There are two well-known facts about Chevy Chase, the now 82-year-old veteran entertainer. The first is that he has been part of some truly transcendent and important comedy over the last 50 years, from the first year of Saturday Night Live to movies like Caddyshack, Fletch, Three Amigos and the Vacation films, to the sitcom Community.
The second fact is that Chase has a reputation as being a tremendous jerk, who has burned all sorts of bridges in the entertainment business, and this is something that has affected his legacy and reputation in a serious way in the last 15 or so years.
I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not is a documentary that debuted on New Year’s Day on CNN and is now available to stream on HBO Max. The film, which features extensive interviews with Chase — many of which show him being a jerk live on camera — lays out the entire story, leaving it to the viewer to judge.
The film was directed by Marina Zenovich, who knows her way around complicated men ― she also made documentaries about Lance Armstrong, Richard Pryor and Roman Polanski.
Unlike that one televised Friar’s Club roast, in which none of Chase’s old friends or contemporaries agreed to participate, some comedy heavy hitters like Dan Aykroyd, Goldie Hawn, Lorne Michaels, and Martin Short. That roast is left out, although we do get a blow-by-blow of his late-night talk show, which lasted mere weeks.
That said, many notable ex-costars are absent, including everyone involved with Community, which infamously fired Chase after racist comments on set. (Jay Chandrasekhar, the Broken Lizard vet who directed episodes of that show, is the one Community figure interviewed.)
Antithesis of Candy
Make no mistake: This isn’t like the John Candy doc last year, which was almost entirely about what a wonderful guy that comedy legend was, and even made clear that his late-career flops were all about Candy agreeing to appear in substandard projects because he didn’t want to let his friends down. Ryan Reynolds, though, appears in both.
Chase really did hurt his relationships with a lot of people, most notably just about all the times he’s returned to Saturday Night Live. In one early ‘80s hosting stint, he made an ill-advised AIDS joke to Terry Sweeney, which is the sort of thing one might be able to pull off when they have a preexisting relationship with someone, but probably not otherwise.
SNL history is so well-documented, in books, podcasts, and documentaries, that everyone has likely heard all these stories numerous times. Near the end, Chase laments why he was left out of the SNL 50th anniversary special, and all I can say is, “Why do you think?”
Chase appears to be suffering from some level of memory loss, which was hinted at when he gave an interview to Marc Maron a couple of years ago, in the interview, when, in a moment of self-awareness, he asked, “Am I a fuck?” He also reveals, close to the end of the doc, that he suffered abuse as a child.
I give credit to the filmmaker for providing an honest look at its subject; the recent Netflix doc on another legend of early SNL, Eddie Murphy, felt the need to omit just about everything potentially controversial. She also declines to let her subject off the hook, even including footage of him being a huge asshole; she neglected to be that tough on Polanski, in either of the docs she made about him.
Chevy Chase has not really been “canceled” in any real sense; the image of him as a comedy legend and huge asshole coexist, sometimes uneasily, in the public mind, but you can still watch all his old movies, shows and sketches. And the documentary creates the impression that this public image is basically accurate.
