- Chris Miller (writer)
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John Christian "Chris" Miller was born in Brooklyn in 1942 and grew up in Roslyn, NY on Long Island. Miller is an American author and screenwriter, most notable for his work on National Lampoon magazine and the movie Animal House. He appeared in the film as Curtis Wayne "Hardbar" Fuller, credited as Christian Miller.
His experiences in the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity at Dartmouth College inspired much of Animal House. Chris was a 1963 graduate of Dartmouth where he majored in English and subsequently received his MBA from the Tuck School of Business in 1964 under Dartmouth's accelerated 3-2 plan. After college he wrote copy and produced commercials at The Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample advertising firm. In 1970, he "dropped out of the straight world" and began writing short stories about his college experiences ("Night of the Seven Fires") which were published in National Lampoon. Those stories led him to co-write what would become Animal House. After the film came out, Miller moved to Los Angeles in 1981 to pursue other movie projects. His most high-profile effort during this period was co-writing the screenplay for Multiplicity, starring Michael Keaton and directed by Animal House co-writer Harold Ramis.
He married in 1985 and fathered a son, Jack, in 1986. The marriage ultimately ended in divorce, and Miller now lives in Venice, California. His ex-wife later committed suicide. In 2006, he published a memoir The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie, about his experiences at Alpha Delta Phi that were the basis for many Animal House scenes.
He's currently working on a follow-up, recounting the post-college years as a struggling writer before ending up at the National Lampoon.
Writing Credits
- Screw (1968) (Magazine)
- National Lampoon (1970) (Magazine)
- National Lampoon's Animal House (with Doug Kenney and Harold Ramis) (1978)
- National Lampoon's Animal House: The Full-Color, Illustrated Novel from the Hit Movie (1978) (Novelization)
- Delta House (1979) (TV)
- Square Pegs (1982) (TV)
- Club Paradise (with Ed Roboto, Tom Leopold and David Standish) (Story Only) (1986)
- Sidekicks (1986) (TV)
- The New Gidget (1987) (TV)
- Multiplicity (with Mary Hale, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) (1996)
- Perversions of Science (1997) (TV)
- The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie (2006) (Memoir)
External links
- Chris Miller at the Internet Movie Database
- Mark's Very Large National Lampoon Site: Chris Miller
- "The Real Animal House" by Chris Miller (2006) [1]
Categories:- 1942 births
- Living people
- American humorists
- American screenwriters
- Dartmouth College alumni
- Tuck School of Business alumni
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