Would Fletch (1985) Have Worked if Chevy Chase Wasn't an Asshole? (Part 1)

Guest post alert! Two of them, in fact! Today’s newsletter was written by James Francis, the mastermind behind Adventures in Indie Gaming, which is a must follow for anyone who loves video games. James truly has his pulse on the gaming world, especially when it comes to new releases, and he does a terrific job of making me want to play everything he writes about. (Fellow movie nerds may be particularly into this write-up about Toxic Crusaders, which is basically The Toxic Avenger meets Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.) Anyway, James and I connected here on Substack, and he pitched me a guest piece about Fletch that I simply couldn’t turn down. And he really delivered—so much so that I had to split his piece into two separate installments, thus making him my first back-to-back guest writer. Next week’s newsletter will dive deeper into Fletch, but before we do that, we’re setting the table by exploring Chevy Chase’s fascinating ego. Take it away, James!

"Good evening. I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not."

A few months ago, I watched Confess, Fletch starring Jon Hamm. It's the long-awaited continuation of the Fletch franchise, two films which I also saw recently for the first time. But I felt the new version lacked the same spark that the original film—and to a lesser degree, its sequel—still retains. 

Nothing against Hamm. He's got charisma and can carry the main character's cheeky demeanor. And yet, the new movie doesn't work. Hamm, the other actors, and the movie in general try too hard. It just doesn't come together.

This got me thinking: Did the original Fletch work because Chase is an asshole? That's a disrespectful statement, yet founded; Chase's abrasive shenanigans are well known, and his behavior even saw him banned from Saturday Night Live, the show he helped create. 

Geniuses are Often Assholes

This is not a judgment of Chase's character. Genius is often abrasive. Isaac Newton.* Michaelangelo.** Mike Myers.*** Chase is a comedic genius, and he's even owned his negative reputation. I won't go into the sordid details, and my views specifically focus on Chase during the 70s and 80s. Many today know him for Community, a show I've hardly watched. So I can't really comment there, other than to note that Chase took umbrage with the writing—a common battleground with many of his conflicts. 

Community was also not Chase in his prime. For that, we need to go to the 70s, when SNL creator Lorne Michaels hired Chase as a writer for the show's first season after seeing him riff with friends while in line for a movie.**** Chase had already been around the block as a standup comedian and a writer and performer for the iconoclastic National Lampoon magazine and radio show. 

I must emphasize how tectonic this period was for American comedy. National Lampoon broke the mold. SNL stomped it into dust. If you want to compare, do a little YouTube digging for Howard Cossell's Saturday Night Live, ABC's variety comedy show of that era. (SNL on NBC back then was just called Saturday Night.) Cossell's show was cringey, but he played exactly what TV audiences expected from comedy at the time.*****

Saturday Night's first episode was entirely different. It started cold with a sketch starring John Belushi and Michael O'Donoghue, a bizarre language lesson about wolverines that ends with both characters suffering heart attacks. Chase then strolls on stage, strikes a grin, and announces, "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!"******

Comedy Egomania

This opener is a microcosm of the early SNL energy. If you think Chase is an asshole, do some research on those two. Belushi was so unhinged that Michaels had to be convinced to hire him. O'Donoghue was a notorious ball-buster, often asking people "What piece of shit are you working on?" His humor was so dark that, during his days at National Lampoon, someone sent a real bomb to him—and it's still not clear if the bomb was a threat or from a demented fan. Either way, O'Donoghue loved it.

Michaels is also a renowned egotist. Even the seemingly easy-going Bill Murray has earned a number of  “asshole” stories. So Chase was very much a part of this ensemble of egos. Suffice to say, Chase may have been an asshole, but so were the people next to him. And they collectively changed modern comedy.******

Many of the stories about this first class of SNL are outlandish. They dubbed themselves the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players," playing on the fact that ABC's Saturday Night Live would broadcast in a prime time slot, whereas Saturday Night aired much later. Feeding on a mix of eclectic counter-culture comedy, the writers and performers were generally confrontational. At one point, they refused to wear any identity badges when entering 30 Rockefeller Plaza, resulting in frequent scuffles with security. Apparently, Dan Akroyd was once dragged out by four guards trying to evict him.

The general atmosphere of this early era has been described as chaotic and confrontational, and Chase reveled in it. He was initially only hired as one of the head writers and had to campaign Michaels repeatedly to get a performance spot. By the time the very first sketch aired, he'd be the third performer on the floor. Chase flourished at SNL—and then quit, leaving bad feelings between him and his former castmates.*******

This sudden change started the legend of Chase the asshole. In hindsight, it doesn't sound like he was any better or worse at this than the rest of that iconoclastic group. Not to excuse his behavior then and since, but his egotism didn't exist in a vacuum. Nor did it serve him poorly. Whatever his reputation, greater success would follow.

Motivated by fame and fortune, New York Magazine's "funniest man in America" went on to make several movies and become the highest-paid comedian in the world. He would play iconic roles in movies like Caddyshack, National Lampoon's Vacation, Spies Like Us, and The Three Amigos. And for many, his best turn was as the investigative reporter in Fletch.

But did Chase really have an outsized impact on what ended up on screen? We’ll take an even deeper dive next week in Part 2.

*Newton was notorious for being willfully cantankerous. When he wrote the first edition of The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, he made it intentionally convoluted to dissuade what he regarded as stupid people from reading it. 

**Legend has it that Pope Leo X, who grew up with Michelangelo, always made sure he sat down before the artist did, thus preserving Papal protocol while knowing Michaelangelo didn't give a damn about protocol.

***Myers and Wayne's World director Penelope Spheeris fell out a lot, and she swore she'd never work with him again.

****The movie was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The British comedy troupe had an outsized influence on SNL's creation and 70s American counter-culture comedy in general.

*****Here's a rare surviving clip from ABC's SNL.

******Spheeris once said “That’s the way Lorne teaches his players—to always one-up one another.”

*******He’d later get into a fistfight over this with Murray, who wasn't hired for the first SNL group because he was already working on Cassell's show (which completely wasted his talents).

Fletch is not streaming anywhere for free, but it was when James pitched this assignment. Also, it is available to rent pretty much anywhere.