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Chevy Chase says you lose perspective when you're famous.
 

Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Chevy Chase to this program. The funny and talented actor, of course, became a household name as a cast member on the first season of "SNL," "Saturday Night Live." More on that in a moment. He went on from there to star in a number of notable films including "Caddy Shack" and the "National Lampoon Vacation" series. His latest project is the new film, "Funny Money." The movie opens next Friday, the 26th. Here now a scene from "Funny Money."

[A film clip is shown]

Tavis: And back to "SNL." The first season of the groundbreaking series is now out on DVD and featured Chevy Chase doing his famous stand-up of then President Gerald Ford. The two later developed an unlikely friendship, but before we get to that, here's how it all began back in 1975.

[A film clip is shown]

Tavis: Chevy Chase, what an honor to have you on the program.

Chevy Chase: I think my hair went gray (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter). You remember, though? You remember that auspicious start? 1975.

Chase: Oh, I remember every fall. I remember every fall I took and my body remembers it. I just had my hip replaced, in fact, from all of those stunt falls. But, oh, yeah, I remember it very well. Ford, as you know, had been appointed by Nixon as Vice President. I wrote an op-ed in "The New York Times," I guess, a couple of weekends ago about his death.

It was kind of a sweet one because he was actually a very sweet man. We became friends, Betty and my wife did. It was a story about how when Betty had announced that she had breast cancer which was very courageous of her and also the alcoholism problem and whatnot, she became very beloved and well thought of by the American people.

One of these networks wanted to do a bio pick on her and Gerald, Gerry, the President, said, "Why don't we all have lunch and we can look at tapes of these guys who are actors who are going to play me in her story?" We were sitting at a table waiting for lunch to be served and Betty and Janie were on their hands and knees on the floor there trying to work out this tape machine and how to get it to work because back then it was just a scan thing.

I said, "Mr. President, maybe I ought to get up and help them out." He said, "No, no" and gently set me back down and said, "I'll probably get electrocuted and you'll be picked up for murder." (laughter). You know, he was thought of as a sort of "stumble bum" and I was always doing these stumbling things and making fun of him, which had quite an effect on his campaign, I'm afraid.

Tavis: What's funny about that is - or maybe not so funny if you're Gerald Ford - is that this guy is an All-American football player at the University of Michigan, perhaps the most fit president coming out of that background we've ever had, yet his M.O., you know, was his Chevy Chase.

Chase: He was, in fact, maybe the best athlete of all the presidents.

Tavis: Right.

Chase: Although he was a senator. I remember once going to do something in the Oval Office with him, one of the morning shows, like "Today" or one of those types of shows. He was sort of trying to make his way through the wires and said, "Damn wiring. I can't. . ." That's all it was. I mean, it was just that there were so many wires and things around and I think it got to him after a while, also that I was making fun of him or the news would catch him, you know, hitting somebody with a golf ball or tripping on the stairs on the airplane.

It just got to him and he kind of got psyched out by it and he'd have more trouble stumbling and bumbling. By making fun of him that way, it was handed to me politically, you know. I was, of course, a liberal Democrat at the time.

Tavis: Did you ever feel bad about that box you put him in?

Chase: I did once because I was down in Washington for the press luncheon there that they do every year. I was the guest of honor and I sat next to the president and I did some impression of him and whatnot. But that evening, I was out with one of his sons in Georgetown just having a beer at a bar in Georgetown. I said to him, "Does any of this ever really get to your father? I mean, it doesn't hurt his feelings or anything?" He said it did a little bit.

I felt awful. I really did because I figured, you know, I was new to this whole thing of being a famous actor now and being a part of the political scene and all of that and being well known, but I knew that the president was fair game and that was the kind of thing you had to respect. But I didn't want to hurt his feelings.

Tavis: I want to come back to "Funny Money" in just a second, but one more question. I knew this back story, but when I reread it, it just took me all over again. You were actually on "SNL" for just one season, got hired by Loren Michaels as a writer on the show, quickly moved from writing in that first season to being on camera. Your career, after one season on "SNL," you started doing movies and you just like -

Chase: - exploded.

Tavis: Exploded. I mean, how unlikely is that? I mean, how fast a liftoff is that?

