There's a category of people that I work with
that are infuriatingly talented...
That connect to an audience, connect to what we do,
that value it,
being part of it and caring about it.
As long as they're in this world,
I think you always recognize whatever it is
when you see it.
You're always drawn to that.
And... Mark.
It's actually Mike Myers, all right, not Mark.
How's everybody? Good, good, good.
Any time you get to talk about Chris Farley
is a good day, Man.
You want this somewhere?
Everybody cries for this, right?
Don't give up.
Yikes.
Doo doo, on the right track.
I haven't "Had sex with a woman."
I "Don't know how that works."
Natural ability, like, you can't even talk about it.
It's just natural.
Lay off me, I'm starving!
The funniest guy ever. It was nuts. Nuts.
Booyah!
"Hello, Malibu!"
I wanted my time with Chris.
Well, maybe I'm not "The norm."
I'm not "Camera friendly."
You know, when everybody's deciding who's the funniest,
you go, "Farley is the funniest."
You're from Wisconsin, right?
Madison, Wisconsin? Yes, Sir.
Beautiful state and a very nice city.
Madison, I think, is the Capital of Wisconsin,
right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Sorry about...
All right, put your hands together for Kevin Farley!
Come on, Baby!
Hi, Madison.
Are you having fun?
It's Saturday night in Mad Town...
Isn't that right?
I'm the one that looks like Chris the most, right?
I look like Chris. Yeah.
Ah ow!
But it is kind of funny, though.
Like, I do look like Chris a lot,
and so I go out of hotel rooms,
and this guy came...
I came out of the hotel the other day,
and the guy goes, "You're that guy,"
and I go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I look like that guy,"
and he goes, "Honey, get over here.
It's Chaz Bono."
I go, "Not that guy."
It was a lot of fun growing up here,
just a lot of great memories, you know.
You know, very peaceful, and a simpler time, you know,
in the '70s.
There's the old haunt...
The house I grew up in.
But boy, when we lived here, it was pretty simple.
We had a lot of fun in that house,
I'll tell you that.
♪ You came into the world
Chris was the middle child,
the black sheep,
the strange one.
He always wanted to certainly out do me
or show the younger two brothers
that, you know, he was better than that.
He was just always... A game.
It's like Americana that everyone dreams
or thinks of in the 1960s.
We had it all.
What's ever in everybody's imagination,
totally true.
Crazy, crazy, crazy.
♪ Don't let nobody
♪ Try to dampen your flame
The poor world only got to see
this part of the iceberg that is Chris.
We lived in a very quiet little town,
Maple Bluff, little village.
We were outside a lot, playing a lot.
You know, my mom would say there was four boys and Barb.
If you were shooting hoops in the backyard
and Mom came out,
and the four of us shouted, "Mom, look at this. Look at me!
Mom! Look at me!"
You've got to say that before every shot?
"Mommy, look at me"?
It's so clear cut, striving for attention.
♪ 'Cause you were born on fire ♪
♪ Da da da da da da da ♪
♪ Da da da da
What kind of a life
did you and your folks have when you were a kid?
Oh, Lord, Dave, I put them through Hell.
My dad was a great guy.
He was a salesman, just hilarious.
I mean, it wasn't a house
where, you know, Dad was strict or anything like that,
and he'd get home and watch the news,
and then, you know, stir us all up
into some kind of frenzy,
and then somebody would get hurt,
and then he'd go, "All right, that's enough.
You took it too far."
And he started the whole thing.
He liked to have the chaos, I think, a lot of the times.
Our family dinner table, Chris had a presence.
He loved to be the entertainer, for sure.
There was a lot of competition that way
on who could do the funniest thing.
He usually won most of the time.
He just demanded it.
We were probably in fourth grade,
and we had a bus that went across town,
and he would sing, "Jeremiah was a bullfrog."
♪ Jeremiah was a bullfrog
and he had the whole bus standing up, singing.
He took his shirt off for that, on the school bus,
and just sang it in the front.
I liked a girl named Chris Bayer,
and so he'd be in the back of the bus,
going, ♪ Johnny Farley loves Chris Bare Naked! ♪
♪ Johnny Farley...
He got the whole bus to chant it,
and I was in the front, going, "Oh, why?"
In grade school, at St. Patrick's,
my mom was in a semicircle
with a bunch of nuns around it,
and they were saying,
"You know, the students at school
are laughing at Christopher, not with him."
And then...
When VHS came out, you know,
Dad was one of the first, you know,
"Look at this new machine I got,"
and we're, like, taping stuff off the TV,
and we're watching it over and over again.
We had just stockpiles of everything.
And we watched Carol Burnett, Jackie Gleason...
Gleason was King in our house...
the big comics, to us, 'cause they reminded us of Dad.
It was just comedy, comedy, comedy all the time.
We would memorize comedy movies start to finish,
and we used to, like, you know, quiz each other on movie lines.
Chris would find beats in movies that we'd all watch,
that every one of us would watch.
He'd find, like, characters in the background, like...
"That fat kid's funny in Meatballs.
I'm going to steal that bit."
And he would use it. It was hilarious.
This old country road leads into a beautiful sanctuary
of nature's last outpost against civilization,
and deep in the recesses of the forest,
this indeed... Camp life.
The Red Arrow Camp is a big part of our family
because all of us boys went there
for seven weeks in the summer,
up in Minocqua, in Woodruff, Wisconsin.
Dad said, "You're going up to camp."
Your riding, soccer, baseball, swimming, sailing, skiing,
you know, we did it all,
but the really interesting thing about camp
was at the end of the summer, they did a camp play.
We'd have auditions,
and then we'd see, like, who would have the most talent,
just raw talent, as a kid,
and back then, you didn't really know.
We had a play director, a guy who wrote all the plays,
named Richard Wenzel.
Chris had a lot of talent,
and I recognized the ability for him to perform,
and I said, you know,
"There's somebody I'm going to have to use on stage."
There was the...
Chris performing, you know, in the living room
in front of aunts and uncles is one thing,
but this was, like, you know, staged, directioned productions,
and Chris... Took to it.
Talent is something you can't put your finger on.
It just happens,
and he had it.
There was no theatre in our life at all
until Chris started, you know, doing this stuff.
He started to think, "Wow, that's different.
I'm different than the other guys this way."
It wasn't a pussy thing, as he always said.
He said, "Oh, I don't want to be in a play.
That's for pussies."
Well, he was a pussy.
He really was a pussy,
and he did it,
and he could do it beautifully.
Chris and I went to Edgewood High School
in Madison, Wisconsin,
a Catholic school.
He lived for playing football. He was nose guard,
and he just loved being a part of the football team.
He always wanted to be a part of the athletic crowd,
you know, the jocks,
and I would get, like,
the stories that would come down, you know.
Like, "You're Chris's brother?
Are you going to, like, pull your pants down?"
You know, and I'd be like, "No."
"Oh, okay. Well, your brother does that a lot."
I brought my parents in to get out of the trouble,
and said, like, "They don't love me at home,"
and my dad's sitting there in this counselling session,
going, "Yeah, uh huh. Yeah, we don't love him, yeah.
The only kid in the family with a 10 speed bike,
and we don't love him.
Yeah. Yo."
So I thought I'd got out of that jam
until we got in the parking lot
and he said, "Get in the car, you prima donna!"
My dad would only get mad at, like, little, small stuff,
like if you were late for the car.
Then he'd just leave.
It was just... The big stuff he was really cool about,
you know, like when...
Chris pulled his penis out in typing class.
He was very cool about that.
He was constantly whipping out his dick.
All the other football players were in the typing class,
and one of the older guys said,
"Chris, we dare you to unzip your fly
and start typing."
Of course, Chris did it.
You know, he never said no.
The girl that saw him,
she was, like, a born again Christian,
and I don't think she'd ever seen a penis before,
certainly not one as small as his.
She freaked out.
She's probably still in therapy.
The nun had to have a conference call with my dad
about that, you know,
so he had to talk to a Catholic nun
about how his son typed with his penis.
He was very cool about it.
In fact, he laughed.
He had to go. He had to go.
So he went away for one semester.
He was like, "Heh, heh, you know...
It was funny."
I don't know why. Weird.
He thought it was funny, and it was.
It always got a laugh.
But that continued on into adulthood,
which was a little strange.
Did you go to college?
Yeah, I went to Marquette University.
Oh, good school. Yeah.
When you went to college, what kind of a kid were you?
Was that... You probably were a little more comfortable
being away from home then?
Dave, the trouble continued.
Oh, my God.
Chris goes off to college,
and they don't have a football team,
so he joins the rugby team,
and he's never played rugby in his life.
We met in a bar called The Green Tree.
He couldn't have looked more preppy if you...
I never even saw anybody like that,
dressed in his pink Izod shirt
and those fucking Khaki pants and stupid shoes.
He was there to perform.
I think he may have spoken to me with the end of his penis.
I can't quite remember,
but I believe there was some discussion
when I spoke just to his penis.
We were a good team,
but we were also an alcohol fuelled organization.
He always wanted to be part of a group, you know,
part of an ensemble, part of a team.
You know, he loved it,
and he liked to play his role in it.
To make the "A" side as a sophomore was a big deal.
Everybody on the team took it really seriously.
They, you know, would jog four miles to practice.
Chris was a great athlete.
He'd dribble a basketball between his legs,
but he wasn't in the best shape.
He had a specific build, for sure,
and either you run with it, or you run away from it.
