Just caught this and thought it was pretty good. Chevy doesn't try to hide his asshole-ishness, yet can't figure out why many people don't like him.

Do they cover the spectacular failure of his talk show? They must.

I taped it on the DVR and will watch it next week hopefully.

Watching Chevy Chase sitting for an interview as a bald 82-year-old, it's easy to see him as a somewhat benign, slightly befuddled old man. But then he'll make some tasteless smartass remark or some bit of physical business, and you can almost see the comic actor you remember. Chase has a storied reputation as being something of a disagreeable asshole and the documentary's director described him as the rudest man she's ever met. A lot of the film deals with Chase's innate hostility.

The documentary covers all the expected bases, chronicling Chase's rise and fall, which apparently included Tony Montana levels of cocaine. All of his hits are covered as well as many of his cinematic missteps. Some actors like Goldie Hawn speak fondly of working with Chase, but the cast of "Community" declined to be interviewed. Of course, the embarrassment of Chase's infamous Nineties Talk Show is covered in detail and he's very honest about his failings in that regard.

The film chronicles Chase's bouts with addiction and depression, as well as the physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother and stepfather. While there are some embarrassing moments, there are many warm scenes mostly focusing on his long and loving marriage. I will say I was surprised at all the "f words" on CNN; usually if CNN is on, I'm the one using profanity.

Does Steve Martin participate?

Briefly

This isn't on Max? Need the CNN app?

It will be on Max 1/31.

If that is true does that mean the CNN version is edited and not the full doc since it has ads?

IMDB lists the run time of the film as 1:37, which is what the CNN app shows the run time as. So I think it is the full doc, with ads bumping it to 2 hours.

I completely forgot about this.

I did read that Yvette Nicole Brown declined to participate as she seems to absolutely despise Chase.

If there aren't any re-airs coming up, I will catch it on Max later this month.

Side note, I actually just picked up Fletch and Fletch Lives on Kino BD during the holidays for about $7 each.

You paid at least $10 too much for Fletch Lives.

I remember seeing Fletch Lives at the dollar theater. Chevy was a gifted comedic lead but apparently was difficult to handle off camera. Bill Murray was much the same but seems to have made a lot more friends over the years.

CNN has been like this for a while now. Most Saturday nights feature the American version of Have I Got News for You (with Roy Wood Jr., Amber Ruffin, & Michael Ian Black) & reruns of Real Time with Bill Maher - & they're both full of cussing.

No, but oddly (to me), Martin Short is interviewed. I think there were 2 very short clips from Thee Amigos. I remember a time when Steve & Chevy used to go on talk shows & promote each other's movies. Aykroyd is in it very briefly. Lorne & Alan Zweibel get a fair amount of time.

I enjoyed the doc.

Martin Short and Chevy were never friends, just co-stars, so for Short, it is just being interviewed about a movie he made.

I looked at the movie on IMDb, and if the people it lists really are the only ones that would talk about Chase, then just about everyone he's ever worked with hates his guts.

That also says a lot about Beverly, 5 films along with a number of commercial revivals, but then I'm sure she's used to dealing with men with huge egos.

Our Warner Bros. VFX team worked with him on Vegas Vacation and confirmed he was an asshole.

At one point John Carpenter said working with Chase on Memoirs of an Invisible Man made him want to quit making movies.

You really have to be a tremendous asshole (slouch?) to have people be that publicly obvious that they hate you.

I was interested in seeing this but it appears to really make Chase out to be some kind of misunderstood genius as opposed to the jerk many say he is in real life. I saw him at a FanExpo event in Orlando a couple of years ago as part of a Vacation anniversary panel and he did not seem to have an iota of humility about himself. He spent most of the time making passive aggressive remarks about other people, ogling Christie Brinkley who was sitting next to him, and seemed to hate being there in the first place. Heck, they even had to get on the building intercom for his photo ops to try and rush everyone to them because people were "holding him up". No other celebrity at the event did that and they had some rather big names present compared to him. The one respectable thing he did do was give props to Imogene Coca for her work on the first Vacation. But that was about it.

He answers his fan mail and responds or it was just for show in the doc.

Sad if he is a asshole and he should be taking in the accolades at this stage of his life and he had so much success and admired by many he should be happy and grateful.

The strange thing about this is that Joel McHale and Dan Harmon have done plenty of interviews where they have discussed their experiences working with him, so maybe they felt like they've already said all that they needed to say about him.

I plan on watching the doc when it gets to Max, but I have no doubts that it will do any good at all in terms of rehabilitating his image into anything other than a big jerk. I own an original Fletch one sheet, and back when I was not work from home it was framed and hung up in my office. And every time someone new came by it was mentioned and the conversation inevitably when to how awful is he and how he's burnt every bridge he has come across in Hollywood. And this was with regular people that aren't reading movie news and gossip on a regular basis.

They didn't discuss their expierences in a medium that was tailored around honoring Chevy Chase and if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything.

Asshole or not, it makes me sad that he's 82 now... every time I see him, he's this healthy 40-something dad and always will be.

While it may be honoring him it still goes into some of the many reasons why people dislike him personally and don't want to deal with him. Doesn't it include a scene where he insulted the documentarian during an interview by telling her that she wasn't bright enough to figure him out, which doesn't seem like something you would keep in if you are trying to make him look like a great dude.

Yes, but if you are Joel McHale and are contacted about being interviewed for a CNN documentary about Chevy Chase, it's reasonable for you to assume that the POV of the piece will be to celebrate Chase.

If the premise of the documentary was to be a hit piece on Chase, then Chevy would not have cooperated. It turned out the way it did because that's what the filmmaker found. As you point out, Chase couldn't stop himself from insulting the person making the movie about him.