Chase: Well, there had been a perpetuation through books and since wired on about the myths that I left "SNL" after the first year because of these lucrative film deals awaiting me. In fact, I didn't do a movie for three years after I left. I left because there was a girl out here who I wanted to marry that I was infatuated with.

Everybody back there, including Loren, knew that she wasn't the right girl for me, but I didn't know that. I was just too infatuated. She wouldn't leave there and I had to leave and go marry her or I would have gone crazy because I just was in love, you know, and I was young. I mean, the marriage did not last a very long time (laughter) to say the least.

The fact of the matter was that I became very famous very fast right there on that show. It almost became the Chevy Chase Show that first year just because of the written media. I think it's the written media that makes stars and not the work you're doing, not being on television, not the bits on Ford or the Weekend Updates that I wrote.

The fact that Jeff Greenfield, a young guy who we now know on CNN, is a political guy and he wrote a cover article in "New York Magazine" on me. That in itself made me famous and it was very sudden. Even though I was old enough to be able to say, "I'm going to have a lot of perspective on this and I'll be fine with it," I never did, of course (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) I'm curious now, since you went there. I'm always fascinated by these tidbits. I learn so much by listening to people talk about the lessons they've learned in their own lives. What did you learn - and I suspect there are any number of lessons - but what do you recall primarily having learned from that experience of leaving this wonderful opportunity to follow your heart in a relationship that ultimately didn't work? I mean, not that your career didn't take off ultimately anyway, but that was a major decision, a major risk. You were a young person when you made that decision. What did you learn from that?

Chase: Well, you have to understand that all the other writers were signed to NBC for five years to the show or it may have been three and the actors were five. But any job that I had taken before that - I was writing for The Smothers Brothers and many other shows before. For twelve years, I had been a writer - I took all my jobs with my option to leave after a year anyway because I didn't like to be anywhere for much longer than that. If I could get "SNL" to do the material I wanted to do and make fun of television and parody it and stuff and I felt we had done that within one year, I might well have left anyway.

One of the things I learned, though, was that I missed my friends. I missed leaving. I missed the show. I made a mistake. I knew it back then, but I didn't talk about it much and I never said much about it. Luckily, my agent out here who's long since passed away, Stan Kamen, a couple of years in said, "You ought to try to do movies." He showed me "Foul Play" and "Animal House." He gave me these two scripts and I said I would do "Foul Play." Goldie's so cute.

Tavis: (Laughter) I'm just looking at how fortunate you are to have walked away from this show. Your agent has you two scripts and they happen to be "Animal House" and "Foul Play." Those are two great scripts.

Chase: Yeah. "Animal House" is funny, but I felt I had lived it kind of. "Foul Play" was really a different kind of a light, romantic comedy that, again, as I said, I'd always been fascinated by Goldie. She was very cute. In fact, we had a little relationship during the making of that movie. We'd both been separated from our marriages and it was kind of sweet. We're good friends today.

One other thing I did learn was that this whole concept of being old enough, having been in the business of writing and becoming famous suddenly, but already thirty years old, that I'd have perspective on this and not lose perspective. One of the things I learned was that you always lose perspective when you have that kind of fame. I mean, fame is frightening. It's not what people think it is.

It throws you off and you never have perspective. You have retrospective. Later on, you can look back and see the mistakes you've made and the way in which you behaved and whether they were bad or good. I've never been anything but nice to people. I've never been mean or bullied people around or any of that, despite what people might write in books. They're not going to write anything nice, but the fact of the matter is, that was a big lesson for me.

The second biggest lesson, I'll just throw it out real quickly because I did meet the girl of my dreams. I've been married for twenty-five years. We've been together twenty-seven years and we have three daughters. As they were growing up, how fame affects your family and how hard it is for your children for you to be a famous person. That's a whole other issue.

Tavis: That's a powerful formulation, though. It's a powerful statement that fame causes you to lose perspective, but you always gain it back in retrospect.

Chase: In retrospect.

Tavis: That's a fascinating thought. I never thought of that.

Chase: Providing you live long enough to have retrospect.

Tavis: (Laughter) I knew there was a joke coming behind that, but I love that. Not because you're here and I'm sucking up, but "Foul Play" is like one of my favorite movies of all time. I don't know if you know this - of course, you do - every day on television somewhere, there's a Chevy Chase movie playing. "Foul Play" must get played like all -

Chase: - do I get paid for that (laughter)?

