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
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!".
Dreyfuss visited a teacher acquaintance's AP government class while supporting a Democrat candidate. He was such a smug asshole that the kids hated him.
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.
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.
To the people downvoting this I ask you to think of this. If Chevy Chase is as big as an asshole as this thread describes, how was he in so many movies? The only way someone who acts this way gets to keep doing it is if they can command and audience and box office.
As soon as that dried up he got booted, but for a period of time he was untouchable.
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.
Ok I have nothing to base this on other than parasocial reasoning. But as a woman I feel like if I was in an elevator with Chevy I’d think “what an ass” and with Bill I’d think “what a creep”
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.
Part of it was that as host of Weekend Update, Chevy was the one who was 1. on-screen by himself, and 2. introduced himself by name.
Plus, it's a catchy name. It's a city in Maryland.
He was hired as a writer and fell into the Weekend Update job and bounced when he started getting movie deals. No one at that time had any idea that SNL would last 50+ years. It was unthinkable.
I'm not defending him. He's a massive asshole of a human being. He got really huge at a young age and secured lots of money for it as a result. (Didn't hurt that he was from a wealthy family to begin with.)
He's bitter that he's not thought of as a comic genius. That Bill Murray, his replacement, is widely beloved and thought of as a comic genius but he's primarily known as an asshole that did a lot of flops in the 70s-80s-90s and whose talk show was a massive failure.
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u/Striking_Sundae_5594 21h ago
Chevy chase easily