by Tom Farley
I told him, “I thought that I could handle being around you if you started using again. I thought I’d never leave you no matter what, but I can’t be around this. It’s just too much.” And I left and went home.
TOM FARLEY:
Chris called me and said, “Tommy, you want to go and see a sneak preview of Black Sheep in New Jersey?” I said sure. He was staying at the Four Seasons, so I stopped up there. He looked fine to me. The limo was going to pick us up any second, and Chris was getting into the minibar, filling his pockets with the little bottles. I said, “Chris, what are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m just getting a couple of these for the limo driver,” he said. “They like that.”
And after three years of sobriety, I actually let myself think that was okay. I just didn’t for the life of me think he could be lying. We got in the limo and drove out to Jersey.
We were up in the screening room, waiting for everyone to filter into the theater. At one point he said, “I gotta go to the bathroom.” I did, too, so I went with him. We got to the men’s room, and it was this small, janitor’s closet kind of thing. I followed him in anyway. He was like, “What are you doing?”
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” I said.
We’re brothers, for God’s sake. I’d been in the bathroom with him hundreds of times. But all of a sudden he’s like, “Get out. I can’t . . . I gotta go by myself.”
I thought that was very strange, but I left him to it. Then we watched the movie, and we were driving somewhere else, and, same thing, “I gotta go to the bathroom.” So we pull over and he goes in someplace to use the bathroom. And, of course, what he was doing was drinking. I certainly didn’t see him give away any of his little bottles. I didn’t put two and two together until the next day when I got a call from Dad, saying, “What the hell happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Chris trashed his hotel room at the Four Seasons and did three thousand dollars’ worth of damage.”
And then it was back to rehab.
KEVIN FARLEY:
When I got the call in Chicago that he had relapsed, it was devastating; devastating to me, devastating to him, and devastating to everyone in the family. He took so much pride in his sobriety, more than any of the movies or work he’d ever done, more than any other success in his life. Those three years were his crowning achievement.
JILLIAN SEELY:
Chris and I had been hanging out every day, and then right around Christmas he disappeared off the face of the earth. He called me early in the morning on New Year’s Eve. He said, “Hey, it’s Chris.”
“Hey,” I said, “why haven’t you called me?” I was pissed.
“I relapsed.”
“You’re lying,” I said. “I don’t believe you.”
We had talked so much about his sobriety, and I was so confident in him that I really couldn’t imagine it.
He said, “I really want to see you. Will you come and meet me at a meeting?”
There was a meeting that morning. I went with him. He told me about the relapse and the screening. He said that he’d fucking hated Black Sheep, that it was just Tommy Boy II, only worse.
TED DONDANVILLE:
That screening didn’t help. He saw one shitty movie that he’d made, and then he really started worrying that, with Ninja, he was working on a second one.
Beverly Hills Ninja was a script that had been around, and around. Several stars had turned it down. Chris himself had passed on it a number of times. But negotiations for the film had taken a dramatic turn the previous summer, while filming for Black Sheep was still under way. Sensing Chris’s impending stardom, Ninja’s producers got very aggressive. They offered him an ungodly salary, and that changed the whole equation. Chris was still reluctant, and his managers were vehemently opposed, regardless of the payday. But Chris’s dad counseled him otherwise, essentially saying, “You don’t turn down that kind of money.” Show business is not the asphalt business, but in this as in all things Chris listened to his father. He signed on to play Haru, an infant boy orphaned in Japan and raised to fulfill a prophecy as the Great White Ninja. Through a series of slapstick setups and wacky misadventures, Haru makes his way to California and solves a crime. Shakespeare it wasn’t.
Chris had rationalized his taking the film by saying it would make a good kids’ movie. Another big factor in the decision was simply his confidence. The story was one big, long pratfall, and Chris’s abilities as a physical comedian had never failed to deliver huge laughs. But Chris’s other major asset was his Midwestern Everyman appeal. Dressing him in martial arts garb and giving him hokey, Zen-sounding dialogue was not a good fit, and it flopped onscreen.
The project was not without its bright spots. It did turn out to be a successful children’s movie. Chris Rock was struggling professionally at the time, and Farley used the movie to lend his SNL friend a helping hand. But all things considered, it was a serious detour.
Following his stint in rehab, Chris flew to Hollywood in January of 1996 and started production on the film. He stayed clean throughout the shoot, determined not to let the relapse derail his three years of hard-fought sobriety. But the change in him was obvious to everyone on the set. His anxiety was rapidly eclipsing his boisterous amiability, and the strength and serenity he’d possessed just a few weeks before had all but vanished.
ROB LOWE, costar, Tommy Boy:
At that point, Chris could have done almost anything, career-wise, and for him to do a movie where he offered himself up as “the fat guy” I felt was a recipe for psychic disaster. I don’t want to sound overly dramatic by saying that that movie killed him, but the decision to do it was Chris surrendering a creative part of himself. He was raising the white flag to easy Hollywood mediocrity. I know that he hated himself for saying yes.
