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by SCOTT MEYER
Battalion Reporter
What does a college student do
after spending a Friday or Saturday
night partying, and is too keyed up
to just go back to the dorm? Many
students go see a midnight movie.
There are three theaters in town
which show midnight movies. They
are the Campus Theater on Boyett
Street, the Plitt Southern Theater
on College Ave. and the Manor East
III Theater at Villa Maria and Texas
Ave.
Each theater has a different idea
of what makes a midnight movie.
Kurt Schulman at the Campus
Theater said that midnight films
started there in 1967.
“They were called the midnight
frolics back then; it was strictly por
nographic crud, but people would
come to hear the Aggies. Most of
the time they were better than what
was on the screen anyway,” Schul
man said.
The Campus was remodeled
from an X-rated movie theater in the
fall of 77, and the following spring it
started showing “The Rocky Horror
Picture Show” as a midnight film.
The picture has been showing there
ever since, although the theater
plans to “swing it with Wizards or
something, to try to build up the in
terest in ‘Rocky Horror,’” Schulman
said.
Schulman said that picking a
midnight movie is something they
“just try to guess at.” Schulman
said that “The Rocky Horror Picture
Show” is probably such a success
because it is an audience participa
tion film.
“People can make fools out of
themselves, and nobody cares,” he
said.
The ability to make fools of them
selves is very important, Schulman
said, because midnight is “let your
hair down time, when all the bars
are closed, and almost everyone is
wasted anyway.”
Leslie Diestler at the Plitt South
ern Theater agreed that a different
type of movie is called for at mid
night, because of the different type
of audience. X-rated films were very
popular with the students, she said,
but were discontinued because
“our company did not know which
way the obscenity laws were
going.”
Diestler said the theater was
under no community pressure to
discontinue the films. “We had no
complaints with them,” she said.
The Alternative Film Society
rents the Plitt Southern Theater ev
ery other weekend, and shows films
from their series. The Alternative
Film Society series includes con
cert films, and movies like “Night of
the Living Dead.”
Tim Sager, a senior journalism
major at Texas A&M University, is
the theater’s midnight sponsor. He
decides what films will be shown on
the weekends when the Alternative
Film Society is not renting the
theater.
“I try to decide on a film that will
do well at A&M; a comedy or a hor
ror picture, or when they allow it an
X-rated one,” Sager said.
He said he used to try and book
two films each night rather than just
one. One would be the typical mid
night movie, and the other would be
a classic film like “Outrageous” or
“The Ruling Class.”
Sager said that while the classic
films were films that he personally
liked to see, they did not do very
well, and he would lose $70 to $100
per show. He said he may try to
show a couple this semester, and
show them more regularly if they do
okay.
The Manor East theater started
showing midnight movies around
the fall of 1978. Rick Atwood, the
manager there, said that the films
did not do very well at first, but that
now the films were considered suc
cessful.
Atwood said he selects movies
that did well at the box office during
their first run, as veil as special
ones like “Hair,” which are shown in
Dolby stereo.
“We tend towards Dolby stereo
movies, because we are the only
theater in town that is equipped to
show them in Dolby, which gives us
an edge on the competition,”
Atwood said.
‘The idea behind midnight
movies is to supplement the regular
movies; to supply quality movies, ”
he said.
National Lampoon top adult humor
magazine, especially on college campuses
United Press International
LOS ANGELES — Matty Sim
mons is not a funny guy. But he
knows what makes people laugh.
He has parlayed that into a multi
million dollar entertainment empire.
Simmons, a former press agent
who helped start the Diners Club,
built his comedy empire on the in
famous reputation and the financial
success of an outrageously irreve
rent, always topical, and sometimes
downright sick magazine — Nation
al Lampoon.
The first edition of National Lam
poon appeared on newsstands in
April 1970. The Vietnam War was
raging. Richard Nixon lived in the
White House. The wild-eyed Char
lie Manson was about to stand trial
for the Tate-La Bianca murders.
The country needed a good
laugh. National Lampoon helped
America laugh at itself.
A decade later, National Lam
poon is the top adult humor maga
zine in the country — especially on
college campuses. The staff has
just published the National Lam
poon Tenth Anniversary Anthology.
National Lampoon alumni have
produced, written or starred in at
least seven books, nine record
albums, four stage shows, two radio
programs, two television shows and
one of the most profitable movies in
cinema history —- “National Lam
poon’s Animal House.”
“Saturday Night Live,” network
television’s successful experiment
with hard-core satire, was written to
a large extent by former Lampoon
staffers. Its cast was studded with
young comics who had starred in
Lampoon stage productions.
“Saturday Night Live” players
John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Bill
Murray are National Lampoon gra
duates. They have since starred in
major motion pictures, including
some produced by Simmons.
Simmons, who now divides his
time between New York and his
office at Universal Studios in Los
Angeles, was already a successful
magazine publisher when he hand
led and co-published with the edi
tors of the Harvard Lampoon a full-
scale parody of Life magazine in the
late 1960s.
The first product was not very
good, Simmons says. Six months
later the Harvard Lampoon editors
decided to parody Time magazine.
This time Simmons was a full part
ner. The issue returned a profit of
nearly $250,000.
g”we discovered,” said Sim
mons, “there was gold in them there
hills.”
The editors soon graduated from
Harvard, bought the rights to the
“Lampoon” name and went into
business with Simmons.
“For the first six or seven months
it was wildly unsuccessful,” Sim
mons said. “Then suddenly things
picked up.
“I was sort of the padrone of this
whole thing. I was always saying,
‘We got to watch it fellas, we can get
sued real easily.’ Then the issue
that really took off was a cover
parody of Minnie Mouse. It was my
idea and it attracted our first law
suit.”
Simmons said two factors contri
buted to Lampoon’s success. The
political climate was ripe. The Un
ited States was then probably one
of the few countries in the world
without an adult humor magazine.
“When you have a president like
Nixon and a vice president like
Agnew,” he said, “a satire maga
zine has tools. People liked to laugh
at them.”
“We were also one of the first
magazines to come out against the
Vietnam War with a cover calling
Nixon a liar. War and Watergate
gave the magazine a lot to work
with.
“Our worst period was when
(Gerald) Ford was president. He
was one of the dullest presidents
ever and everytime we tried to do
something on Ford we fell flat on our
face.”
National Lampoon has had its
share of critics and lawsuits. It has
never lost a suit, but its detractors
label many of the articles unfair, bi
goted and disgusting.
Simmons says there were some
guidelines he enforced.
“Everybody had to get it,” Sim
mons said. “I told the staff to pick on
everybody.”
“There was a natural inclination
in those days to zing it to people on
the right. Now, as a matter of fact,
we have a number of editors who
are very conservative, but in those
days the editors were liberals. I in
sisted we had to give it to every
body.”
As far as taste was concerned,
Simmons said the only guideline
was that the piece had to be “re-
deemably funny” and he made the
final decision.
One of the magazine’s most
famous issues contained a parody
of a Volkswagen ad that suggested
that if Sen. Edward Kennedy had
been driving one of the watertight
German automobiles when the
Chappaquidick accident occurred,
he would have been elected presi
dent.
That piece does not appear in the
anthology, says Simmons, because
the magazine eventually agreed to
a demand from Volkswagen that it
never be reprinted.
Instead, the anthology contains
another piece satirizing Kennedy,
“The Delegate from Chappaquid-
dick.”