by Tom Farley
MICHAEL EWING:
Chris was very self-deprecating, so self-deprecating. It would leave you always thinking, you know, ouch. You could see that there was some wound just below the surface, just a hair below the surface, and sometimes not even that deep. One time on the set, the crew was cracking up after the take, which happened a lot, and Chris walked by and said, “Yep, everybody likes it when fatty falls down.” I was like, oh, there’s the crux of it.
JULIE WARNER:
It’s hard for me not to be able to connect with someone I’m working with. At a certain point during the shoot, Chris was doing his routine, and I stopped him and said, “Can I have lunch with you? Can I just sit and talk to you?”
So we had lunch in his trailer, and he made about forty jokes about “I can’t believe you’re in my trailer” and all that. But eventually it all just went away. All the shtick, it was just gone. We talked about football, about Madison. I think once he realized I was a safe person he stopped being so sheepish. He had an amazing ability to keep people at arm’s length.
We had one kiss at the end of the movie. It was kind of a throwaway moment, but he talked about it all morning. I really wanted to put him at ease about it, make him feel like I was psyched about it. Because I wasn’t unpsyched about it or anything, and I actually thought Chris was sexy. Talent is sexy. Chris was a big guy, but he was cute. I hated that he didn’t feel worthy of that. The first time we kissed the crew applauded and ribbed him a little bit. He was really embarrassed, but once he got past it he was fine.
There was something deeply lonely about him. Profoundly and deeply lonely. He was a man. He wanted that kind of companionship, and yet he did not know how to get it.
TOM FARLEY:
Even though our dad was incredibly proud of Chris’s career, Chris always suspected that what Dad really wanted was for him to settle down with a wife and kids. It’s like, no matter how successful you are, until you show that you can raise a good family you haven’t really proved yourself. That was the struggle that Chris always went through, wanting to be a family guy like Dad was and yet wanting the success in his acting life, too. But very few people can make it work on both ends successfully. If Dad had had a choice, he would have been running for Congress or making deals on Wall Street with all his Georgetown buddies. He’d given that up. But Chris could never be content with his professional success, because he was living by Dad’s barometer and not his own.
FRED WOLF:
We weren’t trying to write a movie about Chris and his dad, but I think a lot of it just subconsciously worked its way in there.
PETER SEGAL:
In writing that movie, we pooled our emotional stories as well as our comedic stories. It was all done out of desperation, and then, ironically, there was serendipity to it. I think Chris brought a lot of his relationship with his dad to that movie; he tapped into those feelings when Big Tom Callahan died. But it wasn’t Chris’s story. It wasn’t Fred’s story. It wasn’t my story. It was everyone’s story.
BOB WEISS:
When Terry and Bonnie Turner were writing it, Terry would say, “Well, this is like my father’s story.” And Lorne would say that it was like his father’s story. Turns out it was a lot like Chris’s father’s story. It made me wonder, well, whose father is it? I mean, what’s the deal? But that’s why the film is so accessible. We all know the dynamic of trying to struggle under this giant paternal shadow. It’s universal.
BRIAN DENNEHY, costar:
When I got on the set I figured my job was to be like Chris, not for Chris to be like me. I had to create this crazy, Rabelaisian character who would be an older, more settled version of Chris’s character. There was never any conversation about it; it’s just something Chris and I both understood. When we did the scene outside my office where we did that sumo thing, bumping into each other, that was my idea. I said to Peter, “It should be like two crazy-ass rednecks or sumo wrestlers who meet in a bar and start tussling like wild bears.” Because that’s what they are, these characters. All that came out of my watching Chris and thinking what it would mean to be his father.
I think that character loved his son and, to a certain extent, spoiled him. I think he also represented the ideal father for all of us. Psychiatrists might not call him the perfect father, but a lot of kids would.
KEVIN FARLEY:
Chris always used to say, “I’m only doing funny stuff to make one guy back in Madison laugh.” And if you saw my dad around town, talking about Chris, he’d be gushing. He couldn’t have been prouder. But like a lot of dads, he was a little reserved about actually showing that to us. You want to have your dad say you did a good job. And Dad would do that. He’d go, “Good job, son.” Really brusque and understated. But most families, especially Irish families, they just don’t communicate that well.
BRIAN DENNEHY:
We all grow up with that necessity to be what our fathers want us to be, and probably, ultimately, failing. There’s no question about that. My father’s been dead now for twenty-five years, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t find myself thinking about it. Our relationship was unusual, my father’s and mine. Our family was classically Irish Catholic in the sense that the family was unquestionably the most important aspect of all of our lives, and yet we were not close, if that makes any sense. There is an emotional distance between us that exists today.
Philip Larkin, a British poet whom I love very much, wrote a poem that really says it all: “They fuck you up, your mom and dad / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.” And that’s not a criticism of parents, but I think it says that there’s something inevitable about it. Your parents want you to know things that they’ve learned, but they can only do so much. You’ve pretty much got to learn it yourself.
