by David Spade
As the shoot dragged on, it got harder and harder to keep our spirits up. Chris and I were great friends, of course, and we were having a fucking blast cracking each other up, but there was a little downtime and the moodiness and irritability set in. It was human nature. And being together twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week . . . it got tough. It was so pointless for me to fly back to New York for read-through on Wednesdays because if I hadn’t written anything for myself, I wasn’t going to be in the show. And I was too burnt out from memorizing lines and shooting to write anything. So by flying back to read-through, I was getting the shit kicked out of me from exhaustion with a sprinkle of humiliation. Chris always had a lot to do in read-through—writers would put him in every sketch because they knew he was a score machine but he was wiped out, too.
A lot of things come together from different angles when you’re doing a comedy. Every joke is so fucking important that you rack your brain all day to try to make things better and better. The best jokes are almost never in the script that was handed in the day before the shoot. I would imagine that in a drama, you don’t have that much leeway. (I wouldn’t know. Lifetime has never called me.) But with a comedy, especially if you have a good enough team of actors, directors, and producers, you can keep adding to the bitter end to make the movie funnier. I know Judd Apatow, Will Ferrell, Sandler, all the funniest guys out there do this. Even an editor who is on his game can get you so many free laughs. A good editor is so important. Our editor, Bill Kerr, was great at the extra gag. Three days after we shot the scene in a gas station where Farley breaks the doors off, Kerr showed me a rough version. He had done it so that the scene cuts to me being sarcastic to the attendant, and then to the attendant, and then back to me again before we even say another line. Stuff like that is so crucial to the final product. We got three laughs instead of one. He also threw in the song “Crazy” droning in the background. Another nice touch.
One of my script ideas was the scene when Chris and I are driving along after a long day of sales. We are both burned and tired and the really fruity song comes on the radio. I pitched the idea to Fred that the song should be one by the Carpenters. (This comes from my REAL LIFE, because I had The Best of Carpenters CD in my car, and once a girl got in and turned on the radio to find that disc blaring “Rainy Days and Mondays.” I played it off like “What is this shit?” and then acted like I didn’t know it was even in there. I may have even tried to blame her.) The scene in the movie based on that is pretty funny, especially with the final beat being the hood of the car popping up and we spin out. It is joke to joke to joke. Fred was good at placing ideas like that, then adding to them.
One other bit that we threw in at the last minute was the scene right before I whack off to the girl at the pool. It was sort of flat and jokeless until I see her out the window, so I asked if we could weave in a bit I had written for Weekend Update a few weeks before. (I was still trying, in my lame way, to get on the show.) The bit involved me reviewing movies, something along the lines of: “You know which comedian liked this movie?” (And there’d be a picture of Cameron Diaz.) “Buddy Whack-it.” “You know what baseball team loves Cameron? The Yankees.” “Who was your favorite Little Rascal? Was it Spanky?” And on and on. All those jokes were loaded in to that update bit (which bombed at read-through, by the way) but I had such confidence that there was something funny about it I asked if we could put it in and dish those payoff lines to Chris because it made the most sense. It was not a big scene but it made the existing one a bit funnier with him nailing those. Also, when Chris walked by the hot girl at the pool and said, “Is there a weight room?” or whatever, all those takes were classic Farley making shit up and killing. Props can also help a scene, too. I love that exchange when Chris tells me he’s wearing a clip-on and I go, “Are you sure?” Throwaway jokes like that are important. They don’t get huge laughs but they’re nice texture and they carry the style of your humor across. And often they pass by so quickly it doesn’t matter if not everyone laughs. Those are my favorite kinds of jokes, the ones that pay off the tenth time you see the film.
