Eugene just doesn’t know how to party, Tim Flowerday said.
Only 30 people showed up for the Cottage Grove Hysterical Society’s fourth-annual Animal House Celebration Toga Party at the Eugene Hilton on Saturday.
“At the first-annual event we set the record for the world’s largest toga party,” Flowerday, the event’s main organizer, said. “I hoped bringing it to Eugene, a bigger city and a bigger venue, would attract more guests. I guess Cottage Grove is just more of a party town.”
Flowerday said the first celebration won the Guiness world record for “largest toga party” with about 2,156 attendees. In the past two years the event has ranged from 800 to 1,500 toga-wearing partiers, but it just didn’t happen this year.
“We actually spent more on the party and advertising than we have in the past,” Flowerday said, but competition from the Ozomatli show on campus might have hindered the event’s success.
The celebration began four years ago in honor of the 25th anniversary of “Animal House,” and opened this year with Windy Ridge performing ’60s, ’70s and Jimmy Buffett hits in front of a tie-dyed backdrop. One side of the stage was flanked by an open casting call for a full-length feature film that will spoof college films.
Cash Reynolds of Eugene began casting auditions for his aptly titled film, “College!”, which will be filmed locally using many of the locations used in “Animal House”. Reynolds said he wants to spoof “Animal House” and “Old School” in the same way the way “Austin Powers” movies spoofed James Bond.
“We’re kind of ahead of ourselves, trying to do casting now,” Reynolds said. “We thought the Animal House Celebration was a good place to begin.”
Reynolds said he’s partnering with Allen Lubkey, an independent filmmaker from the University, to cast students as characters and also to screen his film there during the
editing process.
“Our goal is simply to get some laughs,” Reynolds said.
Despite low attendance, partygoers spent their time on the dance floor set directly in front of the stage.
Marge Wrightson, who was working the door, said she was at the filming of the infamous “Animal House” parade scene filmed in 1977 on Cottage Grove’s Main Street.
“I was working and I would go out there once in a while to watch the camera crew and everything,” she said. “It was fun because they had to do the scene several times.”
She remembered how, at the first event, a Portland man was recognized for looking the most like John Belushi’s “Animal House” character Bluto Blutarsky.
“He really did look a lot like him,” she said.
The turnout for the event was disappointing but an undeterred Flowerday said he plans on continuing.
“The 30th anniversary will be two years from now,” Flowerday said. “We will definitely have the event in honor of the 30th, and will probably resume next year back in Cottage Grove.”