He really wanted to impress upon the others
that were seniors and juniors and really good athletes
that he was as good an athlete as they were.
There'd be a line out,
which is where, like, five or six guys line up
and somebody throws the ball in,
and Chris would just grab his shorts
and pull them all the way up
to what would be a present day thong,
you know, which was hilarious,
but you're kind of like, "I don't think that's right."
Right before the ball comes in,
he'd go, "Ha!"
like he was The Claw.
There's a certain level of fear that he instills in people,
you know.
He has a frightening element that I think is hilarious.
It was almost like an extended family to him
because everybody was just loud and fun,
and he could be the loudest and funnest.
The cliche is, it's a Gentleman's Sport
played by Ruffians.
There's three halves in rugby.
The first half, the second half on the pitch,
and the third half in the party.
We'd always say that, you know, we may lose the game,
but we'll win the party,
and Chris was a big part of that.
The other team would be drawn to Chris immediately
because he was such a show unto himself.
We had fun, huh? Yeah!
The girls would...
Some of them didn't like some of the stunts
that Chris would pull.
If there was a couple girls walking down the street
and you'd say, "Oh, that girl's cute,"
he's like, "Hold my books,"
and he'd run, start jogging in front of them,
you know, kicking up his legs.
Hi. How are you?
A pretty woman would be walking by in Madison,
and he'd drop and do pushups and just go, "198, 199,"
like...
But he did it with such commitment.
And it always kind of got a laugh,
like, "How are you doing, Ladies?"
He would do all these bits
in the hopes that they'd be like,
"Mmm, you're funny."
He had some girlfriends that really liked him and saw...
And they had...
She had to have a sense of humor, you know,
to go out with Chris.
Well, she dumped me, like they all did,
and, you know, she was a nice gal.
I remember we used to have nicknames for each other.
"My raven haired one eyed pixie that stole America's heart,"
and things like that. That's cute.
And did she have a nickname for yourself?
She'd call me "Fatso..."
And it never...
If we were hanging out with, like, at a party,
with a keg with a bunch of... Everybody with a red cup,
and he'd go see a bunch of girls talking to each other,
and he'd go roll in the mud in front of them,
and then pop up and be like,
"You guys, do you want to go out later?"
you know, or say some stupid line.
"So what's your number?"
and just throwing the beer all over himself
or just something...
We're going to show this world a thing or two.
We're going to show...
Blacking out is, like... "Did you black out last night?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah."
Blackout City, Motherfuckers!
Let's all black out tonight.
We knew we wanted to do comedy,
but had no idea how to do it at all.
Now, Marquette had this new thing
called the Follies,
where they had bands and acts and magicians
and anybody who had a talent,
and they'd pack the varsity theatre
with 2,000 people,
and they'd have a variety show, which is awesome.
So we said, "We should sign up for the Follies.
We've got, like, two minutes.
What are we going to do?"
Chris takes my collar, flicks it up.
He goes, "You're Cool Guy."
And I go, "What are you going to be?"
Chris puts on these kind of nerdy glasses,
and he goes, "I'll be Nerd Guy."
I'm not supposed to be here. Uh...
I go out, kind of get a few laughs,
give a silly little run.
Chris comes running out full blast...
Trips, slides, bowling ball,
knocks over his chair, two other chairs.
The place is going berserk.
They're going crazy.
Lights go out.
And then we're running backstage.
It felt like our shirts were even, just,
were blowing in the wind of the audience,
like, applause and laughter.
And Chris just stops, and he turns to me
right at the edge of the curtain backstage
and goes, "This is it.
This is what we're going to do for the rest of our lives."
Did you hear I finally graduated?
Yeah, in just a shade under a decade, too.
All right.
You know, a lot of people go to college for seven years.
I know. They're called doctors.
Clearly, you know,
Dad realized right from the start
that he was unemployable
and there was only one employer
that could possibly give him a job,
and that was him.
One thing Dad realized really quickly,
and which is easy to spot,
is the guy knew people.
You just liked him right away,
and you'd buy anything they had to sell.
Hey, I'll tell you what.
You could take a good look at a butcher's ass
by sticking your head up there,
but wouldn't you rather take his word for it?
What?
They had an oil company
where they sold oil for pavement and asphalt and things,
and did well,
and Chris goes, "All I do is, um,
I take these guys out, uh, to dinner...
uh, we just drink and eat, and I don't pay for anything,
and then at the end, I go,
'My dad wanted you guys to sign this contract.
Is that... Can you do that?'
And they'd go, 'Sure, sure,'
and then my dad gave me money."
Okay, I'll buy it from you.
Well, that's... What?
You could see why Chris's dad was grooming him
to take over the business,
because it was obvious that Chris could...
Had that kind of effect on people,
the kind of slapping people on the back.
Both Chris and I worked for my dad's asphalt company,
Scotch Oil Company here in town.
Nobody heard of it? Okay.
But asphalt's not too hard to sell, Folks,
because you either want it or you don't.
Chris's office at Scotch Oil Company...
We would go in,
"Oh, look at the little president."
We'd make fun of him.
We were, like, "Daddy," and, like,
"Let's see what you're working on there, Champ."
Luke... Luke...
I am your father.
I'd open up his desk,
and it'd be, like Mad magazine, Cracked magazine...
Where is anything resembling work on this desk,
at all?
"What have you been doing?" He goes, "What? Get out of here.
Get out of here."
He was so encouraged at Marquette to get onstage
and do something in the drama field.
They had this little theatre called the Ark Improv Theatre.
There was always
a kind of nice little storefront theatre scene there.
Most of the theatres there tend to be former garages
or future laundromats.
The director tends to be
the guy who goes out and buys paper towels, you know.
It's late, you know.
It's midnight, I don't know.
It was a long day,
and in walks this big, giant guy,
with this big smile, staggering.
"Do you guys do classes?"
And I said, "Yeah, yeah, we do classes.
My wife has a class tomorrow morning,
Saturday morning at 10:00. Here."
He reached out and grabbed my hand,
and he shook it, like, "Ouch!"
Like I saved his life. "Thank you, Man!"
So the next morning, I wake up,
and my wife calls me from the theatre
and says, "Did you invite some guy
to come and take my class this morning?"
I said, "Oh!
Yeah, I did, but I, I, I,
I didn't think he would ever show up,"
and she says, "Well, he's here,
and he brought a case of beer."
Hi there.
Officer Fred McGuire, Local One Niner Niner.
Kind of jaw dropping at times to watch Chris work,
even on a local little stage like the Ark.
The power of his talent was, even in a raw state,
was so undeniable.
(Mumbles)
He just had such presence and charisma.
Chris had this amazing talent, this perfect storm of comedy.
Boom! Obvious.
My love, you ate the liverwurst!
I was hungry.
He found this art form where you work in an ensemble,
and, you know, you work off each other,
and there's no denial.
It's all about acceptance.
I do remember going every weekend
and laughing my head off.
I mean, I wouldn't miss it. It was the best.
The shows were really weird.
The shows were, like, bizarre.
I didn't even get any of them.
Chris would come out as Elvis, Fat Elvis.
"Well, bless my soul, what's wrong with me?
I think I shit my pants."
And then he'd keel over on stage,
and the lights would go out.
"Okay, what did we just watch?"
See, the thing about Chris is his heart,
this really kind, gentle,
childish, innocent heart,
which, I say, was the perfect storm,
because in that kind and gentle heart
was also a very frightened person.
I was sad to see him go
because I thought it was too soon.
He was just beginning improv and coming into a craft,
as opposed to a party guy, a party trick.
Chris comes down to Chicago, and we hook up.
We know Second City's the Mecca. That's the place.
We don't know what to do or where to go,
but we've gotta do this together.
We're just pacing in front of Second City,
and I swear both of us kind of thought
that on the second or third floor
of the Second City offices,
somebody was going to look down and be like,
"Well, then we just need two more people,
or we're not going to have a show tonight.
Hey, those two fellows look pretty funny."
As if you're going to walk around Wrigley Field
and have, "Hey!"
"Come on in. Play some ball."
He called to tell me,
"I got into the classes at Second City,"
and I was like, "Wow, that's awesome!"
He was far more ambitious than I ever thought.
I didn't know that he would pursue training
and end up with Del Close,
king shit of improvisational acting.
I wanted to really show
that we could create art by committee.
Nothing that I hear is going to be simple.
Nothing that you say to me
is going to be accepted at face value.
It always means something else.
Del Close was a fantastic improviser,
great teacher.
He didn't teach comedy,
because I don't think that's teachable,
but he taught creativity.
Del was the creative Svengali
of Bill Murray, Belushi, Aykroyd.
Del was the Chief Anarchist Artist there.
What he taught all of us was to be free
and to be unafraid
and to go out and fail as often as possible,
to try things, to die onstage.
He threw off convention
and kind of blew the lid off the form
so that we could really do the freest work,
um, that we were capable of.
Okay, do it.
And that's the lighting we have?
Okay.
We realize perfectly well
that all the characters that we play
are really subsets of ourselves,
they're just ourselves in slightly different moods,
ourselves carrying a little more emotional freight.
Del said, "Mr. Myers,
there's somebody who I think is a kindred spirit
that you have to meet.
You have to meet Farley."
So I met him.
The second I saw him,
I thought he was going to be a giant star.
If he had just been a big, funny guy that fell down,
Del Close certainly never would have cast him at Second City.
Del Close would have washed him out
right away.
He had no time for people that were just funny,
and if someone sold out a scene for a joke,
Del would sometimes just throw them offstage.
