by Tom Farley
LORRI BAGLEY:
I was at my girlfriend’s house, visiting her new baby, and the phone rang. It’s funny. People don’t react to death like you see in the movies, with all the screaming and hysterics. It’s not like that at all. It just doesn’t compute, doesn’t add up. You sit there, and you can’t figure it out.
JOHN FARLEY:
I stayed in the back room, so I didn’t see what was going on. Teddy was handling it.
TED DONDANVILLE:
The media reports all said that no illegal drugs were found in Chris’s apartment, just a few prescription antidepressants. That’s not exactly true. While the cops were sweeping the apartment, any time they came across something illegal, a baggie of cocaine maybe, they’d come over, quietly slip it to me, and say, “Here.” Essentially, they got rid of the evidence. They were cops, but they were Chicago cops. Chris was dead. Anything illegal he’d been doing was beside the point. Let him rest in peace.
JOHN FARLEY:
They put him in a body bag and took him out. I went down the back way, where I could get to the garage without going by anybody; there were too many people in the front. I got in the car, pulled out of the garage, and then slipped right by them while they were waiting for me to come out the front door. It was pretty bad. It was a madhouse. They’d blocked off the whole street.
DAVID SPADE:
I was at a read-through for my show, Just Shoot Me, and Gurvitz called. He said, “I’m giving you about a twenty-minute head start on this, just so you know before the whole world does.” I went back to the read-through and I fell apart. They took me in the other room, and I just couldn’t stop bawling.
TOM FARLEY:
I was at a meeting at a friend’s, talking about some business ventures. In his office, he had a TV with CNN on in the background, muted. I looked over and I saw Chris and David Spade in a clip from the movies. I said, “Oh, there’s Chris. Turn it up.” He turned the volume on, and just as he did they switched to this scene in front of the Hancock. My friend stood up, handed me his phone, and said, “Take as long as you need.”
JIM DOWNEY, head writer/producer:
I was playing in the basement with my son, and my wife said, “There’s a phone call for you.” So we went upstairs, and as she handed me the phone I looked over and saw the TV, which was muted, and it was a montage of Farley. My son, who was about four years old, started laughing hysterically at what Chris was doing on the television; I put the phone to my ear, and Mike Shoemaker told me Chris was dead.
MIKE SHOEMAKER:
I realized we would need to choose a sketch to give out to the media as a clip. I remember sitting in Marci Klein’s office, crying and thinking, what sketch would Chris want us to use? I picked “The Chris Farley Show” with Paul McCartney.
FRED WOLF:
My manager called me and said, “Chris Farley died.” Five months later he called me and said, “Phil Hartman died.” Thankfully, he hasn’t had to call again.
FR. MATT FOLEY:
After we got the message, my team and I left Santa Cruz. It was a two-hour drive by truck on a dusty road back to Quechultenango. I was driving. It was a very quiet ride. We all knew that somebody in the truck had lost someone; we just didn’t know which of us it was.
I finally pulled up to the parish house, we got out, and someone handed me a note saying that Chris had died; both Mrs. Farley and my sister had called. I was devastated. I had prayed so hard for him, and I had never given up on him. My sister had already booked my ticket home. I caught an all-night bus to Mexico City and flew out the next morning.
KEVIN FARLEY:
Brillstein-Grey got me a flight out that afternoon, and my manager drove me to the airport and got me on a plane. I flew into Chicago, met Johnny and Ted and Maria, my girlfriend at the time. I grabbed Johnny and hugged him. He looked like hell, like he’d come through a concentration camp. We got on a plane and flew into Madison together.
TOM FARLEY:
I drove home from my friend’s office. I don’t really remember the drive; I was just crying my eyes out. We had Laura’s sister take the kids and we went out the next day.
JOHN FARLEY:
They had to do an autopsy, so that took a little while. Dad started taking care of all the arrangements for the funeral.
TODD GREEN:
Kevin Cleary and I flew back to Madison together. Mr. Farley called me in Kevin’s hotel room, and he said, “Listen, I want all the Edgewood guys to be the pallbearers. You, Barry, Healy, Meyer, and the two Cleary boys. That’s the way we want it. That’s the way Chris would want it.”
TIM HENRY:
Everybody had gone to the funeral home to meet with the priest and the funeral director, and Mrs. Farley asked if I would stay at the house while they were gone, just to watch the phones and be there if people came by. While I was waiting, a lot of neighbors came by, dropping off food and so forth. And of course, this being Wisconsin, several people brought over cases of beer. “Yeah, put that first twelve on the back porch so they’ll get nice and cold!”
Then the phone rang. It was David Spade. He asked me to give Mrs. Farley his number and to tell her he’d called.
