On Location: Chevy Chase & Friends (1978)

Starring: Chevy Chase, Richard Belzer, Denny Johnston, Bill Kirchenbauer, and Irv Burton
Grade: D

“I don’t smoke pot. I do heroin……Sorry, I must’ve dozed off. Any mail for me?”

Those National Lampoon guys were something else, weren’t they?

Summary

To open, a camera crew shows up to Chevy Chase’s house, but he’s confused because he was under the impression that they were filming at 8PM rather than 8AM. Since they already set everything up and are ready to go, a dazed Chase lets the crew into his house and continually asks to make sure they aren’t filming and they’re just checking things out for later. Obviously, they’re filming, but Chase doesn’t know this. Next, the crew moves through the house and finds several women in his bed and his wife in the shower, with Chase trying to stop the crew from paying too much attention to how much action is going on in the house. Once Chase goes to the bathroom, the crew goes into the living room to find drugs, alcohol, and Pepto Bismol on the coffee table. Later, Chase is driven to The Comedy Store and exits the car. After being surprised that the nearby crowd isn’t mobbing him, we eventually move inside to Chase introducing the first comedian of the night, Bill Kirchenbauer.

Kirchenbauer’s whole set is physical comedy and is very similar in style and delivery to Robin Williams. It’s fast-paced with immediate impressions and one-off jokes, noises, and even some prop comedy. By the end of it, he puts every last ounce of energy he has into it to the point of exhaustion. He does an impression of a garbage truck in Las Vegas, does a bit about the creation of bagpipes, and proceeds to do the worst Scottish accent I’ve heard in years. At a rapid-fire pace, he then does a joke about “Giant Moron Rubber Darts” and using the mic stand to mime it, using the chair onstage to mime a stereo speaker for the deaf, an impression of The Six Million Dollar Man at a discotheque doing “The Bump”, and an impression of chewing gum. Then, he does this bit where he’s considering ventriloquism, but he can’t afford a dummy. Because of this, the thing he uses is essentially scraps without a body. Then, he does a duet with the “dummy” of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain”. However, since the dummy isn’t really there, he just sings half the song by himself, and the other half is silent. Then, he acts like the dummy asks for a body and he turns it down, prompting this “dummy” to attack him. It’s not that funny but his dedication to the bit is impressive. Once he puts it back in his briefcase, he does an impression of the life of a diaphragm, does a cocaine-fueled impression of every character in The Wizard of Oz, and does a joke with his shoe, talking about a ride at Disneyland to close his set.

To transition things to the next comic, Chase comes back out and acts blind, with a handler trying to help him around the stage. He falls twice and milks the holy hell out of the bit. Next, he brings out Irv Burton. I can’t prove this, but the man’s presence and delivery onstage reeked of cocaine. He talks about how King Kong in the sequel looks like he’s on downers and in the first film he looks like he’s on speed, how the theme music of white and black shows differ, how an Aretha Franklin coffee commercial would go, and small impressions of Joe Cocker, Sidney Poitier, and Bill Cosby. Next, he talks about getting high at a younger age and how his mother and sister would react, a King Kong versus Godzilla impression where Kong is startled by Godzilla, so he just shoots him, and being able to approach women as a comedian compared to in public. To conclude his set, he does this bit about a gang wanting to be a music group. Though he does all four voices to an impressive manner (and is a decent singer), it’s wildly unfunny.

For his next transitional bit, Chase talks about his problem with his Asian laundromat owner because he loses and burns his clothes and calls Chase at 4AM. He then has another comedian sit next to him, and they act the phone call situation out, with the other guy playing the role of the laundromat owner and Chase playing himself. After this goes on way longer than it needs to, Denny Johnston is brought out. Though I was worried once he came out with that guitar, he was actually pretty decent. Right away, he hits us with this quick Czechoslovakian joke and it’s a very funny start. Next, he has a bit about messing with people in several different situations like with answering machine messages, and acting as if you dropped change at a crosswalk and how you should crawl by the passenger side to confuse the driver when the light turns green. After talking about picking your noise to avoid getting pulled over by a cop, he asks to take a sip from an audience’s member’s drink. Once he realizes it’s gin, he hits himself because he “could’ve had a V8”. It got a pretty solid laugh. Next, he does bits on Jack Nicholson as a children’s television show host, Ricky Nelson and if he had a TV commercial that it would be about Hamburger Helper, and John Denver. One of the most underrated parts of the hour was when he asked if the crowd liked John Denver and they all responded with a resounding “Booooo”. Johnston recovers hysterically by asking how many of them hate Denver. When they cheer, he uses this opportunity to transition to his whole impression about Denver singing a song about being a millionaire. Following this, he talks about changing his name to “Don’t walk”, so his name is seen in flashing lights everywhere, an amusing impression of Jimmy Stewart singing “Blackbird” by The Beatles, and a song entitled, “I’m an asshole”.

In his next transition, Chase comes out wearing a trench coat. I didn’t note it earlier because I’m still not sure if it’s supposed to be part of the joke or not, but with each transition, he does come out wearing something different. The reason that I’m not sure if it’s a bit is because with the exception of the trench coat, he dresses pretty normally otherwise. Anyway, he gets the name wrong and everything else and knocks the mic of the stand. This is used to set up fellow National Lampoon Radio Hour alum Richard Belzer.