He's like, "Get the hell out of here, you turkey."
Dell wanted to work with Chris because he was funny and honest.
The smallest,
the teeniest, weeniest emotional discovery that's real
beats the hell
out of the biggest one that's phony,
and that's why our audience, I think,
is so much on our side,
because they want us to succeed.
They have this... They're cheering us on.
"To treat the audience like poets and Kings,
and they'll respond in kind."
I've always felt that way,
and I saw it completely embodied in Chris Farley.
Del loved Chris,
so it's no surprise to me
that Del plucked him for the mainstage cast
almost immediately.
Hello there.
This must be the birthday girl.
That's right.
Hi, Birthday Girl. Doogie Howser.
Well, I guess, then, Little Birthday Girl,
this one's for you.
For Chris, I think Del was the Lamaze Birth Coach
that kind of pulled
all of everything that was inside of Chris out.
He said the same thing to Chris that he said to Belushi,
which is "Go out there, attack the stage like a bull.
You have that kind of power.
Just try to kill them with laughter.
Just kill them."
Chris on stage was crazy, force of nature,
through the roof,
quantitatively, qualitatively amped up past everybody else.
His basic impulse is to make situations funny.
He was taught "Don't stifle that.
Expand on it."
He found his identity with that,
because that was his natural impulse as a kid.
It was really that feeling of, like, "I get it.
I'm only going to watch that guy
if he's onstage,
because there's nothing touching him.
He is wildly entertaining."
I improvised with Chris Farley,
and I was scared to death
because he had already knocked somebody's tooth out
and gave somebody else a scar
from just being so crazy,
and I'm... I mean, I have a lot of energy,
but I don't have that energy.
Jesus...
Right before he'd go on stage, he'd drop his pants,
and just pull them up at the last second.
So you're standing behind him
because if you have to go out next...
You get that view.
It was a very beer soaked culture
in the improv world, you know.
We all drank too much.
Parties usually involved way too much beer drinking.
One time he showed up, he was pretty well lit up.
I was like, "My God, you can barely talk.
Are you all right to go on?"
I go, "You shouldn't go on stage."
Went on stage, was crystal clear as a bell.
Made everyone laugh, hilarious.
Went back to the back stage,
it was like, "Oh, my God."
I'm like, "How the hell did you just do that?"
But he did push it. He did push it, as John did.
He had automatic charisma like John, you know.
He was a light, you know.
Heads would turn when he came into the room.
Chris loved and idolized Belushi,
but he never imitated Belushi,
in the same way
that a Keith Richards might emulate
his old blues heroes
but never really sound like them.
He took what he loved about them and made it his own.
I got hired for Saturday Night Live,
and they said to me, you know,
"Who do you think is good there?"
I listed a whole bunch of names,
but the first name I said was Chris Farley.
Come on. It was undeniable.
You couldn't stop Chris.
He leaped over everyone, and he should have.
Everybody recognized it
even if they resented it a little.
You know, it was very clear.
"Yeah, of course, you know."
All righty, everybody.
He was one of the people we'd heard about,
and you could tell how much he loved to perform.
This incredible sort of generosity of spirit,
and also just a kind of innocence.
I used to say that he was the child
that Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi didn't have.
There was just a joy in what he was doing.
You were always drawn to him.
I knew I was bringing him to New York.
It's a whale. It's a boy.
It's a whale boy.
It was a sad going away, a little bit.
We were happy for him,
but we were also a little nervous...
Like, this poor little kid from Madison
going to go to New York City, which he'd never been to,
and be on a big TV show.
It's kind of a lot for him, and it was a lot for him.
He was scared.
Five, four, three, two, one, go.
Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!
Oh, one more thing.
Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!
It's so intense that it's a joke, you know.
By the time you get off of it,
you're like, "How did I survive that?
That's not possible."
There's nothing like the live performance.
It is the most exhilarating, exciting...
It's, like, heart pounding pressure.
You know, Dana Carvey says
it's like being shot out of a cannon without a net
once a week.
"Chris Farley!"
"Yeah, that's right. Chris is here.
We're going to see Chris Farley live in this tiny studio."
You'd hear that applause go up more.
He was powerful on stage.
I think one of the problems he first had
when he came to the show, I think,
was he was still playing to the back row,
and the fact that the camera's sort of here
took a little while to adjust to.
He always played big,
but he learned how to play big for camera.
The week Patrick Swayze hosted, he called me.
He's like,
"Lorne and everybody wants me to be the fat guy,
and they want me to dress to do a sketch from, uh...
Where I'm stripping from Chippendales
with Patrick Swayze,
and they want me to take my shirt off,
and then I'm the fat guy.
What do you think?
I mean, it's just embarrassing, you know."
It's like, "Well, if you do that
and you are the funniest fat guy ever,
then you should do it."
I'm sure he had reservations about going out there full-on,
but he saw...
"This is my mission. This is full on comic value.
It's a perfect use of my physicality.
Yes, I will do it."
And there's a lot of girth going with it
and not give a shit pride,
and "This is my body."
He's not thinking it. He's there.
Like, I feel really lucky that I was in high school
when Chris Farley was on Saturday Night Live.
That was definitely one of those things
that all the all the kids around the schoolyard
were like, "Did you see that?
Like, that was...
That was out of control."
Even just, like, as a fat kid, it's like "Oh, he's my hero."
Like, he took his shirt off on national TV,
and he's as good a dancer as Patrick Swayze is.
The fact that you've got
the late Jan Hooks and Kevin Nealon and Mike Myers
sitting there, like, watching, as the...
If they laugh,
the sketch goes poof, goes away.
I'm doing...
This.
I'm doing a lot of this.
If you kind of look at my face in the sketch,
it's a little like a dog
that's hearing a weird frequency.
It was like, "What is that?"
Thank you, Adrian, Barney.
If you could just give us a minute,
we'll have our decision.
Oh...
Adrian... You were great out there, Man.
I know... It's going to be you.
Oh, what are you talking about, Barney?
You've got it, and you know it.
Whatever happens, you're the best.
Buddies?
Buddies.
They're ready for you guys.
And then you've got the thing at the end
where they actually say, "Well, no.
We're going to go with," you know, "with this guy.
He's got a better body, and he's a much better dancer."
Who did Farley beat out, then, to get... What?
Yeah, okay, yeah.
On the one hand, Chris was acting
like he was embarrassed about playing the fat guy,
but on the other hand, he fucking loved it,
and that's the contradiction he was.
After the Chippendales, we were like,
"Oh, this guy's going to be giant.
He's going to be a huge star."
But I knew that back in Chicago.
You know, growing up,
you think that showbiz people come from outer space
or something.
You don't expect to know anybody who's doing this,
and to just watch
someone you've watched in improv basements,
you know, on the biggest comedy stage in the world,
was just so exciting.
Just to see him on TV was crazy,
and the family would all gather around
and go, "Oh, my God, look at this.
He's on TV."
We had seen Chris's sketch, the Chippendales sketch,
and went, "We have to sign that guy,"
and he sort of just sat there,
and he would nod a lot, and then he would go,
"Uh, uh, uh... Could I be with you guys?"
and we were like,
"No, it's supposed to be the other way around.
We're supposed to be pitching you."
He was incredibly friendly immediately.
He didn't see it as, "Oh, here comes the new guy,"
or "Oh, good,
I've got more competition on the show, Bubba."
He was just more like, "Hey," like,
"Fellow comedian, here we go."
First day, and I see Farley in the lobby,
and he goes "How are you? Chris Farley.
Gallagher Tent and Awning."
Flips his hair around, and...
Which I grew to know over the years,
that was his standard deep voice, handshake, meet guy.
The truth is that everybody that gets the show
usually are unknown and broke.
Suddenly, you know, you're living your dream life.
I mean, I always say to Lorne,
"Thanks for giving me the life I dreamed of,"
and that's what you get if you succeed on that show.
We were both getting famous,
and literally, when I would walk down the street with him,
it was no one else seen except Farley.
It was just "Oh, my God, there's Chris Farley.
There's Chris Farley. There's Chris Farley."
When I walked through Chicago with him, my God.
Da Bears.
Welcome to another edition of Bill Swerski's Superfans.
That was me.
Very nice. All right.
He was 100% believable playing the biggest character.
You always were like,
"Yeah, I believe this guy. I believe this guy's real."
Everything okay?
No problem.
Just having a heart attack.
He'd be pounding his chest, you know,
having a heart attack in a hula skirt,
and you're like, "Yeah, that could be a real guy."
By the way, I should mention
that Todd was kind enough to show up today
even though earlier this week, he had yet another heart attack.
Yeah, well, the doc says
that I've got a small piece of Polish sausage
lodged in the lining of my heart.
One of the funniest lines to me was, like,
"How many is that, Todd?"
Very nice recovery.
Now, how many heart attacks is that for you, Todd?
That makes a baker's dozen for me.
He didn't do a ton of prep.
He just goes, "Yeah, yeah, we'll figure it out,"
and there's just only X amount you can be taught,
and then there's a guy that, like that walks in.
You go, "Oh, he... He skips it all,"
and it works.
Da... Bulls...
Da Bulls, Da Bulls, Da Bulls, Da Bulls,
Da Bulls... Yeah.
Da Bulls, Da Bulls, Da Bulls...
Very good.
Because everyone can fall down and whatever,
but you can't do it that good.
He doesn't put his hands up, which is what I would do.
So he doesn't block his fall, and that's...
You can't do those forever.
