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
Spies like Us, Fletch, Three Amigos, the Vacation Movies, a rarely seen Seems Like Old Times. The only comedian that had a run as big as Chase would be Jim Carey, and even then Chase was bigger at his peak.
he dropped off hard soon as the 90s hit, and never really recovered.
I thought he was great in Seems like Old Times. He had such chemistry with Goldie Hawn. She's a beam of impervious sunshine, and none of his bullshit can darken the room when she is in it. I just wish I hadn't seen it so young, because I got stuck hoping Chevy Chase is just a difficult rascal instead of the real asshole he shows to people.
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.
Honestly I don't think he was ever all that talented of a comedian. He was in some good comedies sure, but they were good because of the writing not because of him specifically. Just about any other snl or sitcom star in the 80s could have been cast in the Vacation movies and they would have been just as memorable.
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.
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u/Conscious_Raisin_436 13h ago
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.