The actor has once again taken aim at his former NBC sitcom: “I didn’t want to be with those people.”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/chevy-chase-slams-community-1235600779/
The writers of Community had a fun little game. Someone puts forward a racist or otherwise offensive statement. The rest guess if this was something Pierce Hawthorn said (Chevy’s racist character on Community) or something Chevy said himself on set.
Decent article on how disliked and how much of an asshole Chevy Chase is.
There’s a twitter thread where Alison, Donald and Danny play this game. It’s hilarious in a very terrifying way.
My recollection from interviews is that Dan Harmon and the cast found Chevy just didn’t get the show at all when they were making it. A huge amount of Community’s humour is a mix of meta humour and pop culture references. In the same way that Pierce claimed to never understand what Abed was talking about, Chevy didn’t understand most of what Community was on about - his frame of reference for what is funny hadn’t moved on in decades.
Even though he’s famously a dick, when he says he didn’t think Community was funny, he might actually be telling the truth - not just being petty.
That’s totally fine. As much as I love the show, I appreciate it’s not for everyone. It relies on a lot of pop culture knowledge and awareness of tropes and memes. It’s perfectly reasonable that he doesn’t get it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jonathan Banks didn’t get some of the jokes either.
But JB isn’t an asshole, he’s a very grateful and sweet man, so the problem was definitely Chevy.
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This explains why I didn’t get it. I thought Community was ok but never understood why it was so popular. To be honest, I didn’t think it was funny. Guess I just don’t get pop culture references. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Community ended almost a decade ago.
So I suspect what’s happening, is that they’re finally making a community movie, but Chase likely wasn’t invited to join the cast.
Six seasons and a movie!
In his recent interview with The Hollywood Report, Harmon said that he didn’t even know if Chase was legally allowed to come back for the movie.
Context: he was fired for using a slur on set
Wow, I had no idea he was such a dick. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
Also, I couldn’t care less about Chevy Chase’s opinions. Community was genuinely hilarious.
Yeah I agree. And I know this is considered a hot take nowadays, but Chevy Chase was great in it. I’m not saying he didn’t deserve to get booted off the show, but the show definitely suffered when he left.
I almost think it works well that he was in a completely different headspace than the rest of the actors. It made him effortlessly bizarre when he could have come off more as mailing it in.
“Nuanced-take five” -the Todd, probably
That ain’t it, fam. The Dungeons and Dragons episode was a riot, due in part because they made Chevy’s character so nasty.
“You appear in the forest naked. You will die of exposure in fourteen turns.”
McHale: “I wait fifteen turns.”Pierce was a good character with some great moments. That doesn’t mean that Chevy isn’t an asshole.
That beast of a comment by Donald Glover. He is perceptive and also very nice. Love him
His approach to discourse is admirable. He’s woke, which I’m not a fan of, but he’s respectful and has so much empathy for people who disagree with him that one can’t help but respect and admire that.
You’re not a fan of being aware of social inequalities?
He doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about. He’s flailing around trying to reconcile what the word actually meant with Republicans deciding to make it a trigger word for reactionaries.
He can’t just say “I don’t like him because I’ve been told to not like him”, but that’s functionally what it boils down to.
In your own mind!
I am, but I’m not a fan of wokeness. I trust that you’re not so dense that you can’t tell the difference.
It’s not that you can’t define it, no…
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you are dense.
No, it’s certain that you’re wrong and they’re not dense.
You’d have to define it to be wrong, so take a leap rather than call people poo poo heads and run away.
Look, considering you don’t know what wokeness is, I’ll spell it out for you: wokeness is critical theory, which states that, among other things, inequality is inherently bad or wrong, and must be rectified. You don’t need to adhere to critical theory to observe that such inequalities exist though.
You can learn more about Critical Theory here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory
Or about critical theory applied to race, commonly known as Critical Race Theory or CRT, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
That’s my serious answer, with everything you need to know. After this we can be as silly or goofy as you like.
Wait, what is woke then if it’s not being aware of social inequalities?
In a quick sentence, wokeness is critical theory, in particular applied to race, known as critical race theory.
