It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to the next picture show, a Movie the Week podcast devoted to a classic film in the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Scott Tobias here again with...

Genevieve Kosky.

And...

Keith Phipps.

Tasha Robinson has decided to reserve her insight in the national lampoon for Van Wilder.

But she'll be with us next time.

When we do that Van Wilder episode, guys?

On the first half of this episode, we discussed David Wayne's Wet Hot American Summer, the 2001 comedy that brought the offbeat silliness of his troop the state to a big screen spoof. In this episode, we'll turn our attention to Wayne's new Netflix film, a futile and stupid gesture, which approaches the story of Doug Kenny, the late co-founder of National Lampoon, with a similar self-awareness and an interest in toying with biopic

conventions. Will Forte stars as Doug Kenny, and Martin Moll stars as the narrator, an older version

of Doug Kenny. Together, they tell the story of a brilliant but undisciplined and self-destructive

comedy mind

who hailed from an upper middle class family in Shagrin Falls, Ohio, and went to Harvard,

but opted to pursue a career that defied his parents' wishes.

Starting with his time at the Harvard Lampoon in the 1960s, when Kenny met his partner

in crime Henry Beard, played by Dobn Gleeson, an ending with Kenny's

death in 1980, a futile and stupid gesture makes the case that National Lampoon was the

epicenter of 70s comedy and the wellspring for a generation of comedic talents.

When National Lampoon was founded in 1970, there was no market for a comedy magazine, but

...