The Harvard Lampoon Targeted The Hollywood Reporter — Is Hollywood Still Targeting The Lampoon?

Before there was the 1978 film Animal House, before Jim Downey became the youngest writer on a nascent sketch comedy show called Saturday Night Live, and before there was even a mass-market humor rag published out of West Hollywood called National Lampoon, there was Pl*yb*y. Not Playboy, to be sure, but the Harvard Lampoon’s 1966 parody of the magazine. It featured a woman in a jester’s costume on the cover, an editorial by H*gh M. H*fn*r waxing poetic about philosophy, and an interview with the “Plastic Rasputin” of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (an anthropomorphized Magic Eight Ball hired by President Johnson to advise him). When the real, un-asterisked Hugh M. Hefner caught wind of the planned spoof, he threatened a lawsuit. The student editorial board told the smut magnate that they welcomed the publicity if he did. Hefner ultimately did not sue, and Pl*yb*y became a breakout success for the Lampoon.

Today’s parodies by the student magazine (which doubles as a semi-secret on-campus club with its own mock-Flemish castle in Cambridge, Mass.) are less litigious affairs, but the tradition continues. “It’s just a way for people to write over the summer and have fun,” Adrian Maydanich, a rising junior and Lampoon staff writer, recently told me. Over the years, there have been several big parodies (New York Times, Life, National Geographic, a spoof of Cosmopolitan that contained a centerfold image of Henry Kissinger posing nude), but lately, the Poonsters have dedicated their summer spoofing to less prominent targets — say, the Harvard Crimson newspaper. In fact, for the last 18 years, there hasn’t been a major new parody. But this summer, Kai Nelson, the publication’s president (i.e. editor-in-chief), and Lauren Wood, its vice-president, believed it was time to target something big — but what?

“I thought we should do something with Hollywood just because there’s so much bullshit going on that I thought it would be hilarious to parody,” said Maydanich. Said “bullshit” included the Ellisons, the existential threat of AI, and “actors doing crazy social media campaigns,” he said. The choice of parody subject seemed clear to him: The Hollywood Reporter. A quick LinkedIn search revealed a Lampoon alum on THR’s editorial staff, senior features editor Julian Sancton, who willingly served as a conduit.

“I loved my time on the Lampoon but remember it as being a pretty cutting environment,” recalls Sancton, who was on the magazine’s art staff in the early 2000s. “Comedically speaking, it was sink or swim, no holds barred. But I don’t remember us being entrepreneurial or particularly ambitious. So I guess I was well disposed when Kai, Adrian and Lauren reached out because, a) they were nice to me, and b) they really seemed to have their act together.”

Nelson, Wood and Maydanich were quickly in talks with THR‘s editor-in-chief, Maer Roshan, about distributing the parody with the real magazine.

“I was very interested,” says Roshan. “We spend an enormous amount of time chronicling Hollywood’s anxieties, vanities and absurdities. It seemed only fair to let someone turn the lens on us.”

Especially at a moment of uncertainty in the industry, a little levity seemed in order. As an added benefit, Roshan noted, working with college students gave him a fresh perspective on the industry. “I wanted to know what Hollywood looks like from a dorm room in Cambridge. Apparently it’s billionaires buying studios, robots writing scripts, and actors apologizing on Instagram. Which isn’t far off from our daily lineup.”

THR’s acquiescence to its own skewering was a rarity — and technically unnecessary, given the First Amendment and the right to parody. But over the next few months, Roshan and his team supplied the Lampoon with THR‘s fonts, article templates, and general creative direction on how to replicate the magazine as closely as possible. Roshan even agreed to polybag the print version of the parody along with a recent issue of THR. No restrictions were made on content, which, of course, led to moments of doubt. Was this a bad idea? Would the needling go too far? Would peeved publicists take their frustrations out on THR? Would anyone sue? “Hollywood is a big fan of irreverence, right up until the joke is about them,” said Roshan, who notes that nothing was removed from the final product.

There were several articles Nelson recalled being on the fence about, “but maybe for this project we want to go a little bit more PC.” What did make it into the final version was two articles on Scarlett Johansson getting heat for taking roles she shouldn’t have (a callback to the real-life 2017 whitewashing controversy around her playing an Asian character from Ghost In The Shell). “It’s fine. She’s married to Colin Jost,” said Maydanich. (The SNL writer and cast member is himself a Lampoon alum.)

But how cognizant were Nelson, Maydanich and the rest of the student team about the storied Lampoon-to-Hollywood pipeline? For starters, that pipeline is more myth than reality these days, Nelson began. “I know it used to be the case that [David] Letterman would call the Lampoon and ask for [sample writing] packets, but it was never like this person is in because they’re in the Lampoon.”

One TV comedy writer and Lampoon alum I spoke to for this piece agreed with Nelson’s assessment. As he noted, what the Lampoon does for writers is give them a strong peer network who are working in the industry and can give notes on scripts, or help make introductions. To be sure, that network includes some heavy-hitters in the comedy world: Conan O’Brien, Greg Daniels, Mike Schur, BJ Novak, Lisa Henson, Alan Yang, Simon Rich, and many more. So was writing a parody of THR a way to get their work in front of the entire industry?

“We weren’t writing this to get a job,” concluded Nelson. “Which is good, because I haven’t gotten a job from it yet.”