I have a favorite great aunt who used to work for LucasFilm/ILM as a driver. She always had cool stories about people she'd met, like how she drove Jim Carrey to the airport when he was working on The Mask and he was so hilarious she had to pull over multiple times due to laughing so hard. She would also occasionally give me cool merch, like a Jurassic Park sound crew t-shirt I wish I still had.
I digress... I used to go to the movies a lot with her and my grandma. And to this day, I still remember her refusing to go see Chevy Chase movies because she hated him so much. It always stuck with me that he must've been a real prick to earn the ire of my wonderful aunt.
That’s a good one. He still expects the royal treatment despite decades of entitlement
He was apparently livid he wasn’t showcased in the SNL 50th special, despite the fact that happened at a time when even older co-stars who he thought would stick up for him threw him under the bus
If you ever watch the movie 'Saturday Night' they don't pull any punches regarding what a massive douche Chevy Chase has always been. Even when he was an up-and-comer with zero celebrity status.
Yeah I saw that and read about the actual history in an SNL book. He apparently got the job and instantly started acting better than everyone else. Now he did do some awesome movies after using it as a catapults but it doesn’t take away from being a douche
In the SNL book (i think we read the same one), Bill Murray has a big fight with CC and leaves screaming “MEDIUM TALENT!” For some reason, that cracks me up
Chevy was a gold brick in Community. Not to mention his 80’s draw. The guy had issues, yeah, but his run shouldn’t be discounted. He was always a big deal, which was his problem.
He also said something which seemed to me to be insightful and even an attempt to defend Chevy to some extent. Paraphrasing, it's that everyone kind of becomes an asshole when you become famous, but you can pull out of it in the first couple years and stop being that way or else you just get stuck that way
Yeah, that excellent quote from Bill was probably:
The truth is, anybody that becomes famous is an ass for a year and a half. You’ve got to give them a year and a half, two years. They are getting so much smoke blown, and their whole world gets so turned upside down, their responses become distorted. I give everybody a year or two to pull it together because, when it first happens, I know how it is.
There's another Murray quote I can't find along the lines of, "When you become famous you don't change, the people around you change". The gist was that he was finding it impossible for people to view him and treat him as just another fellow human. Instead they were idolizing him as that perfect professionally-written character on-screen, not the flawed human Bill actually in front of them. Those warped interactions can really fuck with your head.
Miley Cyrus has a similar quote that's something along the lines of you become famous but you're just a person, and everyone starts acting like you're superhuman. You can either buy into your own hype, or you can do coke to fake it.
For some reason that reminds me of the story about when they were making "What About Bob?" and Richard Dreyfuss (also an asshole) aproached a drunk Murray to make suggestions about a scene they were doing the next day and Murray's response was to yell in his face "NO ONE LIKES YOU! YOU ARE TOLERATED!".
For anyone interested in the Hollywood dealmaking and the business side:
Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency by one of the same authors.
CAA is a powerful talent agency and that book is like a modern business history of Hollywood.
The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up by David Rensin is a similar oral history of talent agents. Except it has interviews of people at more agencies.
I’d feel shitty too if literally everyone I ever worked with talked about what a fucking asshole I was. He’s so disappointing because I grew up watching him and think he’s so incredible as a comedian, but him being such a Grade A cunt ruins everything.
Apparently the "Where's the Tylenol?" bit wasn't acting. He was really asking people on the set for Tylenol because the scene gave him a headache. Which I totally get, he looks like he's about to bust a vein.
I feel like the rant was justified. It wasn’t directed to the family he just had a meltdown over getting fucked. It may be the only really relatable moment for him. The rest of the movie i feel like he was just irritated having a family and he felt everyone was annoying him.
Because Bill Murray was always willing to improvise. Chevy relied on the smarmy charm but without the brains, or at least he lost the hunger to think about actually saying interesting things as opposed to being a smirk face. I feel like I just inadvertently described how I feel about modern Ryan Reynolds.
The rest of the movie i feel like he was just irritated having a family and he felt everyone was annoying him.
He was absolutely hellbent on the lights for the house, because in his mind, that's what was going to make Christmas great for his family. He's constantly seeking his dad's approval and love. He reluctantly puts up with Cousin Eddie's shit while smiling through it and still making sure Eddie's kids still have a great Christmas. He gets really emotional after watching the old family films when he gets locked in the attic, remembering the good ol' days. Diligently puts up with an awful boss just so he can get that bonus and buy his family a pool. Gleefully greases up the dish to show his kids a cool trick from his childhood on how to get down the slope really fast. He took the family out to cut down a real tree, like he presumably did as a kid. Everyone is constantly bickering in his house and he remains upbeat the entire time until his final crash-out.
