Book uncovers story behind Bluto, Otter and Flounder.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

`Knowledge is Good."

If you've seen a certain 28-year-old film made around these parts called "Animal House," then maybe those three words are familiar.

They grace the plaque of the statue of Emil Faber (actually the "Pioneer Statue" on the University of Oregon campus), founder of Faber College, the fictional university in the 1978 movie filmed in Eugene and Cottage Grove.

And now we know where it all came from, thanks to "The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie," written by Chris Miller (no, not the former UO/NFL quarterback and current Kidsports executive director), one of the classic comedy's three screenwriters, along with Harold Ramis and Douglas Kenney.

Turns out Miller, of Venice, Calif., is the real Pinto, played by actor Thomas Hulce in the movie.

Asked by telephone why he waited so long to write the memoir, Miller says, "In a way, I started it before the movie came out."

But the movie got in the way. Not that Miller minded.

He wrote a few chapters in the early 1970s and one, "The Night of the Seven Fires," was a hit with college students when it was printed in the National Lampoon, where Miller was a longtime writer. It was about initiation rites at Dartmouth College's Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, where Miller attended from 1959 to 1963.

"And the Lampoon was looking to make a movie, so it was a perfect marriage," Miller says of the script that he, Ramis and Kenney (who played "Stork" in the movie) co-wrote.

This "mostly lucid memoir," as it says below the title on the book's cover, tells the real-life story of Pinto, Otter, Flounder and others. And although you won't read about Boon and D-Day and Bluto Blutarsky (John Belushi's character) in the book, you do get to meet some of their real-life counterparts - Rhesus Monkey, Rat, Huck Doody, Doberman, Coyote and Snot.

Miller, who served as the grand master of the parade during Cottage Grove's 25th annivesary celebration of the film in 2003, played a bit part in the movie as one of the Delta House members. He had one line, the word "No" when asked by a man with his child to move during the parade scene. In addition to writing for National Lampoon for years, Miller wrote ad copy (think "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs') before he segued into film writing.

In telling the way it really was, Miller doesn't leave much to the imagination in this tale that centers mostly on, what else, serious binge drinking, losing one's virginity and horseplay that could be classified as criminal.

There's Doberman licking bugs off the windshield of a hearse so Flea can see while he drives. There's Seal, a model for Belushi's character in the film, pouring a giant jar of mustard over his head and crawling around on all fours, biting co-eds on the, uh, backside.

And there's the story of how the Alpha Delta Phi house at Dartmouth got its nickname, "Animal House": Some members were haplessly chasing a chicken around the yard, eager to kill it for dinner, only to be brought up short when an upperclassman (known as "The Man') plugged the chicken from his upstairs room with a .45 slug.

"Up to now, I've thought of the jacket-and-narrow-tie-wearing youth of that era as 'The Quiet Generation,' writes Christopher Buckley, author of "Thank You for Smoking," in The New York Times Book Review of Nov. 5. "No longer. There is nothing quiet about Pinto, Otter, Coyote, Snot, Black Whit, Giraffe, Rat or any of the other AD brothers, unless they're passed out facedown in the snow with the blood-alcohol content of an embalmed corpse."

Buckley describes the book as "sophomoric, disgusting, tasteless, vile, misogynist, chauvinist, debased and at times so unspeakably revolting that any person of descent sensibility would hurl it into the nearest Dumpster."

He also says, "I couldn't put it down."

Miller, whose other screenwriting credits include 1986's "Club Paradise" and 1996's "Multiplicity," says he has "nothing but great memories" of Eugene. "We had a ball. Except for that one night when the guys in that fraternity beat up all the actors in the movie."

To bond and build rapport, actors Tim Matheson (Otter), Karen Allen (Katy), Peter Reigert (Boon), James Widdoes (Hoover), Bruce McGill (D-Day) and a few others decided to hop from one UO frat party to the next on a Saturday night, Miller remembers. Things didn't go so smoothly when they came upon some UO football players who'd been drinking more than a little beer and whose girlfriends became enamored of Matheson.

They managed to settle things down until "Hoover" slapped a beer up into someone's face, Miller says.

Oops.

Nothing like practicing for the real thing.

The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie

By Chris Miller (Little, Brown & Company, $24.99, 321 pages) The Real Animal House By Chris Miller (Little, Brown & Company, $24.99) 321 pages What: Memoir by "Animal House" screenwriter about the real-life early 1960s Dartmouth College fraternity that served as the film's model Hits bookstores: Nov. 1