Chevy Chase spoke last week at a 25th anniversary screening of his movie Fletch. During the movie, he sat with the audience, squirmed in his seat, made uncomfortable faces and tried his best to show his discomfort with the attention and exaggerated adulation given by the Avon Theater’s pretentious artsy audience. After the screening he owned up to not being an actor in the vein of Sean Penn or Robert DeNiro, and said that he just tried to be himself in his films, making wise cracks, improvising, falling down, basically doing the same things he had done from Elementary School to Saturday Night Live to get laughs. When an audience member stood up, mike in hand, and took five minutes to comment and finally ask a question, one whose only point was to show how knowledgeable and perceptive he was, Chevy was brilliant. He rolled his eyes, stuck his finger down his throat, hanged himself with his tie, and when the question finally came, answered it with a quick quip and moved on to the next question. It was a merciless strike at pomposity that made us all smile. It reminded me first of Woody Allen’s coup with Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBtXfBdEXEs
It reminded me second of why I like Chevy Chase. It’s not because he’s a great actor. In every one of his movies, all lightweight comedies, someone else was always funnier. Sure, he’s a comedian, but more for falling down (his classic SNL parody of Gerald Ford) and smirking than for quickness and wit. Though many thought he’d inherit Johnny Carson’s job as host on the Tonight Show, Johnny said of Chase, "He couldn't ad lib a fart at a baked bean dinner". Johnny missed the point. Chevy was surrounded by the best ad libbers ever. He was hired as SNL’s head writer for the likes of John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray. He played straight man for Richard Pryor in a racially charged skit that included the N word and ended with a bug-eyed, boiling over Pryor hissing, “Dead Honky”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl9I7IUFKu4&feature=related
YouTube won’t even show the original. It’s too hot. Chevy never had to be the funniest guy on stage and never could. And he never tried to be. We liked him because he was willing to be the tag along, second fiddle, prat-falling straight guy. His line, “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not” wasn’t directed at Belushi, it was aimed straight at us. He was the dumb schmuck lucky enough to be up there on stage with greatness. He was one of us. While Belushi and Pryor have crashed and burned, Chase has grayed, gained some weight and rolled back onto TV for NBC in some sit-com that I’ll likely never see.
If Chevy was great in any comedic role, it was as host of SNL’s Weekend Update. In the tradition of Laugh-In’s Look at the News, he satirized the week’s news stories. Even better, Update introduced editorial comments from the likes of Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella (“Never mind.”), John Belushi (”But nooooo...”) and many other cast members and guests. When Jane Curtin took over Chevy’s role in 1976, she added Point/Counterpoint which immortalized her as everyone’s favorite “ignorant slut”.
News today is even worse than in 1976 and it is not surprising that most of our 16 to 30 year olds get it from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. Despite being a comedian, Stewart has been voted our most admired and trusted news anchor. He has a keen nose for political hypocrisy and probably invented the technique of using video clips to catch politicians making blatantly contradictory statements. He, like Chevy, says nothing and instead, rolls his eyes to make his point. He lacks Chevy’s physical presence. He is short, slim and a bit of a Nebbish. Of course, it follows that he is a Mets fan. While Chevy is a New York blue blood, descended from the Mayflower, Stewart, nee Leibowitz, grew up in New Jersey, proposed to his wife in a crossword puzzle, at times sucks up to guests and has socialist leanings. His gift, more than his razor sharp wit or his willingness to let his righteous anger show on stage, is his heart. After 9/11 he showed that heart at a time when he knew we were not ready for comedy:
The view... from my apartment... was the World Trade Center... and now it's gone, and they attacked it. This symbol of American ingenuity, and strength, and labor, and imagination and commerce, and it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the South of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty. You can't beat that.
No argument here. I’m happy my kids get their news from Stewart. As Chevy would say, “Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow”.
2 comments:
I loved this until your last line. Stewart is funny and has a gifted way of peeling away all the layers of BS on an issue to bare the truth in a way so raw you just have to laugh. And what's not to love about a guy who proposed with a crossword puzzle? But he is biased and that is OK cause he is a comedian not a journalist. But I would not go so far as to say I am glad the kids are getting their news from him. No more than our parents would have been glad if all we watched was SNL's weekend update.
Our kids are mastering the art of obtaining information from the web, and they seem to evaluate that information from their developing perspectives. While their sources may be biased, they see programs like NPR's News Hour whose format is right-left, public-private perspectives on news events. So they are learning to appreciate both sides of a story. But I can't deny that they are drawn to news as entertainment.
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