For Sunday I wrote a story about Howland native Jeff Schaffer, who is the director, co-writer and an executive producer on the HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

The show starring Larry David is getting plenty of attention since its return earlier this month for its 12th and final season.

But this month also marks the 20th anniversary of Schaffer’s sole film directing credit — the 2004 comedy “Eurotrip.”

“Eurotrip” wasn’t a hit. it earned less than $20 million in North America.

“The person who was running DreamWorks, the person who greenlit the movie, was fired before we finished it,” Schaffer said. “When we got back from Prague, it was not a welcoming atmosphere as far as DreamWorks was concerned. They didn’t really want to deal with it and they didn’t.”

However, the raunchy R-rated comedy found an audience on home video and is remembered more fondly than many of the films that outgrossed it two decades ago.

“What’s amazing is, we set out to make a movie like the movies we watched when we were teenagers,” Schaffer said. “You’d go to your friend’s basement, you’d steal yours or their parents’ liquor and you’d watch an R-rated movie. We wanted to make a movie like that and we did. And the funny thing is it became super popular, not from the movie theater, but by people watching it with their friends in their basements and TV rooms. It became a cult hit, it became a success in the exact same way as our inspiration.”

One of the most memorable elements of the movie is the song “Scotty Doesn’t Know,” which was sung — OK, lip-synced — by Matt Damon, who played the lead singer of a punk band who is sleeping with the girlfriend of one of the main characters, who is named Scotty.

Let’s just say Scotty knows by the end of the song.

Last year Rolling Stone did a list of the 50 greatest songs in movies and television performed by fictional bands. “Scotty Doesn’t Know” was No. 2 on the list, behind only The Wonders’ “That Thing You Do.”

No one knows its enduring popularity better than Damon.

“I was talking to Matt Damon the other day,” Schaffer said. “He was like, ‘I was Ripley in ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley,’ I played Private Ryan in ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ I was Will Hunting in ‘Good Will Hunting,’ and I walk down the street and people yell ‘Scotty Doesn’t Know’ at me.”

“Scotty Doesn’t Know” was written and performed by the band Lustre, and Schaffer has a gold record of “Scotty Doesn’t Know” hanging in his office.

“It’s such a catchy song,” Schaffer said. “It survived because it wasn’t outside the story. It actually drove the story early in the movie. It’s so great that song has lived. It’s a really catchy song and a really funny song.”

Schaffer is the only director listed for “Eurotrip” in the film’s credits and on its IMDb page. However, both the script and the director were a collaboration with Alec Berg and David Mandel, whom Schaffer also worked with on “Seinfeld,” the screenplays for “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “The Cat and the Hat” and some of the early seasons of “Curb.”

The Directors Guild of America wouldn’t allow all three of them to share a directing credit, so Schaffer won by the luck of the draw — his name was the one picked out of a hat on the set in Prague by a Czechoslovakian Buddhist production assistant.

Berg and Mandel have done OK for themselves, even without that directing credit. Berg was executive producer / showrunner for HBO’s “Silicon Valley” and “Barry,” while Mandel has two Emmys as executive producer / showrunner for HBO’s “Veep.”

The movie was shot in Czechoslovakia to save money but it made it challenging to recreate an American high school grad party there.

Schaffer told me in 2004, ”Shooting in Prague is a great place for carpentry and set building done cheap, but try finding an American keg or an American tap or those Solo plastic cups they have at every keg party. We kept describing to the prop people what we wanted, and they were looking at us like we’re crazy.”

Schaffer had his parents, Dr. Robert and Ellen Schaffer, ship Cleveland Indians merchandise to Czechoslovakia to decorate one character’s bedroom. The characters graduated from Hudson High School (Schaffer graduated from Western Reserve Academy in Hudson), and there’s even an Eastwood Mall reference in the script.

As someone who grew up on “Animal House,” “Eurotrip” definitely has some of the same appeal and is worth tracking down. Just be prepared to have “Scotty Doesn’t Know” playing in your head for several days after watching.

Andy Gray is the editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com.