Chevy: I Wrote Fletch
The character of Irwin Maurice Fletcher intrigued Hollywood from the start. Created by journalist Gregory McDonald and the star of several best-selling books, Fletch was a professional smartass — part journalist, part private investigator, part guy-avoiding-his-ex-wives. But even getting the original Fletch into movie theaters was full of false starts.
Over a ten-year period, “everybody in the world who acts and is a male between the ages of 17 and 76 tried to get the role,” said writer McDonald in 1985. Even Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger was angling for the role. “I admire Mick Jagger, but he is not my idea of a young American male,” the author confessed. Jeff Bridges and Charles Grodin also circled the part, but the project continued to stall.
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Enter Chevy Chase, his career tepid between the successes of Saturday Night Live and Caddyshack and box-office turds like Oh Heavenly Dog. Director Michael Ritchie gave Chevy Chase free rein to improvise his ass off in Fletch, for better or worse. “I love props, like wigs and buck-teeth and glasses,” he told The Times, and boy, you can sure tell from watching Fletch.
After the film became a modest hit, at least relative to his recent flops like Modern Problems and Under the Rainbow, Chase let some of that improvising go to his head. “(Screenwriter) Andrew Bergman didn’t write Fletch. I wrote Fletch,” he said. (Years later, he also took credit for directing it.)