Chevy Chase says doing Community show was a "Big Mistake"

[The Borgified Corpse]

Chevy Chase is over 70. The odds of him being very computer savy are pretty slim.

Not surprising coming from Chase. He's always had the "I'm better than everyone" attitude.

Uh, dude, his catchphrase was "I'm Chevy Chase and you're not."

I don't like Community and gave up on it after 3 episodes but really the lowest form of television is "reality" tv not sitcoms.

I'd urge you to give it a second chance. I gave up very early on when it originally started airing, but after reading so much good stuff about it I gave it another go and stuck with it and it's now my second favorite sitcom (after Arrested Development.)

Whenever anyone tells me they don't like Community, I just have them watch season 1's Modern Warfare (the paintball episode). It was probably the first episode of Community that really drove home the whole style of the show.

That's a good one. But, personally, if I'm trying to sell a geek audience on the merits of the show, I start with "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons." I love the bit where they have to seduce the elf to get a pegasus.

Has anyone else notice these last few years how it's next to impossible to see a new American comedy without one to three stars of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE featured in it?

The show has classic cast members and episodes, but is also famous for beating 50 percent of its jokes into the ground in between two four-minute commercial breaks. Add all the musical numbers with performers' hands not even seeming to touch their guitars, and the total entertainment value doesn't come close to 60 minutes, let alone its 90-minute slot. I think the show has much to answer for, including its contaminating the movies with Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, Tracy Morgan and so many others. (Tina Fey is a welcome exception.) And why dwell anymore on Guest Host for life Alec Baldwin? I can think of funnier relatives in cemeteries....

Just give it a few more years until Jon Hamm finally figures out how to have Baldwin killed and make it look like an accident.

Good lord, I couldn't stand him on Community. His scenes always brought an episode's momentum to a grinding halt. His character never appeared to "fit" in with the rest of the cast.

In fairness, I think that was part of the point, that Pierce was so impossibly generationally removed from the frame of reference of the rest of the cast, even the older characters like Jeff & Shirley, that it generated a lot of humor.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

"I think the reason I have stuck around is because I love these kids, the cast - they are very good. It's not like I am working with the great innovators of all time, but at the same time, they are my friends."

I don't see this comment as being so derrogatory towards the Community cast. While I would agree that the show is very innovative and the cast members are all really good on it, I don't think the style of their work is particularly revolutionary. They're basically occupying the same sitcom territory previously pioneered by the casts of 30 Rock & Arrested Development. I haven't seen them do anything as daring as the precise study in human awkwardness that is Alan Partridge.

 

[tighr]

Whenever anyone tells me they don't like Community, I just have them watch season 1's Modern Warfare (the paintball episode). It was probably the first episode of Community that really drove home the whole style of the show.

That's a good one. But, personally, if I'm trying to sell a geek audience on the merits of the show, I start with "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons." I love the bit where they have to seduce the elf to get a pegasus.

Oh, absolutely. One of the best episodes of the show. The reason I pointed out Modern Warfare was because it was a season 1 episode, though.

Coincidentally, its one of the ones I was referring to where its obvious Chase filmed his scenes seperately (another forum I'm on had someone who visited the set when they were filming the D&D episode, and Chase was nowhere to be found.) Even the scenes at the begining of the episode where he is sitting at the table were filmed separately (there are few, if any, in-camera shots of Chase with the other castmembers). I think he's repeatedly stormed offset. Harmon even mentioned in an interview that Chase ruined the season finale by not showing up for work the last day, and he had a planned scene for the end of the episode that had to be cut. Unfortunately for Dan Harmon, he was fired from the show shortly afterwards.

 

[doubleohfive]

Whenever anyone tells me they don't like Community, I just have them watch season 1's Modern Warfare (the paintball episode). It was probably the first episode of Community that really drove home the whole style of the show.

That's a good one. But, personally, if I'm trying to sell a geek audience on the merits of the show, I start with "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons." I love the bit where they have to seduce the elf to get a pegasus.

Oh, absolutely. One of the best episodes of the show. The reason I pointed out Modern Warfare was because it was a season 1 episode, though.

Coincidentally, its one of the ones I was referring to where its obvious Chase filmed his scenes seperately (another forum I'm on had someone who visited the set when they were filming the D&D episode, and Chase was nowhere to be found.) Even the scenes at the begining of the episode where he is sitting at the table were filmed separately (there are few, if any, in-camera shots of Chase with the other castmembers). I think he's repeatedly stormed offset. Harmon even mentioned in an interview that Chase ruined the season finale by not showing up for work the last day, and he had a planned scene for the end of the episode that had to be cut. Unfortunately for Dan Harmon, he was fired from the show shortly afterwards.