To observe inequalities is not woke; what is woke is to believe that all inequalities or power hierarchies are inherently bad.
What are some “good” inequalities?
I think a variety of levels of pay depending on job position, effort, or skill is a great example. Not all jobs are equal, so they should not all yield the same amount of pay.
Jump from a very high place.
But I don’t do drugs
Holy shit are you 12?
what is woke is to believe that all inequalities or power hierarchies are inherently bad.
That sounds like a thinly veiled way of saying you’re a supremacist.
If we’re both the lens of wokeness I’d agree, even though I’m a black dude, as under that framework it’s inequality, not discrimination, that is racism.
How can wokeness be a specific academic concept? That doesn’t make sense, CRT is CRT and it’s just an academic lens. And what’s wrong with it anyway? Do you just not like acknowledging that America has the deck stacked against black people and really doesn’t want to change that? Why do you think it’s good to suppress an academic lens like CRT? What would you prefer is taught instead of that?
But what are some examples of social inequalities that are not inherently bad? Your other examples are not social inequalities. You’re looking at something like suggesting what kinds of systematic racism are good actually, not looking at things like the difference in pay between an engineer and a janitor.
You would have to provide your definition of social inequalities for me to answer, since you don’t think that my examples qualify as inequalities.
Could you define “wokeness”?
“Acknowledging that people who aren’t cis white males exist.”
🤦
Turn off fox news and go outside
no u
I hate Fox News. Newsnation is where it’s at if you MUST watch the mainstream media but most corporate media sucks to be honest.
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What is a woman?
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I’m surprised you’ve never heard of wokeness before, it’s pretty prominent in America. Do you live in America?
Genius level comment. Anyone who says something like this really just binge watches Fox News and has no idea what words mean.
Sorry to link to reddit, but the hobby drama about this man is wild. I’d call him a bitter old man if he wasn’t already this much of an asshole in the 70s.
I had no idea that American Dad episode was a parody of a real roast. That makes it even better lol.
Its not really what he was saying, but he could have had a point. The shows writers really did kind of have it out for him (with good reason as stated everywhere else), and as a result they didn’t give him very much to work with. Even his use of the N word was directed at the writers, saying something like “pretty soon they’ll just have me call Donald N----r”. Its really a vicious cycle, because it’s hard to write good jokes for a person you dislike as much as the writers did chevy. And then Chevy gets even shittier to you because you constantly give him the worst lines.
They did seem to kind of lose focus on Pierce as time went time on. In the beginning he was a rich out of touch guy, but would give good advice every now and then still or a word of wisdom from his age. But then, the same thing happened to Britta, who got dumber as the show went on, and Chang, who got crazier as the show went on. It might just be a result of the same Flanderization.
He’s always been a bastard towards his cast mates. There was a roast of his where everyone railed on him for being such a pain in the ass to work with and it was absolutely getting to him. He deserves all the roasting he got because he has never shown a scrap of remorse.
That opinion doesn’t seem to be streets ahead!
I always thought that was something made up for the show…
Then a couple months ago Biden said it and for a split second I thought he was making a Community joke. But he’s just so old he unironically talks like Pierce sometimes.
More like streets behind.
Chevy will die not understanding that being a shithead is why this all happened to him.
I’ve seen quotes from damn near everyone else on Community that has said Chevy is a bastard to work with. If this is his attitude about the show, I can see why they would say that.
Oh, not just Community! He’s been a huge prick his entire career.
Ugh. I can’t imagine what his Family Vacations must have been like.
He’s managed to burn every bridge and alienate anyone who might have defended him. He took his success on SNL and trampled it in the dust.
He burned his first bridges while on SNL. So much so that he’s been banned from hosting a few times. It seems every new generation of cast has to re-learn the lesson of keeping the Chase ban active.
Projection by Chevy Chase
But he’s can’t escape it. He’s still being Pierce…
Chevy not being in the movie is a damn shame. I always envisioned the story being Troy sailing to find hidden treasure but it turning out to be Pierce after having faked his death.
