Your
Unauthorized Guide
to the Golden Age of National Lampoon
Magazine (1970-1975)

Mark's Very Large National Lampoon Site is not affiliated with National Lampoon or its parent company, J2 Communications. Click here for the real thing.

Matty Simmons’ Letter to The New York Times

July 6, 2005

I’m writing regarding the article on the National Lampoon that appeared this past Sunday in the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times.

I read the article with dismay, anger and disappointment. The article was filled with distortions and lies, with seriously prejudiced comments and accusations taken as gospel, with contradictory incoherence, and with a failure to verify easily available facts.

I founded the National Lampoon Inc. in 1969 with Founding Editors Doug Kenney and Henry Beard. Another individual, Rob Hoffman, handled all negotiations between the Harvard Lampoon (from whom we licensed the name), the Founding Editors, and myself on behalf of 21st Century Communications, the publishing company that I headed. One of the basic misstatements that is gratuitously disparaging is the description of me in 1970 as a “businessman”. Of course, I was a businessman, but I also had been Editor-In-Chief of two magazines with larger circulations than the Lampoon ever achieved, one of which had a circulation of nearly 2 million. I have written seven books and 10,000 magazine articles. I was not in the garment business.

The first issue of the Lampoon was dated April 1970. For the record, none of the people quoted in this article other than myself, were founders, originators, or even original contributors to the early issues. Sean Kelly, Tony Hendra and PJ O’Rourke began contributing within the next year or two and joined the staff in 1972. For the first five years, Beard and Kenney were in complete charge of editorial.

As per my agreement with the Founding Editors, my company purchased their 25% interest in the National Lampoon in 1975 for $7.5 million. Tony Hendra and Sean Kelly left the Lampoon several times. In your article, they say they left in 1978 and therefore suggest that the magazine fell apart upon their departure. Our records confirm that Sean Kelly was the Senior (and principal) Editor of the magazine until October issue of 1984 and, as such, had final editorial control. His name was listed at the top of the masthead, unlike 1971-2 when he and Hendra were listed as Contributors. Tony Hendra left the magazine late in 1979 and became head of the live entertainment division of the Lampoon, producing If We’re Late, Start Without Us, a show that closed after a week, and the HBO comedy, Disco Beaver From Outer Space. My own overall control was very limited in the 1980s during a period when I produced four motion pictures and developed numerous others.

The reference to my sons being in control of the Lampoon during the ‘80s is patently untrue. My sons joined the Lampoon in late 1984, at which time Larry Sloman took over as Senior Editor in charge, replacing Sean Kelly. Omitted from this story was probably the most important episode in the history of the Lampoon since its beginning. A right-wing Christian organization headed by Reverend Donald Wildmon organized a boycott against the National Lampoon. The magazine lost nearly all of its national advertising and most of its distribution outlets, including 7-11 stores, which was its largest sales point.

Because I was spending so much time in Los Angeles, I agreed to sell control of the magazine in 1989, and did so to a syndicate headed by Tim Matheson and Dan Grodnik. It actually took them nearly two years to run the company into near bankruptcy. To at least partially protect their investment, they merged the company with J2 Communications. They were fired shortly thereafter and, soon after that, the magazine was put out of business.

For the next twelve years, the company existed primarily on the prodigious royalties from Animal House and the Vacation films, which I produced. In 2002, new owners took control of the company and invited me to come back. It was agreed that I would only produce National Lampoon films of my own choice and would have no participation in any other projects. I have nothing to do with any of the other Lampoon film, videos, etc. Messrs. Laikin and Bennett can answer the statements made about their operation in their own way. Now, some comments about other statements made in the article.

A) The magazine did not change its policy as far as sex was concerned, despite what Mr. Kelly has said and re-said over past years. There was nudity and sexual content at all times, from the very first issue on. Mr. Kelly suggests further that he argued with me for years about sexual content. Over the years, I argued many things with many writers and editors, including Doug Kenney, Michael O’Donoghue and Henry Beard. I do not recall ever arguing about anything with Sean Kelly. His modus operandi was to be quoted in other publications or at parties or when the people he was talking about weren’t around. Mr. Kelly was finally discharged in 1984 when he was quoted in Rolling Stone magazine: “If I didn’t work for the Lampoon, I wouldn’t read it.” Strangely enough, I found this inappropriate for the Senior Editor of the magazine. Mr. Kelly was an editor of the magazine for twelve years and yet persists in saying he had nothing to do with the editorial.

B) Tony Hendra. In late 1972, Henry Beard urged me to fire Tony Hendra because he had inserted a sketch in the show National Lampoon’s Lemmings that was taken from Monty Python, who strenuously objected. I did not fire him. Sometime later I was told that Mr. Hendra had an affair with his best friend’s girlfriend. The best friend was our most important editor, Michael O’Donoghue, who insisted that I fire Mr. Hendra. Believing that I had no right to be involved in other people’s personal matters, I did not (Mr. Hendra wrote about this indiscretion in his own book). That belief became strained when I was told that Mr. Hendra was a pedophile and had abused his own daughter. That story was repeated most recently in a New York Times article.

In Sunday’s recent article, Mr. Hendra suggests I wanted to go “adolescent”. My principal occupation after Animal House was producing films such as Vacation and Christmas Vacation, none of which in anyone’s imagination could be called adolescent. I also produced a show called National Lampoon’s Class of ’86, which ran theatrically and then on Showtime and Paramount Home Video. During the period from 1978 on, the editorial of the magazine was directed by Tony Hendra, Sean Kelly, PJ O’Rourke, Al Jean, Michael Reiss, Fred Graver, Ted Mann and Larry Sloman. Incidentally, in yet another factual error, Jeff Greenfield was an editor in that period, not merely a contributor.

C) Here’s an interesting quote: “The precise moment the brilliant minds that created the Lampoon lost control of it is difficult to pinpoint. Some say it was when the founders Mr. Beard and Mr. Kenney joined forces with Matty Simmons…” This doesn’t match the previous statements that the early magazine was brilliant. I met Henry and Doug a year before the first issue was published when I co-published a parody of Time magazine with the Harvard Lampoon. The statement is not only a blatant lie, it’s lousy journalism.

D) The line that quotes me as saying about former contributors -- “I don’t think they have anything to offer” -- is equally absurd and either erroneous or taken out of context. Past writers I’ve worked with since producing Animal House include five films and two TV shows with former NL editor John Hughes and other movie, TV and theatrical projects with Mr. O’Rourke, John Weidman, Gerry Sussman, Chris Miller, Harold Ramis, Ted Mann, Tod Carroll, Kevin Curran, Ellis Weiner, and even Sean Kelly.

E) I had a particular reaction to the statement as follows: “In what may seem to the original writers like a cruel twist, Mr. Simmons is the one member of the early Lampoon team who has been drafted to work with the new company.” Exactly who should be brought back to produce movies? I produced all NL movies until 1989. The films I produced grossed nearly $1 billion. Does the writer suggest that they should have brought Sean Kelly back to produce films? What films has he written and produced? Let’s look at his resume.

There’s more, but this letter’s getting too long. The article was no less than a damaging personal attack based primarily on interviews with two men with dubious backgrounds who have been attacking me for years. I notice no other NL contributors suggested that I operated the way they said I did. It’s hard to believe the New York Times would run this article without even a cursory fact check. I await your reply.

Matty Simmons