Okay.
Forty minutes into the meeting, he says, “Wait a second. You’re the director?” And I said, “Yeah…I’m directing the film.” And he said to me the most surreal, bizarre thing. I still haven’t been able to make any sense out of it. He said, “Oh, I thought you were a drummer.” [Shakes head] I said, “Uhh, okay. Let’s start talking about the film again.” After about 30 seconds, he said, “I got to go.”
He just walked out?
He went off and met with John Hughes and said we needed to meet again. Then we had a dinner where John Hughes was present, and I was basically nonexistent. It was Chevy and Hughes, and they talked about everything except Christmas Vacation. We spent two hours together, and I left the dinner and I thought, There’s no way I can make a movie with this guy. First of all, he’s not engaged. He’s treating me like shit. I don’t need this. I’d rather not work again. I’d rather write.
Do you think he was hazing you, just asserting dominance?
I don’t know, maybe that’s it. I guess that sense of humor was funny in the early ’70s. It’s so surreal…Who says anything like that to anybody? It makes no sense. So to tell that story almost makes no sense, but it actually happened. I thought, This was how we’re going to work together? I’m going to be on set and he’s not listening. [Representatives for Chase did not immediately respond to a request for comment.]
What did you do next?
I called John and said, “I can’t do this. John, I need this job desperately, but I know I will not make a good movie with this guy and I will let you down.” And he said, “I understand. Completely understand.”
So you walked away?
I quit Christmas Vacation. The next weekend, I got another script from John—and it’s Home Alone. Home Alone, for me, was even more personal, a better script. And I thought, I can really do something with this, and I don’t have to deal with Chevy Chase. That was it. John and I started to work together, and we had the same sensibility. The only difference between the two of us was, John liked to stay up all night and I work during the day. When I was shooting Home Alone, I’d shoot during the day, and John wanted to have script meetings at night at his house till four in the morning. I was getting about two hours’ sleep. I had a newborn!