The 74-year-old comedy star is sober and ready to work. The problem is nobody wants to work with him.
Chevy Chase is sitting on the porch, outside his home in wooded Westchester County. He takes a drag off a Marlboro and casually mentions that he ran into Donald Glover backstage at âSaturday Night Live.â
This is striking on multiple levels. Chase, one of SNLâs founding fathers, last appeared on the show for its 40th anniversary special in 2015. It wasnât pretty. He was bursting out of his tux, drinking too much and depressed. A cloudy, backstage interview with Carson Daly led Defamer to ask, âIs Chevy Chase okay?â
These days, Chase is sober and about 40 pounds lighter. But he hasnât softened up, and he wasnât about to avoid Glover, even after what the âAtlantaâ star said about him.
Two months earlier, in a New Yorker profile, Glover was asked about working with Chase on NBCâs late sitcom âCommunity.â According to the magazine, Chase, out of envy, tried to throw the younger actor off. Glover said Chase told him, âPeople think youâre funnier because youâre black.â The New Yorker termed the comments âracial cracks.â
Chevy Chase was "Saturday Night Live's" first breakout star, but he fell off the map after the '90s. Then came âCommunityâ and controversy. Now sober and ready to work, no one will hire him. (Erin Patrick O'Connor,Geoff Edgers/The Washington Post)
âI just saw Chevy as fighting time,â Glover told the magazine. âA true artist has to be okay with his reign being over. I canât help him if heâs thrashing in the water. But I know thereâs a human in there somewhere.â
The night the story went up, Chase texted, âThere goes my career.â
He doesnât deny delivering the line â âI could have said itâ â but he denies the interpretation. It was a joke. Chase had been a fan of Gloverâs since they filmed the pilot in 2009. How could anybody think he was racist?
By the time SNL co-creator Lorne Michaels texted Chase an invitation (âyouâre still a legend hereâ) to the season finale in May, the New Yorker thing seemed to have blown over. Then, he ran into Glover, who was doing a cameo in the finale.
âI never saw a guy turn white so fast,â Chevy says.
The line almost sounds like a throwaway, which it is, until you think about how odd it is for Chase to deliver it. Heâs only weeks removed from a potential publicity disaster centered on race, and here he is, reentering the minefield with a reference to Gloverâs skin color.
Chase is a key piece of SNLâs history, whether establishing âWeekend Updateâ or pioneering the path from Studio 8H to Hollywood stardom. When asked what he thinks of the current show, he doesnât hold back, delivering a foul-mouthed appraisal thatâs as unforgiving as his critics. âFirst of all, between you and me and a lamppost, jeez, I donât want to put down Lorne or the cast, but Iâll just say, maybe off the record, Iâm amazed that Lorne has gone so low. I had to watch a little of it, and I just couldnât f------ believe it.â
Maybe off the record? A microphone and digital recorder sit in front of him. He is reminded that SNL is immensely popular, with millions of viewers.
âThat means a whole generation of shitheads laughs at the worst f------ humor in the world,â he says. âYou know what I mean? How could you dare give that generation worse shit than they already have in their lives? It just drives me nuts.â
Danny Pudi, Chevy Chase and Donald Glover in an episode of âCommunity.â (NBC via Getty Images) Chevy Chase with âCommunityâ co-stars David Neher, Joel McHale and Yvette Nicole Brown. (NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
These days, Chase sits at home, waiting for a script to roll in. But his peers are thriving.
Steve Martin, 73, writes musicals, records bluegrass music and tours. David Letterman, 71, travels to India and interviews world leaders on Netflix. Bill Murray, 67, meets a cellist on a plane, and suddenly heâs doing a spoken-word tour backed by a chamber group.
Chase is eager to work. But these days, heâs more likely to be fielding another round of bad press than a promising pitch. The man who revolutionized television in the 1970s, serving as the first breakout star on NBCâs breakout program, âSaturday Night,â who made three of the best comedies of the 1980s â âCaddyshack, âNational Lampoonâs Vacationâ and âFletchâ â and who as recently as 2012 earned raves for his turn on âCommunity,â wonders why he canât get a break.
