The Structure of the Buddies in Animal House

(aka ecarle in other posts here)

Animal House is famous for making a movie star out of John Belushi, and real quick like. He did Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1979. This movie made him a star in the summer of 1978 and set the stage for him to leave SNL as soon as the 1978-1979 season was over. Belushi -- alone -- got the cover of Newsweek when Animal House hit so big.

And yet, not only is Animal House very much an ensemble film -- it rather leans towards TWO "buddy pairs" to anchor the movie while Belushi sort of darts into and out of the story at will.

The first "buddy pair" open the movie --- the guys who will become Pinto(little mousy guy) and Flounder(overweight mousy guy.) It is through Pinto and Flounder that we first get introduced to BOTH the uptight villalnous fraternity(first in line) and THEN to Delta House(so wild, crazy, unkempt and macho in comparison to the first.)

Both Pinto and Flounder are too innocent and abashed to anchor the comedy here, but I suppose that there were Pintos and Flounders(especially Flounders) in the audience and they could relate to these characters.

No, the "Alpha Buddy Duo" shows up at Delta House(AFTER we have met Bluto urinating on the shoes of Pinto and Flounder) upstairs as the party rages downstairs.

Otter and Boon, of course.

And yes, while Otter could be said to "co-share" the lead role in Animal House with Bluto, Otter works best as part of a team with Boon...who is a cool enough guy(check out his shades at the jukebox) with a really pretty girlfriend(Karen Allen, three years away from Raiders of the Lost Ark) , but functions best as part of a TEAM, tossing out set-up lines to Otter, or vice versa:

Boon: Why are you standing up as the defense attorney here?
Otter: I'm pre-law.
Boon: I thought your were pre-med.
Otter: What's the difference.

Bluto: Did we stand down when the Nazis attacked Pearl Harbor?
Otter: The Nazis?
Boon: Forget it. He's rolling.

Boon: He can't do that to our pledges.
Otter: Yeah, only WE can do that to our pledges.

And so forth and so on. Otter and Boon -- the lead comedy team of the movie, where most of the buddy one-liners bounce back and forth. Bluto: the main "solo comedy artist" of the story.

But where does that leave the rest?

D-Day(Bruce McGill) is next in line. The tough guy. The gearhead. The master of the blow torch and the car rebuild. Introduced tapping out music on his trachea. Paired a coupla times as a buddy with Bluto(unlike Otter and Boon, romancing women seems a low priority to these two hooligans --though Bluto surprises with a babe at the end.) D-Day also helps form, with Bluto, Otter, and Boon, an "army of four" who are probably, structurally , the comedy leadership of Animal House -- the house, the movie.

Who does that leave? Well, good ol' Hoover of course -- the ONE guy in Animal House -- its President -- who seems determined to protect and serve his House and to save it against being shut down. Funny thing: he seems to be the most intelligent of the group, but when Dean Wormer reads his GPA, turns out he's kinda stupid, too(or maybe ALL of them "simply don't apply themselves.")

The film's co-writer Doug Kenney (a moody man who died in an accident a few years later) allows himself to look like quite the incel moron with the immortal words: "What are we s'upposed to do, ya moron?" in a perfect Southern accent. At the climax, he gets some screen time leading a marching band down an alley and into a brick wall. Kenney died in a fall off a cliff in Hawaii. One wag said, "Doug fell off a cliff while looking for a place to commit suicide." Kenney was reportedly depressed over the success of Caddyshack, which he felt moved forward as a "lesser" comedy than Animal House, with much of his script thrown out.

Let's review:

Bluto(a force of nature)
Otter and Boon(the cool, hip, comedy team, one a ladies man, one WITH a lady, BOTH able to LAND ladies.)
D-Day: Working class Jack of All Trades with a cool handlebar moustache and a nifty fifties crew cut.
Hoover: All around good guy and leader. Doesn't work for him.
"Stork": Doug Kenney. What're we SUPPOSED to do, yuh moron?
Pinto: At least gets two sex offers from a pretty girl. He turns her down the first time(Angel on his shoulder.) Goes for it the second time. And she's underage.
Flounder: When they wreck his brothers new car and Flounder starts sobbing, he gets too great pieces of advice, one from Bluto("I advise you to start drinking heavily." Otter: "(Smiling) Hey, don't take it so bad...you fucked up, you trusted us."

A good team of guys. Which one are you?