Happily, Ford cracked up—the only discomfited among the 1,000 guests were broadcast biggies like NBC president Herb Schlosser, who privately felt Chase had bombed, or, worse, galled administration and congressional types the industry shouldn't offend. Chevy, who does not suppress his own support for Morris Udall in '76, was genuinely knocked out by the President's graciousness and sportsmanship. "Ford," Chase discovered, "has a good sense of humor—he's just the wrong guy in the White House." (Chevy, in this shrink-ridden age, analyzes the President's problem of awkwardness: he really has super motor coordination but is a klutz because of "unconscious guilt for not being elected President and for pardoning Nixon.") In a similar snap judgment, Chevy notes, "Udall may not be half as nice a guy as Ford is."
It is that very sort of yippy wit and uninhibited statement that has made Saturday Night the only real breakthrough network series of this long yawn of a TV season. In their 11:30 p.m. (EST) sanctum, Chase and his aptly titled "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" are getting away with an unprecedented degree of unsettling and subversive if sometimes puerile and (to their elders) tasteless material. "We don't care if it gets a laugh in Peoria," asserts one of the Players. "We're writing for ourselves."
Their average age is 27, actually five years younger than head writer Chase and a generation apart, in spirit anyway, from the network censors. So, expectably, the boys (three of the ten writers are women) are hung up on dope jokes the way Dean Martin's scripters are into booze. Chevy, who once portrayed the President rolling a joint (clumsily) in the Oval Office, concedes "the show is put together by people who have smoked pot or have been on occasion potheads," but he steps on reports that it is produced "under the influence of drugs." If the crew nods off from anything, it would be lack of sleep. Chevy puts in 100 hours a week, obsessively rewriting himself right up to live air time. He frets that the show is cutting him off from the society he is supposed to be satirizing. "Being burnt out," he complains, "is as bad as being impotent."
Chevy was, in fact, born to the debchasing dolce vita in Manhattan. He was christened Cornelius Crane Chase, but his grandma began calling him Chevy when he was three days old. Dad, a former New Yorker writer who is now an editor and V.P. at Putnam, divorced his mum (the plumbing fixture heiress behind Chevy's middle name) in the late '40s. Young Chase ricocheted around prep schools and colleges, majoring in English and soccer, in which he perfected his famed fall. After graduation (from Bard), Chase resisted going to Vietnam by "acting a little crazy" (asked if he "liked men," Chevy answered "yes" because, he says, the question had no context). Classified 1-Y, Chase toured as a rock musician and wrote gags for Mad magazine, the Smothers Brothers and Alan King, and performed his own material on PBS's Great American Dream Machine and in the National Lampoon show Lemmings. Then, a year ago, while queuing up for a midnight Monty Python flick in L.A., he fortuitously bumped into producer Lorne Michaels, who later offered an unemployed Chevy a writing spot on Saturday Night.
Like most of the Saturday Nighters, Chase's personal life has gone to hell. Single again after a failed four-year marriage, Chevy fends off increasingly available groupies and maintains a long-distance romance with a lanky L.A. actress he sees at three-month intervals. The show's concept, pre-premiere, was for faceless equals, and Chase's emergence as the star leaves him "going around half the time feeling terrible. My whole life's just this show," he complains, while admitting "the star treatment is flattering. But I think I'd rather be remembered not as a performer but as a producer-writer."
NBC obviously feels differently—in February it announced Chase was signed to "an exclusive contract as a performer." But, claims Chevy, "I haven't seen it yet and I haven't signed it yet. Suppose I wanted to write a movie?" Chase brushes aside speculation that he's being groomed as a future Johnny Carson: "I'd love to do it for a week but I'd never want to sit around asking questions—it's not my style." Still, Chevy adds diplomatically, "I'm quite happy with NBC."
He's looking forward to the April 17 episode, on which the host will be presidential press secretary Ron Nessen, who's scolded the media for "unconscionable misrepresentations" of his boss. Chevy, accused of letting the White House use the program, insists, "We're not selling out. Nessen is an interesting host. People are tired of seeing the same old craperoos, all the people you see on game and variety shows. Having Nessen is not like having Nixon." Then, his eyes alight, Chevy amends, "whom we would have on in a minute."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