He has a few theories. His disastrous late-night TV talk show on Fox in 1993, which lasted 29 episodes and earned an F grade from Entertainment Weekly. His move from Hollywood in the mid-â90s to a quiet town in New York to raise his three daughters with his wife, Jayni. Then the general thing that happens when you grow older in show business.
âTheyâre really more about the George Clooneys and people that age,â he says. âI look pretty good for 74. I donât know why I couldnât do a Chevy Chase picture, but it just doesnât happen.â
White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen, left, on the set of âSaturday Nightâ with Chevy Chase, producer Lorne Michaels , right, and other cast members during rehearsal for a 1976 telecast. (AP) âSaturday Night Liveâ alumni Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase joke during taping of âThe Dennis Miller Show,â in Los Angeles in 1992. (Julie Markes/AP)
Chase can be arrogant, unpredictable and mean. He is a masterful put-down artist. He can be blunt or tone-deaf, depending on what he fesses up to, and he doesnât always seem to understand the fine line between comic provocation and publicity disaster.
But Chase can also be hilarious, sensitive and surprisingly supportive. Sometimes, heâs all of these things at once.
At his home, standing in the kitchen, heâs asked about his reputation as he fixes a cup of coffee. Chase seems to be listening intently until you realize heâs doing a sight gag with the top of the milk carton, twisting the cap over-and-over again until you notice it wonât tighten, all with a blank stare worthy of Harpo Marx.
Then he pauses and reflects on his life.
âIâve already done what Iâve done. I canât change anything. And Iâm old. I donât have to worry about what I did anymore. I know who I am. People know who I am who know me. And Iâm proud to be who I am. Because I care about people, I care about feelings. I care about warmth, love. Itâs everything.â
SNL is a particular minefield in the universe of make nice.
âIâd have to say, that after the first two years, it went downhill,â Chase says. âWhy am I saying that? Because I was in it? I guess. Thatâs a horrible thing to say. But certainly I never had more fun. I really loved it and enjoyed it. I didnât see the same fun thing happening to the cast the next year.â
But what about Will Ferrell doing George W. Bush?
âJust not funny. Makes $25 million a picture.â
âI liked Tina. I didnât see what all the folderol was about. She was good.â
âI liked her a lot. She had two things going for her. She had clear-cut chops, and she was pretty, too. But what happened to her? Where did she go?â
âI thought Eddie Murphy was funny. Gumby. I found that funny and people loved that. .â.â. Stevie Wonder, he did well. [Pause.] Itâs not that hard, for Christâs sake. Your skinâs the same color. You just put on some sunglasses and do this.â
He is effusive in his praise of Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd, whom he calls the âfunniest guy on the show, almost the leader,â and also singles out former cast member Dana Carvey.
Carvey, who arrived at SNL a full decade after Chaseâs exit, even remembers getting a call from Chase after his prime-time variety show fizzled in 1996.
âHe was the only person who left a voice mail,â Carvey says. âAnd I hadnât seen him in years. Saying youâre great, youâre brilliant, you will work. He gave me a pep talk out of the blue in a very sweet way.â
The same thing happened to Jim Downey, the legendary SNL writer, when he and Norm Macdonald were fired from âWeekend Updateâ in 1998.
Aykroyd, part of the original SNL cast and his co-star in the 1985 comedy âSpies Like Us,â describes Chase as âone of the sweetest, largest-hearted people, most magnanimous people I know.â
But there is an entire body of work devoted to casting Chase as a nasty, bitter egomaniac who spreads bad cheer whenever heâs within winking distance of a camera.
The primary sources of Chaseâs battered image are the two main documents of SNL 101: 1986âs âSaturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live,â and 2002âs âLive From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.â In both books, Chase is the supremely talented star who couldnât handle the rush of money and fame, ditches SNL after a single season to cash checks, snort coke, and returns every few years to torment the cast. A âmonster,â former cast member Terry Sweeney says of Chaseâs 1985 guest spot. âThe worst host,â adds Will Ferrell of Chaseâs eighth and final one, in 1997.