BRAD JANKEL, producer:
I used to work at a company called Motion Picture Corporation of America. We’d had some success with the Farrelly brothers. We did Dumb & Dumber and Kingpin. We did Bio-Dome with Pauly Shore. Then we got ahold of Beverly Hills Ninja. If I recall properly, Dana Carvey had been attached to it at one point, and Chris held Dana in such high regard that he was open to looking at the script. Chris really was the first guy that we went to. We offered him a ton of money.
TED DONDANVILLE:
One day while we were filming Black Sheep, Chris’s agents showed up. Agents always stand out because they’re the only ones in L.A. who wear dark suits. They were really happy, really up. They came rushing in and met Chris in the trailer. Beverly Hills Ninja was a movie that he had rejected a number of times. “No, thanks. Pass.” But this time the script came in with an offer for $6 million, which at the time was like a three hundred percent increase in what Chris was making. All of a sudden it was like, “Eh, maybe the script isn’t so bad after all. . . .”
BERNIE BRILLSTEIN:
Marc Gurvitz and I, we told him not to do Ninja. It was about a fat guy in tights. Let’s face it, who wants to see Chris like that? It was an embarrassing film. But the offer was $6 million, which even then was a lot of money. Chris called up and said, “I have to do it. My dad says I can’t turn down that kind of money.”
DOUG ROBINSON:
After his father weighed in, there wasn’t much of a conversation. I remember sitting with Chris in his trailer at Paramount, telling him that there would be other big paydays down the road. It was one of those situations where you want to advise your client not to do it. But you could see that as soon as you told him the amount of money involved, the ship had sailed.
LORNE MICHAELS:
It was a bad decision in that no one was telling the truth and people had all kinds of different agendas. There are so many rationalizations: “It’ll get your price up.” “It’s important to keep working.” “Not every movie’s a masterpiece.” But Chris was an incredibly sensitive kid. No matter what he did, he always had some kind of hope for pride in his work, and so for Chris to do something that empty just d
idn’t feel right.
LORRI BAGLEY:
It was fear. He took that movie out of fear. Chris’s only goal in life was to be on Saturday Night Live, and after that was over he would always say, “I never imagined myself being a film actor.” And I’d think, oh shit, he’s out of his comfort zone. Movies and Hollywood and all that are out of his comfort zone, and things are going to get difficult.
KEVIN FARLEY:
Chris loved football, and he loved being part of a team. Saturday Night Live, Second City, those are team sports. Chris was competitive. He wanted to win, but he wanted the whole team to win. Winning doesn’t mean anything if you can’t share it with someone.
When you’re a movie star, all the pressure is on you as an individual. But if you put too much pressure on one player, you’re not going to win ball games. On a film, clearly one guy is making the most money, and they’re banking on him, win or lose. His career is on the line. In Hollywood, you’re kind of alone.
TED DONDANVILLE:
The crew used to joke that when the Beverly Hills Ninja action figures came out, the Haru figure would come with its own Ted figure. Unlike most personal assistants, I was never out running errands and taking care of other things. Chris always wanted me to delegate that stuff to other people so I could stay, literally, right next to him all the time. We’d work all day and he’d be like, “No, c’mon. I’m taking you to dinner.”
On that movie he was hung out to dry. That was a Chris Farley movie from start to finish. Except for those few Chris Rock scenes, every scene hinged on him.
BRAD JANKEL:
Farley wanted Chris Rock in the movie. He was very adamant about that. It was almost to the point where he wouldn’t do the film if Rock wasn’t involved. I think it was a bit of a life raft for him. I distinctly remember that Chris’s best days on the set were the days that Rock was there.
Whatever reservations Chris may have had, to me he was just so appreciative, and grateful, and he really felt a personal responsibility that came with taking that much money. I had never experienced that with an actor before. He was so excited that we were hiring him, let along paying him so much, that during shooting he’d often say to me, “God, I hope I’m doing okay. Are you guys happy?”
And that kind of raised the bar for us. After he’d say those things to me, I’d walk away going, “Oh jeez, I hope I’m gonna deliver for him.”
Chris also helped develop the script. When we went into Ninja, we wanted it to be a really broad, adult movie, and, to his credit, Chris really took it more in the direction of being a movie for kids and families. That’s what he wanted. And thank God he did. It wasn’t a huge success, but kids loved it. They really turned out, and that’s where the movie made its money.
JASON DAVIS, costar:
The producer of Beverly Hills Ninja had done a movie that I was in, and I got cut out of that one. But he said I’d be perfect for this. I remember going to audition for it. I had to run into a wall and fall down. That was the audition. When they said I had the part, I got real excited. I got to play Chris Farley as a little kid. At the time, what could have been better? He was one of my heroes.
For my big scene, I was supposed to flip a stick around and accidentally hit this kid on the head. The director said, “You can hit him as hard as you want, because he has padding.”