Tavis: I hope you do.

Chase: I hope I do too.

Tavis: You should because "Foul Play" like airs all the time and it's just as funny now. I mean, I just literally watched it -

Chase: - it's on all these cable stations.

Tavis: All these cable stations. I watched it like three nights ago. What a great and funny, funny film. And the soundtrack for that film. Barry Manilow, the Bee Gees, it's a powerful soundtrack.

Chase: I was never that crazy about that movie. Frankly, I liked "Fletch" a lot more and "Caddy Shack" and others, but I loved making the movie and I loved Goldie and the experience also. It was really my first movie and it was a great experience. In just looking back, I don't put it up there with my top five because I made almost forty and the rest of them stank.

Tavis: All right, so what five? Since you went there, what's in your top five, since you don't like my choices? No, you said it, you said it. Come on.

Chase: Well, I think "Fletch," "Caddy Shack," "Christmas Vacation," "Spies Like Us," "The Three Amigos," "Funny Farm" and maybe one or two others.

Tavis: How about this movie "Funny Money?"

Chase: This movie surprised me because we shot this in Romania because it only cost a dollar to make (laughter) and it's a great cast. Penelope Ann Miller and Armand Assante, a very good cast. We shot ten pages a day. Usually you shoot about two and a half under stringent conditions in Romania to save money, as I said. We showed it at a film festival in Florida and also at the Aspen Film Festival, which I didn't go to, but I went to the one in Florida.

It's the first movie that I've made that I've gone to where it was full and they belly laughed all the way through the movie, just all the way. I've always felt that eight to twelve belly laughs in a comedy and you've got a hit. I was always right. Eight to twelve, somewhere in there. But these people were just laughing all the way through and I'm not sure why exactly. I found it kind of funny, but I thought, "Is it that funny?" Apparently, the audience felt that way, so we'll see what happens.

Tavis: Give me a little bit about the story line.

Chase: It's a simple kind of farcical, fast-moving type of picture where I'm a guy who makes waxed fruit - naturally - and I -

Tavis: - waxed fruit. What a great job making waxed fruit.

Chase: Yeah, I inherited it (laughter). In any case, I'm going home to my house in New Jersey right across from New York City on the train. I mistakenly change my briefcase with somebody else's briefcase and I end up with this Romanian mobster's briefcase filled with several million dollars in cash just packed in there.

I'm amazed by this and taken back and the first thing I can think of when I get home is how to get out of the city immediately before they find my briefcase with some identification and they come and get us and kill us and take the money back. Of course, my wife played by Penelope doesn't understand what my behavior is all about because I'm just in shock and I'm making calls to the airport for what flights go to Barcelona or go anywhere.

She's also arranged to throw a surprise party for me that night for my birthday, which I didn't know anything about. So she's fighting to keep me there and I'm fighting to get out of there. Then she sees the money and it just breaks loose from there and it just doesn't stop. It's like a chase all the way through it. It's quite funny and it's got a great cast. Robert Loggia is in it. He's great.

Tavis: Speaking of chase. Here's this other question. Is Chevy your given name?

Chase: By my grandma when I was two days old. My mother named me Cornelius Crane Chase because her adopted father was Cornelius Crane who was just a very wealthy old man from the Crane Company, you know, toilets and valves and whatnot. She thought, by naming me Cornelius Crane Chase, I might get all that money which would be about eight billion dollars today. He left nothing to any of us (laughter).

We lived in East Harlem. I mean, he disavowed everybody and gave it all to the Zen Buddhists, which is a fact. But my grandma on my father's side couldn't stand it. She lived up in Woodstock, New York, where I grew up as a kid. She named me Chevy like the second day I was born. I spent the first year of my life with my grandparents anyway.

Tavis: Speaking of New York and that region, I think I got this right. The movie is filmed for one dollar in Romania, "Funny Movie," but it's actually set like in Hoboken.

Chase: That's correct. They did a good job. They were able to build that street. I think it was Frank Sinatra Drive.

Tavis: I was about to say. You think of Hoboken and, of course, you got to think of Frank Sinatra who's an icon.

