Why have Netflix and director David Wain suddenly announced plans to make a movie based on a decade-old biography of National Lampoon co-founder/editor Doug Kenney (i.e., Josh Karp‘s “A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever“)? Doug Tirola‘s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, one of 2015’s most under-appreciated docs, is why. Wain saw it, loved it and a light went on. Obviously. Trust me — a deal to adapt Karp’s book didn’t just happen to come together ten years later. Will Forte will play Kenney (fine) and Domnhall Gleason will play Lampoon editor Henry Beard (not a shred of physical resemblance — they couldn’t at least find somebody who hails from a vaguely similar gene pool?). John Gemberling has reportedly been cast as John Belushi; ditto Joel McHale as Chevy Chase.