After Belzer does a Gerald Ford impression that would have been a lot funnier had Chase not built his career around it during this timeframe, he talks about how male nightclub singers have this weird neck movement, an impression of Michaelangelo, and the movie Earthquake. It’s a rocky start. He starts getting into his groove when talking about how wedding singers make every song sound the same, and it’s exemplified by his request for “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones at a Jewish wedding. After mentioning how Mick Jagger looks like a “rooster on acid”, and a few bits on Bob Dylan and Jack Benny, he asks for a cigarette from the audience and hits us with the other best joke from the show saying, “Anybody can quit smoking. It takes a man to face cancer, ok?”. Following this, he talks about doing heroin, how people smoke cigarettes, a longer bit about a fictional French guy that had an excellent punchline involving a New Yorker interrupting the man’s story, why black men walk the way they do, how they get hired for “sounding white”, and that they should do the opposite. Because it’s the 70s, there’s a couple of bits on Jack Nicholson and the very good point on how flying saucers seem to only be seen by idiot farmers in the south. Chevy Chase closes the show by talking about how he doesn’t give a shit if they don’t find it funny because they’ll put a laugh track on the special later. After slapping the mic off the stand and messing around a bit, the stage show ends.

The special concludes with another Chase bit about the producers wanting him to sign a waiver and how they won’t pay for his injury (complete with his arm in a cast), and it goes on through the credits.

My Thoughts:

I tuned in for Chevy Chase. As we know, Chevy Chase in the late 1970s and 1980s was untouchable, so the idea of watching him roam free on a special sounded like a lot of fun. Fresh off Saturday Night live and on the cusp of superstardom, Chase is given the job of hosting this special to hopefully help out his fellow comedians looking for success. Though the enthusiasm and intent were there from all the performers involved, the laughs were few and far between.

This is a one-time viewing at best. In fact, it’s skippable entirely.

Taking a look at all the comedians, it was obvious Richard Belzer was the most seasoned of all the performers involved, but Denny Johnston definitely fought him for “Set of the Night”. Without a doubt, they were the best, with Johnston arguably getting the most laughs if not for Belzer reiterating his catchphrase of “You know what I’m saying?” after almost every one of his jokes and still getting a reaction each time. The first two comedians in Bill Kirchenbauer and Irv Burton were awful. They seem like nice guys, and they put every ounce of energy possible into their set, with visible sweat and exhaustion on the face of both men. Nevertheless, the material just isn’t that funny. You can’t look away because of their presence, unpredictability, and possibly drug-induced behavior, but the jokes mostly involve screaming like maniacs and running around the stage like a couple of insane cartoon characters. If you were there in attendance in 1978 and were having a long day, I’m sure Kirchenbauer and Burton would wake you up a bit but watching this by yourself after a tiring day isn’t going to make you like them. At most, you’ll stare in awe because the two are trying so desperately to get a laugh and you won’t be able to look away.

Denny Johnston saves the show from being a complete disaster and Belzer carries on that energy to finish things. All of the best bits, one-liners, and ideas stem from these two. Personally, I’d never seek their stuff out again, but they made the most of their opportunity. Johnston in particular was underrated. Even his little asides like saying how he’s only doing this until he gets the “manager job at Pioneer Chicken” got a chuckle from me. He’s quick on his feet too. The John Denver stuff exemplified this. I was impressed with how quickly he was able to recover from the annoyed audience once Denver’s name was brought up. Though the song it led to wasn’t very funny, his quip making fun of him and then backtracking to say “I only kid. He has enough money in his left pocket to say, “Have that asshole killed” was a great example of Johnston’s underrated delivery and off-color punchlines. He was unpredictable without acting like a maniac too, something Kirchenbauer and Burton should have taken note of. Johnston was just colorful enough but subdued at the same time that he felt like a breath of fresh air compared to the early part of the night. Very rarely do I like comedians bringing in instruments or music into their sets either, but Johnston did so impressively to the point where I wasn’t annoyed with it. That’s saying something. Also, his deadpan screeching of “Blackbird” while doing the Jimmy Stewart impression was a lot funnier than it had business being. I don’t know much about Denny Johnston, but he surprised me.

Belzer was about as New York as it gets and was amusing enough to deserve the honor of being the final performer of the night. Though I enjoyed Johnston’s set more, Belzer had a lot of one-liners, quips, and understated style that made him the most memorable of all the comedians of the night. In addition, his delivery was undoubtedly the best out of any of them.

The biggest letdown was Chevy Chase himself. Being the headliner of the special and the host, I was excited to see the arrogant, sarcastic, “King of Deadpan” in his prime, but he plays it way to cool and assumes his presence is funny enough to where he doesn’t have to try. This is why the opening and closing segments centered around Chase drag as much as they do. Both times, the idea of the skit is amusing, but nothing actually said or done by Chase is really that funny. You just sit there waiting for the punchline to come, but it never does. He even drags out each transition to unamusing results as well. He goes on for too long without doing anything particularly funny, he shows up with different clothes on each time for some reason, and he overdoes the physical comedy to the point where you’re looking around wondering when he’s going to get to the point. He doesn’t even do a good job at hosting either. He tries to announce the names of each person before they come out, but he either gets their name wrong for comedic effect, says some off-color comment, or continues with his bit until you’re wondering when it will end. It felt like he had nothing prepared at all, or he had carte blanche to do whatever skit or joke he wanted to do and picked a myriad of things that didn’t work, with the exception of the closing statements where classic “I don’t give a shit” Chevy came out. Other than that, he was very disappointing, especially since he’s the whole reason I watched this thing in the first place.

HBO’s On Location: Chevy Chase & Friends is a lesser-known stand up special presented by Chase. If you include Chase himself, there were five performers. Two were bad, two were decent (though they looked like superstars compared to everyone else), and Chevy was below average. This was a major miss. Had Chase came somewhat close to making the in-between stuff remotely entertaining, they could have hit a much higher ceiling.

It still wouldn’t have been good either way, but still…It could have been better.