As I write this I feel like I sound like I’m patting myself on my back, claiming that I wrote every joke in that movie. I didn’t, of course. I would just add in my ideas here and there and try to hold up my end of the deal. This movie was obviously a tour de force for Chris and made him a movie star. He was hilarious in it. Bonnie, Terry, and Fred wrote a great script and Fred added jokes the whole way. Chris added in his own killer stuff. The one thing I did a lot of was rely on my memory. I could remember all the funny shit Chris had said in the past. I would tell him to say them when I thought they would work on-screen. And Chris would say, “Davey, that’s a great joke, thanks.” And I’d say, “It’s your joke, dude; you said it a year ago.”
We finished the movie and Paramount seemed pretty happy with the test screenings. When it was released, it was number one for the weekend. That shocked a lot of people, including us. Neither one of us had much of a concept of whether we had fans, or if anyone even gave a fuck about us at all. So to see the movie debut so strong was a nice boost. Today, all these years later, it’s still talked about, which I guess means it has stood the test of time whereas many of my other on-screen performances (or gems, as I like to call them) have not. I have to say I definitely got spoiled with Tommy Boy because I didn’t quite realize how fucking hard it is to get a movie to number one, to get it to be pretty solid all the way through and memorable ten years later. People forget that making a shitty movie is just as hard as making a good one. That one was sort of lightning in a bottle.
After Tommy Boy worked, Chris and I went on to shoot Black Sheep. The story behind Black Sheep is complicated, and there are a few different versions out there. I’m going to tell you my version, how I remember it. Sometimes people remember things differently, but this is my recollection. Paramount wanted another movie with us after Tommy Boy. The timing needed to be that we would write the movie during the SNL season, and then shoot during our summer break again. It was interesting working backward from a green light. I don’t think there was ever another time in my career when I experienced this, and I can say now that this was a luxury. But the problem was that after Tommy Boy was considered a success, everything got way more complicated. That movie was Chris, Fred, and me making up shit and having fun, with no one on our asses. For this movie we were being watched like a hawk and the clock was ticking.
Fred Wolf wrote up a quick first version of a script and handed it in for Chris, me, and Paramount to read. This was where things got tough. In a strange turn of events, I was going to make more money than Chris on this movie. The reason was that Chris had been in and out of rehab, and had made a two-picture deal with Lorne and Paramount. I’m sure he signed it to get back in everyone’s good graces, to show he was a team player. He had a set fee for the second movie. My fee for Tommy Boy was a one-shot deal so I got to negotiate from scratch for the follow-up. So that was awkward, but we got past it. The real elephant in the room was that Chris had quietly been offered the lead in The Cable Guy for $3 million. This was an unbelievable amount of money and nothing close to what either of us was going to make on Black Sheep.
I came to work one day and Chris was there, hair all greased back, smoking a cigarette, and in all-biz mode. He said, “Hey, have you read Black Sheep yet?” I said, “No, I’m reading it tonight. How is it?” He said, “It’s good, not great. I think it needs a lot of work. There are some good moments but we should really take our time with this and get it right. Probably wait until next summer.” I left and went to an Au Bon Pain café underneath Rockefeller Center. I went there to think about the situation. It was very unnerving. I knew that if I didn’t like the script and said no to doing Black Sheep that summer, Chris would be off the hook with Paramount and could do The Cable Guy. But if I liked the script and said yes, Chris would have to do it because he owed Paramount a movie. So I had to take his script comments with a grain of salt b
ecause maybe he was telling me in between the lines to just say no to this so he could go do The Cable Guy. I decided I would read it with an open mind and just go with my gut. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it, and Chris could do whatever he wanted. That night I read it and realized it wasn’t perfect but there was a funny movie there. I thought we could work with Fred, pepper in our extra jokes, and everything would work out fine. This had a chance to be as good as Tommy Boy, in my opinion. So I said yes. This didn’t go over great. I told Chris, “I’m sorry but if you took Cable Guy out of the equation, you know this movie can be really good.”
Chris came around, but it was an uncomfortable moment. Luckily, he faced reality and decided to focus on making a great film.