DAVID SPADE:
It was just very hard. Everybody takes it differently. I couldn’t really talk to Johnny or Kevin; they reminded me too much of him. I talked to the family but didn’t go to the funeral. I caught some shit for that, but it was my choice. I couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t put myself through it, and that was selfish, but I didn’t want to grieve in public. I’ve talked to Sandler and those guys, and they get it. They understand. I just don’t like it that some people took that as meaning we weren’t getting along.
TOM FARLEY:
Over the weekend, Kevin, Johnny, and I had to get Chris a shirt and a pair of socks to be buried in. We went to the big and tall store where Chris would shop when he was home; they had his measurements. We got him a white shirt, but instead of black socks, they had these red and green Ho-Ho -Ho socks with a little Santa Claus on them. I said, “I think Chris would want to be buried in these.” So we bought those, and we all had a good laugh about it.
We went and delivered them to the funeral home, and they told us to take them around to the back entrance, which is where they actually prepare the bodies. That’s when it really hit me again: I was delivering socks for my brother to be buried in. The whole week was just full of those moments, realizations like that.
JOEL MURRAY:
The morning of the service, David Pasquesi, Bonnie Hunt, Holly Wortell, and I ended up in a car together, driving up to Madison and telling stories. To a man, everyone in that car was saying, “Why isn’t this his wedding? Why aren’t we here for him to be marrying some nice local girl? What a party that would have been.”
TOM FARLEY:
The funeral was two days before Christmas, and so everyone went through hell trying to get to Madison from all over. They already had holiday travel booked elsewhere and they had to change flights, and so many of the flights were already oversold. It was a nightmare.
JOHN GOODMAN:
I flew in through Chicago and the flight was late and I had to sprint for about a half mile through the terminal to make my connection—and me sprinting is not cool. For a moment I thought maybe there would have to be two funerals. Then I landed in Madison and the taxi got lost and couldn’t find the church. Finally I saw this huge mass of reporters on the street, and I told him to let me out and I just walked.
JOHN FARLEY:
I’ll never forget the sight of John Goodman. The parking lot had been kept empty, and this massive bank of news crews had been cordoned off way back at the street. All of a sudden, you see this pack of reporters in a startled panic as Goodman just parts them like the Red Sea, elbowing them aside and yelling “Get outta the way!” He breaks through them and here he comes, trudging through the snow with these two massive, heavy suitcases under his arms and his big beige raincoat flapping in the freezing wind. John Goodman, t
hat motherfucker, he loved Chris. Come hell or high water he was gonna make that funeral.
TIM MEADOWS:
Lorne was flying up by himself from Colorado. I met up with him at the Madison airport and we got a car. We were running really late. The service had already started, so I didn’t see his body in the casket, and I didn’t really want to.
TOM FARLEY:
We had an open casket at the church. We stood there in this receiving line that just stretched on and on forever. People were coming through, paying their respects, and then taking their seats in the church. After a while we just shut the casket and had people go to their seats, otherwise we never would have gotten to the ceremony.
TODD GREEN:
All the Edgewood guys were there. It was really hard for Mike and Kevin Cleary. They’d already lost their father and a brother, and Kevin had put so much into trying to save Chris. But the person I felt really sorry for was Kit Kat. She was there all by herself, and nobody talked to her.
LORRI BAGLEY:
I didn’t really know where to be, or who to be with. I was having these heaving sobs, and this woman took me and let me sit next to her in the pew. Dan Aykroyd came over to me and said something. I don’t remember what it was, but it immediately put me at ease. He knew what to say, because he’d been there before.
JILLIAN SEELY:
Everyone was saying, “You had to have seen it coming.” But Chris was so full of life that you just wouldn’t think that he would die. People were in shock. I was standing next to Adam Sandler, and I said, “This just doesn’t seem real.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I keep expecting him to open up the coffin and be okay.”
ALEC BALDWIN:
It’s sad when something like that happens to anyone, but somehow it seemed sadder when it happened to Chris. Most of the people whom I’ve seen go down that path, they didn’t have the humanity that he had.
KEVIN FARLEY:
A lot of people showed. Sandler, Chris Rock, and John Goodman. Al Franken and Norm Macdonald. I was just blown away by the life that Chris had lived. There was a deep melancholy in the room, but you also felt this great love from everyone. He had touched so many people. As sad as I was, I was really proud of him.
PAT FINN:
I was one of the pallbearers, along with the Edgewood guys. Just walking the casket in was tough. When you’re thirty-three you don’t expect to be doing this. It’s something you should be doing for your great-grandfather or something.
It was also strange because the room was filled with people whose names were synonymous with comedy and laughter, and yet the room was the exact opposite.
KEVIN FARLEY:
Nobody in that room could hold it together.
