Chevy Chase laces into 'Community' creator
Chevy Chase, left, as Pierce, Joel McHale as Jeff in the NBC sitcom "Community." Credit: NBC Photo
After being humiliated in front of his family by "Community" creator Dan Harmon at a wrap party for the show, series co-star Chevy Chase left the producer a profanity-filled voice-mail message that found its way to the Web.
The industry trade site Deadline.com said Chase, who has expressed discontent about "Community" in the past, walked off the set on the last day of shooting the current season three. At the wrap party shortly afterward, the site said, Harmon gave a speech highly critical of the veteran film comic and "Saturday Night Live" founding cast member. The show creator then led the crew in directing an obscenity at Chase, who was attending with his wife and one of their grown daughters.
On the voice mail that went viral over the weekend, Chase, 68, says in a calm voice, "I don't get talked to like that by anybody, certainly not in front of my wife and daughter . . ." followed by expletives. He says, "Your writing is getting worse and worse" and calls Harmon an "alcoholic" who "will live to be about 57 if you're lucky, the way you eat."
Harmon played the voice mail for other people, Deadline said, and the online recording contains background laughter and occasional applause.
Chase has been known to be volatile, feuding with Howard Stern in 2009, physically brawling with Bill Murray when Chase returned as an "SNL" host in the 1970s, and insulting "SNL" guest Robert Downey Jr. about Downey's father and having to apologize to cast-member Terry Sweeney for homophobic remarks in the 1980s.
Before "Community's" season wrapped, he told The Huffington Post, in an interview published online Saturday, "I have creative issues with this show. I always have. . . . I would like to see it go further. I think, if you know me and my humor over the years, you know that this is certainly not my kind of thing. I probably won't be around that much longer, frankly."
Neither Chase nor Harmon responded to Newsday's requests for comment.
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