time.
So theydidconsider Lennon to be off-limits.
Oh yeah, people were definitely very reluctant to go up against John Lennon.
I couldnt care less one way or the other.
I was the walrus.
I was just saying that to be nice, but I was actually the walrus, stuff like that.
Its just insane, right?
Its too good to miss.
Did you ever get any feedback from Lennon about the performance?
He did have a sense of humor.
Yeah, he had a sense of humor about humor.
And [Lennon], at same time would have been promoting, I dont know.
It wouldnt beImagine, I guess.
But anyway, he was promoting an album at roughly the same time.
I went to a station, I want to stay with KRLA, to plugRadio Dinner.
He walked out of the studio.
Thats the only feedback I ever got.
You mentioned Christopher Guest.
Tell me a little bit about makingThis Is Spinal Tap.
But when it came about, it was Rob Reiner who actually called me.
I said thats fine, is there a script?
And it had been turned to shit largely by an industry that has no scruples or morals at all.
There was a great spirit on the set.
We were going to send up, not just heavy metal, but the rock world in general.
Why didnt you fill it out and send it in?
I have it in my wallet to this day.
I do apologize for blow-out cards.
Theyre the most horrible things about magazines that there is.
