The ‘Saturday Night Live’ star who called the show’s audience a “generation of shitheads”
There are usually two ways that a performer’s career can head when their days of being a Saturday Night Live star are over: it’s either the springboard to bigger and better things, or it’s as high as they get, with relative obscurity and professional anonymity soon beckoning.
Even the worst seasons in the show’s history have served the former purpose; after all, he may have only been a full-time cast member for a little over six months, but Robert Downey Jr managed to do alright for himself in the years that followed, ultimately becoming SNL‘s first Academy Award-winning actor.
It’s been a proving ground for Hollywood’s biggest comedy stars for the last half a century, with everyone from Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd to Bill Hader and Pete Davidson passing through the doors, never mind Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and the rest.
Obviously, it doesn’t work out that way for everyone, and one of the SNL alumni who wasted little time in breaking free from the sketch series’ shackles and establishing themselves as a big-screen commodity found their time in the spotlight limited for one major reason: they were a total and utter dickhead.
That person is, of course, Chevy Chase, who was pegged as a breakout name from almost the second he debuted on the very first episode. He didn’t hang around for long, departing midway through the second season, but the decision to bet on himself bore fruit, with the actor quickly becoming a cinematic fixture.
Even in a place like Tinseltown, there’s such a thing as too much bad behaviour. So many people shared their tales of woe from working with Chase that his opportunities became limited, and these days, the main reason he’ll find himself in the headlines is that people are talking about him being an arsehole.
The people he worked with on SNL grew to despise him, the people he worked with when he returned as a host despised him, the future generations who picked up the mantle and had the displeasure of meeting him despised him, and so did several filmmakers, producers, and television showrunners.
He’s been an angry old man yelling at clouds for a while now, and it shouldn’t shock anyone that Chase hates SNL, too. “I had to watch a little of it, and I just couldn’t fucking believe it,” he told The Washington Post. “That means a whole generation of shitheads laughs at the worst fucking humour in the world.”
“How could you dare give that generation worse shit than they already have in their lives?” he added. “It just drives me nuts.” Is that surprising? No, because if you asked an SNL fan to name the one ex-SNL star most likely to call the show’s audience “shitheads,” Chevy Chase would be the number one answer. Once again, he’s living up to his billing as an irrelevant relic raging against a machine that wants nothing to do with him.
