The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts (2 page)

Good to be here. Um, pretty nervous. I was here a couple times, so I know what it’s like to be sitting where you are, full of fear and anxiety. Kinda how I’m feeling tonight! Heh heh heh!

Anyhoo.

I’m supposed to share my experience, strength, and hope with you, and so I’ll start. I remember my first drink. I was seventeen years old, almost eighteen. My friend Patrick was a year above me and I admired him quite a bit, looked up to him. He was a great football player, all-state and everything like that. I went to a party with him one night. We went down in the basement. The guys started drinkin’, and they went, "C’mon and take a drink, Chris.”

So I took a shot, and I remember going, “Man, this sucks. I can’t believe you do this.”

“Just take it down like medicine,” they said.

So I wolfed down about ten of ’em, no problem. And I remember hearing stuff like, “Man, I thought he was wild before, and now he’s
really
gonna be a
wild
man!”

So that kind of planted in my cranium what I’d always wanted, and that was to fit in, or to be liked. Everyone seemed to love it. When I went upstairs, I remember the girls were like, “Great! Chris,
finally
!”

And I was like, “Yeah! Maybe I’ll even get a chick now!”

So that night I got blind drunk and threw up in my bed. Then I called Patrick the next day and said, “Man, this was great! When are we gonna do it again?” And I got blind drunk every weekend until I graduated high school.

Then I went on to college at Marquette University. I was away from home and that meant I could party every night. I did. Each year I got worse and worse. Freshman year I’d party Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Sophomore year it’d be Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Then it started on Tuesdays, and by the time I was a senior it was every night.

Every drug that I tried I couldn’t wait to try more. Sophomore year I tried marijuana and fell completely in love with it. I went home and watched
Love Connection
and was like, “Ooooohhhh man ...” You know? I couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t getting high. It was the best way to live. My God, how boring it must be for you poor sober people. So I got high every day from that day on. I’d try psychedelics and I’d have a really bad trip and still couldn’t wait to do it again. “Maybe this one’ll be different.” And that was the way it was. I just wanted to escape.

And so I remember reading about John Belushi in the book
Wired
. A lot of people read
Wired
and thought, “Man, that poor guy! I never wanna do drugs again!” But I was like, “Yeah! If that’s what it takes, I wanna do it!” ’Cause I wanted to be like him in every way, like all those guys from that show. I thought that’s what you had to do.

When I got outta school, I didn’t know what I was gonna do with my life. I knew I didn’t have much in the grades department, and so I was very fearful. A whole lot of fear. I remember drinking was the only time I felt, you know, good. I went and worked for my dad after school. I’d show up late and stuff like that. He was the boss, and so I was his screw-up son. I didn’t get in too much trouble. He’d let it slide.

The one thing I knew was that I wanted to go into acting. I went down to Chicago to try to go into a place called Second City. I auditioned for that and got in pretty quickly, but I couldn’t stop partying. They gave me a warning: “If you do it again, we’re gonna kick you off the main stage.”

I wanted to continue performing, so I only got high for the performance, on marijuana. Then afterward I couldn’t wait to get ripped. I remember one time my director was giving me notes, and I drank a pint of Bacardi in about ten minutes, before he was done talking. He asked me a question, and I was slurring my words. He said, “Oh, you’re no good. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” But it was kind of tolerated. My lifestyle cradled it, because I didn’t have to wake up in the morning. I could get blind drunk every night, and that’s what I did.

Then I went to New York and started working on
Saturday Night Live
. That was, I thought, a dream come true. I’d read all about my idols and how they partied back then. I thought, man, this is gonna be great! I am gonna get
ripped
!

Well, that just wasn’t the case. It wasn’t hip anymore. I stuck out like a sore thumb, taking my clothes off at parties and making a fool of myself, which I had learned to do pretty good because I thought people would like me. Nobody’s afraid of the fool. “Hi! C’mon, idiot! C’mon aboard!” I was totally full of fear. I’d do anything for you to like me, including doing things that I didn’t want to do. As long as I had my substance, I was okay.

I went back to Second City after my first year on
Saturday Night Live
and took a bunch of acid and cocaine and a ton of liquor and went onstage and made a complete ass of myself. They booed. I remember during a blackout between scenes someone yelled, “Get the drunk off the stage!” That kinda rang true.