I think Chevy Chase warned him not to do that.
Because Chevy'd always had something there
just before he fell
that he could hit that broke the fall,
but Chris was just taking it as paid.
Da Bulls, Da Bulls, Da Bulls.
He wasn't paying close enough attention
to see that there was a way you could do it
and not hurt yourself.
His commitment was total.
Chris, if I happened to be in the building
and he happened to be in the building,
would knock on the door
and go, "Michael!
You're such a good writer.
What are you writing?"
and I'd be like, "I'm writing a Sprockets."
He goes, "Can I be in it?"
Like this, just completely...
And I'd go, "I don't know. Sure. I don't know.
Can you do a German accent?"
"No, no, I can't. I can't!"
And then he'd just... "I can't!"
He's not going to be the idea man,
but he's going to take any idea you bring in
and make it better.
I know he didn't write for himself,
because a lot of those guys wrote for themselves,
the smart ones,
and they created these things,
and he kind of was at the mercy of other people.
I think he was very intimidated by the writers.
I don't think he felt
like he could contribute in sketch writing,
but of course he could, because he had great instincts,
and he could put himself into a character's mindset,
and he could improvise lines and moments
by just doing the character.
All you've got to do
is kind of hold on to Chris like a ski lift, you know?
He'll lift you up the hill.
And so you would give him a sketch and go,
"How would you make that funny if you said it your way?"
or whatever, and honest to God,
he would destroy it with how he would do it.
When we would have a hundred people
in the read through,
it was a hundred people pulling for Farley.
He was the easiest guy to write for, for sure.
He did try to write one sketch because he never wrote sketches,
and it was called "Puppy Lawyer,"
and it was about 14 pages,
and it was horrible, and it was too long,
and at the read through, it was dying,
and just...
And then I kept looking at the read through,
going, "Oh, my God. It's dying."
Bomb.
Then he grabs really hard when he gets nervous.
"David, I'm going to get in trouble,"
and then after that, I would say,
"I'm working on Puppy Lawyer.
Your honor, arf arf."
I think you see the purest Chris,
um, when we did the Chris Farley Show.
You see the timidness. You see the awkwardness.
Somebody didn't write the character of Chris Farley.
That was Chris Farley.
It's almost an impersonator's ability
to pick up on the way the person talks about themselves
or sees the world,
and heighten it a little bit,
and that was Chris right there.
The Chris Farley Show.
That's how he felt about the world.
Welcome to The Chris Farley Show.
I'm Chris Farley.
Most regular people relate
to that being a little star struck,
and even when he was a star himself,
I don't think he ever stopped being kind of awestruck
by celebrities he admired.
My guest tonight is one of the greatest musicians...
Uh, rock musicians...
I guess, songwriter... Ever.
"You're Paul McCartney." "Yes."
"And you were the Beatles."
"Yes."
Remember when you were with the Beatles?
Sure. Sure.
That was awesome.
Yeah, it was. Yeah.
That was a magnified version of himself,
of his own insecurities,
and you knew when he was doing those interviews
that was the arc of the sketch,
was we wait for his falling apart,
because he was "so stupid!
Damn it. Why did I say that?"
So stupid.
What a dumb question.
No, no, no.
Chris, I get asked that all the time in interviews.
Awkwardly, like, "I know, I'm an idiot,"
and "Oh, it's so great, what you do,"
and he kind of felt that way about almost anybody.
His self deprecating manner
was another part of the vulnerability
that he put in a lot of the things that he did.
"And in the end, the love you take
is equal to the love you make."
You remember that?
Yes.
Is that true?
All that love that came out of the guy
was him just apologizing by nature
for a lot of stuff that he...
I wish he'd never had to apologize for.
Yes, Chris, in my experience, it is.
I find the more you give, the more you get.
Oh...
Awesome!
All the stars that would come on the show,
on Saturday Night Live, the hosts,
they would just, out loud, just go, "I love you.
You're the best.
I watch the show because of you," you know.
We'd all be, like, "That's funny, Man.
They all love Farley."
When Christian Slater came, he had his hair greased back.
He goes, "Christian Slater's cool,"
which he said about every single host.
He started combing his hair back,
and I go, "Oh, no, no.
Is it Single White Female?"
He goes, "It's cool, Man."
Every host was like,
"Please put me in a skit with that guy."
They just loved being around that energy.
He was sort of nervous outward,
so he would try to show off a lot,
try to be funny all the time,
and that was his way of flirting.
I remember he was walking around with a Diet Coke,
and I think Glenn Close was there, talking,
and I could see him looking,
and she goes, "Well, talk to you later."
He goes, "Yeah, okay," and he goes...
And he chugged the whole Diet...
And she goes, "Okay."
She walked away, and I go,
"Was that... Are you showing off?"
and he goes, "Yeah, I chugged the whole thing."
I go, "And who cares?"
and he's like, "Shut up, Dude."
That was, like, his Achilles' heel, you know.
Any time you were in front of a girl,
he was very bashful.
Chris was very attractive to women, very attractive,
and had some of the most beautiful women in Hollywood
would come by the set to visit him
because he was nice to people.
He was nice to everybody.
He was funny, he was sweet, and he was a gentleman.
It starts with that genuine expression,
that sincerity here, that was so attractive,
and then his power and his strength.
He had an incredible masculinity at the same time.
You know, he's not your traditional leading man,
you know what I mean,
but it's...
There's no one like him.
And he was infectious, and he was kind,
and he was a puppy dog.
There was nothing malicious about him,
arrogant about him.
It was a purity.
It may not be what you thought was Ken doll,
but it comes together, and it's extremely attractive.
There was probably a part of him
that always wondered,
"Do these women want to be with me
just because I'm famous,
or do they really like me?"
He was trying to pull out of me what it was like.
"How does it work with fame?
How do you live with fame
and have a really good relationship?"
I met David Spade in a deli.
He knew who I was
because I was, like, doing Victoria's Secret.
He heard my voice, and he started laughing,
and I knew he was laughing at my voice.
David kept saying, "You remind me of Chris.
You act like Chris."
I said, "I want to meet this Chris,"
and he said, "No, because you'll fall in love with him,"
and, um...
The first time I met him,
I just looked at him and said, "I love that guy."
And then we just started hanging out all the time,
you know?
I didn't really know the goofball so much.
I would see it sometimes, you know,
but there was just a whole different side to him
that I thought was just so beautiful.
It was just so beautiful.
We'd gone to church together,
and we drove through a very nice neighbourhood.
He said, "I'd really like to settle here
and have a wife and have children,
and raise my family here,"
I think very much similar to what he had been raised in.
He really longed for that.
A lot of comics,
they're not really funny away from performing,
and then a few are,
and he was one of those.
He was very funny off camera.
As far as, like,
just physically doing anything for a laugh,
Chris would just... He'd do anything.
The funniest thing that Chris ever did,
and he did it pretty much every week,
and I always forgot,
so I had, like, an insane routine down.
I'd go to the upper deck outside of Lorne's office
and watch the musical acts,
because I knew
that I would never have a chance again in my life
to see so many fantastic musical acts,
and then I would go and have a shower
at exactly the same time,
and Chris, every time I was in the shower,
would rip the curtain back.
I'd be completely naked.
He would tuck everything and go,
"Michael, I love you so much,"
and he would pin me against the wall in the shower,
and I would whale on him like this, just whale on him,
like, "Get off me. Get off me."
"Just give me one kiss, Michael.
I love you so much."
It was the most frightening thing in the world,
and it killed me every time, and I forgot every week,
because you would think
that's not something you'd forget,
and every time, I'd go, "Oh, God, of course.
I should have my shower at home, not at work."
My daughter asked me
what was the best thing I've ever done in show business,
and I said,
"On stage,
doing 'Motivational Speaker' with Chris Farley
eight times a week,
no question,"
and nothing will ever come close.
Let's get better acquainted
by letting me give you a little bit of a scenario
of what my life is all about.
At Second City, people would come in,
like, waiters and waitresses, bartenders, staff,
that would come in at, like, 9:18,
because they knew that's about the time
"Motivational Speaker" was coming on at Second City.
First off, I am 35 years old.
I am divorced,
and I live in a van down by the river.
He had done some speech in kind of that voice.
Bob Odenkirk and everyone else recognized
that they had to do something with this character.
It was just too compelling and funny.
It was so fun.
He pushed it, and he broke you,
and did it every time.
It was insane.
Probably going to go out there and say,
"Hey, I'm going to take the world by the tail,
wrap it around, pull it down, and put it in my pocket.
I thought, "What if the guy is using himself
as an example of why not to do it,
because of "Look at me. Look where I am."
He is still the worst example.
I mean, the sketch has great structure to it,
but the fact is,
it's a framework for this insanely wonderful performance.
You're not going to amount to jack squat!
It was a grand slam every single fucking time.
It was nuts, nuts.
As I told you, my name is Matt Foley,
and I am a motivational speaker.
Chris, when he did it,
was doing his dad as a character,
and his dad...
Great guy, but when he got mad,
he, like, transcended a scream level,
scarier sounding pocket,
and it was more like, you know,
"Christopher, I am not going to tell you again."
Dad, I wish you could just shut your big yapper!
Then we'd played rugby with a guy, Larry Hill,
he kind of ran on the outside of his feet,
so he would kind of...
Larry would play rugby like this,
so he's there doing Larry,
going, "What we're going to do..."
Young Lady, what do you want to do with your life?
He took what he loved about them
and made it his own.
You're telling me there's a real Matt Foley?
