At an event celebrating the DVD release of Community’s second season in England, Chevy Chase had a freewheeling chat with HuffPost UK. He had a few middling/positive things to say — Donald Glover’s good at improvising, Dan Harmon has never slept in his life — before cranking the dial up to Chevy. Why’d he do Community, anyway?
It was a big mistake! I saw this pilot script, thought that it was funny, and I went into the room where they were casting and said, “I would love to play this guy.†Then they mulled it over. Then they hired me and I just sort of hung around because I have three daughters and a wife, and I figured out I might as well make some bread, every week, so I can take care of them in the way they want. My wife has just been in the Antarctic, and Cuzco in Peru, and Lima, and Machu Picchu … she likes to travel. That was about a month of traveling, and that will take about a year of work.
But does he like making TV, at least? A change of pace from all those years of film work, maybe? Or perhaps the solace that he’s making that bread?
I prefer movies because the money is better and certainly because you really know where you stand when you are making movies, and I have made a lot of them: 50 something, I don’t know. The hours in this kind of show are not commensurate with the actual product. The hours are hideous, and it’s still a sitcom on television, which is probably the lowest form of television. That’s my feeling about it. I think the reason I have stuck around is because I love these kids, the cast — they are very good.
Got it — sitcoms, scourge of the earth. But back to that bread — Chevy talks money a lot in the interview, actually. An uncomfortable amount. Asked if he has regrets, he confides that he has “many.â€
I turned down Forrest Gump, I turned down American Gigolo, there are many films — like Ghostbusters — that I turned down … the first one I did was Foul Play with Goldie Hawn, but I turned down Animal House — I turned that down. So all those I regret only because they made huge amounts of money and I would be very wealthy …
For bonus head-scratching, try sorting out this answer regarding what Chase thinks of Louis C.K.: “Yes, I’ve seen Louis C.K. I wouldn’t in any way make a degrading remark about Louis C.K., but the question is do I think anyone is funny? And the answer is not too many people. He might fit right in there.†Or the moment where he’s asked if he’s ever going to stop acting: “Right after this interview.â€