The film that made director John Carpenter want to leave Hollywood

Per Variety, Carpenter didn’t mention Chase’s name directly, but it was pretty clear who he was talking about. He said:

“(‘Memoirs’) gave me a chance to make a semi-serious film. But Chevy Chase, Sam Neill – who I love and had a long friendship with – and Warner Brothers. … I worked with them, and it was fun… No, it wasn’t Absolutely fun, I’m lying to you, it was a horror show, I really wanted to quit after that movie and gosh, I don’t want to talk about why but let’s just say there are characters in this movie – who won’t be named – that needed to be killed off “No, no, this is terrible. No, no, no, that’s all right. I survived it.”

After Memoirs, Carpenter would team up again with Sam Neill to produce In the Mouth of Madness, a gorgeous, psychedelic horror film about a Stephen King-like author and a book that drives the world crazy with fear, so the director got back on his feet fairly quickly, But the Diary seems to have been a bad time for him.

The story goes that Chase was “impossible to direct” and that he and Hannah were “the stuff of nightmares,” though I haven’t been able to pinpoint a source for that other than unsubstantiated references on sites like TV Tropes. It’s easy to believe that Chase was difficult to work with, despite reports of his caustic, mean and sarcastic behavior on set. He has committed no crimes, but has developed a reputation for storming into groups in a rage and generally saying widely offensive things.