Dan Palmer reports from An Evening With Chevy Chase in London’s Hammersmith…
Chevy Chase is primarily known for two things; his highly successful 1980s comedy career and being something of a prickly pear… emphasis on the prick. As a dyed-in-the wool fan of Mister Chase and his oeuvre (including such genuine comedic classics as Foul Play, Spies Like Us, Fletch and the Vacation series) I’ve always been something of an apologist when confronted with tales of his abrasive behaviour. In the style of a good friend or benefactor of a #MeToo suspect.
So, when entering the Hammersmith Apollo on Saturday night to see ‘An Evening with Comedy Legend Chevy Chase’ I have to admit there were mild concerns, gurgling in the back of my lizard brain, that Chevy might quantify these tales of telling fans to, “go fuck ’em selves” and slapping people in the face in the most auspicious setting possible.
I did not take one second to consider the possibility that the problem would be …the host.
Rocco Buonvino is a promoter who specialises in high-end ‘evenings with’. Past guests have included Schwarzenegger, Pacino, Travolta, Sheen (Charlie not Martin) and Stallone (Sylvester not Frank). They have all taken part in these Q&As, where hosts have included Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross and Piers Morgan. ‘Jesus, I hope it’s not Morgan’, a friend naively pleaded. Within the hour she would be praying for the ego-free subtleties of the lovable Good Morning Britain every man.
When the host was introduced as ‘Mike Read’ an audible question mark emanated from the crowd. Befuddlement was amplified as we were also informed of his accomplishments, one of which was that of ‘songwriter’. My Spidey sense began to tingle when the Zoot suited host of Saturday Superstore and Pop Quiz appeared on stage and duly informed us that he will be talking to Chevy Chase about his …music?
The man of the hour, for his part, was amiable, friendly and in good spirits. Chase seemed genuinely humbled by the affection from the audience. Unfortunately the host seemed determined to turn his guest’s mood to muddled confusion, forgoing questions about his career and instead asking him about tennis, ‘English soccer’ and his 1620s ancestors.
Read’s major focus of the evening was …as promised.. music. He rambled on and on (and on and on) about a music career that Chevy Chase didn’t even know he had. Neither Chevy nor the audience wanted to hear about it, but Mike Read DID – so we all had to like it or lump it. This all slowly and steadily built to a twangingly cringe-worthy crescendo when Read pulled out his guitar (which I do believe is the very same instrument of torture from his now infamous ‘UKIP Calypso’ video). It was pure Gervais. Incidentally my friend and Fanged Up co-star Ewen McIntosh (aka Big Keith from The Office) was present – he probably thought he was coming over with PTBD (Post Traumatic Brent Disorder).
Chevy wasn’t asked about his time working for National Lampoon or Saturday Night Live or his tumultuous tenure on the hit NBC sitcom Community but WAS asked if he had a message for the kids about drugs? Brilliantly his response was ‘dip ya finger in it and taste it first’.
Mike didn’t seem to approve.
Through no effort on the host’s part, Chase would periodically drop some delicious bread-crumbs, but instead of having a taste; Read dust-bustered them and offered up haphazard head-scratchers like; ‘Do you ever wish you were in Steely Dan?’
References to John (Belushi) and Danny (Aykroyd) were ignored as the posturing MC clearly didn’t know who Chase was talking about. The audience cooed with palpable intrigue when Chevy confessed to turning down the lead roles in American Beauty, Forrest Gump and Ghostbusters. But as Chase ruminated on missing out on Dan Aykroyd’s supernatural wealth, and ‘wisely’ evading Tom Hanks’ ascent into award-winning respectability, Read suspecting that the audience’s fascination might be growing, torpedoed that line of questioning for esoteric interests of his own and his only.
Impatience began to grow amongst the knuckle-gnashing crowd, some (who had paid up to £65 for the pleasure) simply got up and left. The atmosphere grew dark and ugly.
In Mark Manson’s New York Times Bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life the author proffers that, “We are always interpreting the meaning of every moment and every occurrence. We are always choosing the values by which we live and the metrics by which we measure everything that happens to us. Often the same event can be good or bad, depending on the metric we choose to use.”
This ideology was put to the test when a brave soul in the audience decided to reverse the metric gauge of the evening by exclaiming, “Mike Read! You’re a twat!” And with this; a very bad event almost (almost) became good. The biggest unified belly laugh of the evening resulted from one trailblazing ticket-holder who simply had had enough of this defunct DJ consistently melon-twisting the aging star of Oh, Heavenly Dog.
From this point forward we uniformly chose the alternate metric; we were permitted to laugh …and laugh we did. But for the first time in his career the man who majored in prat-falls on SNL, electrocuted himself in Christmas Vacation and received an impromptu cavity search in Fletch became something he had never been in in his forty-five years in the business; the straight man.
And thus Mike Read’s Jackson Pollak approach to interviewing metamorphosised into that rarest of things; a sublime accidental performance of divine comedy in its purest form. This mulletted madman’s abolishment of form and structure would have been envied by Andy Kaufman, Kenny Everett and Salvador Dali alike. His cocky posture and references to his own greatness and legendary status conjured up the most deliciously genuine guffaws from every corner of the venue. This allowed Chase to summon up some of those Irwin M Fletcher double takes and asides. At one point Chevy spoke for us all and asked ‘What are you talking about?’ Buttoning another awkward exchange; Read looked to the middle distance and simply said ‘Ahhhhh, great stuff!’ The Apollo pissed itself.
Convalescing in a nearby pub, shortly after this unforgettable event, those who were once strangers became comrades, veterans with a desperate desire and necessity to confirm with nameless others that what they had just witnessed ..actually happened. Bonding over a shared traumatic experience as if Polish escapees from a Gulag …lorded over by a man who wishes he was Steve Wright.
We had seemingly all been granted extra drinking time from our marble-deficient master of ceremonies as Read, in a rare moment of self-awareness, sensed the wave of bad juju permeating from the masses and appeared to cut the evening short – disappearing and going ungentlemanly into that good night.
This left poor old Clark Griswald stranded on the stage. But as he literally dropped the mike (both upper and lower-case), Chevy received a rapturous standing O for surviving yet another surreal, laughter-filled journey.
He had finally reached his Wally World.
Although the wally in question was already hailing a cab.
Dan Palmer is an actor and writer. He wrote the cult hit Stalled and co-wrote and co-stars in Fanged Up which is out later in the year. He looks forward to Timmy Mallet interviewing Eddie Murphy.