So we do the scene. We’re twirling the sticks around, and I smack him on the head, only not on the part where he has padding. The kid goes down for the count. I just remember turning my head over to the right, looking at the director and seeing Chris going “Oh, fuck” and laughing his head off. He had this expression like, yup, he’s just like me.
TED DONDANVILLE:
The role of the young Chris Farley is supposed to be this shitty little ninja, right? Well, Jason Davis literally was a shitty ninja. He was such a bad athlete and such a spastic little kid that it was funny to see him play this idiot. Chris saw this kid who was just a mess, and that amused him.
KEVIN FARLEY:
Chris liked that kid a lot. He always used to say, “That kid reminds me of me when I was little.” Jason was kind of an out-of-control little guy. He’d go up and talk to anybody. Since Jason looked up to Chris so much, Chris kind of took him under his wing whenever he was around.
JASON DAVIS:
For the three days I got to work on the movie, I got to hang out with Chris a lot. Then, about a week later, he called me and said, “Hey, we should go out to lunch.”
I thought, wow, that’s really awesome. So we went out to lunch, and from then on we just really clicked. We’d hang out. We’d go and do stuff together.
What I loved about Chris was that he was the only person who ever understood me. For a period of time, if I needed to count on anyone, it was Chris. I was like eleven or twelve, and my mom wanted to send me away to fat camp. I was trying every which way to get out of it. I was praying for Chris to kidnap me and hold me for ransom so I wouldn’t have to go. But Chris would talk to me about being a kid with a weight problem, and he really helped me a lot. I could call him and say, “My mom’s being a bitch. I’m pissed off. I want to run away. I hate it here. What should I do?”
And he’d be like, “Relax. You’re obviously going through denial. Your mother loves you. Don’t run away. Besides, you’d have to stop at McDonald’s every other block just to survive.”
NANCY DAVIS, Jason Davis’s mother:
Jason saw a side of Chris that maybe a lot of other people didn’t see. Chris understood what he was going through, and touched Jason in this amazing way. He really did. When Jason was filming Beverly Hills Ninja with Chris, he was going through a hard time in his life. His father and I were getting divorced, and Jason had some similar issues with Chris, some weight issues, really deep father issues, and maybe Chris saw that in Jason. It was like he could just sense it, and he really made a point of helping him to deal with it. People are so afraid to talk about what’s bothering them, and Chris really got him to open up about it. Jason’s always been quirky and different, and Chris gave him the strength to think that was okay.
TED DONDANVILLE:
When I first started working for Chris, he’d been sober for about two and a half years. He was doing really well. He was very comfortable in his sobriety, and very strong. After that first relapse, he was very different. It changed him. He was still sober most of the time, but it was not the same strength and confidence you saw before. He’d be on edge about it. He used to never care if I drank around him. Now, if he found out I’d been out drinking, he’d get angry. So after that first relapse, there was a change. After the second, third, and fourth, they were all kind of the same.
BRAD JANKEL:
It was no secret that he was battling addiction. In preproduction he had it down. He didn’t talk about it. He didn’t need to talk about it. But then, during filming, he would struggle at times. And by struggle I mean that his actions were a little more overt. He would talk about his need to stay sober. There were a few more mood swings, but his commitment stayed the same. You could tell he was just trying to buckle down and get through it. I appreciated that he was open about it, and we all tried to support him.
TED DONDANVILLE:
The whole time we were shooting Ninja, there were no problems whatsoever. He had the first relapse before shooting, and then the second relapse came after—idle time.
BRAD JANKEL:
When he came back for reshoots, he was a different person. I wasn’t there that day, but I got calls about all the problems. They couldn’t make the film match. He’d put on weight, and he looked horrible. He wasn’t the same old Chris. They kind of had to shoot around him different ways.
When we wrapped shooting, I could sense that he was starting to feel that the movie wouldn’t turn out how he’d hoped. Chris went into it thinking he was making a good, earnest film for kids, but in the end he wasn’t proud of it the way he was about other movies.
BERNIE BRILLSTEIN:
After the f
irst screening of Ninja, I took Chris into the bathroom and he just cried on my shoulder. Cried and cried. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever been through.
BRAD JANKEL:
I was disappointed, too. It didn’t turn out as I had hoped. Thank God it played with the kids, because it missed with the older crowd. Not everything turns out the way you want; some things fail. I mean, you’re talking to the guy who produced Bio-Dome.
There’s a reason they give the Best Picture Oscar to the producer, because it’s a collaborative effort and the producer is responsible for bringing all those collaborators together. But Chris felt like the whole thing was his failure, and it wasn’t.
Principal photography on Beverly Hills Ninja wrapped in March of 1996. Without the incentive to stay clean for work, Chris relapsed a second time and returned to Hazelden in Minnesota. Other than the reshoots on Ninja, he spent the spring and early summer in Chicago, passing time with friends and family and working his twelve-step program. It was a frustrating time. Chris would maintain his sobriety for six weeks, two months at a stretch, then head angrily back to the starting line and begin again. It was not easy, but no one could say that Chris was not trying in earnest.
