Credit: Jesse Chang via Wikimedia Commons
Chevy Chase almost died in 2021. His heart stopped. Doctors put him in a medically induced coma for eight days. His daughter later said he “basically came back from the dead.”
He survived. But according to Chase, his memory didn’t.
In “I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not,” a CNN documentary premiering January 1, the 82-year-old comedian says the heart failure left him unable to recall large portions of his past — including, conveniently or not, the incidents that earned him a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most difficult people to work with.
“According to the doctors, my memory would be shot from it,” Chase says in the film. “That’s what happened here.”
The problem is, everyone else remembers just fine.
The “Community” incident
Chase’s exit from “Community” came after years of tension — including an incident where he used the n-word on set.
Director Jay Chandrasekhar recounts the moment in the documentary. According to Chandrasekhar, it occurred during a scene involving a blackface hand puppet. Chase said something to co-star Yvette Nicole Brown. She walked off set.
When a producer asked Chase to apologize so Brown would return, he refused.
“He goes, ‘You know, me and Richard Pryor — I used to call Richard Pryor the n-word, and he used to call me The Honky, and we loved each other,'” Chandrasekhar recalls. “I said, ‘Can we just have a little apology?’ He goes, ‘For what?'”
Chandrasekhar says Chase then had a “full meltdown.”
When asked about the incident in the documentary, Chase says he doesn’t remember it.
Credit: Cameron Yee via Wikimedia Commons
The SNL50 snub
There is one thing he does remember: being left out.
In February, “Saturday Night Live” celebrated its 50th anniversary with a star-studded special. Chase was in the audience. But when original cast members were called to the stage, no one called his name.
“It was kind of upsetting actually,” he says. “This is probably the first time I’m saying it. But I expected that I would’ve been on the stage too. No one asked me to. Why was I left aside?”
The documentary doesn’t answer that question directly. It doesn’t need to. The previous hour already has.
The reputation
In an interview with Variety, director Marina Zenovich says she walked into her first interview with Chase wondering how to ask the obvious question: everyone thinks you’re an asshole.
Chase answered it himself.
When Zenovich told him she was trying to figure him out, Chase replied: “You’re not bright enough.” Then he grinned.
But based on the accounts in the film, plenty of people figured him out a long time ago. Former “Community” staff have spoken openly about how difficult he was to work with. “Chevy Chase stories” became their own genre in Hollywood — tales of ego, blowups, and a refusal to read the room.
The question
Chase’s health crisis was real. His wife, Jayni, explains that years of drinking led to cardiomyopathy. When she took him to the ER, his heart stopped. Doctors warned the family to prepare for the worst.
The memory loss may be real too.
But the documentary places Chase in an uncomfortable position: he can’t defend himself against accusations he says he doesn’t recall, while the people who do remember are right there on camera, doing the remembering for him.
It’s a strange kind of accountability — or a strange kind of escape. The man who allegedly refused to apologize now says he can’t remember what he’d be apologizing for.
The documentary reminds him anyway.
“I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not” premieres Wednesday, January 1, on CNN.