Insulting the director who’s making a documentary about you won’t be probably the most diplomatic of decisions. Then once more, Chevy Chase has by no means been very diplomatic.
The comic will get snarly on the high of filmmaker Marina Zenovich’s “I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not,” which airs Thursday on CNN. During their very first assembly, he warns her it is not going to be simple to determine him out. She asks him why.
“You’re not bright enough, how’s that?” he replies.
That the trade made the movie says quite a bit about Zenovich and likewise about Chase, a gifted bodily comic who starred in basic Nineteen Seventies and ’80s comedies like “Fletch,” “Three Amigos,” “Caddyshack” and the National Lampoon’s “Vacation” franchise.
“He’s one of those people everybody thinks they know,” says Zenovich. “He has a reputation that precedes him and there’s something underneath that you want to get to. So it was a great challenge to try to get there.”
“I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not” follows Chase’s life and profession, from his darkish childhood to the daybreak of “Saturday Night Live” after which Hollywood, ending along with his messy time on the TV sequence “Community.” There are views supplied from Dan Aykroyd, Beverly D’Angelo, Goldie Hawn, Lorne Michaels, Ryan Reynolds, Martin Short, his spouse Jayni Chase and three daughters, and brother Ned.
A portrait emerges of a pointy and sometimes chopping comic who has a deep fan base however can rub some individuals the incorrect manner with a blunt inelegance. “I’m complex and I’m deep and I can be hurt easily,” he tells the filmmaker.
The documentary reveals footage of his movie and TV work alongside residence films, cuddling a cat, enjoying a piano, enjoying chess, studying fan mail — together with a birthday card from Bill Clinton — and visiting a flower store.
The film has the endorsement of a tricky critic: Chase, himself. “It’s just like a massage. I think of it that way: I love the massage. Sometimes it hurts, but the massage is so lovely,” the comic tells The Associated Press.
Chase is simply the most recent profile by two-time Emmy-winner Zenovich, whose earlier documentary topics have included Roman Polanski, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams and Lance Armstrong.
“I make films about these complicated men,” she says. “I’m just fascinated by humans and their behavior and Chevy just seems to fit in my oeuvre.”
Zenovich factors to Chase’s early years to assist clarify how he grew to become who he grew to become. Chase, as a boy, was locked within the basement for days, hit throughout the face and shut in a closet as punishment by the hands of his stepfather and mom.
“I think the whole key to Chevy is his childhood. I hate to use the word trauma, but I think he’s traumatized,” she says. “Humor is his way of dealing with it.”
Chase famously feuded with many comedians, together with “Community” co-star Joel McHale, “SNL” castmate John Belushi and Bill Murray, who had changed him at “SNL.” He left “Community” following reviews he’d used a racist slur and directed insults at co-star Donald Glover. He had additionally quarreled with the present’s creator Dan Harmon , who was pushed out for a time.
“The old Chevy could make you laugh putting you down and there was a little bit of a wink there, so you were in on the joke,” author and actor Alan Zweibel says within the movie. “Now it just comes off as mean.”
The movie argues that Chase’s darkness was amplified by his drug use. “In his mind he doesn’t think he’s mean,” says Zenovich, who interviewed Chase twice after which adopted him round for just a few days.
“What was really interesting about Chevy is that he really wants to try to figure himself out. He wanted to go there, but then something stops him,” she says. “He goes to a certain point, and then something stops him.”
Chase, now 82, says he is conscious that there is a lengthy listing of people that take into account him contemptible, however insists he does not care. “It’s just Hollywood stuff,” he says. “It never really bothered me.”
The film digs into his short-lived TV discuss present and his eye-opening first and solely season at “Saturday Night Live.” He concedes leaving “SNL” was a mistake and reveals how damage he was to not be invited onstage when the present celebrated its fiftieth anniversary earlier this yr.
The documentary additionally reveals him basking within the applause of followers as he attends a current screening of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and it additionally reveals that his three daughters are insightful, humorous and candy.
“I think the one thing he really did was he was able to break that generational trauma,” says Zenovich. “There I go again, using the word. But that’s quite a feat, right?”
© Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This materials is probably not revealed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.