Sean Kelly (writer)
Encyclopedia
Sean Kelly is a Canadian author
, writer
, humorist, voice actor and teacher
who was originally from Montreal
, Quebec
, Canada
, but who currently lives in the United States
. From 1970 to 1984 he was an editor and one of the main writers for National Lampoon. He has also created a variety of work for other media, including authoring a considerable number of books, as well as writing for children's television. He has many beloved grandchildren, his favorite remains Grace Louise von Simson. She is the light of his life and if you meet him, he will tell you all about her beauty and charms.
Kelly currently teaches in the Humanities and Media Studies department of the Pratt Institute
, an art college in Brooklyn
, New York City
.
and illustrated by the well-known comics artist Neal Adams
.
In 1973, Kelly co-wrote and co-directed National Lampoons mock-rock musical Lemmings, which was subsequently issued as a soundtrack music album. The songs were also made available in the National Lampoon Songbook
in 1976. In 1989, Stephen Holden of The New York Times
commented:
“Pop debunking perhaps reached its zenith in the early '70s with albums like Goodbye Pop ... and National Lampoon’s Lemmings in which Christopher Guest
, Sean Kelly, Tony Hendra
and others gleefully desanctified hallowed touchstones of the rock counterculture.”
At National Lampoon, Kelly often worked with other Lampoon writers, including Michel Choquette
, Anne Beatts
and Tony Hendra
.
There is a chapter (pages 136 – 147) about Sean Kelly in the 2010 book Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great
by Rick Meyerowitz
. On page 320 of the book, Meyerowitz calls Kelly, "the sharpest tack in Brooklyn".
, an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine. Kelly's work has also appeared in Interview
, The Village Voice
, The Old Farmer's Almanac, Playboy
and Spy
.
, the live action/computer animated series Ace Lightning
, CBS Young People's Concerts
, the FOX series Goosebumps
and the PBS series Shining Time Station
. In 2004 he received an Emmy Award
for the PBS early literacy series, Between the Lions
.
Of the 1993 book Boom Baby Moon, Gahan Wilson
wrote in the New York Times Book Review on December 5, 1993:
"Boom Baby Moon is unlikely – despite the lulling rhythm of Sean Kelly’s poetizing and the innocent-looking illustrations of Ron Hauge – to con the densest of grown-ups into thinking it’s a simple children’s book. I suspect it will be banned shortly after it appears in our nation’s bookstores, that it will never have a chance of making the libraries, and that its creators will be speedily investigated by a Senate committee."
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, humorist, voice actor and teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
who was originally from Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, but who currently lives in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. From 1970 to 1984 he was an editor and one of the main writers for National Lampoon. He has also created a variety of work for other media, including authoring a considerable number of books, as well as writing for children's television. He has many beloved grandchildren, his favorite remains Grace Louise von Simson. She is the light of his life and if you meet him, he will tell you all about her beauty and charms.
Kelly currently teaches in the Humanities and Media Studies department of the Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
, an art college in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
National Lampoon work
Kelly's most memorable National Lampoon work may be the Son-O'-God Comics, which were created with Michel ChoquetteMichel Choquette
Michel Choquette is a French Canadian from Montreal, a humorist who has written for print, for television and for film, and a comedian who has performed for television....
and illustrated by the well-known comics artist Neal Adams
Neal Adams
Neal Adams is an American comic book and commercial artist known for helping to create some of the definitive modern imagery of the DC Comics characters Superman, Batman, and Green Arrow; as the co-founder of the graphic design studio Continuity Associates; and as a creators-rights advocate who...
.
In 1973, Kelly co-wrote and co-directed National Lampoons mock-rock musical Lemmings, which was subsequently issued as a soundtrack music album. The songs were also made available in the National Lampoon Songbook
National Lampoon Songbook
National Lampoon Songbook was an American humorous songbook which was issued in 1976. Although it appears to be a book in its own right, it was a "special issue" of National Lampoon magazine and as such it was only sold on newsstands...
in 1976. In 1989, Stephen Holden of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
commented:
“Pop debunking perhaps reached its zenith in the early '70s with albums like Goodbye Pop ... and National Lampoon’s Lemmings in which Christopher Guest
Christopher Guest
Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest , better known as Christopher Guest, is an American screenwriter, composer, musician, director, actor and comedian. He is most widely known in Hollywood for having written, directed and starred in several improvisational "mockumentary" films that...
