Michael O'Donoghue wrote for National Lampoon during the underground humor magazine's 1970s glory days. That led to a writing job on the premiere season of Saturday Night Live in 1975, where he appeared on-camera in some of his own sketches.  (He most famously appeared in the show's first sketch, as an English teacher giving John Belushi strange phrases like "I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverines.") Revered by fans for his oddball and subversive humor, O'Donoghue became a kind of elder statesman for the show. He also wrote the 1988 movie Scrooged, which starred Bill Murray in an update of the Charles Dickens story A Christmas Carol.

Michael O'Donoghue had bit parts in the movies Manhattan (1979, with Woody Allen) and Wall Street (1987, with Michael Douglas)... Another celebrated National Lampoon writer was Douglas Kenney.