I had to cover my ass so they’d hire me back at
SNL
again next year. So I came here to the Shoemaker Unit at Hazelden. I hated every minute of it. I complied and kissed ass until the counselors went home and then screwed around and tried to make everybody on the unit laugh, and didn’t take it serious one bit. Got outta there and thought I was cured. “All right, I did twenty-eight days sober, no problem.”

So I got outta here, didn’t go to meetings, didn’t get a sponsor, didn’t do anything that they told me. And guess what? I got back to New York and started doing a lot of drugs. I thought, if I don’t drink in front of people, they’re not gonna know I’m high. I thought I was fooling everyone, and I was fooling no one.

That Christmas, after a real bad bender, my apartment was just totally ripped out. I’d ripped apart drawers, everything was on the floor, because I’d been looking for something. “Oh, what’s this? Is it in here? No?”
Crash!
“Where’s this?! What’s that?! Oh fuck!” So Christmas, coming home to surprise my parents, what a lovely gift I was. They put me in a detox for a couple of days.

The whole rest of that season I did the outpatient thing, which was a complete joke. I would comply with them and say,“I’m really trying hard.” Meanwhile I always had a thing of urine in my pocket just in case they tested me. God, what an ass, asking my friends for their urine. “Kevin, yeah, you got that, uh, urine?” Jesus. Everyone knew I was using. I just remember a horrible dismay. I was crying all the time, because I could not stop. I couldn’t imagine a life with sobriety, because drugs and alcohol were the only thing that was my friend. I knew I was in trouble.

I came back to Shoemaker. I decided to make sure they
knew
that I was trying. “By God, I’m your boy, boss. I’m
trying.
Pluggin’ away!” So I screwed around and complied in treatment again, and didn’t take it serious. I wasn’t listening, and that’s what you gotta do about this disease, because it’s hell to stop.

I got outta there thinkin’ I was cured. La di da! Didn’t last even as long as I did the first time out, and by that time I had almost thrown in the towel. I went out to California to do some work the next summer. I got into another rehab out there. It was like every time I turned around I was in friggin’ rehab. God, it sucks! But I kinda started takin’ this one serious, because I was like, “I don’t wanna come back here, man.” The door was open just a little bit. I was sick of using, and I knew I was gonna be fired very soon. I didn’t want that because
SNL
was everything I’d worked for.

They told me to go to Fellowship New York, a halfway house that had just opened. So I went there and this time I was gonna finish it, you know, give it a real shot. I was frightened of going to recovery meetings. Because what if I couldn’t do it? That’s what would really suck.

I was glad to be sober, but after ninety days people weren’t patting me on the back anymore, sayin’ “Good job on that sobriety! Go get ’em!” People just expected it. And why shouldn’t they expect me to be sober? I’m working for them. But I wanted the pats on the back, and they weren’t doing that.

That ninety-day mark was a real tough one for me. After a bad day at read-through, the writers didn’t write me into the show, and I was going back and forth. I used. I did five bags of heroin. Then I came back and told my boss. I thought if I was honest with him, you know? That’s another manipulating tool. “I’m being honest with you, so you won’t fire me, right? Because I’m
trying.
Can’t you see I’m trying?” All that bullshit.

So, I lost my job for about a week. I kept begging and crying, the same manipulative things. Finally he gave me my job back, but he sent me to this place in Alabama, which was kind of like a boot camp. It was exactly what I needed, a good kick in the rear end. They told me stuff like “You’re arrogant. You’re complying.” They made me cry every single day. They’d say that if you pick up drugs and alcohol, you’re a baby. I didn’t like to be called a baby. I didn’t like to be called arrogant. I didn’t like to be called all those things that I was.

It was around Christmas time, too. Man, what a horrible place to be over Christmas, you know? Hearing “Have yourself a merry little Christmas . . .” when I’m in a stinky hospital ward. But I did things in this treatment that I didn’t do before, like making sure I made my bed every day. I practiced what I would be doing on the outside. I prayed to God in the morning to please keep me sober that day, and then I’d thank Him for keeping me sober every night.

