No, scratch that! He has hurt me personally and cost me financially.
Let's go ahead and jump into the Way-Back Machine for some perspective and background, shall we?
Our first stop is October 11, 1975, a Saturday night. Being unpopular as a kid meant I spent a LOT of time visiting with my one true faithful friend, the TV. I just left the TV on the NBC affiliate and let it ride (remember, this is back in the days of three--count 'em--three(!) TV stations, possibly four if the weather cooperated). Suddenly, a show came on that was unlike anything I'd ever witnessed before. There was a whole new and fresh vibe, a young person's comedy full of sarcasm and underlying anger. They showed commercials that had me stumped whether they were real or not. No canned laughter (which I'm still stunned that several shows still use today; Hello, CBS!). And best of all, they sometimes broke through the fourth wall to address that they were in a skit, something Green Acres would never attempt.
Hello, comedy that spoke to me; Goodbye, Hee-Haw and all the old fogey comedy it represented! I worshiped at the altar of Saturday Night Live.
And anchoring it all was a strangely smart alecky, deadpan, lanky comedian named Chevy Chase.
I was all in.
Well, Chase didn't last long on Saturday Night Live. At the beginning of the second season, he bolted for Ginormous-Mega-Movie-Super-Stardom, aka, "Big Head Syndrome." The writing was on the wall. If only my young naive self had been aware enough to read it and pay heed.
I championed Chase. No matter where he went, I followed. I'd brag to family and school acquaintances that he was the funniest guy working in entertainment and to catch his newest vehicle. Without seeing it first, that's how much I believed in him.
In 1977, he spat up a TV special. It guest-starred Tim Conway and Dr. Joyce Brothers. I thought, "Wait a minute...what happened to the new-fangled cutting edge satire? These are...my grandma's guest stars!" Chevy made "funny faces" while wearing mime make-up and sticking his tongue out. Ha ha. It took him all of a year to sell out to The Man. Mortified, the next day I made the rounds apologizing to everyone to whom I recommended this epic disaster.
But I thought it was a one off! A bad day for Chevy! Undeterred, I continued to follow his career.
First we had Foul Play, a "rom com" with Goldie Hawn. While this is considered to be one of his "better" movies, I felt ripped off and left with a feeling of "meh-ness." Chase wasn't even acting, just coasting at best.
A year or so later, I found out he was starring in Oh, Heavenly Dog. Alongside "Benji (Now, again, for you whippersnappers, Benji was a dog that starred in several family films. Don't ask me why.)" But I thought, surely he'll make it into a subversive satire. Again, I dragged a buddy off to the theater. It was a short-lived friendship.
Now I hear some of you shouting, "Hey, what about National Lampoon's Vacation, Caddyshack, and Fletch?" Well...Vacation has some good stuff in it, but is uneven; Caddyshack was woefully stupid and childish (my date liked it if that tells you anything about her), and Fletch was...insufferable. Kinda like how I was beginning to feel about Chevy Chase.
I mean, really, can one base a movie career on smirking, shameless mugging and smarminess?
I drew the line at Follow That Bird, the heartwarming tale of a giant, intellectually-challenged, baby-man-bird getting lost far from home.
Enough was enough. I'd thrown down a small fortune banking on Chase's "talents" at the box office, lost many friends over the cinematic atrocities I'd dragged them to, and had many, many one-date-onlies due to his crimes against moviedom.
He owes me. Big time.
But it doesn't stop with me. Apparently, Chase is quite the jackass, alienating coworkers left and right. That's why they killed him off on the TV show, Community. He'd publicly bashed the show, saying he didn't think it was funny. This coming from the man who thinks mugging and buck teeth are a laugh riot.
In a recent interview, Chase said "I don't give a crap about how I've acted on shows. I am who I am."
There you have it in a nutshell. As I grew up suffering through Chase's "output," it slowly dawned on me that he didn't "give a crap" about what he churned out, thinking so little of his audience that he'd put out anything for a buck.
I guess there's kinda a happy ending. Because of his jackass reputation, Chase went into straight-to-video pablum (the "Eric Roberts of Comedy") to hardly finding any work.
He still owes me. Anyone else? How about a class action suit?
While we're on the topic of "comedy" and substandard practitioners of the genre, have you heard the one about middling (at best) stand-up comic, Charlie Broadmoor, and how he displayed the poor judgement to heckle a demon in his audience? No? Well, here's your chance! Demon With a Comb-Over available here!
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