The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts (22 page)

“You see, I like God. That’s just my own thing. But you like to tap on the roof of hell and invite the devil to join you.”

“
Shut the fuck up.
That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Well, there’s no superstition in the Bible, Chris, which you’d know if you ever leafed through it. That’s something the devil made up so people would invite him into their lives.”

He was fucking stunned. I loved it. He didn’t know what to do. Even though I was totally bullshitting him, it sort of sounded like it made sense, and he just stared at me, frozen.

And there was no joking about that stuff, either. Every time he smoked a cigarette he brought it out backwards to his lips and touched it, and then turned it around and put it in his mouth. If he turned around, did a 360-degree turn to the right, he’d have to unwind and do another 360 to the left, like how you’d spin if you went around the corner and forgot something and came back for it. You’d ask him about it, and he’d say, “I gotta undo. I wound up to the right, and I gotta unwind to the left.” There were all these habits. For some reason, I think they were comfort factors to Chris.

Chris looked everywhere for safety and support, and he felt very safe within the family he’d found on this film. Whatever feeling of acceptance he craved, I think he found it there.

Chris was very silly with me at first. He was like, “I can’t believe they cast someone so pretty to be the love interest.” He had this kind of goofy thing that he did around girls. It was like, “Oh, Julie, I can’t even look at you. You’re so pretty. I can’t even talk to you.”

It was put on, but it was obviously his defense for the fact that he couldn’t have a real moment with you. That whole aw-shucks character he did on “The Chris Farley Show,” that was all very deliberate. He’d say stuff to me like, “You were really good in
Doc Hollywood
. Especially in the naked part. You remember that time in
Doc Hollywood
when you were naked? You remember that? That was
awesome.
”

At the beginning it was funny. Then it went on for weeks, every time I saw him. I even said to David, “Is it always going to be like that?”

He said, “Chris can’t talk to girls he thinks are pretty.”

To be an actor, you have to make it real, play off the other person, listen and react. And Chris had that. We really connected when we were acting together. Interestingly, when Chris was on camera, it was the only time I could get him to look me directly in the eye.

We went to a club one night after work. Chris came in a three-piece suit, wearing his black horn-rimmed glasses. There were a lot of pretty women there, and Chris looked really tense. I said, “What’s the matter?”

He was looking at these beautiful women at the bar, and he said, “Pete, beauty makes me angry. I can’t tell whether I want to take ’em home or club ’em over the head with an empty wine bottle.”

I’ve quoted that line to so many people over the years. It was hilarious, but you could tell that he was tortured by his own insecurities. He was the bravest guy in the room, yet fearful in ways that he would never let on.

Chris was very self-deprecating, so self-deprecating. It would leave you always thinking, you know,
ouch.
You could see that there was some wound just below the surface, just a hair below the surface, and sometimes not even that deep. One time on the set, the crew was cracking up after the take, which happened a lot, and Chris walked by and said, “Yep, everybody likes it when fatty falls down.” I was like, oh, there’s the crux of it.

It’s hard for me not to be able to connect with someone I’m working with. At a certain point during the shoot, Chris was doing his routine, and I stopped him and said, “Can I have lunch with you? Can I just sit and talk to you?”

So we had lunch in his trailer, and he made about forty jokes about “I can’t believe you’re in my trailer” and all that. But eventually it all just went away. All the shtick, it was just gone. We talked about football, about Madison. I think once he realized I was a safe person he stopped being so sheepish. He had an amazing ability to keep people at arm’s length.

We had one kiss at the end of the movie. It was kind of a throwaway moment, but he talked about it all morning. I really wanted to put him at ease about it, make him feel like I was psyched about it. Because I wasn’t unpsyched about it or anything, and I actually thought Chris was sexy. Talent is sexy. Chris was a big guy, but he was cute. I hated that he didn’t feel worthy of that. The first time we kissed the crew applauded and ribbed him a little bit. He was really embarrassed, but once he got past it he was fine.

There was something deeply lonely about him. Profoundly and deeply lonely. He was a man. He wanted that kind of companionship, and yet he did not know how to get it.

Even though our dad was incredibly proud of Chris’s career, Chris always suspected that what Dad really wanted was for him to settle down with a wife and kids. It’s like, no matter how successful you are, until you show that you can raise a good family you haven’t really proved yourself. That was the struggle that Chris always went through, wanting to be a family guy like Dad was and yet wanting the success in his acting life, too. But very few people can make it work on both ends successfully. If Dad had had a choice, he would have been running for Congress or making deals on Wall Street with all his Georgetown buddies. He’d given that up. But Chris could never be content with his professional success, because he was living by Dad’s barometer and not his own.

We weren’t trying to write a movie about Chris and his dad, but I think a lot of it just subconsciously worked its way in there.

In writing that movie, we pooled our emotional stories as well as our comedic stories. It was all done out of desperation, and then, ironically, there was serendipity to it. I think Chris brought a lot of his relationship with his dad to that movie; he tapped into those feelings when Big Tom Callahan died. But it wasn’t Chris’s story. It wasn’t Fred’s story. It wasn’t my story. It was everyone’s story.

When Terry and Bonnie Turner were writing it, Terry would say, “Well, this is like my father’s story.” And Lorne would say that it was like his father’s story. Turns out it was a lot like Chris’s father’s story. It made me wonder, well, whose father is it? I mean, what’s the deal? But that’s why the film is so accessible. We all know the dynamic of trying to struggle under this giant paternal shadow. It’s universal.

When I got on the set I figured my job was to be like Chris, not for Chris to be like me. I had to create this crazy, Rabelaisian character who would be an older, more settled version of Chris’s character. There was never any conversation about it; it’s just something Chris and I both understood. When we did the scene outside my office where we did that sumo thing, bumping into each other, that was my idea. I said to Peter, “It should be like two crazy-ass rednecks or sumo wrestlers who meet in a bar and start tussling like wild bears.” Because that’s what they are, these characters. All that came out of my watching Chris and thinking what it would mean to be his father.

I think that character loved his son and, to a certain extent, spoiled him. I think he also represented the ideal father for all of us. Psychiatrists might not call him the perfect father, but a lot of kids would.

Chris always used to say, “I’m only doing funny stuff to make one guy back in Madison laugh.” And if you saw my dad around town, talking about Chris, he’d be gushing. He couldn’t have been prouder. But like a lot of dads, he was a little reserved about actually showing that to us. You want to have your dad say you did a good job. And Dad would do that. He’d go, “Good job, son.” Really brusque and understated. But most families, especially Irish families, they just don’t communicate that well.

We all grow up with that necessity to be what our fathers want us to be, and probably, ultimately, failing. There’s no question about that. My father’s been dead now for twenty-five years, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t find myself thinking about it. