OK.

Forty minutes into the meeting he says, “Wait a minute. You’re the director?” And I said, “Yeah… I’m directing the movie.” And he said something unreal and bizarre to me. I still couldn’t make sense of it. He said, “Oh, I thought you were a drummer.” (Shakes his head) I said, “Uhh, okay. Let’s start talking about the movie again.” After about 30 seconds, he said, “I have to go.”

He just walked out? (UPDATE: Readers have suspected that Chase was probably jokingly referring to the jazz percussionist also named Chris Columbus.)

He went and met with John Hughes and said we had to meet again. Then we had dinner, at which John Hughes was present and I virtually didn’t exist. It was Chevy and Hughes, and they talked about everything but Christmas holidays. We spent two hours together, and as I left dinner I thought, “There’s no way I can do a movie with this guy.” First of all, he’s not engaged. He treats me like shit. I don’t need that. I’d rather not work again. I prefer writing.

Do you think he was bullying you and just asserting his dominance?

I don’t know, maybe that’s why. I guess that sense of humor was funny in the early 70s. It’s so surreal… Who says something like that to anyone? It makes no sense. So there’s almost no point in telling this story, but it actually happened. I thought: This is how we’re going to work together? I’ll be on set and he won’t listen. (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 badly, but I know I’m not going to make a good movie with this guy and I’m going to let you down.” And he said, “I understand. Complete understanding.”

So you went away?

I give up Christmas holidays. The next weekend I got another Screenplay by John – and that’s it Home alone. Home alone, For me it was even more personal, a better script. And I thought I could actually do something with this and not have to deal with Chevy Chase. That was it. John and I started working together and we had the same sensibilities. The only difference between the two of us was that John liked to stay up all night and I worked during the day. When I was filming Home alone, I was shooting during the day and John wanted to have script meetings at his house until four in the morning. I slept for about two hours. I had a newborn!