Those books are the anecdotal tapeworms which led to Chaseâs bad-boy reputation, including Gawkerâs âHeâs Not Chevy, Heâs an Asshole: A History of Chevy Chaseâs Horrific Behavior,â Uproxxâs âChevy Chaseâs 4-Step Plan for Getting Your Workplace Staff to Hate You,â and, just this past July, an essay in the London Telegraph that began with the line: âBill Cosby is the most hated comedian in America. But if you were looking for a runner-up, Chevy Chase has to be in with a shout.â
The repurposers donât bother reaching out to their target. They revel in his misdeeds. In an online chat, Max Read, who wrote the âHeâs Not Chevyâ item in Gawker in 2012, thanks James Andrew Miller, co-author of âLive from New Yorkâ with Tom Shales, for being his main source.
âWhatâs the best Chevyâs-an-asshole story youâve heard,â Read says, and then asks, âand do you have any theories about why the guy is such an asshole?â
Sweeney, Miller replies, told him a couple of stories that will make you âcarsick.â The why part? He doesnât address it. In a phone interview, Miller said he doesnât know the reason behind Chaseâs behavior.
âWith Chevy,â he says, âweâre talking about one of the more psychologically complex actors of the last 40 years.â
Chevy Chase in 1948 with his brother Ned. His mother, he says, gave him the black eye. (Family photo) Caley, Cydney, Chevy and Emily Chase in their home in Bedford, N.Y., in 1996. (Family photo)
There has been one serious attempt to explain Chase. A little over a decade ago, Rena Fruchter, a classical pianist who had written a book on his late friend Dudley Moore, persuaded Chase to sit for a series of interviews. She then wrote 2007âs âIâm Chevy Chase ⦠and Youâre Not.â On the cover, the book calls itself the âauthorized biography.â
âShe had the sense of humor of an egg timer,â Chase says.
Chase is sitting in his favorite spot, on the living room couch next to a stack of books that include David Mamet, Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy. Thereâs a script by an unknown screenwriter. The part heâs being pitched includes all of three lines. He wonders why his manager sent it through.
Emily, 29, the youngest of his three daughters, is in the kitchen, working on a laptop. Like all Chases, she listens to her father talking to a reporter and grows worried. He peppers his stories with what most celebrities save for their memoirs or just never mention. About this guy being a bully, that one having no talent. Sometimes, Chase will check himself. Youâre not going to print that? heâll say, but then heâll delivers a distinctively Chasian laugh, a slightly throatier version of Clark Griswoldâs cackle, and wave his hand in the air. Oh, it doesnât matter. Youâre just going to write what you want.
The Fruchter book is poorly written but revealing. Chase wouldnât talk to Miller or Shales about what he went through growing up, telling them âyou have no sense at all â nor would I share with you what my childhood was like.â But he and family members offer a heart-wrenching account of those years to Fruchter. This portrait runs counter to the one presented to the public for years by unsympathetic observers, a group that casts Chase as the âWaspy golden boy,â as former SNL writer Anne Beatts snickers in âLive From New York.â
Chaseâs parents divorced early. He loved his father, Ned, an influential book editor and one of the funniest people he ever met. But he lived with his mother, Cathalene, who would wake him up in the middle of the night and slap him repeatedly in the face without explanation. Once, at 14, he got into trouble at school. She locked him in the basement for several days, with only a pitcher to use as a bathroom.
âI was shocked,â says Paul Shaffer, a close friend who has known Chase since Shaffer joined the SNL band in 1975. âI thought he had gone to Bard, and it turns out it was the school of hard knocks.â
In a society desperate for confession and redemption, the Fruchter book offered Chase a perfect out. He could peg everything â his occasional outbursts, his bad career decisions, his battles with painkillers â to the horrendous way he was treated. Except Chase would prefer the book just disappear.