Now for the next problem we didn’t see coming. To direct the film, Paramount hired Penelope Spheeris. She was a hot director coming off the success of her documentary The Decline of Western Civilization and then Wayne’s World. Of course, that movie was a massive success and starred two SNL comedy leads, so it all sounded perfect to everyone but Chris and me. Trouble started right away. Penelope told us right off the bat that she didn’t love Tommy Boy and that she knew how to make Chris and me funny. That’s where someone should have pulled the plug. Then she ripped forty pages out of our script and said she would fix them with her writer. Fred and he had a few bad meetings and he was essentially kicked off the project from then on. She was making so much more money than us, she outranked us and that was hard for Chris and me to deal with. I wish Pete Segal would have done it but he was tied up. We all had it down and could have really made that thing a crusher. My gut told me Mike and Dana had made all the comedy decisions on Wayne’s World but for some reason they were giving the credit to Penelope. I didn’t get it.
In the movie, Chris and I shot a lot of scenes apart. This was odd, because the whole point was our chemistry. We were always funnier together. Chris was also asked to make the relationship between him and his brother slightly more dramatic, which I didn’t mind, but I personally thought the movie should be straight comedy with as many jokes as we could cram in. I could tell she really thought Chris was a great talent. Unfortunately I could also tell she thought I was not. It was package deal, and unfortunately for her I was part of the package so she had to deal with me. The shoot went all right but we had troubles along the way; it was just not a good match. Once there was a scene where I ran around singing “Summer Lovin’ ” from Grease. The idea was that I would be out in the woods, singing at the top of my lungs, when I am caught by a bunch of tough hunters. Then I would immediately switch gears and talk about how I wish I was blowing the heads off antelopes with my trusty twelve-gauge, never acknowledging that I had just been prancing around singing “Summer Lovin’ ”—both the Danny and Sandy parts. Twenty years ago this probably would have worked but it was not funny to Penelope. At all. She kept telling me she didn’t like that scene and wanted it out. Fred, Chris, and I stood our ground. We wanted to shoot it, but promised to get rid of it if it didn’t test well. Seemed fair.
The day of that shoot (another scene Chris wasn’t in) we were twenty miles outside L.A., in the middle of nowhere. We set up a crane shot and I was waiting in my trailer. I was all by myself . . . waiting . . . and waiting . . . until finally Penelope knocked on my trailer. She came in and shook her head. “I can’t do it. I’m not shooting it. I can’t put this scene in my movie. I hate it.” There was a pause while I went over my options in my head. I finally said, “Okay, got it. That’s a wrap.” And we all went home. With no cell phone, no landline, and no way to get to Lorne . . . there was nothing I could do, so I had to eat that one. Penelope has said since then that I have never made her laugh. That made a lot of sense to me. She just couldn’t say it out loud back then. I know my comedy isn’t for everyone but in my opinion, she never should have taken the job.
Despite all of that nonsense, the movie came out and still did pretty well. I liked a lot of it and so did Chris. We by no means hated it. There are fans who still really like that one and even a few who like it better than Tommy Boy. But if all the jokes and scenes that we came up with had been included, what that movie could have been when Chris was at the height of his popularity and on top of his game . . . that movie could have been fucking unbelievable.
A FEW MORE THINGS ABOUT CHRIS
As you can tell if you are reading this book, Chris Farley was a big part of my life, for a small amount of time. After what happened I got to chat with Danny Aykroyd about what happened with John Belushi. It was nice to have a cool dude I looked up to let me open up and ask questions on how to handle it all. I will always be remembered by many people first and foremost for the things I did with Chris. I’m all right with it.
Chris and I were so young and stupid on SNL and when we made our movies together. We thought we had it all nailed. I think we can all agree that he did. I was still learning, and happy to be his straight guy, hanging on for dear life in the tornado that was Farley. But more than the comedy, it was the fact that Chris was my friend that was the important thing. Our bullshit at SNL carried me through the times when I wasn’t exactly tearing it up on-screen, or in the writers’ room. I could rely on him to make me laugh or to laugh at my jokes when no one else would.
