Dana Carvey Thinks He’s Got Chevy Chase All Figured Out
Dr. Dana Carvey stroked his chin this week on the Fly on the Wall podcast, certain that he’d diagnosed the personality disorder that makes Chevy Chase difficult to work with. Chase has been a Fly on the Wall guest in the past, and it was prior to that conversation that Carvey developed his Unified Theory of Chevy Chase.
“I kind of figured him out,” Carvey told David Spade and Chase’s Community costar Joel McHale. “He has an impulse to say the thing you’re not supposed to say, even if it goes into territory that you cannot even comprehend he’s going there. But he has an impulse to do that.”
Armed with his theory, Carvey knew exactly the right method for approaching Chase’s interview. “I just sort of went with it,” he explained. “(Chase) would do all this shock stuff, and I just started finding it so funny because I saw what he was doing.”
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The key, according to Carvey, is not to take Chase’s bait. “If you don’t get defensive, it’s like a swing and a miss,” Carvey said.
McHale, who spent a lot more time on Community with Chase than Carvey did during that one-hour interview at Spade’s house, agrees with Carvey’s theory, but only up to a point. Working with Chase was a lot more problematic than taking offense at his shit-stirring jokes. “At six in the morning, as we’re all stumbling in there, hoping to make our 15-hour day, he didn’t want to be there for that long,” McHale explained. “It was too much for the man. He didn’t want to be there. And so we would have to find a way to shoot him out.”
In other words, the cast and crew would have to bend their days to get Chase’s scenes done first so he could leave. Meanwhile, everyone else had to put in the long — and now disjointed — hours.
“Chevy if you’re listening or watching,” McHale said, “I don’t think you would disagree with any of this.”
Both things, of course, can be true. Carvey’s theory that Chase blurts out incendiary remarks to get a reaction is right on. If that was the only problem, McHale and the Community gang probably could have grimaced their way through. But as the show’s cast and crew can testify, Chase’s passive-aggressive tactics went well beyond “shock stuff.”
Speaking of theories, I have my own about Carvey’s hypothesis: It was all subterfuge so he could once again talk about working with egomaniac Mickey Rooney on their sitcom, One of the Boys. Chase being an a-hole? “I’ve had experiences like that — Mickey Rooney,” Carvey commiserated. “But anyway, it doesn’t really matter — Mickey Rooney.”
For a Saturday Night Live podcast, Rooney gets a lot of airtime on Fly on the Wall. There’s virtually no comedy story that Carvey can’t tie back to his crazy experiences working with “the biggest star in the world.”
Carvey even admitted it as he made the flimsy Chevy Chase comparisons: “I love any podcast that mentions Mickey Rooney.”