âChevy Chase hiding in a closet from his mother?â he says. âGood God. Take me for who I am now.â
Jayni Chase, his wife of 36 years, thinks the difficult childhood is an important piece of understanding Chase. It drives how he treats people, and also how he responds when he feels attacked or ignored. The pain heâs felt from being hurt over the years â by friends who donât call, by former collaborators who blast him, by Will Ferrell quotes â has made him grow more cynical and critical.
âChevy is an abused kid,â Jayni says. âOne of the things that most of us have is, we know that our moms loved us, and some of us are lucky enough to be able to say that our fathers also loved us .â.â. thereâs layers of lucky and grateful, and things that give you a good start in life, and a foundation and self-confidence, and give you a capacity to live without fear. And Chevy doesnât have those things.â
There are times when Chase pretends he has no idea an entire oeuvre of Chevy Chase bashing exists. Heâll claim heâs never heard of Gawker or hasnât read âLive From New York.â At other moments, heâll admit that the swaggering put-down artist he has often played, on and off camera, might in fact be the armored manifestation of the terrified, confused kid who was told heâs no good. That kid may have just turned 74, but heâs still got ears.
âI guess the part they donât write about is where Iâm lying in bed, hurt by that, not going to sleep but thinking over and over, why would somebody write that? Iâm highly sensitive. I donât know it in my insensitive self.â
A New York City bus ad featuring a gap-toothed Chevy Chase to promote the premiere of his Fox Network talk show in 1993. (Marty Lederhandler/AP)
Six summers ago, at his daughter Cydneyâs wedding, Chase turned to Lorne Michaels and told him he was ready. He hadnât been back to host since 1997. It was time.
âHe said no,â Chase recounts. â âCome on, Lorne.â âNo.â âWhy?â âYouâre too old.â I said, âAnd Helen Mirrenâs pretty and young?â I didnât get it. Youâre too old? Weâd had many people older than me hosting. What did he mean? Iâve never understood what he meant. Because Iâd be very good, and it would be fun for an audience to see me doing that.â
It clearly stings. Itâs why heâs bringing it up six years later to a reporter heâs just met.
âItâs like denying that I was the guy who made this show really go that first year,â he says. âItâs like taking all that away from me.â
When you talk to Chase about SNL, it inevitably circles back to 1975. It is the moment unresolved, when everything was possible and still in front of him. Before, he had kicked around for years, writing for the Smothers Brothers and performing with National Lampoon. By the time SNL premiered, Chase was 32, older than fellow cast members Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and Gilda Radner. Then he exploded. SNL went on the air Oct. 11. By Christmas, New York magazine put Chase on the cover, calling him a potential successor to the king of late night, Johnny Carson.
Martin Short, who last starred alongside Chase in 1986âs âThree Amigos,â remembers a story his friend Gilda Radner told him.
âShe went to Florida, and her 84-year-old mother said, âYou really know him?â Thatâs how big this guy was.â
Chase had all the tools. He could play piano and drums, and in college, at Bard, had been in a band with a pair of classmates, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who would go on to form Steely Dan. He could do physical comedy, voices and improvisation. He was a completely different kind of TV star, not interested in stand-up, drawn instead to the slapstick genius of Chaplin, the subversive absurdity of Ernie Kovacs and the comic poetry of Charles Marion Russell. And boy, was he good-looking.
âComedy had always been funny people who were, like, goofy-looking, and they were kind of loud,â says Downey, who would join SNL as a writer in 1976. âChevy was the first person who ever did that room-temperature soothing voice where youâd go, âWait a minute. What did he just say?â â
Matters of state engage the attention of the "president," Chevy Chase, and host Buck Henry, who plays the president's press secretary, in a 1976 SNL sketch. (Associated Press)
âWeekend Updateâ introduced Chaseâs name to the masses. But he played many other characters: The mumbling âland shark,â a moustached drooler and clumsy Gerald Ford, a different kind of impression in that it was done without trying to make him look at all like the president. His colleagues at SNL were as impressed by the fake commercial for âTriopenin,â meant to play off the advent of childproof pill bottles.