Harmon wasn't talking about the season finale being ruined by Chase. The episode Harmon was referring to was the video game episode, which aired the same night, which Harmon later discussed during his AMA on Reddit. The confusion is probably tied to the fact that the last few episodes aired on the same night as well as the fact that the scene in question would have been one of the last to be lensed during the production schedule. Here's the pertinent quote:

Dan Harmon said:
He refused to do the "tag" for the Digital Estate Planning episode (the 8 bit video game episode). In the scripted tag, Abed comes to Pierce with the thumb drive he took, and says "Pierce, I've been able to adjust some of the code for your Dad's video game and I've made a version I think you might like better." He puts the thumb drive into a laptop in front of Pierce. We cut to the laptop screen, where we see Pierce's avatar on a front lawn with the giant floating head of Cornelius. Every time Pierce presses the space bar, his avatar throws a baseball to his father's head, which gives him a thousand points and a "great job, son!" Pierce presses the space bar a few times, pauses, then leans over and embraces Abed and we fade to black. When Adam Countee pitched that tag, tears instantly rolled down my cheeks, and in point of fact, my eyes are getting watery describing it to you. It was the most important part of the episode and possibly one of the most important moments of the season. I was very upset to hear that it wasn't shot because someone didn't feel like shooting it, especially since it was literally the last day of shooting, which meant we'd never be able to pick it up. I regret nothing about how upset I got. My job was to care about my show.

And now Community fans online are trying to re-create the video game, and the lost scene Harmon described above (though the article also incorrectly describes the episode as the season finale):

http://www.cinemablend.com/televisi...ates-Lost-Scene-From-Season-Finale-46290.html

 

[Delsaber]

I remember reading somewhere that Patrick Stewart was on Dan Harmon's shortlist to play Pierce. That almost certainly would've turned out better for everyone. Even Chevy Chase, apparently, if this is really his attitude about the show.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I remember reading somewhere that Patrick Stewart was on Dan Harmon's shortlist to play Pierce. That almost certainly would've turned out better for everyone. Even Chevy Chase, apparently, if this is really his attitude about the show.

Man, that would have been awesome.

I know it's not going to happen, but it would be funny if they just replaced Chase with Stewart as Pierce and didn't even acknowledge the difference; just have everyone be oblivious to the change in appearance and accent except Abed (but no one takes him seriously when he brings it up). You could even have Abed say he looks like Patrick Stewart, Picard, or Professor Xavier so they think he's just mixing up reality and fantasy again.

 

[FPAlpha]

I remember reading somewhere that Patrick Stewart was on Dan Harmon's shortlist to play Pierce. That almost certainly would've turned out better for everyone. Even Chevy Chase, apparently, if this is really his attitude about the show.

Man, that would have been awesome.

I know it's not going to happen, but it would be funny if they just replaced Chase with Stewart as Pierce and didn't even acknowledge the difference; just have everyone be oblivious to the change in appearance and accent except Abed (but no one takes him seriously when he brings it up). You could even have Abed say he looks like Patrick Stewart, Picard, or Professor Xavier so they think he's just mixing up reality and fantasy again.

Oooh.. Stewart would have been excellent!

Coincidentally last nights episode of the Daily Show had him in a comedy bit.. totally was not expecting him on the show as anything but a guest to be interviewed and i laughed my ass off and clapped.. awesome!

As to the replacement idea.. pretty good and has also been done on Roseanne way back in the 90s when they replaced one of the daughters with Sarah Chalke (of Scrubs fame later on) and when they went back to the original actress had quite a bit of fun pointing it out in a *winkwink* style.. was very funny.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Coincidentally last nights episode of the Daily Show had him in a comedy bit.. totally was not expecting him on the show as anything but a guest to be interviewed and i laughed my ass off and clapped.. awesome!

Yeah, that was fantastic. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

 

[gblews]

Good lord, I couldn't stand him on Community. His scenes always brought an episode's momentum to a grinding halt. His character never appeared to "fit" in with the rest of the cast.

In fairness, I think that was part of the point, that Pierce was so impossibly generationally removed from the frame of reference of the rest of the cast, even the older characters like Jeff & Shirley, that it generated a lot of humor.

Remember that conversation Robert Downey Jr. had with Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder about acting? Downey said that Sean Penn had gone "full retard" in that movie and that was the reason Penn didn't get the Oscar. He was saying that Penn gave a great performance as a retarded person, but failed to get across the character's underlying "wisdom" -- the thing that would have made the character pitiable but endearing and noble rather than just pitiable.

That is how I think of Chevy's performance as Pierce -- he went "full asshole", meaning he presented the asshole part of Pierce while failing to impart to the audience that Pierce really had a heart of gold deep down underneath it all while he was being an asshole. The only time we ever saw Pierce's softer side was when the dialogue was specifically written for Pierce to show that softer side.

Chevy's performance also many times seemed to break the show's natural flow (for lack of a better term). It is as if Chevy never fully "got" his character or the show and consequentely never was able to fully mesh Pierce with the other characters and the episode's story. Chevy, through Pierce, always seemed to me to be looking at his castmates going, "Huh".

The quotes attributed to him in the this thread seem to confirm that this is what was going on.