Chevy Chase: Cut to the Chase

**This is your third Vacation movie--one that you're on record as saying would never happen.**

Absolutely.

"It would be a waste of time," you said. "They've been done."

And the fourth one, we're working on now. [Laughs] I guess it had never occurred to me that they might pay me tremendous amounts to do it. That part I hadn't taken into account. But this one's actually quite funny.

Still, it's a sequel of a sequel. In 1985 you said you like to stay away from sequels. In 1988 you said sequels bother you.

Now I say I'll only do sequels. [Laughs] I don't know how I feel about them. Who could care less whether something is a sequel or not? It has to stand on its own. When I did the second one [European Vacation], it was so awful that I just couldn't imagine doing another one. But this third one is written by John Hughes, and he wrote a good script.

Was there a central idea that got you interested in it?

It's about what it's like in anybody's house when everybody comes to visit at Christmas, and if that's like what we do at our house here, Christmas is hilarious, it's mayhem. You feel like you don't know everybody, there're too many presents, too much food, and there are so many funny things to do to the place. I thought of this idea of a Christmas tree catching fire, of some uncle who lights his cigar in the back room and you just hear a phroom! Just the sound that says, I don't think there are any branches left on that tree. And all the presents underneath all went up with the tree. And the uncle is on fire. To me that was a hilarious image. I told it to John Hughes and we laughed and laughed. And he said, "We've got to make a movie about that." About this tree exploding and this guy catching fire. And it sort of took off from there.

Before you got the image, was this second sequel something you had to be talked into doing?

Oh God did I have to be talked into it. Yeah, it was a major negotiation.

Did the money just keep getting bigger and bigger. . . ?

It wasn't the money so much as the promise that I'd have work afterwards. I like Warner Bros, but I wanted a guarantee that I'd have two or three other things to do after that. So we made a deal that was up in the many, many millions of dollars for three pictures.

The numbers we heard were $24 million for four pictures.

Well, if you know, that's what it is. It's a good average. Average of six a picture.

**And they don't all have to be Vacation and Fletch sequels?**

There was another Vacation one, Down Under, written by Eric Idle, but we ultimately decided it wasn't American enough. We were trying to trade in on the Paul Hogan Australian popularity at that point. I think we both felt that it wasn't strong enough. And you can be sure I won't be doing any more Fletch sequels.

**You really hated Fletch Lives that much?**

I fought the whole time against it. I said it's not going to work. It was during the writer's strike and I couldn't write for it. We had no script. We had a director who was doing the writing, and he couldn't write. All I could do was go out and improvise. Basically I had to hold that picture together by winging it.

Before you became a producer how much involvement did you have in your films?

I like to have my hand in it in every way. Every picture I'm on, I get very involved in the writing. My name may not be on the picture but I'm involved in the pre-production, the production, and post-production.

And your complaints about the final product have usually been about the final cut, which often changes what you've thought you've made. For instance, on Deal of the Century, you sounded very positive about working with director Billy Friedkin until you saw the results.

The problem was in post-production. Billy went a little bit batshit. He's a very intense man, a brilliant director, but there were a number of things in the script that scared him, so he completely changed the ending around.

**That happened with Al Pacino on Cruising as well. He thought he was making one picture, and Friedkin made another.**

That's what happened to Deal of the Century. But I didn't want to go up against Friedkin. I felt sorry for him. He's not a universally well-liked man out here. I think it's because he has problems with his temper. He had some real emotional problems that I just didn't want to be involved with. Life's too short to go through that. The picture did very poorly.

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