Modern Problems stars Chevy Chase as an air traffic controller on the verge of a mental breakdown. Exposure to nuclear waste grants him the power of telekinesis, which he uses to try to win back his ex-girlfriend and exact revenge on the people who have annoyed him. The film wasn’t all that well-received and isn’t generally one of Chase’s best-remembered. However, it almost certainly stands out in Chase’s mind more than any other because it was the one movie he made that nearly cost him his life.
According to Rena Fruchter’s 2007 book, I’m Chevy Chase…and You’re Not, Chase was almost electrocuted to death on the set of the film. While shooting a dream sequence in which his character becomes an airplane, Chase had lights placed on his arms. The special effects crew was planning to attach the lights over his shirt using insulation, but director Ken Shapiro wanted them directly on Chase’s skin instead. The padding they used wasn’t what Chase was expecting, but he trusted the team’s expertise over his own instincts.
“The way I understood it, it was not simply DC power, but AC power too,” Chase explained. He told the crew, “Look, I’m clammy, sweaty. I hate electricity, electric shocks. I think there’s a danger.” Nobody agreed with Chase, and they assured him it was “perfectly safe.” “Don’t worry. We can test it,” they said. He agreed to do the scene and immediately regretted it after they turned the lights on.
As electricity flowed through his body, Chase screamed for them to turn it off—for ten seconds straight. Because of his reputation for joking around, they ignored his pleas, and he eventually collapsed. He awoke, lying out on a blanket with a paramedic sticking a needle in his arm. In an interview leading up to the film’s premiere, Shapiro said that when the paramedics asked Chase his name, he looked up and said, “Don’t you know who I am?”
The electric cuffs Chase was wearing burned the muscles in his arms and shoulders, and it took two years for his wounds to fully heal. He returned to the set after a few days in the emergency room. “For at least a year, I wouldn’t turn a light on or off,” Chase recalled. “I asked [my wife] Jayni to do it.” Looking back, he said that he probably should have sued over the incident, but he didn’t think of it at the time.
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