So I got outta that thing in Alabama. I got a sponsor. I got a home group. I was reading from the Big Book. I went to a morning meeting every day at seven-thirty. I got involved, because I know I can’t stay sober without these things, without going one hundred percent. But I can stay sober when I do. And sobriety’s good, man. Sobriety’s not carrying around urine jars—that’s a real treat. It’s not waking up in a horrible apartment with everything broken in it. I have a nice apartment now that’s all taken care of. I make my bed every day. I do the things that I did in treatment. I have a very healthy fear of getting high, and I have to take it serious, man. Because if I don’t, I’m gonna use, and I cannot use again. I hate that shit. God, I hate it. I hate being a slave to that shit.

The ninety-day mark was a real kicker for me, again. I remember it was on St. Patrick’s Day. I like to have an icy cold Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m Irish! I have to drink, right? And I remember pacing back and forth in the rain outside a bar, crying. I was so scared, and I was just crying and crying and praying to God to help me. Then I stopped. I remembered that I don’t have to drink. I called the halfway house, went to a meeting, and I did what I had to do. And today I have one year, six months, and six days. That’s the most time I’ve ever had. And I can do this. I know I can do it.

We all can do it.

CHAPTER 2

Madison, Wisconsin

GREG MEYER,
friend:

We were all sitting in the library one afternoon—me, Chris, Dan Healy, Mike Cleary, a bunch of guys. We’re sitting at this table, and Chris is just cracking us up. Finally, he gets up to go to class, and as he’s leaving somebody says, “He’s going to be on Saturday Night Live.”

Everyone at the table just nodded. "Definitely."

Chris Farley’s grandfather Donald Stephen Farley worked as an executive with the A&P supermarket company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He lost everything he had in the 1930s Depression and returned to his family’s home in Madison, Wisconsin. There he joined his brothers in a hardware business that sold machine parts and services. One of those services was laying asphalt roads, a lucrative field in the booming infrastructure build-out following World War II. Hanging out their shingle as Farley Oil, the brothers bought and sold road-paving contracts. They were middlemen, salesmen. They bid on contracts with state and county officials and in turn brokered the services of the crews that laid the actual roads.

Donald’s son Tom Farley, the second-youngest of six, applied for a special driver’s license and began driving for the family business at the age of fourteen. Later, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., he discovered his calling in the game of politics. He soon found himself president of the campus Young Republicans and a frequent dinner guest of Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy.

During his senior year, Tom met Mary Anne Crosby, the daughter of an established Boston family and a student at Marymount College. Upon graduation, he moved back to Madison to attend law school at the University of Wisconsin, the first step in his plans to seek a career in law and a future in elected office. Mary Anne followed him to the Midwest, and they married in 1959.

The following year, Donald Farley suffered two massive heart attacks. He could no longer run the family business or support a family. With two parents, several siblings, a wife, and a new daughter depending on him, Tom had little choice. With only one year of law school remaining, he quit, shelved his dreams, and for the next thirty years plowed his expensive East Coast education and considerable personal charm into selling asphalt.

He sold a lot of it.

As a partner in Farley Oil—and later owner of his own company, Scotch Oil—Tom Farley was very successful. He became well known across the state, thriving in a business run entirely on his boisterous laugh and hearty handshake. His success gave him the means to provide for his family, which in the Irish Catholic tradition would soon grow quite large. Tom and Mary Anne’s daughter, Barbara, was born in 1960; Tom Jr. a year after that. Two years later, on February 15, 1964, at 3:34 P.M., Mary Anne gave birth to her second son, Christopher Crosby Farley. He weighed eight pounds, fifteen ounces. Next came Kevin Farley in 1965, and then finally John, the youngest, in 1968.

Although Tom Farley, Sr., had grown up in a middle-class pocket of Madison proper, when it came time to make a home of his own, he moved to the Village of Maple Bluff. Maple Bluff was, and is, an idyllic slice of affluent twentieth-century suburbia. Clustered on the eastern shore of Madison’s Lake Mendota, it is home to the governor’s executive mansion as well as the stately residence of one Oscar Mayer, proprietor of a local luncheon meat and hot dog concern. There, among Maple Bluff’s treecanopied lanes and rolling green lawns, Tom and Mary Anne raised their children. Over the next fifteen years they lived in four different homes, each one bigger than the one before. The last had a commanding lake-front view. Growing up, Chris would lack for little in the way of material comfort. The Farleys lived well. On paper, at least, it looked like the American Dream.