The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts (24 page)

It became more of the atmosphere of the show, because you had this critical mass of young guys. I always went to all-boys schools, so I have to admit it’s something that makes me laugh, you know, when it’s done right. Chris would burst through the double doors of the writers’ room with his pants around his ankles and his privates tucked back between his thighs doing the thing from
Silence of the Lambs
. He’d start rubbing his breasts and saying, “Am I pretty?” It was just so balls out, so to speak. I mean, you had to give it up for that.

Comedy people, when we’re alone and insulated, just get more and more shocking, and it doesn’t play to the rest of the world. It’s the same way to this day. I’ve seen worse before and since. A lot of it was disgusting, but in the context of this place it was always funny. We were just constantly thinking, oh, this is so damn funny, but if anybody saw it we’d all be arrested.

It’s hard not to laugh even if you think it’s encouraging irresponsible behavior. Sometimes, to get Chris to stop doing something, we’d talk among ourselves while he was out of the room and agree not to laugh no matter how funny it got. Chris’d get perplexed, and eventually frustrated, because no one was laughing. Then he would just escalate more.

Farley liked to do this routine where he would jokingly hit on waitresses. He’d say, “Well, little lady, I’ve got a problem. I’m in from Moline, Illinois—work with a grain elevator outfit out there—and I’m in town for a couple days on business. And darn it, if I don’t use my whole expense account the home office’ll be liable to cut me back. So, how’s about you and me do this town up right.” And so on, using all this weird, Jazz Age lingo. You’d be like, Chris, what the hell are you talking about?

One night we were at this Mexican restaurant in Midtown named Jose’s. It was one of those places where you buzzed downstairs and they let you in and the entire restaurant was up on the second floor. One night, Farley was doing his goofy routine with the waitress all night, and she was kind of rolling her eyes, like, “Yeah, yeah, buddy.”

The rest of us, I suppose, were not giving him enough attention, so he felt he had to take it up a notch. He jumped up, scooped her up in his arms, and ran down the stairs and out of the restaurant. I turned and looked out the window, and I saw him dashing up Fifty-fourth Street and getting into a cab with her. We all hung back, staying in the restaurant, like, “We’re not going to bite. We can’t give him the satisfaction.” Then I said, “Jesus, we could all be sued.” I was acting in loco parentis with these kids, so I ran downstairs after him. But Chris liked to do that, do big put-ons with strangers who didn’t know who he was. In most cases people realized it was a joke and were happy to be a part of it.

Chris would do things with girls, like a kid would do. He’d always be like, “You shure are purty. Can I touch your leg?” It was all for the comic effect of how you’re
not
supposed to approach a girl. It was all harmless, but obviously because he had a lot of money, some extra came on the show and decided this amounted to sexual harassment.

The second-to-last show of the ’93-’94 season, I had written a piece about Bill Clinton called “Real Stories of the Arkansas Highway Patrol.” We had to go upstate and do some outdoor filming. Some women were extras in the piece, and one of them went up in the car with us. It was me and her and Schneider and Farley. It was a limo, with that wide space between the two rows and seats facing each other. Schneider and I were sitting together, and Farley was next to this girl. He was doing his usual “Hey there, little lady!” shtick. And he was poking her and hugging her, but if you knew Chris you knew it was all playful. I finally told him to knock it off—not because I thought it was assaultive behavior but because it was getting annoying.

Well, this girl went to the talent department and complained, hinting at some sort of legal action for what Chris had done. But Chris never did anything wrong. I know because I was sitting there, and as the producer of the show I never would have allowed it. My impression, honestly, was that she was mostly complaining about the size of her part. She thought she had several lines, and it actually wasn’t a speaking role. I think we paid her for a speaking part instead of as an extra, and that was the end of it.

Nothing ever came of it. It was actually a very minor incident. It became a much bigger story in people’s minds because of the prank that followed, more so than because of the incident itself.

So the next week it’s last show of the season. Farley came in, and we decided to have some fun with him. It was just completely random and totally unplanned. He came by, and I said to him very casually, “Chris, you know about the lawsuit, right?”

“What?” he said.

“You know, the sexual harassment suit. Anyway, you’re not going to do any jail time. That’s—don’t worry about that. I mean, it’s not one hundred percent you won’t, but it’s at least a sixty to seventy percent chance you won’t do any jail time.”

“Wh-what are you talking about?”

“You know. The girl from the limousine. Anyway, it’s too early to tell, but NBC’s lawyers are all over it.”

He was really starting to shake and sweat. Then the other writers started gathering around. Mind you, I’d seen Farley do plenty of similar put-ons to other people, so in no way did I think this was unfair. And also, I thought that he needed to learn a lesson, that the kind of outlandish behavior he pulled in the limo can have consequences, even if it’s harmless and well intentioned.

I said, “Now, Chris, I used to be a process server, so I know how this works. If you’re walking down the street, for the next two . . . well, for the next several months, if you’re walking down the street and someone approaches you, do not wait to find out who it is—you
run.
You flat out run.”

And then Ian Maxtone-Graham chimed in, “Oh yeah, I was a process server for a whole summer. If they even
touch
you with the document, you’ve been served. If it touches anywhere on your person.”

Eventually, everyone’s getting in on this, giving Chris advice on how to hide out and things like that. I don’t know what happened with Chris in the intervening days, but we went to the prop department and had them make up a subpoena, and I had one of the writers I knew from
Seinfeld
serve Farley with a lawsuit at the end-of-the-season party. He was devastated. A couple of people were coming up to me, saying, "C’mon, that’s cruel. He’s close to tears.”

Chris was just ashen, and the even crueler part was that they didn’t let him in on the joke until an hour or two later. To make it that much worse, his mother was standing right there beside him when it happened. It was really terrible.

