Chevy Chase Wasn’t Welcome at Michael O’Donoghue’s Wake
The Chevy Chase/Michael O’Donoghue feud started over an impossibly long screenplay. The two comic minds had worked together for years, well before Saturday Night Live. After Chase stumbled his way into a drumming gig on National Lampoon’s Woodstock parody, Lemmings, he earned a spot on O’Donoghue’s National Lampoon Radio Hour. The two continued their collaboration in the early days of Saturday Night, a partnership so fruitful that the duo decided to collaborate on a movie script.
Saturday Matinee was a parody of the early days of moviegoing, where a kid might pay a nickel to see cartoons, coming attractions, newsreels, sing-a-long songs and comedy shorts all running back-to-back. The Chase/O’Donoghue version, of course, would replace the wholesome content with strange and offensive parodies. O’Donoghue’s first draft ran well over 200 pages, according to Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O’Donoghue. And that was before Chase added his material. Just one of the satirical bits, Planet of the Cheap Special Effects, ran more than 160 pages, longer than most films.
Understandably, the movie studio needed Chase and O’Donoghue to edit themselves before filming. Chase agreed, but O’Donoghue refused to change a word. “He was irresponsible in that way,” Chase said. He told his partner, “‘You’re going to have to compromise to some degree.’ And he wouldn’t. ‘I can’t compromise. I’m Michael O’Donoghue.’”
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O’Donoghue felt betrayed when Chase wouldn’t back him with the studio. And because Chase had a movie deal and O’Donoghue didn’t, the writer couldn’t take the script elsewhere. It was a rift they never mended.
Years later, after O’Donoghue died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1994, Lorne Michaels stepped up to foot the bill for his wake. It was held in O’Donoghue’s apartment, featuring a framed photograph of the comedy writer holding a large shotgun alongside two contact sheets showing off his postmortem brain scan. Black comedy in life, black comedy in death.
According to Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, Michaels showed up for the wake with Chase, even though he’d never patched things up with O’Donoghue. “No one could have been more out of style around Michael’s friends than Chevy,” Michaels said.
Almost as awkward as the brain scans on display were O’Donoghue’s VHS copies of The Chevy Chase Show on a side table. Chase’s recent late-night talk show had been a disaster, and O’Donoghue delighted in watching his ex-friend’s public humiliation.
SNL luminaries were at the wake to eulogize O’Donoghue. Bill Murray stood on a chair and described how the writer taught everyone to embrace hate. “He hated the horrible things in life, and the horrible people in life,” Murray said. “He hated them so good.”
Then it was Chase’s turn to mount the chair, telling the assembled how much he loved O’Donoghue’s comedy bit in which he pretended to be Merv Griffin getting steel needles shoved into his eyes. A heckler corrected Chase — it was Mike Douglas, not Griffin. If you’re going to honor a man’s comedy, at least get the joke right.
When it was Buck Henry’s turn to speak, he called out both Chase and Michaels, who’d also feuded with O’Donoghue. “Thank you, Lorne. Thank you, Chevy,” Henry said. “I think we all know how much Michael loved you.” The room had a good laugh at their expense.
Michaels later said that people at the wake made him feel like he’d “defiled the temple” by attending (even though he’d paid for it).
Chase felt the others didn’t understand that being on an enemies list was just part of the Michael O’Donoghue experience: “Part of who Michael was was that he could love and hate a person in the same weekend.”
Nevertheless, the wake participants embraced the Chase hate that night. “It was a hideous, hurtful thing,” Chase maintained.