, Sean Kelly, Tony Hendra
Tony Hendra
Tony Hendra is an English satirist and writer who has worked mostly in the United States. Educated at St Albans School and Cambridge University, he was a member of the Cambridge University Footlights revue in 1962, alongside John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor.-Career:In 1964 Hendra...
and others gleefully desanctified hallowed touchstones of the rock counterculture.”
At National Lampoon, Kelly often worked with other Lampoon writers, including Michel Choquette
Michel Choquette
Michel Choquette is a French Canadian from Montreal, a humorist who has written for print, for television and for film, and a comedian who has performed for television....
, Anne Beatts
Anne Beatts
- Early life:Born to parents Beatts describes as "beatniks", Beatts grew to have what has been called an "aggressive, dark sensibility" which she later put to use in the world of comedy. Growing up in Somers, New York she later attended McGill University....
and Tony Hendra
Tony Hendra
Tony Hendra is an English satirist and writer who has worked mostly in the United States. Educated at St Albans School and Cambridge University, he was a member of the Cambridge University Footlights revue in 1962, alongside John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor.-Career:In 1964 Hendra...
.
There is a chapter (pages 136 – 147) about Sean Kelly in the 2010 book Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists who made National Lampoon Insanely Great by Rick Meyerowitz, is a 2010 book which was published by Abrams Books of New York...
by Rick Meyerowitz
Rick Meyerowitz
Rick Meyerowitz is an American artist. He started drawing during his childhood and attended art school at Boston University...
. On page 320 of the book, Meyerowitz calls Kelly, "the sharpest tack in Brooklyn".
Other periodicals
In 1975 Kelly was the founding editor of Heavy MetalHeavy Metal (magazine)
Heavy Metal is an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine, known primarily for its blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica. In the mid-1970s, while publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris to jump-start the French edition of National Lampoon, he discovered the French...
, an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine. Kelly's work has also appeared in Interview
Interview (magazine)
Interview is an American magazine which has the nickname The Crystal Ball Of Pop. It was founded in late 1969 by artist Andy Warhol. The magazine features intimate conversations between some of the world's biggest celebrities, artists, musicians, and creative thinkers...
, The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, The Old Farmer's Almanac, Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
and Spy
Spy (magazine)
Spy was a satirical monthly magazine founded in 1986 by Kurt Andersen and E. Graydon Carter, who served as its first editors, and Thomas L. Phillips, Jr., its first publisher. After one folding and a rebirth, it ceased publication in 1998...
.
Television work
Kelly has done a considerable amount of writing for children's television: in the US for The Magic School BusThe Magic School Bus
The Magic School Bus is a series of children's books about science written by author Joanna Cole. They feature the antics of Ms. Valerie Frizzle, an elementary school teacher, and her class, who board a magical school bus which takes them on field trips to impossible locations such as the solar...
, the live action/computer animated series Ace Lightning
Ace Lightning
Ace Lightning is a children's television show co-produced by the BBC and Alliance Atlantis, which has been broadcast in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom and Australia. The show was filmed in Canada, but the program was set in America...
, CBS Young People's Concerts
Young People's Concerts
The Young People's Concerts at the New York Philharmonic are the longest-running series of family concerts of classical music in the world.-Genesis:...
, the FOX series Goosebumps
Goosebumps
Goosebumps is a series of children's horror fiction novels written by American author R. L. Stine and first published by Scholastic Publishing. It is a collection of stories that feature semi-homogenous plot structures, with fictional children being involved in scary situations...
and the PBS series Shining Time Station
Shining Time Station
Shining Time Station is an American children's television series co-created by Britt Allcroft and Rick Siggelkow. The series was produced by The Britt Allcroft Company and Quality Family Entertainment in New York for New York City PBS Station WNET, and was filmed first in New York and then in Toronto...
. In 2004 he received an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for the PBS early literacy series, Between the Lions
Between the Lions
Between the Lions is a PBS Kids' puppet show designed to promote reading. The show is a co-production between WGBH in Boston and Sirius Thinking, Ltd., in New York City, in association with Mississippi Public Broadcasting, in Mississippi. The show has won seven Daytime Emmy awards between 2001 and...
