What makes complicated comedian tick?

Chevy Chase’s new documentary sheds light on a famously prickly personality.

- MARK KENNEDY

CHEVY Chase in February at “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert” in New York.

(EVAN AGOSTINI Invision / AP)

Insulting the director who is making a documentary about you might not be the most diplomatic of choices. Then again, Chevy Chase has never been very diplomatic.

The comedian gets snarly at the top of filmmaker Marina Zenovich’s “I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not,” which aired Jan. 1 on CNN and is available on the network's streaming platform. During their very first meeting, he warns her it isn’t going to be easy to figure him out. She asks him why.

“You're not — bright enough, how's that?” he replies.

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 '80s comedies like “Fletch” and the National Lampoon's “Vacation” franchise.

“He's one of those people everybody thinks they know,” says Zenovich. “He has a reputation that precedes him and there's something underneath that you want to get to. So it was a great challenge to try to get there.”

“I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not” follows Chase’s life and career, from his dark childhood to the dawn of “Saturday Night Live” and then Hollywood, ending with his messy time on the TV series “Community.”