TIM MEADOWS:
I was sitting in front of Sandler and Rock and Rob Schneider. At one point I started crying, and Aykroyd came over and put his arm around me. After the funeral, Chris Rock just lost it. That was the first time I’d ever seen him cry. Sandler, too. That’s how it was the whole day. We were a bunch of men who never cried, who never got emotional, who never showed that side of ourselves to each other. And we all just cried and cried uncontrollably all day.
ROBERT BARRY:
Mr. Farley was by far the worst of anyone. Chris was his life. Every Saturday night he’d line up a tumbler of Dewars Scotch, pull up in front of the TV, and laugh and laugh for hours at whatever Chris did. After the ceremony, the pallbearers and the family went back to put Chris in the mausoleum. Mr. Farley had his head in his hands, and he was just sobbing. “My boy’s not supposed to be gone. Not before me.”
PAT FINN:
We were there in the mausoleum, probably about fifteen or twenty of us, for the priests to say the last, final blessing. And I’ll never forget the sight of Mr. Farley, getting up from his chair, which was tough for him to do, and putting his arms around the casket. He stood up, just this big bear of a man, and he reached around and he hugged the casket and he wouldn’t let it go.
TED DONDANVILLE:
He stood up and raised his arm and with his big, open hand he slapped the coffin twice, loud and hard. Boom! Boom! It echoed across the room, sending a jolt through everyone. It was like a final send-off, a father’s last good-bye.
FR. TOM GANNON:
I only really remember one thing from the funeral, and that was looking at the father and thinking he wouldn’t last a year after Chris.
KEVIN FARLEY:
We all knew Dad wouldn’t be too long to follow. I think even he knew it. He closed down the business, paid off the mortgage, made sure all his insurance was in order. When you wake up in the morning, what gets you through the day is your hopes and dreams for tomorrow. For Dad a lot of that was gone after Chris died. He couldn’t find it again. They say that happens when you bury a child. I would have long talks with him, and he was just confused about the whole thing, wondering why it had happened, asking God why it had happened. It was such a shock that it left him in a daze. For the rest of his life he just sat in his chair, staring out the window. But from that day until the day he died, a little over a year later, he never picked up the bottle again.
FRED WOLF:
I actually didn’t go to Chris’s funeral. My own father had had a heart attack and almost died. I’d gone up to Montana to visit him. I spent that day at the hospital, and I told him about Chris, that the funeral was going on right at that moment.
My father and I never knew how to talk to each other. He was an alcoholic, and our relationship was difficult. I didn’t know him that well. One of the only really heartfelt conversations we ever had was that day, about Chris. My dad was saying how the things Chris did are so important for the world, that Chris may have been fighting these demons, but he helped a lot of people who were fighting those same demons feel better, if only for a little while. And I know that sounds sappy. It sounds like something you’d see sewn onto a quilt for sale in the window of some souvenir shop. But at the same time, there’s a lot of truth in those quilts.
BOB ODENKIRK:
At the core of being funny is frustration, and even some anger, at the world. And Chris had so much constantly happening inside him that he was always being chased into that corner. He was always living inside that space, and that’s why he was just funny all of the time. That was his choice. He made a lot of unhealthy choices, but that was the healthiest choice he could make to deal with the feelings that he had. You take some of the most intellectual comics in the world, and what’s going on in their work, on a basic emotional level, is the same thing that was going on with Chris—his life was the purest expression of what it is to be a comedian.
DAN HEALY, friend:
It wasn’t just that he made you laugh hysterically all the time; he did, but it was more who he was. I’ve struggled so many times to put into words exactly why Chris had such a huge impact on all of our lives. He had such a faith in other people. He believed in those basic things like goodness and right and wrong. When you were with him, he had this demeanor that simplified things for you. He let you take everything that was complicated in your life and just set it aside for a bit. And that was really the gift he gave us, honestly. Being with Chris reminded you that there was a time when you could still believe in all the things that he believed in. It reminded you of a time when you were lucky enough to look at the world through honest eyes.
IAN MAXTONE-GRAHAM, writer:
The week that Paul McCartney was the musical guest, someone said, "Let’s do a ’Chris Farley Show.’ ”
Chris had done it twice before, with Jeff Daniels and with Martin Scorsese, and we all said, “Eh, it’s been done. There’s no new moves there.”
But they decided to do it anyway. Franken and I were assigned to write it, and I was so glad that we hadn’t persuaded people not to do it. It’s so often the case that you write something you’re not that excited about and then the performer brings something to it and you think, my God, I’m glad I was at work that day.
It pla
yed unbelievably sweet. It was so sweet that even now, ten years later, I get goose bumps just thinking about watching it. There’s that one moment where Chris says to McCartney, “Remember when you were in the Beatles, and you did that album Abbey Road, and at the very end of the song it goes, ‘And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make’? You remember that?”
