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NEW YORK<\/strong> \u2013 Insulting the director who is making a documentary about you might not be the most diplomatic of choices. Then again, Chevy Chase<\/a> has never been very diplomatic.<\/p>\n The comedian gets snarly at the top of filmmaker Marina Zenovich’s \u201cI\u2019m Chevy Chase and You\u2019re Not,\u201d<\/a> which airs Thursday on celebrity.land. During their very first meeting, he warns her it isn’t going to be easy to figure him out. She asks him why.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not bright enough, how\u2019s that?\u201d he replies.<\/p>\n That the exchange made the film says a lot about Zenovich and also about Chase, a gifted physical comedian who starred in classic 1970s and \u201980s comedies like \u201cFletch,\u201d \u201cThree Amigos,\u201d \u201cCaddyshack\u201d and the National Lampoon\u2019s \u201cVacation\u201d franchise.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s one of those people everybody thinks they know,\u201d says Zenovich. \u201cHe has a reputation that precedes him and there\u2019s something underneath that you want to get to. So it was a great challenge to try to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n A complicated man<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m Chevy Chase and You\u2019re Not\u201d follows Chase’s life and career, from his dark childhood to the dawn of \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d<\/a> and then Hollywood, ending with his messy time on the TV series \u201cCommunity.\u201d There are perspectives offered from Dan Aykroyd, Beverly D\u2019Angelo, Goldie Hawn, Lorne Michaels, Ryan Reynolds, Martin Short, his wife Jayni Chase and three daughters, and brother Ned.<\/p>\n A portrait emerges of a sharp and often cutting comedian who has a deep fan base but can rub some people the wrong way with a blunt inelegance. \u201cI\u2019m complex and I\u2019m deep and I can be hurt easily,\u201d he tells the filmmaker.<\/p>\n The documentary shows footage of his film and TV work alongside home movies, cuddling a cat, playing a piano, playing chess, reading fan mail \u2014 including a birthday card from Bill Clinton \u2014 and visiting a flower shop.<\/p>\n The movie has the endorsement of a tough critic: Chase, himself. \u201cIt\u2019s just like a massage. I think of it that way: I love the massage. Sometimes it hurts, but the massage is so lovely,\u201d the comedian tells The Associated Press.<\/p>\n The key is childhood<\/p>\n Chase is just the latest profile by two-time Emmy-winner Zenovich, whose previous documentary subjects have included Roman Polanski,<\/a> Richard Pryor, Robin Williams and Lance Armstrong.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI make films about these complicated men,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m just fascinated by humans and their behavior and Chevy just seems to fit in my oeuvre.\u201d<\/p>\n Zenovich points to Chase’s early years to help explain how he became who he became. Chase, as a boy, was locked in the basement for days, hit across the face and shut in a closet as punishment at the hands of his stepfather and mother. <\/p>\n \u201cI think the whole key to Chevy is his childhood. I hate to use the word trauma, but I think he\u2019s traumatized,\u201d she says. \u201cHumor is his way of dealing with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Chase famously feuded with many comedians, including \u201cCommunity\u201d co-star Joel McHale, \u201cSNL\u201d castmate John Belushi and Bill Murray, who had replaced him at \u201cSNL.\u201d He left \u201cCommunity\u201d following reports he’d used a racist slur and directed insults at co-star Donald Glover. He had also quarreled with the show’s creator Dan Harmon , who was pushed out for a time.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe old Chevy could make you laugh putting you down and there was a little bit of a wink there, so you were in on the joke,\u201d writer and actor Alan Zweibel says in the film. \u201cNow it just comes off as mean.\u201d <\/p>\n The film argues that Chase’s darkness was amplified by his drug use. \u201cIn his mind he doesn\u2019t think he\u2019s mean,\u201d says Zenovich, who interviewed Chase twice and then followed him around for a few days. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat was really interesting about Chevy is that he really wants to try to figure himself out. He wanted to go there, but then something stops him,\u201d she says. \u201cHe goes to a certain point, and then something stops him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Hollywood stuff\u2019<\/p>\n Chase, now 82, says he’s aware that there’s a long list of people who consider him contemptible, but insists he doesn’t care. \u201cIt\u2019s just Hollywood stuff,\u201d he says. \u201cIt never really bothered me.\u201d <\/p>\n The movie digs into his short-lived TV talk show and his eye-opening first and only season at \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/a> He concedes leaving \u201cSNL\u201d<\/a> was a mistake and shows how hurt he was not to be invited onstage when the show celebrated its 50th anniversary<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n