Toga! Toga! Toga! The real story behind ‘Animal House’
Actor Stephen Furst, who played the inept, naive and lovable butt of a lot of semi-insane fraternity-house pranks in the 1978 film “Animal House,” died over the weekend. In a Miami Herald story in 2003, on the 25th anniversary of the film, we revealed the unconventional (OK, totally nuts) way he got the role, plus some other tidbits — many of them printable — about what went on on the “Animal House” set. Here it is:
LOS ANGELES — Dean Wormer: Who dumped a whole truckload of Fizzies into the swim meet? Who delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner? Every Halloween the trees are filled with underwear; every spring the toilets explode.
Marmalard: You’re talking about Delta, sir.
Nobody had ever seen anything like it. It was rebellious, it was anarchic, it was gross. It had kids getting wasted and puking and being promiscuous, sometimes all at once. Its heroes were drunks and slobs and Peeping Toms; its villains were teachers and cheerleaders and anybody who was or would ever be grown up. It trashed militaristic ROTC Nazis and limp-wimp folksingers with equal glee. It was grungy rock ‘n’ roll in the slam-glam Age of Disco. It made audiences crazy. It was “Animal House,” and it was something.