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Brian McConnachie

Brian McConnachie has built a career in which acting and comedy writing are closely intertwined. Born in Garrison on December 23, 1942, he emerged as one of the main writers for National Lampoon during the early 1970s, authoring and co-authoring numerous pieces over four years. That grounding in absurdist comedy would remain a defining thread through his later work. In 1978, McConnachie joined the writing staff of Saturday Night Live, reuniting with friends Bill Murray and John Belushi from The National Lampoon Radio Hour. His sketches for SNL included “Cochise at Oxford” and “Name the Bats,” and he shared in an Emmy nomination for the show’s writing team in 1979. He later joined SCTV, where he was part of the writing team that won an Emmy Award in 1982. McConnachie’s television writing also reached younger audiences through 15 episodes of Noddy and 18 episodes of Shining Time Station. Decades later, he wrote “The Fabulous Faker Boy,” an episode from the 24th season of The Simpsons. His interest in magazine comedy continued with The American Bystander, first launched after his time at SCTV and relaunched in 2015 with Michael Gerber and Alan Goldberg. As an actor, McConnachie may be most immediately familiar to movie fans as Drew Scott in Caddyshack. He also became a recurring presence in the films of Woody Allen, appearing in seven: Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Don’t Drink the Water, Deconstructing Harry, Celebrity, Small Time Crooks and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Those supporting appearances form the screen-facing side of a career shaped just as strongly by writers’ rooms, comedy magazines and an enduring taste for the absurd.