I wanted to share one more story that perfectly represents the nature of our personalities and our friendship. Not many know this story aaaand I wish it was classier but . . .
Once during our SNL stint I had the amazing luck to be dating a Playboy centerfold. Being the tool that I am, I had to puff up and bring the Playboy to work, bragging to my friends that I was hooking up with this hot chick. I showed the pics to Chris, Adam, and Chris Rock, and after a few high-fives and fist bumps (so street) we went to the read-through. Well, during the read-through, Farls sends me a crumpled note (no cell phones then) that said, “Did you look in our office yet?” I looked at him confused and he smiled like a psycho Cheshire Cat and then nodded and giggled. I was like “whatever.” Then on an intermission he asked again. I said, “No. What the fuck is in the office?” He just laughed and said, “You should look.” Then laughed a sinister laugh he usually did in the Gap Girls sketch. So I walked to my office with the others in tow only to find the Playboy magazine open on my desk, and the centerfold was covered in jizz. Chris’s jizz.
Yes folks, you heard right. He hustled out a jack-off sesh right before stressful read-through and was so proud of his work. He was behind me when I walked in and saw it, as were Sandler and Rock. We were all a little shocked, even though we thought it was funny. And gross. And crazy. Chris looked around at all of us, taking in our reactions. I could tell by the look on his face that he was suddenly worried he had gone too far. That made it even funnier. Chris had gone too far. He did every time. That’s what made him Chris. And the fact that I was such a lame little shit that I had to bring the mag to work to brag to my buddies, like a teenager, I deserved a hazing. I’m not sure that was exactly the hazing I would have guessed but it was a great example of how “out of the box” he thought. This was borderline psycho.
Chris always went right to the edge, and often over it. Taking things too far is the thing that made him Chris but it was also the thing that took him away in the end. I miss the guy every day.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SKIPPY
Hiring an assistant is a very difficult thing for people like me. Being an assistant to a celebrity (cue eye roll) is a vague job that everyone thinks is easy because you seemingly need low to zero skills. And zero schooling. Most people think it’s a total cakewalk. One of the first questions I get from model/actress types when they realize things aren’t going perfectly as planned in L.A. and that they may need some steady income (and don’t want to be hookers yet) is, “Hey, do you know anybody that needs an assistant?” They are like, “What do I do? Just pick up dry cleaning, gas up cars, fly to New York on a private jet and hang backstage at Letterman, hit premieres, and fuck off the rest of the time? Sure, I can handle that.” Th
is was the type of assistant I had, when I first hired one. So I guess there’s a reason they think that. My first assistant was an old friend so she just hung out and shot the shit with me and did what she wanted, when she wanted, because I’m a softie, I never yell, and I am easy to work with. Naturally, they take advantage of me. I’d tell her to come over at 10 A.M. and she’d roll in at 10:45 with a Starbucks going “The fucking 405 was nuts today!” I would sit there thinking, Well, this isn’t new information. No one ever says, “If you want to save time, take the 405. Best-kept secret in L.A. Shhhh.” The 405 is nuts every day! Then she said something to the effect of, “I can usually make it here in twenty if there’s no traffic.” Well, when’s that? Christmas Eve? Any other time it’s fucked. Never say “if there’s no traffic.” In L.A. that is not a real scenario.
When that one left to have a baby, I had to hire a new assistant. This time around I interviewed a guy and a girl. I knew the guy already. He was named Skippy. Well, that was his nickname. His real name was David but since I had dibs on David we went with Skippy to keep confusion down to a min. While I was deciding between Skippy and the chick, I got the unforgettable call that Chris Farley had been found dead. Since Skippy had worked for the director of Tommy Boy (that’s how we met), he knew Chris and knew me and knew all the parties who would be involved dealing with this disaster. So I just hired him on the spot.