PETER SEGAL:
Knowing more now about his relationship with his father, I recognize a lot of things in hindsight. Chris was a really good athlete. He idolized his coach, who was also a father figure. And I realized that the best way to work with Chris was not as a director but as a coach.
For example, take the day he shot the scene where he looks at his grades and says, “A D plus! I passed!!!” He wasn’t getting it right, and he was so furious with himself. I told him to go out and run around the quad a couple of times and come back in. I said, literally, “Take a lap.” There were times when he’d be so amped up with coffee and cigarettes that I’d have him drop and do twenty push-ups. I just needed him to work it off. He’d go, take the lap, do the push-ups, then he’d come back and he’d look at me like I was about to put him into the game. And that was okay. Every actor is different, and that was how I had to deal with this particular person. In that instance, I was his coach. He would have walked through a brick wall for me if I’d asked him to.
ROB LOWE:
Pete Segal is a comedy mathematician. He really understands the timing and the beats in a way that a lot of other directors don’t. And Chris’s style was very wild and unstructured and, frankly, lacking in technique. So it was a good mix between the two of them.
JULIE WARNER:
I’m sure Paramount wasn’t thrilled about the amount of money that was being spent, but Pete knew there was a gold mine there, and he was determined to get at it. He knew that the movie was only going to work if Chris was free to have fun, and that meant making sure he felt safe and not pressured. He gave Chris the trust and patience that I don’t think he found anywhere else. Once Chris felt that safety, he was able to shine.
MICHAEL EWING:
What people responded to in the movie was the comedy, number one, but also this underlying heart that’s woven through it. They’re dancing at the wedding, and Brian Dennehy suddenly drops dead of a heart attack. I mean, what comedy has one of the main characters drop dead a third of the way through the movie? This is a comedy that people thought was just light and fun, but it also dealt with real things in a real way.
> We were just a little movie, and by the end of the shoot Paramount didn’t really want to spend any more money on music or anything. They said, “Here’s the money to make the movie, and not a penny more.”
Then Sherry Lansing saw the first screening. I was sitting across from her, and as the lights came up I could see there were tears running down her face. We went outside; she gave Pete a big hug and gave me a hug and said, “My God, where did all that heart come from? That wasn’t in the script.”
It was just one of those rare things that happens in movies sometimes. It all came together. Then they approved the extra money to do a real score and everything.
FRED WOLF:
The critics totally missed the point of Tommy Boy, and, of course, history has proven them wrong. It’s seen as this mini comic gem. A few years ago, Time magazine listed the “Top 10 Movies to Watch to Make Yourself Feel Better.” It went all the way back to Adam’s Rib and Cocoanuts with the Marx Brothers, and Tommy Boy was on that list. That was really great to see. I wanted to fax that to every movie critic in America.
ROB LOWE:
To this day, people stop me on the street and say they love Tommy Boy. It’s the ultimate movie for fifteen-year-old boys. And if you compare Tommy Boy to what they’re making today for fifteen-year-old boys, it’s the fucking Magnificent Ambersons.
DAVID SPADE:
Looking back it feels like it was a big hit, even though it wasn’t. It did all right. It just has nice memories about it. It’s the most-talked-about movie that I’ve ever had any part of, certainly, and that’s ninety percent because of Chris.
PETER SEGAL:
The premiere was very small. The movie was about to start and everyone had gone to their seats. I was nervous as hell, and I went into the men’s room. Chris came in behind me. He said, “Well, this is it.” He was nervous as hell, too. We knew we had been through a real war together. On the same side, but still a war. To this day it’s the most difficult shoot that I’ve ever experienced.
We stayed there in the men’s room and talked for a little while, knowing that the movie was starting. It was like that moment when you buckle yourself in to a roller coaster and you know that, as afraid as you are of going up that first hill, there’s nothing you can do about it. I gave him a hug, and he said—and he was very adamant about it—he said, “Please don’t leave me. Let’s do this again. Promise me we’ll do this again.”
MICHAEL EWING:
I have a tradition that I get all of the actors to sign my movie poster for me. So one day I gave Chris the Tommy Boy poster. He took it, signed it, and handed it back to me. And what it said just cut straight to my heart, and really surprised me. What he wrote on the poster was: “Dear Michael, Don’t give up on me. Chris.”
CHAPTER 10
The Lost Boys
MARILYN SUZANNE MILLER, writer:
In the years I was back at Saturday Night Live, I so didn’t belong there. But then of course, no one belonged there. The cast didn’t belong there. The writers didn’t belong there. And we didn’t belong there with each other. The whole thing was a real marriage of hope.
Just two years earlier, during the run of the 1992 presidential election, Saturday Night Live had been at the top of its game, consistently funny and culturally relevant. But in the fall of 1994, as Chris Farley and David Spade flew back and forth from Toronto to film Tommy Boy, they returned each week to find the show slipping further and further into confusion and disrepair.
