Siskel and Ebert dissed “The Three Amigos” to Chevy Chase's face on “The Tonight Show”
When Chevy Chase, Roger Ebert, and Gene Siskel all sat down on The Tonight Show couch in 1986, they were far from three amigos.
In a new book, Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever, author Matt Singer recounts the movie critics' frequent appearances on late night television — and the authenticity they brought to the process.
Most notably, one night when Johnny Carson asked Ebert about what he wouldn't recommend currently playing in theaters, the critic replied, "I can't really recommend Three Amigos. It's the Christmas picture I like the least. This is kind of hard to say because Chevy Chase has made a lot of good movies and God willing he will make a lot more good movies in the future."
Johnny Carson's Tonight Show/YouTube Chevy Chase, Roger Ebert, and Gene Siskel
What made it particularly daring was that Chase was also Carson's guest that night and sitting right there next to Siskel and Ebert (though it later turned out that Chase had a similar low opinion of the comedy film in which he starred opposite Steve Martin and Martin Short).
Singer's book, on shelves Tuesday, details this encounter, as well as Siskel and Ebert's similar pot shots at Chase in a Saturday Night Live performance. Read more in the exclusive excerpt below.
G.P. Putnam's Sons Opposable Thumbs by Matt Singer
Nervous or not, they did well enough to get invited back on the Tonight Show over and over. In time, they got comfortable with Johnny—maybe too comfortable. In their December 12, 1986, appearance on the Tonight Show, they followed Chevy Chase, who was there to promote his new Christmas comedy, Three Amigos.
For the first few minutes, everything went smoothly. Siskel, Ebert, and Carson all named their favorite Chevy Chase movies, while Chevy, seated next to Roger on the famous Tonight Show couch, smiled warmly. With some coaxing from Johnny, Chevy even trotted out his old Saturday Night Live bit where he'd sarcastically lipsynch a stuffy person's speech behind their back—with Roger cheerfully playing the role of Chevy's patsy.
Then Carson steered the show directly into an iceberg. "I hate to ask you to pick a dog," he said, "because it's not fair sometimes to the people who make the movies. But is there something out there that is really so bad?" Faced with the choice of risking his credibility as a critic by lying or potentially hurting Chevy Chase's feelings, Ebert didn't hesitate. "I can't really recommend Three Amigos," he replied, bashing the very film Chase was there to promote. After a chorus of boos from the studio audience, Ebert added, "It's the Christmas picture I like the least. This is kind of hard to say because Chevy Chase has made a lot of good movies and God willing he will make a lot more good movies in the future." "With your help!" Chase shot back sarcastically.
After the show, Chevy found Roger and Gene's dressing room and confessed: he didn't like Three Amigos very much, either. Still, he would never say that on the air, and no one else would, either— except Siskel and Ebert. That was another key reason for their talk show success: they were fearless. The power of candor that Siskel had talked about back in his early days at the Chicago Tribune was even truer on the talk show circuit—because it was even more uncommon there. Over and over, Gene and Roger took a wrecking ball to the unwritten rules of talk shows that required guests to be polite and supportive at all times.
The following year, Ebert told an interviewer that this spontaneous and somewhat awkward exchange with Chevy Chase on the Tonight Show provided an epiphany about the appeal of Siskel & Ebert. "I got a lot of letters from that—and generally when we're on the Carson show, I don't get any letters," he said. "'How could you be so mean, how could you be so cruel, how could you be so rude?'—that type of thing. But other people sent in letters saying, 'It was refreshing to hear someone telling the truth on television for once.' "Siskel and I talked about this afterward and we thought that maybe the reaction to that helps explain why people are interested in the format of our show. They sense that we are actually telling the truth about what we think about the movies."
Gene's and Roger's unflinching honesty was upending their audience's expectations left and right. "What works on television is authenticity," agrees Ben Mankiewicz, a longtime host at Turner Classic Movies who also hosted At the Movies in the late 2000s, after Roger Ebert finally left the series. "When it works, there is a strong presence with a defendable point of view, not a character. And Siskel and Ebert had points of view."
That wasn't the first time Siskel and Ebert criticized Chevy Chase to his face, either. In 1982, Roger and Gene guest-starred on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live; they appeared as themselves and reviewed three of the sketches from earlier in the night. (They also reunited with their first producer at Opening Soon . . . at a Theater Near You, Eliot Wald, who was on the SNL writing staff at the time.) Gene and Roger wrapped their segment up by awarding a "Dog of the Week" to the show's host—none other than Chevy Chase. (They also took some shots at Chase's performance in the appropriately titled Oh! Heavenly Dog.)
Reading their reviews from cue cards—something they had never done before—Gene and Roger weren't nearly as comfortable or relaxed as they were speaking spontaneously in their debut appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. The rehearsal for the sketch had gone poorly and the producers wanted to trim it down. Ebert grew concerned he had less lines than Siskel. Then Siskel got upset that his role was getting diminished. Ebert had to count every word of dialogue—not lines of dialogue, words of dialogue—to make sure they each had exactly the same-sized part. "By the time we went on the air," Ebert later said, "we were both complete basket cases."
Excerpt from Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever by Matt Singer, to be published Oct. 24, with permission from Putnam, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House copyright (c) 2023 by Matthew Singer
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