I didn’t know until this morning that Chevy Chase was left out of Saturday Night Live’s anniversary reunion show this year, SNL50: The Anniversary Special, Chevy Chase. I don’t know because I stopped watching the show many years ago when it stopped being a cultural satire program without a political agenda and converted to an all-woke, all-progressive, anti-Republican Axis member like all the other late Night Shows. In SNL’s prime, however, when Don Pardo was still the announcer, I never missed an episode.
In CNN Films’ upcoming documentary, “I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not,” the original “Saturday Night Live” “Weekend Update” host reveals how hurt he was that he was left out of the program. “Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” Chase says. “This is probably the first time I’m saying it. But I expected that I would’ve been on the stage too with all the other actors. When Garrett [Morris] and Laraine [Newman] went on the stage there, I was curious as to why I didn’t. No one asked me to. Why was I left aside?” “Why was Bill Murray [hosting “Weekend Update” on the show] and why was I not? I don’t have an answer for that.”
Oh, I bet Chevy does. He was disliked by much of the cast and regarded as a toxic asshole. But that shouldn’t have mattered, and it was petty and wrong for the producers to snub him.
By purest coincidence, I wrote and co-directed my own 50th anniversary reunion show this year. We invited everyone who had ever been involved in the organization’s productions, and if they were willing, I worked them into the performances, no mean feat if I do say so myself. Did I personally like everyone we invited? No, of course not, nor did several prominent performers care much for me. That didn’t matter, and shouldn’t have mattered. The production was a salute to the group itself and its continued success and longevity. Every single key figure in its history available should have been on that stage or participating in the project.
Several did not participate out of lingering grudges and spite. That is their pathology: I can’t do anything about that. However, in any organization, the pioneers, the founders, the key figures all deserve respect and recognition no matter how difficult they were or how acrimonious their parting was. Like him or not, Chevy Chase was a major reason for SNL’s success that first year.
I’m sorry this happened to you, Chevy. It was wrong.
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t think I ever knew Chevy Chase was an asshole. I thought he was great on the early, good SNL shows. I didn’t ever watch the National Lampoon Clark Griswald movies. They seemed off-putting.
I didn’t know that, either. With all the problems we have losing respect for the art because of the terrible aspects of the artist, it sometimes make me wonder if we’re in general better off not knowing anything about the private lives and off-screen behavior of celebrities.
“I didn’t know that, either.”
We really don’t know any of those people; Brett Favre and O.J. Simpson come to mind.
Chase’s soaring career was meteoric (the next Cary Grant, some claimed) until the irony of all ironies ENSUED
PWS
Chase got really bad PR when he was on the sitcom “Community” with the entire cast calling him out for rude, bigoted, offensive behavior. It got him booted from the show eventually.
He’s started doing conventions. We attended a panel in Chicago last Summer with a reunion of the “Vacation” cast, including Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Randy Quaid, Anthony Michael Hall and the two different actresses who played Audrey. It was 30 minutes late starting. The general consensus was that Chase was in his room passed out or something.
He certainly did seem to try to make it “The Chevy Chase Show” up there. Funniest moment was at the end when something asked Hall a question, Chase started to answer it, Hall reminded him that the question was directed at him, Chase demanded to know why Hall got to answer the last question and Hall quipped, “Because I’m Anthony Michael Hall and you’re not!” And danced around the stage in triumph while the audience roared.
Hmm, I remember Chevy Chase from the 40th anniversary. Strange he wasn’t in the 50th.
From the 50th anniversary show I put together this year, I noticed a major attitudinal shift away from the group’s origins in the decade since the 40th, which I also presided over. The generational divide seemed much greater.
James Austin Johnson as Trump has taken over every, literally every cold-open this season. You have have to hold your nose and turn away to make it to even make to the monologue.