Demi Moore Called Chevy Chase a ‘Turd’ While Making One of the Worst Comedies of All-Time
Demi Moore is the odds-on favorite to win the Best Actress Academy Award this year, but can she also get some kind of honorary Oscar for enduring the behind-the-scenes hell of Dan Aykroyd’s directorial debut Nothing But Trouble?
For those who never saw it, or have poured thousands of dollars into hypnotherapeutic efforts to wipe it from their memories, Nothing But Trouble is a 1991 comedy about a yuppie couple (played by Moore and Chevy Chase) who are pulled over for running a stop sign in the fictional town of Valkenvania. They end up being imprisoned by an elderly, cannibalistic judge (Aykroyd) in his gothic funhouse full of wacky grotesqueries.
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Between the judge’s conspicuously dong-like nose and his deformed mutant baby-men grandchildren, Bobo and Lil’ Debbull, it could be argued that Nothing But Trouble is far grosser than anything in The Substance.
But making the film was a difficult process — not because the script was unhinged and Aykroyd was inexperienced as a director, but because Chase acted like a jerk the entire time.
Keep in mind, this movie built a 90-foot-tall garbage-filled mansion, a giant roller coaster and a “working drawbridge over an actual moat.” According to The Telegraph, Warner Bros. held emergency budget meetings to try and “stop the bleeding!” But still, the biggest nuisance on set, it would seem, was Chase, who the studio had insisted on casting in the lead role.
Chase hated the script, but per his authorized biography I’m Chevy Chase… And You’re Not, he “wanted to do whatever he could to help” his old SNL co-star Aykroyd. Once he got on set, however, he reportedly “had a habit of bullying the increasingly exhausted Aykroyd,” who was eventually hospitalized for fatigue. The crew, who enjoyed working with Aykroyd and the creative freedom he gave them, “hated” Chase for his abusive behavior. One crew member even threatened to “drop a brick” on Chase’s head if he didn’t turn things around.
As with some of Chase’s other female co-stars, Moore similarly didn’t get along with the Fletch actor. In a podcast interview, late comedian and character actor Taylor Negron, who played “Fausto Squiriniszu” in Nothing But Trouble, revealed just how bad their working relationship was.
After noting that the production was like a “fever dream” and “the first time I ever really smelled a crack pipe,” Negron explained that the shoot was “very dramatic because Demi Moore and Chevy Chase got into the worst fight ever. I was in the middle of it.”
The feud got so bad that Negron was reminded of his parents’ violent arguments during his childhood, and the production actually let him leave. “They said ‘Taylor, you can go home.’ And I remember going home in my costume, which was like an orange pantsuit,” Negron recalled. They even got into a “horrible fight” about who should take the blame for the fight: “He said, ‘You apologize to me,’ and she said, ‘I wouldn’t apologize to you goddamn turd shithead.’”
Incidentally, Negron also suggested that much of the movie was improvised, and the ending was written by having the grips pull story ideas out of a hat. Which would explain a lot, actually.