âIt just showed Chevyâs hands,â says Laraine Newman, another original cast member. âAnd he is acting and getting laughs with just his hands.â
Still, there were tensions even before Chase left SNL. Belushi, in particular, grew frustrated with all the attention directed at Chase. And when he actually decided to go, there was no sheet cake.
Time didnât heal those conflicts. When Chase returned to host two years later, feelings were so raw, he actually got into a fistfight backstage with Bill Murray, the cast member who had replaced him.
âHe got a bad break,â Michaels says. âIt wasnât the way I felt. I understood what he was going through â one, because I was his friend, and also because it was a battle, not between us, but a battle for what the show was going to be. Was it going to be âThe Chevy Chase Showâ with these people, or what we set out to make, which was an ensemble show?â
Chevy Chase attends the SNL 40th anniversary special in February 2015. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Chase, back on his couch months after he first brought it up, contemplates the snub at Cydneyâs wedding. He wonders whether Michaels still holds a grudge for his exit.
âI think this was pure regret and anger,â Chase says. âRegret that he didnât keep me there and anger that I chose to leave.â
âBut I was never angry,â Michaels says in a phone interview.
It is the only time he raises his voice when discussing Chase, and not out of anger, but exasperation. Michaels says he knows the pressure on Chase then. NBC wanted him for prime time. His girlfriend at the time told him he had to move to California. There was the thing about the next Johnny Carson.
âWe must have discussed this 50 times,â Michaels says. â I know it was a huge deal in both of our lives, but I understood what he was doing. I really did. Also I believe, most importantly, that he loved the show just as much as I did.â
The wedding incident, as told by Michaels, is not nearly as harsh as Chaseâs version.
âThey were literally waiting for him to walk Cydney down the aisle. And he said, âIâm ready to host again.â All I was saying was, we have to stop this discussion now. Youâre old and annoying. This is a big moment in your life. Iâm here for you. Danny [Aykroyd] is performing the ceremony. Weâre your friends; weâre here. Youâre walking your daughter down the aisle.â
Michaels has his own idea why Chaseâs image has suffered over the years.
âChevy does shock stuff, which is maybe more forgivable in a 25-year-old or 30-year-old than in a 50-year-old or 60-year -old,â he says.
But Michaels also thinks much of the reporting on Chase has been unfair. Take his 1997 hosting turn on SNL. In the book, Miller and Shales talk about how Chaseâs nastiness created a kind of cast revolt. Michaels, the book stated, was mortified by his old friendâs behavior and issued a Chevy Chase ban.
âThatâs idiotic,â he says. âNone of it was particularly shocking to me or upsetting to me. Itâs just generational.â
He points to how much society as changed since the burst of chaotic energy that sparked the early â70s alternative comedy scene and eventually led to SNL.
âWeâre coming out of Vietnam and Watergate and the draft and New York in collapse, and it was just a different, tougher time, and people said things that were more provocative, and it was tolerated,â he says. âWeâre not in that time anymore.â
Perhaps more than anyone in comedy, Michaels understands how to stay relevant. He is just a year younger than Chase, and yet he oversees SNL, âThe Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallonâ and âLate Night with Seth Meyers.â
âThe only thing that I know consistently, but as a universal thing in show business, is that itâs always, always about reinvention, and I think, you have to get offstage so you can come back and make another entrance,â he says. âIt has to be fresh, and everybody who has sustained and been around, knows that.â
Chevy Chase with his family at the pre-premiere party for âA.I. Artificial Intelligenceâ at the Remi Atrium in New York City in 2001. (Scott Gries/Getty Images)
There was a moment, not long ago, that Chase made a proper but short-lived comeback. He signed on to do NBCâs âCommunityâ in 2009. At the time, he said that he was semiretired but that he had been blown away by creator Dan Harmonâs writing. In the show, which also featured Glover, Joel McHale and Alison Brie, Chase was cast as Pierce Hawthorne, an aging millionaire with a nasty streak and an insecurity complex the size of Pittsburgh.