I did not know that. I did not know that.
It's someone's unfortunate position to be like,
"Oh, well, I'm on TV now."
I am the Matt Foley.
It's the height of my career,
living in a van down by the river.
Caught a lot of questions in the last 25 years
about that.
He would often name or re-name his characters at Second City
after friends that he would spot in the audience,
and in that case, the name just stuck.
Then he comes out, "My name is Matt Foley,"
and does that bit,
and I just kind of sunk down in my chair a little bit,
and said, "Oh, my God, where's this going?"
He told him, apparently, "I'm never changing the name."
You know. "I'm keeping it.
He's always going to be Matt Foley."
We're going to be buddies!
We're going to be pals!
We're going to wrestle!
I was humbled.
It was a wonderful, wonderful expression
of our relationship,
but my little slice of notoriety was well appreciated,
and I give thanks to him every day for that.
I'm living in a van down by the river!
You didn't often see Second City scenes
brought fully formed to SNL that way.
He just had this thing wired and perfected from Second City,
so once he even did a read through,
everyone loved it.
Your father and I came up with a brilliant idea
to give you kids some direction...
A motivational speaker.
Yeah, it was Christina Applegate,
and she was the host.
And I remember Lorne Michaels saying to me,
apologetic in a way, like,
"He has this character
he's really been wanting to do on the show.
We're not sure what it is.
Do you mind if we premiere it in your episode?"
and I was like, "Well, yeah, of course," you know.
"Let's see what it is."
Matt, we're ready for you.
Out comes Chris out of that door.
All right, how's everybody?
Now, let's get started by letting me give you
a little bit of a scenario of what my life is all about.
First off, I am 35 years old.
I am divorced,
and I live in a van down by the river.
He'd combine the scratchy voice,
move his glasses around, he can't see,
and then grabs his belt,
or when he's sideways to you,
he crosses his eyes so the audience can't see,
try new tricks, and he'd just...
"Huh? Huh?"
Okay, I'm going to go out
and I'm going to get the world by the tail,
and wrap it around and pull it down
and put it in my pocket.
We all just kind of stopped.
What is going on?
And it just, the...
"Doo, doo, on the right track."
How can we get back on the right track?
Bigger, and more crazy, and we just... That was it.
When Chris did Matt Foley,
he tried to make everyone crack up.
Well, la di frickin' da.
We've got ourselves a writer here.
I think just the combo
of watching the audience see it for the first time
and realizing this is such a funny thing,
and we'd seen it all week.
I started thinking it was funnier again.
Ol' Matt's going to be your shadow.
Here's you, here's Matt.
There's you, there's...
Whoops a daisy.
You could see me, I'm hiding behind my hair
because I knew
that if I looked at him for one second more,
I was going to drop off that couch.
I couldn't even get my line out.
I knew that, "Okay, I have one line."
What do you want to do with your life?
"I want to live in a van down by the river."
It's the only joke I had in the whole thing,
and I just was like... (Whispers)
I want to live in a van down by the river.
"I want to live in a van down by the river,"
and I just put my head back down.
Well, you'll have plenty of time
to live in a van down by the river when...
You're living in a van down by the river!
You can't design it in a laboratory,
but "I live in a van down by the river..."
The first time I heard that, I was like, "Hm.
That's yummy. I know that one."
He made my whole body go into convulsions of joy.
And I was more scared of getting in trouble.
I did not want to get yelled at by Lorne.
I didn't want one more reason to get rid of me.
From what I've heard,
you're using your paper not for writing,
but for rolling doobies.
You're going to be doing a lot of doobie rolling
when you're living in a van down by the river.
It just was thrilling.
It was...
It was like watching Evel Knievel, you know.
You just kind of couldn't believe it.
We knew that we were in the presence
of something that was pretty great.
I don't think any of us, on that day,
knew that "Motivational Speaker"
was going to become such an iconic character for him.
It was an incredible moment, though.
It was pretty cool to see that happen.
I don't give a rat's behind, because I'm moving in.
I'm sick and tired of living in a van down by the river!
I mean, he lit up a room,
and Chris did everything to excess.
He was your friend to excess.
He loved you to excess.
He was kind to excess.
But when it came to, you know, drinking and other stuff,
Chris got caught in a world
that I don't know if he could get out of.
Chris was one of Lorne's favorite performers,
and one of his favourite men,
and truly, truly loved him.
Lorne was never concerned about, you know,
assisting Chris in his artistic ability.
He was more concerned about the lifestyle.
There was some part of him that clearly trusted
that if he was a little bit fucked up,
that it would be all right, or that it would be...
Maybe that was where the magic came from.
Chris and Lorne
had a father figure kind of a relationship.
Lorne was always worried about Chris,
and he looked out for Chris a lot, you know.
Lorne was very good to Chris, and Chris looked up to Lorne.
When he got to SNL,
whatever track he was on as far as, you know,
any drinking or anything like that,
that was just sort of set in line,
and so all the wheels were in motion
by the time we got to him, you know.
It's just hard to deal with,
and not everyone's that stable.
I'm not, and it's very hard.
So many comedians have low self esteem,
feeling like, "Well, if I'm not making people laugh,
do I really deserve to be here?"
But he was this boy who wanted to do good.
He wanted to impress his dad and his mom
and his family so much,
but then there was this other side of him,
so his whole life was this constant battle.
You know, bars filled from ceiling to cash register
full of booze,
and he goes, "Johnny, don't you ever look at that
and just want to drink
every single drop of all that stuff right there?"
and I go, "Nope,
it didn't really enter my mind, Chris."
He was a very sweet guy...
Before midnight.
He was as open and like a six year old
as he was dark,
and the darkness was compelling,
but not something you want to really be around.
When he would get super messed up,
he would pull away a little bit.
"Everybody's on my ass. I want to be by myself.
I've got the exact drugs I'm going to do,
and then I'm going to get it together,"
which is not the way it goes.
The way it goes is you get messed up,
then you really, you know, you call your buddies.
When you're jumping up steps in the showbiz ladder
and you're leaping over everyone around you,
and everyone around you is going,
"You'd better watch out,"
some part of you has to be going,
"No, you'd better watch out,
because I'm kicking ass every day."
I kind of grabbed him once,
and I just took him, just with all my might,
I just took him behind this curtain
at an after thing,
and I said, "Dude, what the fuck?
Seriously?"
And he'd get very,
"Michael, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.
You're right, you're right, you're right."
I said, "Seriously, Dude, what the fuck," you know?
There came a point,
certainly there came a point in his story
where he gave credence
to everyone's warnings and worries.
The thing he loved the most was doing the show,
so taking it away from him,
we sent him to a very sort of tough place
in the South, I think in Alabama,
and that period was really hard for him,
but I think it also...
He came back much clearer and determined
that that was never going to happen again.
Hey, Girls. Did I miss anything?
Nothing. Chrissy's being stupid again.
Oh, God, I love these fries.
If you love them so much, why don't you marry them?
Can I have some?
Um, sure, Cindy, go ahead.
Oh, God, these are good.
Uh, Cindy, can you leave some for us?
I thought you were, um, trying to lose weight.
Lay off me, I'm starving.
Diet starts Monday.
There was this steak joint called "The Steak Joint,"
and they had this thing called the Trenchman's Cut, which...
This thing was probably this big and this wide,
roast beef,
and I'd be, like,
"How are you going to eat that and go on stage?"
He'd be like, "I can do it."
We'd all be like, "Go, go, go."
Oh, look, Tammy, it's the Gap Girls,
and they're eating.
What a surprise.
You're so dumb,
when they were passing out brains,
you thought they said "Trains,"
and then... You got on it... On a train,
and then went for a ride.
Two Rib Eyes, medium...
and I'm not exaggerating, I'm not trying to be funny,
he'd taken the Rib Eyes,
he'd kind of put it in his mouth
and stripped it, kind of, almost...
Like a sparerib or something.
And I look over at the plate,
and both the Rib Eyes are gone.
Later on, we were walking,
and I said, "Those steaks, the way you ate that..."
And he says, "I know. I know. What am I doing?"
and whenever he said "What am I doing?"
You knew that he knew everything.
He knew everything about himself.
Nothing was, like, sneaking past him.
It just seemed
like there was always something massive that he was doing,
something big, something huge.
Jeez, those two are always OTR.
You two are terrible!
Sometimes he would head butt me in sketches,
get so close it would throw you off,
like "What's going... You're not supposed to do that."
So that was funny, and he liked it,
and he'd go "I made you laugh," and get excited,
like a child.
I'll tell you what he never did.
He didn't make it about himself.
Never sat back and was cocky about killing.
His laughs were so huge and thick and long,
the giant roars,
I'd say, "Did you hear how you...?"
He'd be like, "Really? Really? It was good?"
If I had some of those roars, I would definitely
have a lot more of an attitude right now.
I don't think I'd be hanging out with you.
The world of high fashion...
There was never anyone like Dante.
These designs are atrocious.
Are you trying to ruin me?
I shared an office that year,
10 feet wide with just two wooden desks.
Oh, Dante...
I sat there.
Behind me was him.
That's the third assistant you've fired this month.
I had to write my own stuff, which was tough.
He didn't write or read or really do anything,
but he was funny, and that was more important.
I'll have not have my decisions questioned, Lucien.
In bed, you're my partner,
but in this office, you work for me.
But, Dante...
Go away.
Chris Rock and Sandler had to walk through ours
to get to their little office,
so they would come in and out,
and then when they locked their door,
you know they're starting to write hard...