.
Books
Kelly has authored and coauthored a considerable number of books. Most (but not all) of the books are humorous, and many of them were coauthored with other writers who had been associated with National Lampoon.Of the 1993 book Boom Baby Moon, Gahan Wilson
Gahan Wilson
Gahan Wilson is an American author, cartoonist and illustrator known for his cartoons depicting horror-fantasy situations...
wrote in the New York Times Book Review on December 5, 1993:
"Boom Baby Moon is unlikely – despite the lulling rhythm of Sean Kelly’s poetizing and the innocent-looking illustrations of Ron Hauge – to con the densest of grown-ups into thinking it’s a simple children’s book. I suspect it will be banned shortly after it appears in our nation’s bookstores, that it will never have a chance of making the libraries, and that its creators will be speedily investigated by a Senate committee."
List of books
- Slightly Higher in Canada, Sean Kelly and Ted MannTed MannTed Mann was an American businessman, involved in the film industry, and head of Mann Theatres. He famously changed the name of Grauman's Chinese Theater to Mann's Chinese Theater when he purchased the National General Theatre chain that owned it in 1973...
, 1978 - The Secret: A Treasure Hunt, Sean Kelly and Ted Mann, 1982
- Irish Folk and Fairy Tales, Edited by Sean Kelly, 1982
- Not the Bible, Sean Kelly and Tony HendraTony HendraTony Hendra is an English satirist and writer who has worked mostly in the United States. Educated at St Albans School and Cambridge University, he was a member of the Cambridge University Footlights revue in 1962, alongside John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor.-Career:In 1964 Hendra...
, 1983 - A Book Called Bob, Sean Kelly, 1984
- Grosseries, Sean Kelly and Trish Todd, 1987
- Nicknames/Unusual Monikers, Secret Identities, Remarkable Aliases, Hilarious Histories, Sean Kelly and Ron HaugeRon HaugeRon Hauge is an American television writer and executive producer. In his earlier career Hauge was a contributor to National Lampoon. After this he wrote for Seinfeld, In Living Color, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and a short lived reincarnation of The Carol Burnett Show...
, 1987 - Spitting Images, Sean Kelly, 1987
- 101 Ways to Answer the Request: "Would You Please Put Out That #(!&)", Sean Kelly, Warren Leight, and Charles Rubin
- The Book of Sequels, Henry BeardHenry BeardHenry N. Beard is an American humorist, one of the founders of the magazine National Lampoon and the author of several best-selling books.-Biography:...
, Christopher CerfChristopher CerfChristopher Cerf is a U.S. author, composer-lyricist, voice actor, and record and television producer. He is known for his musical contributions to Sesame Street, for co-creating and co-producing the award-winning PBS literacy education television program Between the Lions, and for his humorous...
, Sarah Durkee, & Sean Kelly, 1990 - Boom Baby Moon, Sean Kelly and Ron Hauge, 1993
- Saints Preserve Us!: Everything You Need to Know About Every Saint You'll Ever Need, Sean Kelly and Rosemary Rogers, 1993
- Herstory: Lisa Marie's Wedding Diary: Shamelessly Concocted, Sean Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Ron BarrettRon BarrettRon Barrett is a cartoonist and artist best known for illustrating Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. He is a graduate of the High School of Industrial Art, now the High School of Art and Design, in New York City. While still in high school he was an apprentice in the studio of Lucian Bernhard, the...
, 1996 - Who in Hell...: A Guide to the Whole Damned Bunch, Sean Kelly, Rosemary Rogers, and I. Clement, 1996
- How to Be Irish (Even If You Already Are), Sean Kelly and Rosemary Rogers, 1999
- The Birthday Book of Saints: Your Powerful Personal Patrons of Every Blessed Day of the Year, Sean Kelly and Rosemary Rogers, 2001
- The Saint-a-Day Guide: A Lighthearted but Accurate Compendium, Sean Kelly, 2003
- Bush Photo Oops: Presidential Photo Ops Gone Awry, Sean Kelly and Chris Kelly, 2004