It was a really shitty thing to do.

And I was like, “Now, wait a minute. I’ve seen Chris put many a waitress through the paces before. He’s a big boy.” But finally I said, “Okay, let’s end it.” I went over and talked to him. It took me about a half hour to convince him that it was a put-on. As far as I heard, he was never mad about it, because he liked to put one over on other people, too. I talked to him a few days later and I reminded him, “You’re a celebrity now, and people will be on the make. You should keep that fake subpoena as a reminder not to do anything that could be misconstrued.”

And he said, “I don’t have it. I burned it.”

It was like he had to destroy the evidence of the whole thing.

Chris was very much a man’s man. There were girls who were his friends, but anyone who was being honest would say he did some pretty inappropriate things with women. He was often mean to them. It was weird. It was the trust thing: Will you love me for who I am?

Chris used to say that every girl he went out with before he got famous looked like him with a wig on. Not to slam those women, but it’s probably true. Then, all of a sudden, he’s famous and these hot girls are all over him. So obviously, sexual issues, relationships, were very difficult things for him. I think he trusted God implicitly; I don’t think he trusted people. “Why do these women want to go out with me?” He was very confused by that. He didn’t trust them. He didn’t know who to trust.

That was something we talked about quite a bit. He’d always say, “How could any beautiful girl love my fat ass?”

One of the real differences between John Belushi and Chris Farley was that John Belushi was married, whereas Chris was sort of the opposite of married. I wouldn’t even put him in the category of “single.” He wasn’t single; he was the opposite of married.

He went out with this girl named Lorri—her nickname was Kit Kat—this really hot girl. I was in New York one weekend and Chris told me, “I really like this Kit Kat girl.” I saw her on the set. She was this five-foot-ten Victoria’s Secret model, long legs, just hot. They clearly weren’t going to talk about second-century world history together. Chris said, “What should I do? I don’t know if she likes Spade or not. I want to ask her out, but I’m so confused.”

I said, “Well, Chris, why don’t you go to work today and ask David if it’s okay if you ask her out?”

He did, David said it was okay and he asked her out. So here we are on a date, Chris, Kit Kat—and me, his priest. The next night we all went to a movie together. It was just bizarre as hell. It was like I was back in eighth grade.

Lorri lived directly across the street from me. I’d see her at the deli. She was this Victoria’s Secret girl, who I eventually realized was one of the Victoria’s Secret girls back from when I used to look at Victoria’s Secret and found her quite striking. She was very friendly. I invited her to the show, and we started talking. I didn’t have a whole lot of friends in New York outside of
SNL
, so it was nice to meet someone to hang out with.

We became friends and started dating. Chris would hang out with us. She thought he was funny, and I didn’t mind that he’d come along. This happened a lot, and he’d always paw all over her, going, “You’re so purdy,” and all that. And I wouldn’t get mad, but I was like, “Dude, be a little more respectful, to me and her. C’mon with that shit.”

Then sometimes Lorri and I would go do stuff, and I’d say, “You know, Chris isn’t doing anything this weekend. Can he come with us?”

Chris and I met because we were both best friends with David Spade. David and I had met, and we just clicked. We’d meet for breakfast, hang out after work. We even wound up living across the street from each other. Before Chris and I met, David would always say, “You’re just like Chris. The two of you are the same person.”

“I want to meet him,” I’d say.

“No, if you do, you’ll fall in love with him.”

Men being men, I think David would have liked to date me, but for me it was just never like that. He asked me to go to the movies one night, and I said no, because I didn’t want to be alone in a movie theater with him. So he said, “I’ll bring Chris.”

For a year, the three of us were just friends. We were like this fun-loving threesome that hung out together all the time. It was the most fun time of my life in New York. This was all about a year before
Tommy Boy
. I was a model, and I was doing Victoria’s Secret shoots, and Fred Wolf said, “We have to have a pretty girl in the movie. It should be you.” So I did the scene as the girl in the pool at the motel.

After
Tommy Boy
, we all kept hanging out just like before. Chris and I had never really been alone. We were always with David or a group. But Chris would always do these little things, like pulling my chair closer to his at the dinner table—little things that said, “She’s mine.” One night after my acting class, we were all at the Bowery Bar, just dancing and having fun. Sandler was there. It got late, people were going home, and Chris wanted to go out some more. Sandler looked at us and was like, “You guys are
baaaaad
. . .” He saw the connection. So Chris and I went out alone. That was the first night he kissed me. He was a very good kisser.

When it all first came up, Chris came to my apartment and said, “I have to work with David. Until I finish
Saturday Night Live
, we can’t see each other, because I can’t go to work every day and have that kind of stress.”

I said I understood, and we stayed apart for like three days. We just couldn’t do it. David lived right across the street from me, on West Seventy-ninth, so that didn’t make it easy. One night there was an after party for the show. Chris didn’t go so he could come and see me, but it turned out David didn’t go, either. He came home and saw Chris in the car out front waiting for me to come down.

I was getting ready to head out when David called me. “Is that Chris waiting for you downstairs?” he said.

“Um . . . yeah.”

“You fucking bitch.”

And he hung up the phone.

It drove a wedge between them. Chris wasn’t a ladies’ man like Spade was. Chris wanted to fall in love and be married. Spade’s the opposite. He’s a real playboy. Chris decided that Spade had a million girlfriends, so he could have just this one.

Spade dates nothing but hot girls, still to this day. But for Farley she was a coup.

And that was the part that ultimately kind of pissed me off. I had brought him into the mix. I should have just kept it the two of us, but I always made sure Chris was involved, because he didn’t have anyone.