Chevy Chase bashes 'Saturday Night Live,' adds that he's ready to work again
We know what Chevy Chase is not doing on Saturday nights.
Now 74, Chase, the breakout star of Saturday Night Live’s inaugural season of 1975-76, called out his former show for not being funny in a new interview with the Washington Post. He said the show started going “downhill” after the first two years, when he’d left the show in the dust to make ’80s blockbusters including Fletch, National Lampoon’s Vacation, and Caddyshack.
“First of all, between you and me and a lamppost, jeez, I don’t want to put down Lorne [Michaels] or the cast,” Chase told the Post, “but I’ll just say, maybe off the record, I’m amazed that Lorne has gone so low. I had to watch a little of it, and I just couldn’t f***ing believe it.”
In case you misunderstood what he was saying — and it was pretty clear — he restated it another way.
“That means a whole generation of s***heads laughs at the worst f***ing humor in the world,” Chase added. “You know what I mean? How could you dare give that generation worse s*** than they already have in their lives? It just drives me nuts.”
(In a separate interview with another SNL alum, Norm Macdonald, on Netflix’s Norm Macdonald Has a Show, Chase even went in on the way people today deliver the big “Live from New York” line at the top of the show. “Anyway, that’s not nice of me to say, but f*** ’em.”)
Chase has strong feelings about some of the show’s recent cast members, all of whom were standouts like him. He said he “liked” Tina Fey, and while she was “good,” he didn’t see “what all the folderol was about.” He said that Will Ferrell’s impression of George W. Bush is “just not funny.”
Chase obviously isn’t a fan of The Martian or Downsizing, because he isn’t aware of what former cast member Kristen Wiig has done since leaving the show in 2012. “I 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?”
Of Eddie Murphy, who was featured on the show from 1980 to 1984, Chase agreed with viewers that he was “funny,” particularly in the character of Gumby. Then he added, in what must have been a supremely awkward moment for the interviewer, “Stevie Wonder, he did well. [Pause.] It’s not that hard, for Christ’s sake. Your skin’s the same color. You just put on some sunglasses and do this.”
As the years went on, Chase acquired a reputation for being difficult, and the essential books about the history of Saturday Night Live paint him, as the Post puts it, as “the supremely talented star who couldn’t 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.” It didn’t help that Chase had an infamous talk show that flopped just 29 episodes into its 1993 run and a batch of ’90s movies, including Vegas Vacation, that didn’t perform well.
Still, Chase told the Post, when he encountered SNL producer Michaels at Chase’s daughter’s wedding six years ago, he asked Michaels if he could come back on the show.
“He said no,” Chase recalled. “‘Come on, Lorne.’ ‘No.’ ‘Why?’ ‘You’re too old.’ I said, ‘And Helen Mirren’s pretty and young?’ I didn’t get it. You’re too old? We’d had many people older than me hosting. What did he mean? I’ve never understood what he meant. Because I’d be very good, and it would be fun for an audience to see me doing that.”
He explained that it hurt him deeply.
“It’s like denying that I was the guy who made this show really go that first year,” Chase said. “It’s like taking all that away from me.”
Chase wants to work now, but he says that finding gigs is hard.
“They’re really more about the George Clooneys and people that age,” Chase said of the 57-year-old Clooney. “I look pretty good for 74. I don’t know why I couldn’t do a Chevy Chase picture, but it just doesn’t happen.”
Despite Chase’s words, he has five projects in the works, according to his IMDb page.
“I’ve already done what I’ve done,” he lamented. “I can’t change anything. And I’m old. I don’t have to worry about what I did anymore. I know who I am. People know who I am who know me. And I’m proud to be who I am. Because I care about people, I care about feelings. I care about warmth, love. It’s everything.”
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