Chase: Yeah. Then you look across and you see the skyline of New York City. They were able to build that right on that lot there in Romania and they did a darn good job.

Tavis: I raise that because, in my mind, we're making all these dots. So you think of Hoboken and you obviously think of Frank Sinatra, Chairman of the Board, an icon. When I think of one icon, Frank Sinatra, I think of another icon, Miles Davis. There's a Chevy Chase-Miles Davis connection. There's a wonderful story about your having hung out one night with Miles Davis. Tell me about that.

Chase: Oh, not just one night. I knew Miles. I grew up with Bill Evans, who's a pianist. I play piano. I play a lot of Bill's stuff. He was on "Kind of Blue." He's the only white man on "Kind of Blue," the greatest jazz album ever made.

Tavis: Without question.

Chase: But I did one - there is a story. I mean, all these guys knew me. Charlie Mingus was always at the Five Spot and Coltrane was always at the Half Note and, at the Jazz Gallery, you could see Miles. I mean, this was what New York was. At the Vanguard was Thelonious and Bill Evans. I used to hang out in these places when I was young lad in my late teens and I got to know all of them.

I was at the Au Go Go one night in the Village and there was Tony Williams, this new young incredible drummer and a full band. Keith Jerrick, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on drums. Miles said at one point, "Hey, let Chevy sit in" to Tony, you know, with that voice.

Tavis: That raspy voice, yeah.

Chase: Yeah, and I was scared to death because I had been a drummer, you know, with the Steely Band group before they became well known when we were in college. I was mostly a jazz drummer, though, but nobody could play like Tony Williams. I actually sat in on a song the whole time hoping I was keeping the beat and hoping please don't give me tray fours or don't give me any solos (laughter), so I got to play one song.

Tavis: How many guys get a chance to say they played with Miles Davis? That's pretty amazing. You were called up by the audience to do this?

Chase: Yeah, it was fun. It was nice. I mean, in those days, you know, in the late 1960s, around that period of time, it was so loose down in the Village, the jazz scene. I saw Miles fire Philly Joe. I think I was with my brother and he fired Philly Joe Jones off the drums and had Jimmy Cobb sit in. Jimmy Cobb ended up on that album, "Kind of Blue." I saw Charlie Mingus fire Calvin Newborn, a guitarist, because of a bad solo. "Get off, get off, get off this stage!"

Tavis: (Laughter) These guys take their work seriously.

Chase: Yeah, particularly Charlie Mingus. He was a big guy and he took his work very seriously. It's a wonderful group of people. These are people that I'm still very connected to, even though most of them have died. Clark Terry and some of them are still around and I'm a member of the Jazz Foundation and I'm always involved every year with a function at the Apollo and raise money to take care of these old jazz guys who never made a cent. Best musicians in the world. They never made a cent and they needed money for their health and they need money to live.

Tavis: I was in New York, Chevy, not long ago and saw that Jimmy Heath was playing. I love Jimmy Heath. For those watching who know Mtume's song, "Juicy Fruit," Mtume's daddy is a great jazz professor and artist named Jimmy Heath. So Heath is playing at Birdland and I go see Jimmy Heath and, to my surprise, he has flown in from Arizona Clark Terry to sit in with him and I cried at the end of that.

Chase: They all know each other.

Tavis: Jimmy Heath and Clark Terry together was amazing.

Chase: It's amazing to go down to the basement of the Apollo the night that we do those concerts. They're all down there. All the Heath brothers, you know, and Clark. I like to do mumbles with Clark.

Tavis: He did that with Jimmy Heath. It was amazing.

Chase: I mumbled with him down in Little Rock (laughter). He let me come up and do mumbling with Herbie on the piano.

Tavis: So Chevy Chase stumbles and mumbles and does it all well. That might have been a bad joke. Anyway -

Chase: - I thought that was good.

Tavis: Thank you, Chevy. I'm glad you appreciate that.

Chase: That'll be twenty-five dollars.

Tavis: There you go (laughter). The movie, "Funny Money," starring Chevy Chase. Go check it out. What an honor to meet you and glad to have you on the program.

Chase: The honor was mine. Thank you.

Tavis: I enjoyed it immensely. That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Our radio podcast now available at tavistalk.com. I'll see you back here next time, though, on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.

[A film clip is shown]