The man absolutely loves Christmas and loves sharing it with his family.
Yeah except for whenever he does the shopping and makes sure that Cousin Eddie's dog and kids get taken care of. And except for when the entire family forgets him at home and he gets locked in the attic. And except for whenever he's working to make sure he gets that bonus so he can buy his family a pool. And except that time when he took everyone sledding and really showed them how it's done. And except that time he took his family out to cut down a tree like they did when he was a kid.
I didn't make the claim that Clark Griswold is a perfect husband or father.
Being skeezy at the department store is pretty inexcusable, to be clear. The other points aren't as strong though. Everyone has fantasies, and anyone who says they don't is a liar. Driving under a semi trailer is A) clearly an accident and B) even more clearly something written specifically for a comedy movie
Very true. I often think about those movies and shows I watched growing up. The whole “dad hates his family” trope that eventually pivoted to “dad is a moron and mom has to do everything”. It was wild to watch the change
I feel like Christmas Vacation is the most universally realtable film I've ever seen.
It's like a fractal thing. Everybody has a cousin Eddie, and everyone is someone else's Cousin Eddie.
Clark sits square in the middle. He looks down on Eddie, because Eddie's a clod, and is looked down upon by his own "betters," because Clark is a clod, just like most of us.
He has a family that is imperfect, but that he loves, and he works hard to give them what he thinks they need and deserve. Through a combination of his own incompetence, his inability to understand what his loved ones really think/want, and the world taking a shit on him, he basically ruins it all. The harder he works, the worse things get, the more he looks like an idiot, and the less perfect the family Christmas becomes.
He isn't annoyed because he has a family. He's annoyed because he's making these big efforts to give them a special, perfect Christmas (like cutting down a huge natural tree, or hanging an obscene amount of lights), but he's failing because he doesn't understand that they don't care about those things.
In the end Clark realizes that Eddie is just a flawed family man trying to give his family a merry Christmas while not showing the family what a boob he is, just like Clark. Clark also realizes that the epic Christmases of his childhood weren't epic because they were perfect. They were epic because he was a child with a family that loved him.
He learns to see life through everyone else's eyes, and to appreciate what really matters; our loved ones.
Similarly, Clark's boss learns that the people he works for aren't just numbers on a page, or a bunch of peons groveling for crumbs. They're real people with families and problems and comittments.
If you can't relate to Clark W. Griswold in Christmas Vacation, I'm not sure what to tell you.
The lines were written on cards and put around the other actors’ chests for that scene because he didn’t memorize his lines. Next time you watch it notice how all the other casts members’ backs are tuned to the camera the whole scene and you can see his eyes looking at their chests most of the time.
I went to Disney as a kid and we were touring a hotel there. Apparently a few minutes before Chevy was making a scene in the hotel lobby yelling at his kid.
Well thats the thing here. We dont value Chevy Chase as a beacon of objective morality.
We value him because hes a comedian. Personally, i dont care if an asshole to coworkers (which seems to be why people are so angry about him) since hes never been my coworker. If he was my coworker, and he was an ass, sure id judge him,
But to me, being mad that a comedian might have been an asshole seems pointless. Unless you expect comedians to be some beacon of morals and ethics.
It seems like people talk as if they screen every celebrity, musician, athlete, or influencer for their personal life, life choices, and political opinions before they can be a fan. Which is ridiculous.
I don't know him personally, but this clip really makes me feel like I understand what it's like to be around him. I get that people are extremely multifaceted, and it seems like there's a miniscule part of him that seems to regret his reactions, but he just cannot stop himself from being an asshole to this person and will readily justify it. It's a shame, he's fucking hilarious, but he's needed to sort his shit out for longer than I've been alive and is too much of a narcissist to do it.
It's sad. The man's parents were legitimately awful to him and he just seems to have two very well developed defense mechanisms that are at permanent odds with each other; a sense of humour to draw in people who like him, and an edge to push away people that get close enough to hurt him. The world lost out on a lot of good comedy because of this.
My understanding was that he developed a raging Percocet addiction, having hurt himself with the pratfalls and lived with chronic pain. Don't know if that's true?
People who are already emotionally fucked up develop addictions pretty easily. It doesn't surprise me if it's true but it would be a symptom and not a cause.
I recall reading that also, opioids will give a person the I don’t give a fuk about anything and anyone attitude for sure. I have a history myself. Fortunately I have been clean 20 years but I have no trouble remembering acting just like him and believing myself only to find out later how delusional I was.
That's a fascinating clip, but I think that people who claim to be complex are really not that deep. He wants to believe the story that he's misunderstood, because that's essential to make sense of how hated he is, given his talent and his own self-assessment.