Especially Sandler wrote a lot.
He was a really giving guy to the other comedians.
Loved the other comedians,
and if you made Farley laugh, my God, that felt good,
with that giant laugh of his.
Okay, I've got a package here for Dante.
I am Dante.
All right, here you go.
Sign on the X.
There.
I'll sign your precious Federal Express receipt,
and now I wish you could do me a favor
and buzz off.
Oh, man.
There you go. Excellent!
All right.
Peekaboo, Dante.
I was playing some overly fey character
in the designing of clothes industry, I believe.
Well, well, well, if it isn't Taylor Evans.
If you've come looking for modelling work,
you're out of luck.
I don't let whores walk down my runway.
Charming as always, Dante,
but I don't intend to take "No" for an answer.
Well, then, perhaps you'll take this for an answer.
"Now go!"
And then at one point,
there was a little fluffa happened.
There was a line that got skipped,
and I just, like, pushed his glasses up,
and his eyes crossed.
It was this delicate moment that made me very happy.
I have grown wise to your trickery, Dante.
He came from that background where you pull everybody up,
that you're there for everybody.
You don't leave anybody hanging,
so when you're working with him,
he was just right there and helping you.
"Come on, Buddy," you know, that kind of thing.
I was very influenced by his commitment,
full, all his molecules,
and anybody around him's molecules,
into his performance.
So powerful and so ungoverned,
and that was a big part of, I think, you know,
Chris's appeal.
You always had the sense that he was...
He was having the most fun possible.
Why, it seems the liposuction done on your face
has clogged your eardrums.
Make like an egg, and beat it.
It's a word I wouldn't normally use,
but there was something always dutiful about him.
He cared about the whole show.
He never fought for his piece over someone else's piece.
He was most comfortable being part of it
and caring about it.
Chris said, "I want to become so famous
that I can go to children's hospitals
and I can cheer the kids up, and they'll know who I am."
Not a Ferrari, not mansions, not go to Europe.
That's it.
Like, that kind of summed up Chris.
Chris walks into St. Jude's Hospital.
Within 60 seconds of being in that kid's room,
they don't care who he is.
They don't care about his fame.
They just know they're madly in love with him.
And he picks up an IV and goes, "Urrr,"
makes believe he's drinking.
The kid doesn't care about show business.
It's not Tom Brady.
It's Chris.
Chris was a real Catholic in the best sense,
not in a casual passing sense.
He lived it. He walked the walk.
He went and visited people on weekends
and didn't even tell anybody about it, like,
to bring them meals or make them laugh.
His dad told him a long time ago,
"Only by the grace of God go I,"
so he saw those that were most vulnerable,
and he saw how blessed he was
and recognized that those people, I think,
he related to best.
The acts of kindness that he did off camera,
which were true acts of sort of piety and modesty,
that part of him I don't think people knew.
We would go by a homeless person
and I'd go, "Uh, I don't have anything,"
and Chris goes,
"What if we just passed Jesus Christ?
You know, they say he could come back as a homeless man
or something.
Maybe he's testing us."
Kevin Nealon and Mike Myers and Adam Sandler and David Spade
were all sitting around,
and someone says, "How big do you think you're going to be
as a performer?"
And it went around the room, and they were all going, like,
"I don't know. I'll be pretty big, I guess.
I don't know. I'm pretty funny.
I think I'll do fine,"
and everyone kind of leaves, you know,
and it's just Chris and I were left in the room there,
you know, and I go, "Really?"
"Yeah."
"Really, that's what you think?"
and he looked around, waited for them to be out of earshot,
and then he goes, "I'm going to be so huge.
Oh, my God, I'm going to be so huge.
I'm going to be a giant star."
Let me tell you something.
On that program, no offence to anybody else,
you're the life of the party, Buddy.
Scripts are coming in. You're reading constantly.
You're trying to figure out what are the best moves.
I always call it the ride, where the ride is headed up
and the trajectory is straight up,
and that's where Chris was.
I was there when Lorne was developing Chris as a talent
and then breaking him out as a movie star.
When we were shooting Wayne's World,
Chris was in it for one scene.
He played the security guard,
and Mike and Dana were, you know,
at the top of their game.
I remember on Wayne's World,
he turned to me and said, "How am I doing?
Is it going well?"
I said, "Yeah, it's going well."
I said, "I'd just like to point out, Chris,
that this is my first movie.
I've actually never even been in a movie.
This is my absolute first movie, so I'm..."
"Well, you seem so at home and seem so natural,"
and I said, "It's not.
I'm terrified,
and I have no idea what I'm doing."
He was so sweet in Coneheads and wonderful,
and just to be on the set with him was great.
Chris was the romantic lead.
When you first sign somebody as an agent,
you want to introduce them to everybody in the town
who can make a difference in their movie career.
First of all, he wore the same thing to every meeting,
which was a button down white tearaway SNL wardrobe shirt,
so it would have the buttons down,
but underneath it was Velcro...
And he wore that probably three or four days in a row.
All right.
It's a clip on.
Are you sure?
All right, now...
Wayne's World, the Coneheads,
all of those little cameos, we can call them, that he did
were getting him more and more notice.
It was still very much within the SNL family,
and Billy Madison was Adam saying, you know,
"I want Chris to play this part."
Everybody on? Good. Great.
Grand! Wonderful!
No yelling on the bus!
Hey!
You laugh at the fact
that this guy's been through hell,
and he's handling it to the best he can,
and he's still lovable.
I'll turn this damn bus around.
That'll end your precious little field trip
pretty damn quick, huh?
Shit.
That was bananas.
We don't even know what the hell happened to him.
He turned dark red,
and I remember having to cut around literally every take.
Like, it would be like,
"I think we've got three frames before Adam laughed there,
so maybe we can use that shot right there."
It was hard to cut around, but he was nuts.
He was nuts.
He was so loose as the bus driver.
All of these guys tend to work together
and collaborate.
The environment there just breeds friendship.
Everyone knew he had talent,
and everyone wanted him in their movie,
and he was riding high.
It was nice to see him just kind of rolling, doing well.
He started wearing suits.
He'd go down to the Rochester Big and Tall
and buy, like, 10 suits,
and he'd slick his hair back,
and I'm like, "Who's this guy?
What are you, a Hollywood guy?"
But it was fun. It was fun to see.
It was cool to see the man
driving up in, like, a convertible Caddy or something
and just having huge money and tipping people
and just being like what you expect he would be.
He loved to be an actor. He just loved it.
He loved every minute of it, you know,
and so he was just happy,
just having a good time, killing it.
In Hollywood in the old days, they used to call it "It,"
when someone had "It."
They didn't know how to describe it either,
so they called it "It," and he had "It."
The pressure of Saturday Night Live
is once you get the show,
everyone's looking at you like,
"Oh, you have a chance to do movies and be famous
and be a movie star."
First of all, to get a movie, that's the hustle.
You have to be able to get in the movie,
and Chris got in the movie,
and the movie that he got in was Tommy Boy.
Aah!
I've got to go to the bathroom, Daddy.
♪ Maniac...
Aah!
If you mention Tommy Boy,
80% of the people go "Fat guy in a little coat"
because of the way Chris did it, what it was,
and all that sort of stuff,
and that to me is the best way to say
that's Chris Farley.
Richard...
Is this your coat?
Fat guy in a little coat
was something that Farley did to Spade.
Don't do it. Fat guy in a little coat.
In my office, he'd put the coat on.
"David, I've got your jacket on.
Fat..." Fat guy in a little coat.
Don't.
David, for real, would say, "Chris, take it off.
Take the jacket off.
You're going to break my ja... You're going to split it.
Take it off. Take it off."
"Oh, fat guy in a little coat."
♪ Fat guy in a little coat... ♪
Take it off, Dickhead. I'm serious.
Richard, what's happening?
He and Spade were just induplicable as a team,
wonderful together.
David is very acerbic,
and he's, you know, he's a toughie,
and Chris is a softie.
You've got the best of Belushi and Aykroyd,
of Abbott and Costello,
of Martin and Lewis.
You had just a perfect Yin Yang situation with those guys.
A fantastic combination
of ultimately innocent and ultimately jaded.
They are the oil and vinegar of comedy.
Ugh, I can actually hear you getting fatter.
They would react to stress in different ways.
Chris would get bigger, and there'd be less of David,
and I used to say
that the amount of weight in the frame
kind of stayed constant, you know, in a two shot.
They were funny. They were close.
You could tell they were really good friends,
and only really, really good friends
can fight the way they fought.
You don't want none of me. Think it through.
Come on, give me your best shot.
I'll give you a free one. Let me have it.
That was a good one.
They'd throw something
and not speak to each other for a couple hours,
and we'd all sit there and laugh
and watch this thing go back and forth.
That's it!
You are going to die!
I am going to get you!
And when I would visit those fools during the shoot,
they'd have little fights on occasion,
and Farley would have a snap,
and Spade would be scared for his life.
They were in love with each other.
We all were in love,
but Spade and Farley
had a definite brotherly relationship.
Tommy Boy is basically a skeleton sketch
of how we grew up in Wisconsin,
minus Bo Derek, of course.
I met Chris literally on the set,
and I looked down,
and Chris was doing pushups,
and just...
And he got up, and his face was beet red,
and he was so cute, so adorable.
Holy schnykies.
First scene, of course, was the swimming pool scene.
Oh, man.
Dad, she's like a 10.
Hi, Honey.