Critics praised Chaseâs return (âfarcically loopy and delightfulâ) and he seemed thrilled, in interviews, to have agreed to the gig. Then came the Season 3 wrap party.
There had been tension behind the scenes. Chase felt worn out, frustrated by Harmonâs lack of organization, which created long waits on the set and constant changes to the scripts. He had begun to dislike his character. Harmon didnât appreciate the pushback. At the party, he led a shout of âf--- you, Chevyâ to, as he states in an email, âlet the cast and crew know how much I valued their patience and professionalism.â At that point, Chase, Jayni and their daughter, Caley, left the party.
Back home, Chevy left Harmon an angry voice mail, criticizing him for embarrassing him in front of his family and calling the show âjust a mediocre f------ sitcom. I want people to laugh, and this isnât funny.â
What happened next would be just the latest example of a pattern Caley had watched play out over the years. When somebody is hurt by her father, âthey run away and tell other people what an asshole he isâ or âthey immediately call the Hollywood Reporter or TMZ.â
Harmonâs response to the voice mail was bizarre for somebody in charge of a successful sitcom. He played it out loud to a crowd at a small theater. Somebody taped it, Chaseâs rant went viral, and Gawker had another anecdote.
âThere would be other problems on âCommunity,â as when Chase dropped the N word at a table read to, he said, explain why he felt his character was too racist.â (He says a legal agreement with NBC keeps him from saying more about it.) By now, Caley, who was living with her father, watched a glass of wine become a bottle, and then the wine turn to vodka. She stopped talking to her father until his doctors told her he had alcohol cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart muscles from drinking.
Chevy Chase with a guitar at his father and stepmother's East Hampton house about 1960. (Family photo)
âAt that point, I had given up and I assumed he would die soon,â Caley says.
When rehab failed, Jayni wrote him a note that read, in part, âI do not want to divorce you, but I canât watch you hurt yourself anymore.â But she admits she couldnât leave.
Finally, about 18 months ago, for reasons Chase canât necessarily explain, he walked out on the porch, took a final swig from his vodka bottle and decided to quit.
He no longer wants to be semiretired, which is why he went to New Orleans last year to make âThe Last Laugh,â a Netflix film scheduled to come out next year. In it, he plays an aging manager desperate not to retire who pushes Richard Dreyfuss, a long retired comic, back on the road.
As soon as Chase arrived on set, director Greg Pritikin took him aside.
âHe said, âyou know, I was very nervous, because you have a reputation,â Chase says. âI said, âI canât believe that.â
And, in November, Chase flew out to Los Angeles and the Television Hall of Fame.
The original cast of SNL was set to be inducted. If there were lingering bad feelings, they were gone. Chase walked to the podium and praised Belushi and Radner for taking risks and being brilliant. He complimented the cast members standing behind him, including Aykroyd, Newman, Jane Curtin and Garrett Morris.
Then, looking up at the ceiling, his eyes half-closed as if to transport him to when he had tousled hair, a mischievous smile and a license to say anything, Chase grew emotional.
âI canât tell you, to be up there, on that stage, doing that stuff,â he paused. âOh, God, it was fun. Iâll tell you, Iâd do it again in a minute.â
Chevy Chase at his home in Mount Kisco, N.Y., in December. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
About this story Story by Geoff Edgers. Video by Erin O'Connor. Designed by Lizzie Hart.
padrock on September 19th, 2018 at 18:56 UTC »
I'm picturing him reading about Mel Gibson's new movie, hands shaking as he lowers the newspaper in rage
Shinygreencloud on September 19th, 2018 at 18:38 UTC »
He's spent years carefully culturing his image to seem like an asshole who is difficult to work with.
I doubt he wants to throw all those years of work out the window.
Pod-People-Person on September 19th, 2018 at 18:31 UTC »
Well, due to his rep of being an asshole, it's no wonder.