The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts (38 page)

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Nobody in that room could hold it together.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 played 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?”

“Yes.”

“Um, is that true?”

And McCartney says, “Yes, Chris. In my experience it is. I’ve found that the more you give, the more you get.”

And Chris is just like,
“Awesome!”

And in that moment Chris isn’t acting at all. It’s really Chris, tapping into that quiet, needy part of himself. You see it up there on the stage. What you see in that sketch is the actual Chris Farley being happy that the actual Paul McCartney is telling him that there is an infinite amount of love in the world, and that someday that love will come back to him.

Epilogue

Christmas was always Chris Farley’s favorite time of year, a time he made certain to be home in Madison, surrounded by family and childhood friends. But on December 22, 1997, he had come home to stay. Following the funeral service at Our Lady Queen of Peace Church, Chris was laid to rest in a mausoleum at Resurrection Cemetery, just down the road.

Although the last days of Chris’s life in Chicago had been toxic and frenzied, at some point along the way he had arrested his downward spiral and paused to do his holiday shopping, picking out special presents for his parents and his siblings, handwriting personal notes to accompany each specially wrapped box. And so on Christmas Eve, only two days after burying their son, with the winter chill blowing in from the frozen lake outside, the Farley family sat around the tree in their living room and opened their final presents from Chris. He’d bought his mother two small ceramic clowns.

On January 2, 1998, the Office of the Cook County Medical Examiner issued an autopsy report in the case of Chris’s death. It stated that he had died of opiate and cocaine intoxication, with coronary atherosclerosis as a significant contributing condition. Chris’s body tested positive for cocaine and morphine (metabolized heroin) as well as traces of marijuana and the prescription antidepressant Prozac. No alcohol was found in his system at the time, but his liver showed signs of significant damage from years of drinking. Blockages of fifty to ninety percent were found in his major coronary arteries from years of unhealthy eating. The report ruled his death an accident.

On May 29, 1998,
Edwards & Hunt
was released under the newly test-marketed name
Almost Heroes
. Chris’s passing cast a shadow over the film, and costar Matthew Perry’s own public struggle with addiction at the time didn’t help much, either. The film’s offbeat sense of humor failed to translate onscreen, and scenes of Chris’s character acting drunk and out of control were particularly difficult to watch. Critics panned the film, lamenting the tragedy of its being the final installment of Chris’s brief career. It earned a little over $6 million at the box office and quickly passed into history.

That summer, Chris was treated to one last curtain call. Norm Mac-Donald’s
Dirty Work
, which featured Chris in a small cameo, was released on June 12. In it Chris played an ornery bar patron whose nose had been bitten off by a Saigon whore, providing some of the film’s best laughs.

During the year after Chris’s funeral, the health of his father, Tom Farley, Sr., deteriorated rapidly. Chris’s death had forced him to stop drinking, but the damage had largely been done. Morbid obesity and liver failure left him severely debilitated, and soon his condition was exacerbated by a bad fall. In March 1999, he checked in to a hospital. After several days of constant vigil, Tom asked his family to go home and rest while he did the same. He died three hours later. He was sixty-three years old.

In the months immediately following Chris’s death, several of his friends had made charitable donations to the family in Chris’s name. Lorne Michaels of
Saturday Night Live
, meanwhile, issued a
Best of Chris Farley
home video, pledging a portion of the proceeds once again to the family. With this capital, Tom Farley, Sr., started the Chris Farley Foundation (
www.thinklaughlive.com
), a nonprofit organization to promote awareness and prevention of substance abuse problems. In its earliest incarnation, the foundation produced anti-drug public service announcements with past and current stars of
Saturday Night Live
.

From 1999 to 2003, the foundation hosted Comics Come Home in partnership with Comedy Central. An annual comedy event held in Madison, it featured the talents of David Spade, Dave Chappelle, Tom Arnold, Norm MacDonald, Bob Saget, and others. With the funds raised at Comics Come Home and other events, the Chris Farley Foundation works with high schools and colleges across the Midwest to develop programs and seminars aimed at educating kids on the dangers of drugs, primarily through the use of humor and strong communication skills. Today, Tom Farley, Jr., serves as the foundation president.

In late 2003, ImprovOlympic founder Charna Halpern petitioned the Hollywood Walk of Fame committee to give Chris Farley a star on Hollywood Boulevard. The organization hands out very few posthumous honors and almost none to those who pass away in less than rosy circumstances, as Chris had. But in April 2004, John Belushi was at long last honored by the organization, and Halpern seized on the precedent to lobby even more strongly on Chris’s behalf. Michael Ewing, one of the producers of
Tommy Boy
, approached Paramount Studios to sponsor Chris’s application. With the tenth anniversary DVD release of
Tommy Boy
just on the horizon, the right moment presented itself. Paramount helped push the nomination through and pegged the DVD’s launch to the upcoming event.

On Friday, August 26, 2005, the Farley family joined several luminaries from Chris’s life—Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Rock, Tom Arnold, Sarah Silverman, Peter Segal, Bernie Brillstein, and more—as they unveiled Chris’s star, the 2,289th, on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. The tone was far more festive than somber. Mary Anne Farley accepted the award on Chris’s behalf. Chris Rock declared that “every fat comedian working today owes Chris eighty bucks,” and David Spade wistfully observed that if Chris were alive today, “he’d be working for Sandler, too.” Chris’s star is located at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Cosmo Street, directly in front of the theater for ImprovOlympic West.