And Chris was funny all day,
and he actually made me relax
by making fun of me, kind of,
which was good.
I'm Tommy.
I'm Beverly, and you are just adorable.
Brian Dennehy's character and Chris,
that was a lot of him and my dad.
It's kind of like who my dad was, you know,
this big, gruff, great salesman guy, you know.
Hi, Dad.
Tommy!
Ooh...
We had that in common.
We both loved our dads, and we both were...
Anything our fathers said, we'd be like,
"Well, now I have to do it, because my dad told me to."
Scram, don't give her the weight room thing.
Do you know where the weight room is?
I'll check it out.
Sorry.
I was hanging out with David and Chris and Fred Wolf,
so he wrote a part for me,
but I wasn't supposed to be naked in that part.
I was supposed to just jump in the swimming pool,
and then they're like,
"Okay, and then you take your bathing suit..."
And I was like "What?"
and they're like, "We rented out this whole thing,"
and da da da da da.
"You're not going to not do it now, are you?"
It was such a pressure thing.
Chris was so worried about,
"You've got to make her comfortable,"
and he would just always try to make me laugh, like,
or always put a towel around me, like...
He was just being such a protective gentleman.
I'm back.
Richard?
What were you doing?
Going over some documents.
Look at his movie performances.
The physicality, I mean...
And Tommy Boy, just the...
You saw his quality as an actor there,
and his range as an actor.
I'm going to really miss him.
Your father was a great guy.
Yeah.
What I think was really important
with Tommy Boy
is it showed Chris how we saw him
behind closed doors.
Sensitive. Kind.
That kindness, and that real vulnerability.
Oh, Richard, I'm so happy. Hold me.
Yikes.
Don't run away from your feelings.
It's so great when everyone leaves you alone.
We're just trying to...
"What's the funniest thing we can do here
that makes us laugh?"
Sandler, during Tommy Boy,
wrote him a sketch in Pepper Boy.
Say when.
When.
Grazie.
Adam Sandler is Pepper Boy, right?
It's like, you know, "Fresh pepper?"
and he would give people pepper.
He's under high scrutiny for this.
It is an art of the Pepper Boy, Carlo.
Don't let it die with me.
Please, let me teach it to you.
Teach me, Senor Marco.
We had to fly all the way back from Toronto to do the show,
and I wasn't even in it.
All right. You see that man right there?
Farley was in it,
but he only had one line in that sketch,
so he was mad about it,
so he put on this huge beard. He looked ridiculous.
He goes, "Watch this line. I'll get a laugh,"
and I'm like, "I don't think so.
You're not supposed to. It's supposed to be Sandler,"
but...
Fresh-y pepper?
He goes, "Oh yeah? Huh?"
Bite his lip,
and you knew you were in trouble.
Why, thank you, Pepper Boy!
That's the perfect amount of pepper.
Bravo!
"Why, thank you, Pepper Boy,"
and we're like...
Of course, if you only have one line,
why did you fucking put on a beard for one li...
Like, it's, like, this is the funniest shit ever,
and he's, like, just the guy...
He's a warm body in the sketch.
It's an Adam Sandler sketch.
Bravo!
That was his, like, fighting back
at, "Watch how funny I can be,"
and it works. He's great at it.
30 seconds before a skit,
would tap you on the shoulder and go,
"I'm going to get you."
He did that a few times to me, and he always got me.
You did it! How do you feel?
Like I can fly, senor,
on wings made of pepper.
He was aware of his power.
He was aware of his gift.
He's got his BA from Second City.
He's got his Master's from Saturday Night Live.
Totally equipped.
Saturday Night Live
with a feature film where he's the lead...
I can't imagine the pressure
of just flying alone back and forth
to be doing a movie, then flying for the show,
then fly back
to be up at 5:00 a.m. Monday morning
to shoot the mov...
I mean, it's incredible pressure.
That's going to wear everybody down,
but it didn't wear Chris down at all,
not even a little bit.
He didn't seem... He didn't...
I would... "How are you doing?"
"Yeah, it's great. So what are we doing now?"
He just didn't show any signs of wear at all.
He will be a major motion picture star
when his brand new film, Tommy Boy,
opens nationwide.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
please welcome the Human Thunderball,
Chris Farley.
A very impressive entrance.
I think in the 10 years we've been doing this show,
I've never seen anything quite like that.
I want to do what the King wants,
so I'd like to do that.
I'm on the Dave Letterman show! By golly...
How are you doing, Buddy?
All excited about your big movie?
Aw, man. You and David Spade.
David Spade, a very funny man, very nice guy,
and you guys are friends
as well as working together on the show,
and now on this big movie.
Yeah, he's my buddy. We had a lot of fun.
When the movie came out, the reviews were bad.
For him, the idea that it could be that willfully hurtful
took him back,
and he didn't have the confidence yet,
because it was his first movie, you know,
because I'd say, "Let them wash over you,
and in two weeks, nobody will care.
All that matters is the work,
and it's a piece of work that will be around."
When the video came out, it was an obsession.
Our generation was into him, and that was the coolest.
It's interesting that a movie that was that savaged
ended up being sort of a movie that's never gone away.
Time magazine published a page of the 10 Comedies of All Time,
and Tommy Boy's there,
and I know that Farley would have been incredibly proud
to see it there.
I really love this movie.
I hope that everyone will like it,
because we had fun making it, and I think it's really good.
I hope so, too.
I hope it's a huge hit for you and for David Spade
and everybody else as well.
Because if I don't,
I'm going back to Wisconsin on the farm,
so go to it!
No, no, that was stupid too.
I shouldn't have...
Chris was at a place,
not that he didn't need SNL at that point,
because it feels
like it just had kind of run its course.
Once you're on the show
and then you're in a movie that does really, really well,
it's weird being on the show.
It's not like you think you're better than the show...
Never, of course.
The movies are a lot of work.
The love you get for what you've done
lasts for years,
and on Saturday Night Live, it's gone by Sunday morning.
For Chris,
the pull of Hollywood was now very strong.
A new administration came in at NBC.
I think they did not like him.
They did not like Adam Sandler.
It was a generational change.
What happens after SNL is scary, Man,
and you don't want it to end.
I remember the last party,
looking at each other and being like,
"This is it, Man? This is over, that great run?
Now what?"
From my own experience being on the show,
you always wanted, like, to be on the show
and then have a movie out that was a hit
at the same time,
and so if they don't do well,
you think, "Well, at least I still have the show,
so I'm not, like, completely out of it."
And he was getting big offers to do stuff,
big money, they had big directors,
everybody loved him.
So he had stuff to do,
but there's that fear of, like, "What the hell am I doing?
Why am I going to be out on my own?"
because there, you're a team together,
then all of a sudden, it's all you.
He said, "Kitten...
I only saw myself doing Saturday Night Live.
Like, that was my goal, was to do Saturday Night Live
and make my father laugh.
I never imagined myself doing movies."
And I said, "Oh, no...
It's not in his comfort zone,"
and when you don't get in your...
You're past your comfort zone,
you've got to make sure you're really grounded.
Otherwise, it can just be overwhelming.
He was a giant TV star, a giant movie star,
but the kind of routine
of having the show and the family
and the same people and Lorne and all his "brothers,"
and without that, it wasn't the same.
I mean,
it might have made him feel like he was floundering,
like there wasn't the safety of the show,
the security of that set... Family atmosphere.
Hi, Ma'am.
Vote for Donnelly.
Tommy Boy's a movie that stayed with people,
and then what happens is the studio is sort of like,
"We're going to try to replicate that.
We're going to try to grab whatever Tommy Boy had
and make it that again," you know,
and I get that.
Paramount had an option on him from Tommy Boy,
and so he had to do Black Sheep.
Fred Wolf was 60 pages into the script
when we were greenlit,
and I went,
"We don't actually have a script yet."
Listen, I think it's better
if we bring the energy down a tad.
Are you kidding me?
It's showmanship.
You've got to go out and get 'em.
It was like Tommy Boy.
We wanted to get back and do that.
He goes, "That's the one people like,
and we should try it again."
Fred gave him a rolling down a hill.
He'd just keep falling, because it gets funnier
because it's so stupid.
He's just very good at anything you give him like that.
He can come up with, like, jerky moves and funny faces,
and he snaps his head around.
Bunk beds.
I've got dibs on top.
Okay.
In the cabin with David,
or him rolling down that hill, or...
There was lots of really funny things.
Nothing's going to stop us now.
We knew there was a difference
between Black Sheep and Tommy Boy,
and Chris knew that, too.
The process became interrupted.
It just got to be manipulated by people from outside.
Okay, maybe we could use some help.
The two pictures grossed
almost exactly the same amount of money,
so the fact that one vehicle maybe was a little rushed
and maybe not made as lovingly as the first one was,
that's what you take away when you're doing it.
Chris was a perfectionist,
and he was always, you know, he just wanted to do the best,
and if it wasn't the best, he was really hard on himself.
Just because things aren't perfect
doesn't mean people won't like them.
Unfortunately, I was with him when it...
When it...
When he relapsed the first time.
And we were...
He called me up, and he said, "Do you want to go see...
We're doing a preview show of Black Sheep."
He was just getting nervous, and he was upset,
and to see it onscreen, he was like...
It just was enough to set him off.
And the next day, my Dad calls me up.
He was like, "What happened last night?"
It's like, "What do you mean?"
It's like, "Christopher trashed his hotel room,
and, you know, he's back in the, you know, rehab, and..."
It's like, holy shit.