Cast stalwarts Dana Carvey, Jan Hooks, and Phil Hartman had all left. In their place, Lorne Michaels had hired a slew of actors and comedians, both young and old, known and unknown. In all, the cast swelled to seventeen members, more than double the original group of Not Ready for Primetime Players in 1975. But in spite of all the talent in the room (or because of it), very little seemed to work. The cast was not a team. It was an odd collection of ill-fitting parts. There was little chemistry and no love lost among several of those sharing the stage. It was not a happy time.
Off-camera the changes were just as severe, and the process just as broken. The younger writers were coming to the fore, but the writing staff as a whole never gelled, especially with veterans like Al Franken and Marilyn Suzanne Miller feeling pushed out and stymied by the new generation. Caught in the midst of this chaos, and trying to manage it, was head writer Jim Downey. Downey’s experience probably encapsulates best what everyone was going through: At the end of the year he was served with divorce papers on the same day he was fired.
With the show in a rut, Chris found himself in one, too. He put in a hilarious turn as a lost contestant on a Japanese game show, and he took on some of the show’s political humor with his impression of House Speaker Newt Gingrich—a role that would even take him to the halls of Congress. But as far as memorable performances go, that fifth year added virtually nothing original to Chris’s SNL legacy. The Motivational Speaker came back again (and again). So did the Gap Girls and the Super Fans. And as Saturday Night Live limped to the end of a particularly disappointing season, Chris’s attentions drifted elsewhere.
MIKE SHOEMAKER:
It was a terrible year. Everyone was miserable. And once it starts getting bad, it almost has to get worse.
STEVE LOOKNER:
There was definitely a sense at the start of the ’94-’95 season that we needed to make the show better. After every taping there was more discussion over what worked and what didn’t, more of a conscious effort to pull things together. Nobody wanted to be the cast that brought Saturday Night Live to an end.
TIM HERLIHY:
The ratings plunged. It wasn’t just a critical reaction; it was a popular one, too.
JIM DOWNEY:
My feeling was that the show had been running on vapors for a while, but the ratings had been crazily spiked by Wayne’s World. It annoyed me that the network didn’t care if the show sucked while the ratings were high. They only cared if the show sucked and the ratings were low.
DAVID MANDEL:
It was just very unclear what the show was supposed to be. When you look at the 1992 year, you had Carvey and Myers and Hartman, Jan Hooks and Kevin Nealon. Those guys were all-stars. Hartman used to put on a bald cap and play ten different characters with ten different voices in ten different sketches. So the beauty of adding a guy like Sandler to that group was that Sandler could go on Update and do his weird, funny thing and kill with it. Same with Chris. He could be a killer supporting part, like in the “Da Bears” sketches, then turn and have his own starring role, like in the “Chippendales” sketch. That was all you really needed of Farley in a given show. It was like a flavor of something. Jim Downey used to say something very interesting, and I will paraphrase it. He used to say that Farley and Sandler were like the special teams on a football team, the great kicker or the great punter, the guy you need to come on, do his thing, and then get off the field.
After the all-stars like Hartman left the show, it never seemed like a working cast so much as “Here’s the Sandler sketch. Here’s the Farley sketch. Here’s the Spade sketch.” All of a sudden, we were playing a football game with nothing but these special teams guys out on the field, and that’s not a team that’s going to play well for a whole four quarters.
JANEANE GAROFALO, cast member:
The system was flawed in a way that funneled the cream to the bottom and the mediocrity to the top. When we did the table read-throughs on Wednesdays, there were always funny sketches in there. Rarely did they hit the air. Downey was still there, but he wasn’t spiritually there. I think there were some personal things going on in his life that he wasn’t fully present, emotionally. He didn’t have the reserves needed to manage the room. The system was just broken.
MARK McKINNEY, cast member:
People were clinging to the stuff that worked in a time without a lot of focus. It was really, really hard slogging. But I saw Chris as ensconced in a brotherhood of his own making with several of the writers. He was comfortable in a w
ay that I never was.
JANEANE GAROFALO:
Chris had the luxury of not only being talented but also well liked. When he would come onstage, even just to take his mark during a commercial break, people would start cheering. It was clear that he was an audience favorite, and kind of the go-to guy for a laugh.
FRED WOLF:
All the writers wanted to get their stuff on the show, and you learned very quickly that there were guys that you could count on. You could ride their charisma onto the air. We would do that with Chris.
Ian Maxtone-Graham gave me this diagram he’d made of “Fred Wolf’s Sketches for Chris Farley.” There were three different dials on it. The first one was labeled “Chris is: Dry. Moist. Soaking Wet.” And the dial was set on “Soaking Wet.” The second one was labeled “Chris is: Quiet. Talking Loud. Screaming at the Top of His Lungs.” And the dial was set on “Screaming at the Top of His Lungs.” The third one was labeled “Chris is saying: Gosh! Oh no! Oh, sweet mother of God!” And the dial was set to “Oh, sweet mother of God!”