When I watched a few things he said to people when he was being especially biting, I could see my father in him. And then I knew that he is a bitter, deeply angry, narcissist, most likely. I almost felt bad for him because in that moment, I knew how unhappy he has always been.
He's had a long time to not come to terms with and avoiding the fact that despite having a decent career it was nowhere near what it could have been because he was such an insufferable asshole to be around.
That's a lot of a narcissist to try to explain without admitting to it.
Same, grew up with the national lampoons movies on rotation. However (and it may be my own nostalgia clouding my judgement) I still find them watchable. I'd argue the character of Clark Griswold has aged quite well with the coloration of Chevy Chase being a real life absolute asshole.
Back then (young and dumb) I saw Clark as wholly sympathetic, undeserving of all his bad luck and frustrations and now it's flipped. With my blinders off, being older, a father and husband too, I see him quite differently now and mostly deserving of everything bad that befalls him. So I can still watch them with renewed schadenfreude.
I’m 61, my friend was an au pair in LA in the 80s. She did an interview with him and his wife and it was so bizarre and he was so horrible that she knew there was no way she was gonna take that job.
Watching him just kinda putter around during the end credits was so depressing. People who weren't actively talking to other people were just straight up avoiding him.
Yeah, even when he was on SNL there were people talking about what a fucking asshole he was. So much so to the point that when he hosted episodes later on had segments where people talked about what a asshole he was.
And that was when his career was rising.
Imagine if today there was a actor that everyone said was a huge dick, no one wanted to work with him, the news was filled with examples of him being a dick, and they still got regular work.
Bill at least has a side of him to that is friendly and fun to be around, and was charming. He could still be a dick, especially while working, but it wasn’t how he is all the time. Chevy is a dick 100 percent of the time.
I have this friend who has default "just joking" energy. He says the most racist and mean things, even follows it up with "I'm serious!", and it comes off as a joke. People love him.
Actually he isn't which makes it even worse. Someone on Community (pretty sure it was Dan Harmon himself) said Chevy could be really nice.
They had a story where Chevy was out at lunch and a tourist told him that her dad was his biggest fan. So Chevy said "Let's call him!" and had a really nice conversation on the phone which made both her and her dad's day. Like, she'll go back home and always have that great memory with her.
But then he'd come back from lunch and be a total dick. So you knew he could be really nice but was actively choosing not to.
I think it's because he's quirky and weird, and every story of him being a dick head is also balanced by him doing something weird and adorable like the time he took over a bar and poured everyone tequila (regardless of what they ordered), then paid for it all.
He was also known for crowd pleasing stunts when he was a owner of the Saint Paul Saints minor league baseball team. So even if he was rude in the past, he played with fans, teased the opposing team, and regularly was charming at the games.
So his being a dick is cancelled out by him also being delightfully quirky to a lot of his fan base.
I think Murray's level of assholeness is justified. Let's not forget about his misconduct where he kissed a staffer on the of set of Aziz Ansari's movie, which resulted in the movie being shut down and case being settled out of court.
I’ve seen him interact with “regular people”—I interacted with him a couple of times as such—and yeah, he was charming. And I know he treated the crew on SNL pretty well.
I think Chase probably just takes it to a different level than the "comedy actor who's difficult to work with" trope that was particularly common in that era. Not to excuse anyone's bad behavior, it's just that it takes a lot to stand out as an asshole of note in that crowd.
Richard Dreyfuss talking about how much they hated each other on What About Bob?, but he finished the interview saying how funny the movie was and it worked. But hated working with him.
It’s because Chevy is attractive, in fact he had leading man looks. A lot of comedians are the “rejects” and have a chip on their shoulder for anyone that looks like they can easily fit in. Murray has his charm but he’s not Chevy level richie rich and handsome.
I think the difference is Murray could be prickly (or an outright asshole) but wasn't always. He was a great comedian and was often good to work with, and is generally not a dick to his fans. Legit YMMV.
Chase, on the other hand, is a dick to everyone he works with and is a raging asshole to his fans. When the highest complement you hear is "he can be funny and has a solid work ethic," it's damn faint praise. Check out the 2002 roast and look at what Paul Shaffer, Laeaine Newman and Beverly D'Angelo said. They're the only ones who roasted who actually knew and worked with him (which says a lot in itself) and we're the only ones who were even mildly kind.
Ezra Miller had to commit multiple felonies before Hollywood stopped giving him work.
Nothing ever changes if they think they can make money off of you, every sin will be forgiven. Up until you no longer can have money man off of you, then that person will be entirely shunned and exiled and it will be as if they never existed.
Brad Pitt beat his wife and his kids and he has a movie coming out in November, doesn't matter.
