Saturday, November 04, 2006

Toga! Toga!

I was not a particular fan of the 1978 film "Animal House" but "The Blues Brothers," perpetrated by roughly the same writers and actors, is a favorite, along with their later "Ghostbusters."

Chris Miller, one of the writers of "Animal House" has now written a book, The Real Animal House, about his fraternity days that inspired the movie.

New York Times reviewer Christopher Buckley describes the book as "sophomoric, disgusting, tasteless, vile, misogynist, chauvinist, debased and at times so unspeakably revolting that any person of decent sensibility would hurl it into the nearest Dumpster," adding "I couldn’t put it down." Buckley continues: "Toga-wise, Miller’s book is to 'Animal House,' the movie, what 'Caligula' is to Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove’s 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.'"

If the book as half as spirited as Buckley's review (in which he claims to be unable to quote from the book because the language and the activities described are unprintable for the Times) I may be forced to read it.

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