If you love Caddyshack (and who doesn't), then read Chis Nashawaty's book.

There is a subgenre of books that could be summed up as “The Making of (insert movie title),” where the history of how an important film came about is retold, two of my favorites being Glenn Frankel’s books on the making of THE SEARCHERS and HIGH NOON. I will happily add to this list Chris Nashawaty’s CADDYSHACK: THE MAKING OF A HOLLYWOOD CINDERELLA STORY. Nashawaty is a long time writer for Entertainment Weekly, and he knows the business of show well, which comes in handy when detailing all the twists and turns, along with the big egos of the big talents that went into making the 1980 comedy classic, CADDYSHACK, which just might be the best gift cocaine ever gave American culture. Yes, this book is very much a warts and all look at a time and place, and the people who thrived on, and some who were destroyed by, the sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll lifestyle of the ‘70s.

Though a short book, coming in at just over 250 pages, Nashawaty gives us a history of the National Lampoon, SNL, SCTV, and the making of ANIMAL HOUSE, all of which were essential to how CADDYSHACK came about. More than that, we get the tragic story of Doug Kenney, the brilliant and troubled young comic writer who helped co-write the script for ANIMLAL HOUSE, and then was a producer on CADDYSHACK, where he believed that not only would lighting strike again, but that the second film would eclipse the first. Kenney, and his fellow Baby Boomers like Harold Ramis, Ivan Reitman, Chris Miller, had become very successful at a very young age, riding the cultural shift in America in the decade after the ‘60s to massive acclaim, and with that success came a lot of money, and with that money came the means to indulge a lot of bad habits. It seemed that Americans during the Jimmy Carter years, which followed the tumultuous era of Vietnam and Watergate with long lines at gas stations, stagflation, and the humiliation of the Iran hostage crisis, wanted nothing more than to go to the movies and have a good laugh. Comedies were doing blockbuster business, especially ones with hot young talent, and said talent could write their own ticket, at least up to a point. That is how Kenny and Ramis inked a deal with producer Jon Peters and Orion Pictures in 1979 to make a raunchy coming of age film about a bunch of sex obsessed young caddies at an upper class mid-western country club. It would have a distinct class conscious theme, with rowdy youth coming up against the staid establishment. Who didn’t want to see that in the late ‘70s?

That’s how it started out, but that is not the film we got, and the story of how that happened is the best part of the book. Shot at a Florida country club in the early fall of 1979, the location quickly became, by many accounts, one big drug fueled party, with much of the script, based on co-writer Brian Doyle Murray’s teenage years, being improvised on the spot. It didn’t help that Harold Ramis had never directed a film before, and was often in over his head. Same with standup comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who had no idea how to act in a film, and was unnerved that there was no laughter when he spoke his often hilarious dialogue. Chevy Chase and Bill Murray (Brian’s younger brother) often winged it in their most memorable scenes, while old pro Ted Knight just as often seethed at the antics of his co-stars, much like his character, Judge Smails. Younger actors Michael O’Keefe, Sarah Holcomb, Cindy Morgan, Scott Columby, and Peter Berkot would see their parts diminish as more time was given to the older performers at the direction of the studio heads at Orion. Then there was the Gopher, who was added to the film in post production at the insistence of producer Peters. It all sounded like fun at the time, maybe too much of it, and certainly the wrong kind of fun by today’s standards. But as is pointed out, the job got done, even if the kids were in charge. This is the part of the book that I like the best, where the inside sausage making of the creative process is described, where talent, hard work, and just plain luck (good and bad) produce something that resonates. I also liked the deeper dives into people like Dangerfield, one of those guys whom success did not come to early in life and who more than earned a great second act to his career. Nobody much remembers Cindy Morgan, who played Lacy Underalls, but she has an interesting story to tell, especially when it comes to producer Peters, very much a creature of Hollywood, but who still ran interference for the guys in Florida when the suits at Orion got concerned about on set antics.

But most of all, this book is the story of Doug Kenney, who was destroyed by too much success, too soon. At least that is how I feel. CADDYSHACK had a rough post production, where the final product had to be edited down from four hours of film, and cut into something like a coherent narrative (that’s using the term loosely in this incidence). But the end product was still very rough, and it very much played out like something made up on the fly, where comic bits by Dangerfield and Murray were shoe horned into a script that was then pretty much discarded. Ramis’ inexperience as a director was plain to see in a movie that appeared to be nothing more than a vulgar and sexed up TV sit com for the big screen. When time came for the release in late July of 1980, the box office was good, but not great, and the reviews were particularly scathing, especially from older critics who just didn’t get (or didn’t want to get) the film’s low brow humor. Depressed at what he saw was a failure, and carrying a heavy coke addiction, Kenney got out of LA for a few weeks in Hawaii. He never returned. In the long run, the film proved to be a success, for if the critics reviled it, young audiences, especially guys, got it, and were soon reciting Al Czervik, Carl Spackler, Ty Webb, and even Judge Smails’ lines to each other. Its very shortcomings became its strengths, as fans embraced it as a video house party in which everyone was invited, where a few wickedly funny friends took the center of the room, and had everyone in stitches. Within a few years, a VHS copy of CADDYSHACK could be found on a shelf next to the VCR in millions of homes. Golf, once the sport of middle aged men, would become cool with young people in no small part due to CADDYSHACK.

If I have any complaint with the Nashawaty’s book, it is that it doesn’t go into just what it is about CADDYSHACK that has made it endure. The “slobs vs. snobs” theme is universal, but much of the comedy is very much of its time, especially the drug humor. Then again, if you have to ask… And I have often been struck by the irony of this movie finding love from so many Americans only months before they elected Ronald Reagan in a landslide, a man who throughout his political career did nothing to hide his considerable disdain for the sex, drugs, and rock lifestyle embraced by CADDYSHACK.

It is worth noting that we do not have big comedy blockbusters like CADDYSHACK anymore, which is a shame, since the comedy genre has been a corner stone of American cinema since the days of Chaplin and the Keystone Kops. That all seemed to end in the 2010’s. Long gone is the Hollywood where talents like Kenney, Ramis, and Brian Doyle-Murray were handed millions of dollars and told to go make a movie. Some would have said that millennials refuse to laugh at anything until they are sure that it is not sexist, misogynistic, racist, or homophobic, and thus comedy has lost its edge, its willingness to take risks. Films like CADDYSHACK and ANIMAL HOUSE are attacked for their “toxic masculinity” with calls that they be “cancelled.” Fingers are pointed in outrage, and it feels like we’ve lost our sense of humor. As a friend of mine put it, nowadays, comedy goes to the movies to die; doesn’t seem like we’re honoring Doug Kenney’s memory very well at all.


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