So he went off the handle for two weeks,
then they dragged him back into rehab.
A couple more rehabs,
and then sober for Beverly Hills Ninja.
Here's the thing.
If you're a drug addict, you know,
and an alcoholic,
all of a sudden you're sober, you're sober today.
Like, it's a day.
"I'm sober. Oh, look at me, I'm sober."
But if you're fat, and I speak from experience...
You look in the mirror,
and you've eaten healthy one day,
you're still fat.
You're like, "How do I beat this thing?"
I have always looked up to you,
and you have always looked out for me,
but now it is time that I look out for myself.
Be careful in your travels, Haru.
The world is a dangerous place.
When I saw him, and he was cleaned up,
and he'd been to rehab a couple times,
and he was refusing booze at this party,
he was standing up for himself,
and he wasn't a kid going, "What? What do you want?
Oh, yeah, cool, great, whatever you've got I'll do
to make you happy, to be a part of this."
He was saying, "No, I need to protect myself."
I think it's important to just have a self esteem
and believe in yourself
and be able to tell the world...
I guess, "Go fuck yourself," on some level.
It's a tough thing to deal with that kind of fame
when you're that fam...
And if it happens fast, it's almost lethal
if you don't really have a firm belief
in what you are and what you're doing.
It's sad to me, though,
that he didn't love himself
as much as everybody around him loved him.
He went through 17 rehabs, but he was a committed athlete.
He was not going to let this addiction beat him.
I would love
when he'd come back from any rehab
and be fresh and be like,
"I'm done with that,"
and he had his eating under control,
and he was excited.
He was excited to have that new shot.
Chris sober was the most brilliant, brightest thing
I'd ever seen in my life.
To this day, nothing's come close.
You can't walk around being funny all the time.
You have to be yourself sometimes,
and you have to be alone sometimes.
You can't be on stage all the time.
I think when Fatty falls down, everybody goes home happy.
It's easier than dialogue.
I don't have much brain.
But Chris also had such a terrible self image.
"Fatty fall down,"
and "I'm just an idiot."
And everyone around him would go, "No, you're not.
You're really smart, and you're a great person,"
and he'd go, "No, I'm not."
There's you, there's...
Whoops a daisy.
By God, whoops a daisy.
It's interesting when people put out an image of themself
and then in some way have to live that life.
People want that, expect that,
and if you don't get to go offstage
and somehow restore yourself,
the pull of it is...
You know, the flame,
and you can get burned to a crisp.
And now, here with another commentary
is Update commentator Bennett Brauer.
Bennett?
He had a big appetite...
A big appetite for life,
for food, for drink,
for late nights,
for the pleasures of the earth.
Well, maybe I'm not "the norm."
I'm not "Camera friendly."
I don't "Wear clothes that fit me."
You know, he sincerely wanted to be sober,
and was sober for periods of time,
and...
But I always said, "You can't be fat, super fat,
and a drug addict.
You've got to pick one."
I'm not "Hygienic." I don't "Wipe properly."
I lack "Style."
I have no "Charisma" or "Self esteem."
Something was, was... Amiss.
Something wasn't working.
You know, everyone's going to do what they're going to do.
That's the problem.
There's only so much you can do.
I mean, I'll be honest with you.
There was something going on in college.
That shit doesn't just creep up on you.
I mean, I guess it does creep up on you, but...
Alcohol probably being his first love,
but he wasn't, you know...
The other stuff wasn't far behind.
You know, an addictive person...
I mean, it's a conundrum.
I don't "Own a toothbrush"
or "Let my scabs heal."
I can't "Reach all the parts of my body."
There was something about him that...
He was just... I don't know.
He was in deep, a hard place to be.
All of us knew, every time.
His hair looked different. He looked sweaty.
He looked... His eyes were different.
They were just...
You were like, "Oh, shit."
It was rough seeing him like that,
and I hated it.
Thank you, Kevin.
Bennett Brauer, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Thank you.
I knew he was in trouble.
People would call me,
and I thought the thing he loved the most
was doing the show.
He never found the thing that was as powerful.
Timmy, come back. Come back. Come back.
I mean, I'm not the host tonight,
and Timmy damn sure ain't the host tonight.
No, the host tonight
is our good friend, Chris Farley.
Come on, Chris.
Here we go!
Let's do it! Let's do it!
Whatever shape he was in,
coming back and making him go through it
to realize, if nothing else,
this is what's happened to you, you know...
That thing you're losing,
that ability to be able to still play the game,
which you were an all star at.
You know what I've learned?
I've learned lessons about responsibee...
Responsibility.
Being responsible, not only to myself,
but to the people around me.
That means you guys.
I think it's time to quit goofing around.
I think it's time to grow up, Fellas.
I want you... Everything's going to be okay.
All right, Man. Okay.
I'm a new Chris, okay, Fellas?
Now, stay, we've got a great show tonight.
Mighty Mighty Bosstones are here,
so stick around.
It's just rare that a person has that much joy
and brings that much happiness to everyone around them,
but with Chris...
There's a limit to how wonderful it is to me.
And that limit
is when you kill yourself with drugs and alcohol.
You know?
That's where it stops being so fucking magical.
Things are getting better and better for you, aren't they?
Yeah.
I... I love it.
Success in show business
does not always create the best version of people.
Do you get a sense now of how your life might change
with the fame that is going to come
with the release of this film?
Not that you're not famous now,
but, you know, it's going to be more and more.
And also thinking
that you have the physical capacity to handle it,
because, you know, you may think that you can handle it.
It's not going to change me. Going to be the same old Chris.
Yeah. Nothing's going to happen...
Oh!
Are you going to be okay?
Yeah, I thought that...
Maybe this was the life that he was supposed to live.
I mean, I'm selfish. I wanted more.
You don't really believe it when you're going through it.
You just think...
That he'd be able to pull it out.
"You're going to die from that shit, Buddy.
You've got to stop, you've got to stop,
and it's just not going to end right,"
and then... It...
The entertainment world has lost a huge talent,
and much too soon.
Comedian Chris Farley died today in Chicago.
I wasn't shocked.
And I was very sad, and straight up...
Lots of things you wish didn't happen, you know?
You know, he died alone,
you know, on a linoleum floor.
It was not what we wanted for him,
nor what he wanted for himself.
Nobody died...
You know, you're 33.
You don't die at 33.
It doesn't happen.
It took months to go,
"Okay, I can talk about this, or I could just..."
Too much.
It comes up in something in my mind every day,
and I think it will forever.
I liked having him in my life. It was better.
It made my life better being a friend of mine.
Do I wish I could clone that guy?
But with Chris, you just don't...
When they say, "God made the mold
and he threw it out the window,"
there was no mold.
There was just...
It was just ether, stars, comets,
precious jewels and gems...
And Chris.
Thank you, Folks. You guys have been great.
Thank you for coming out.
Keep it going for Kevin Farley, everybody.
Chris, he would never want to bring any sadness.
What he would want is just everybody to laugh
and don't be sad.
Keep the laughter going.
It's called a clown's prayer.
Before any audition at Second City
or for TV or film,
we'd always take out the prayer.
We'd read it.
I actually still have the prayer in my wallet, um...
I usually don't read prayers, but I will.
I mean, I do, but not for...
All right.
"Dear Lord, as I stumble through this life,
help me to create more laughter than tears,
dispense more happiness than gloom,
spread more cheer than despair.
Never let me become so blase that I will fail to see
the wonder in the eyes of a child
or a twinkle in the eyes of the aged.
Never let me forget that my work is to cheer people,
make them happy, and make them laugh.
Never let me acquire success to the point
where I discontinue calling on my Creator
in the hour of need,
and acknowledging Him and thanking Him
in the hour of plenty.
And in my final moment, may I hear you whisper,
"When you made my people smile, you made me smile."
Chris Farley.
Whoo!
♪ You came into the world
♪ The day that all the Kings died ♪
♪ I felt the heat in your heart ♪
♪ Saw the flames in your eyes ♪
♪ For three days and three nights ♪
♪ You didn't sleep or even tire ♪
♪ Yeah, you're gonna burn bright ♪
♪ 'Cause you were born on fire ♪
♪ Don't let nobody
♪ Try to dampen your flame
♪ Try to cool you down
♪ Try to make you change
♪ Try to steal your heat
♪ Or mock your desire
♪ Take your flames to the street ♪
♪ 'Cause you were born on fire ♪
♪ Saw you playing in the ozone ♪
♪ Jumping on your time bombs
♪ Skipping through the land mines ♪
♪ Made to cut you down
♪ Cut you down
♪ Laid to cut you down
♪ Well, I seen you bleed
♪ And I seen you bruise
♪ And I seen you rage
♪ And I've seen you blue
♪ But that don't break my heart ♪
♪ Like when you look me in the eye ♪
♪ And you ask me questions
♪ Like where we going when we die? ♪
♪ Then who you gonna love?
♪ And how you gonna live?
♪ And will you be a poor one
♪ Or could I leave you rich?
♪ I can't leave you no money
♪ I can't leave you no land
♪ I can't leave you no faith
♪ I lost the little I had
♪ Well, I can leave you this truth ♪
♪ Hold on to hope and desire
♪ And take your flames to the streets ♪
♪ 'Cause you were born on fire
♪ Da da da da da da da ♪
♪ Da da da da da da da da ♪
♪ Da da da da da da da ♪
♪ Da da da da da da da da ♪
♪ Da da da da da da da ♪
♪ Da da da da da da da da ♪