Chevy Chase: Cut to the Chase

You sound almost resigned. Would you like to be making "deeper" movies, working with better directors and actors?

Yeah, but I don't get many calls from them. It's because I'm perceived as being somewhat iconoclastic, and beyond that, a person who is a loner, who does "his own thing," who makes too much money; it's prohibitive for a director to hire him without having to pay the big bucks. Why take the chance when all that he is perceived to make are pictures that are simple-minded and go for big yucks? That really isn't the case, but it's going to be hard to break the mold there.

You mean you're willing to work for less if the quality is upped?

My price can be adjusted. I'm not a guy that has to stick to the big bucks. I'll take points [smiles]. I'd like to do some things that are serious. I've always said over the years that what I really want to do is make people laugh. Well I've made people laugh. Now I'm beginning to think about the art form of acting. If I'm doing it for all these years, why don't I start getting good at that, use a little bit more of my emotions than I have in films?

But?

There's never been a driving ambition in me to get something very deep out there. For the most part, I like making people laugh. But as you get older there are younger comedians coming up that are getting hot, the big box-office guys, the Keatons and Hankses and the Yahoo Seriouses.

Still hard for you to be serious all the way through a sentence, isn't it?

I'd like to use a little more of my acting ability. The word is getting out now that yes, I'm available... and quite open and interested.

Have you ever considered directing yourself?

That would be next to impossible. And the drop in salary that you take in directing would be monumental compared to what I make as an actor. But I feel very confident that I'd be a good director. The question is do I want to spend that kind of time away from my family? I'm spending close to a year on a project anyway. Being a director would be three times worse and one has to make that choice. This is a critical time in my children's lives. They are four and six and one. They need their dad just as much as they need their mom. They need to have a sense of accessibility at home; that he is consistent; that he's their father; that he's not off on some self-aggrandizing lark, or that being a movie star is more important to him than being a father to his children. I think that's a much more important thing.

So the timing isn't right for you to direct or write scripts as well as act?

Look at the hours you have in one day. You get up in the morning, and the kids are going to school. Then you have your work day. You have dinner at six with your children, you bathe them and read to them at seven, put them to bed by 8:30. You are exhausted. You get upstairs with your wife and lie in bed and read or watch TV or whatever you do and you are out by 10. Then you're up the next morning doing it again. That's life. That's the way most people are and that's the way I am. When I'm shooting, it's a whole other thing. Up at five, don't see the kids, get home and they are already finished with dinner. It's not as if: Oh, incidentally, I think I'll direct this picture, or, I think I'll just spend a few hours writing. You are too exhausted.

So that novel you're supposedly working on is not really being worked on?

Well, you know the old joke: "What are you doing?" "Writing a novel." "Oh yeah, neither am I." That's basically where I stand on that one.

Does being a father affect your choice of material?

Yes. I want to make pictures that are rich and full and have human relations in them, but at the same time I have to think carefully. Do I want my children at this delicate stage in their lives to see their father in bed with another woman who isn't their mother? And try to explain to them that it's only playacting? It's a tough one. It's a major decision. You don't see too much of the light romantic lead in me lately since I've had daughters. Why? Because I made a personal decision to take it easy on the sex. These are the kinds of considerations that you wouldn't normally expect an actor of my level and caliber to be thinking about, but they are considerations in my life.

Are you speaking out of your own insecurities?

I'm more secure than anybody when it comes to having a great wife and family, and having the money to see that they'll be okay for the rest of their lives. But in terms of my work, I'm never happy. I've never felt that I've quite found the project, quite had the writing. It's not an Oscar, it's not all the critics, it's not the acclaim, it's not the huge box-office success I'm talking about. It's the feeling yourself that you've lived up to what you can do. I don't think I have. Most people I know feel that I can do better. I'm the one who feels, geez, I'm not so sure. Let's look at what I've done and the reality is: this is what I've done. I think of Lee Marvin at the end of his life saying "I have made a lot of shit." And I know what he meant.

Do you also know what Marlon Brando means when he says everybody is an actor, that there's nothing special about it?

I know exactly how he feels about acting. He's very self-deprecating in a dishonest sort of way. It's very tough to look at a man that age questioning what he's done with his life and coming up with fighting for the Indians as being more important than some of the great work he's given us. That's like a child. Intellectually he's not a grown man.

Getting back to your own self-doubts. With the kind of money you're making, do you see yourself at the top of your profession?

I don't think I've ever been on top. I'm amazed that I get what I get. But it's all about opening pictures. Danny Aykroyd's films have made more than mine and he's making half of what I'm making, or a quarter. I may face a time in my life where I have to adjust and say there are other people who are taking over who are doing better than I am, who the studio is going to look at first for their big summer releases.

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