{"id":374613,"date":"2025-12-28T19:26:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T19:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/374613\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T19:26:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T19:26:07","slug":"im-chevy-chase-and-youre-not-director-on-going-toe-to-toe-with-chevy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/374613\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not’ Director on Going Toe-to-Toe With Chevy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMarina Zenovich<\/a>\u2018s \u201cI\u2019m Chevy Chase<\/a>, and You\u2019re Not\u201d is not your average celebrity documentary. From the film\u2019s outset, it is clear that the 82-year-old comedian had zero editorial control over the project.<\/p>\n

\n\tA minute into the CNN doc, Zenovich (\u201cLance,\u201d \u201cRobin Williams: Come Inside My Mind\u201d) can be heard off camera saying to Chase, \u201cI\u2019m just trying to figure you out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis response: \u201cNo shit. It\u2019s not going to be easy for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhy is it not going to be easy?\u201d Zenovich asks.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou\u2019re not bright enough,\u201d Chase deadpans. \u201cHow\u2019s that?\u201d Then the comedian grins.<\/p>\n

\n\tZenovich says that while she was taken aback by Chase\u2019s response, she was also relieved.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019d never done an interview where someone was so rude to me,\u201d Zenovich tells Variety. \u201cBut I was so worried going into that first interview with him about how I was going to say to him, like, \u2018Everyone thinks you\u2019re an asshole.\u2019 I thought if I did, he would throw me out of his house. So the minute he said that to me, I had a way in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe doc, premiering Jan. 1 on CNN, charts Chase\u2019s rise from breakout \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d to leading man, his three marriages, his addiction to cocaine and alcohol, heart failure that led to a coma<\/a>, childhood abuse, depression, a failed talk show, and the star\u2019s various on-set disputes with actors like Terry Sweeney and the entire cast of \u00a0the NBC comedy \u201cCommunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to figure out who was the real person behind the conflicted, guarded and somewhat fragile man we see on camera,\u201d Zenovich says. \u201cWhat was behind the surface of his slightly intimidating superstar bravado? Was there any self-awareness there? Having interviewed Chevy at length, I have to say that yes, it\u2019s all there \u2013 and a whole lot of pain and heartache too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to Chase and his family, the doc includes revealing interviews with the star\u2019s former collaborators and confidants, including Mike Ovitz, Dan Aykroyd, Beverly D\u2019Angelo, Goldie Hawn, Lorne Michaels, Ryan Reynolds and Martin Short.<\/p>\n

\n\tVariety spoke with Zenovich and her husband, and long-time producing partner P.G. Morgan, about why Chase decided to make the doc and getting someone, anyone, from \u201cCommunity\u201d to give an interview.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou have worked together on quite a few docs about celebrities, including \u201cLance,\u201d about Lance Armstrong, \u201cRobin Williams: Come Inside My Mind,\u201d \u201cRichard Pryor: Omit the Logic,\u201d \u201cJerry Brown: The Disrupter,\u201d and \u201cRoman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.\u201d Where does Chevy Chase rate on the difficulty meter?<\/p>\n

\n\tZenovich: When I first sat down with Lance Armstrong, he was sitting at the edge of a seat and ready to spar with me. That is exciting because you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re going get. Then I did Jerry Brown, whom I tried to do that wit,h but he had no interest whatsoever. So, each person is different. Chevy was willing to go there, but he would stop himself. He wouldn\u2019t go all the way. The interviews with him were very hard.<\/p>\n

\n\tMorgan: There were a lot of unknowns going into the interviews. Chevy is incredibly quick-witted and always on, so you have to be able to go toe-to-toe with him. He\u2019s a bit intimidating as well, and we had a lot of stuff that we wanted to talk to him about \u2013 the good stuff and the touchy stuff.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it comes to celebrity documentaries, the celebrity is usually promoting something like a tour, a fashion line or a book. Chase wasn\u2019t promoting anything. Why do you think he wanted to make this film, which isn\u2019t exactly a flattering portrait of him?<\/p>\n

\n\tZenovich: \u00a0Someone wrote a book about him, and I don\u2019t think that [Chase\u2019s] family liked it. I think they were trying to right a wrong. I don\u2019t know if they think that they did because it has been hard. [The doc] was a hard watch for him and his family, but I think in the end they appreciate it.<\/p>\n

\n\tMorgan: I\u2019m guessing that they felt as a family that he wasn\u2019t getting his due. That there\u2019s been a whole run of these documentaries about other people from his generation. I think it hurt that he hadn\u2019t had the same recognition.<\/p>\n

\n\tDo you think that the people who said no to interviews, like Steve Martin and Christopher Guest, were really saying, \u2018We don\u2019t like the guy\u2019?<\/p>\n

\n\tZenovich: I can\u2019t answer for them, but I think that the absences speak for themselves. Whether it\u2019s scheduling, personal, or saving it for their own doc. In the end, I think we got the right mix of people. I was initially disappointed that we didn\u2019t get more people from \u201cCommunity,\u201d but there are things people don\u2019t want to talk about.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow hard was it to get anyone from \u201cCommunity\u201d to sit down with you?<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery single person said no. I ran into (\u201cCommunity\u201d creator) Dan Harmon at a screening of \u201cDeaf President Now!\u201d and I got his number. I was so excited. I thought it was going to happen but then he declined. I was so lucky to get Jay Chandrasekhar (\u201cCommunity\u201d director). He has such an amazing delivery and he was willing to go there. If Jay had said no, I would have been screwed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m Chevy Chase, and You\u2019re Not\u201d\u00a0premieres Thursday, Jan. 1, on CNN. The film streams live for pay TV subscribers via\u00a0CNN.com, CNN Connected TV and mobile apps on Jan. 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marina Zenovich\u2018s \u201cI\u2019m Chevy Chase, and You\u2019re Not\u201d is not your average celebrity documentary. From the film\u2019s outset,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[71599,129134,88,183282,206],"class_list":{"0":"post-374613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-chevy-chase","9":"tag-cnn-films","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-marina-zenovich","12":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}