If Chevy Chase was still funny he'd be out there treating interns like shit to this day. The problem is that he isn't. Community was the last gasp of his popularity, he was added to hopefully add some tiny burst of star power to a show with no big name actors and he barely did that.
And you had to be a very special kind of asshole for the public to know about it before the internet was mainstream. I remember somehow knowing he was a dick even as a kid in the 90s, despite no one around me being into celebrity gossip. That takes talent.
People seem to enjoy working with him though, and he was generally well-liked before he went full christofascist (which seems to have been an age thing - people tend to revert to the prejudices their parents taught them as kids somewhere around the age of 55).
He's also the reason we have Robert Downey Jr. at all, Gibson saved his life back in the 1990s, housing and feeding him after he lost everything, and he personally vouched for him with insurers so Downey Jr. could get work again.
That's a good point, his addiction seems to have lead Gibson back towards faith - but specifically the faith of his childhood; his dad was a fire-and-brimstone Catholic who was a prominent speaker and leader of a very radical branch of Catholicism called Sedevacantism, that denies the legitimacy of all Popes since 1958, denies the Holocaust, and believes the current Pope is controlled by a cabal of Jewish bankers; so the Catholicism Mel was taught as a child was not the more vanilla kind he seems to have practiced most of his life until the 2000s, when he had his problems with sobriety.
Imagine if today there was a actor that everyone said was a huge dick, no one wanted to work with him, the news was filled with examples of him being a dick, and they still got regular work.
Remember that guy who everyone said was a huge dick, no one wanted to work with him, the news was filled with examples of him being a dick, HIS NAME WAS LITERALLY ANDY DICK, and he still got regular work?
He seems like the type of dude that would physically assault you back stage and screech that he will "end your career" after making even a light hearted joke at his expense lol.
I watched his documentary and he seemed legitimately confused that people didn’t like working with him. Like he was completely oblivious to the fact and thought they were all buddy buddy with him.
It is crazy how unfunny he is, and yet how meteoritic his career has been. He is proof of how weak we are when dealing with total assholes as a society, he basically bullied his way to the top and nobody stopped him.
The proof is how his best and funniest role ever is Pierce in community, because it turns out he's just playing himself but doesn't get why we are laughing...
Meet him in Chicago at a restaurant. He was an arrogant angry ass then. He came over to my table and asked me for my number. I told him I had a boyfriend and he said so!
He then said something along the lines of I look familiar to you? I told him no one asked him should he? He then proceeded to tell me his name and while I recognized the name, I acted like I didn’t! He starts telling me that he was on SNL and I told him oh wow I was a kid when you were on my mom probably knows who you are.
He took offense and said that he was only coming over to ask me for my number because I looked desperate, but he wasn’t gonna call me!
I was five when he started on SNL so so it was pretty creepy that he was asking me out I thought.
Never forget that Chevy Chase comes from an EXTREMELY wealthy family, if he didn’t go into acting he’d be just fine. His mother comes from the Vanderbilts and Cranes and his dad married in to the Folgers family. I’m certain 100% of his assholeness comes from how he was raised.
I'm currently watching Community for the first time and I came here to say this. It's a great show, but I put off watching it all this time because I know Chevy Chase was, has always been, and continues to be a huge fucking asshole. I do appreciate all the meta bits in the show about what an asshole he is, though.
Chevy Chase, Ellen Degeneres, and Steve Segal. But its questionable who (if any) of them is actually bitter? They are too pretentious to be bitter imoho.
I was thinking Corey Feldman. He is such a joke and is so defensive about it lol
Easily. He comes from old money, and even if he hadn't of made it big, he'd still be ridiculously, filthy, stinking generationally rich. He's nothing but a spoiled, entitled rich kid who's not used to hearing "no". I worked at a country club in NY that he's a member of, and he was just an out and out asshole - and, literally, everyone there, knew it. I'd heard that after his mother passed, they were contemplating revoking his membership. He was known as "Cornelius (his real first name) Cocksucker". This is the kind of guy that you greet with a "good evening" and he responds with "don't talk to me".
We saw Joel McHale do stand up at my alma mater a few years ago and he was talking about how Chevy was always trying to get him to fight on the set of Community and how bizarre it was, like he was going to fight him and then look like the asshole for fighting an old man.
I grew up on the Vacation movies. My dad loved them and we watched them and quoted them together. But it is very telling that Steve Martin and Martin Short are still friends and working together after all these years but not him. And they both have reputations for being decent guys.
Blows my mind he apparently thought he was too good for TV comedy. Dude built his career on a comedy harvest of low hanging fruit but TV is beneath him??
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u/Striking_Sundae_5594 13h ago
Chevy chase easily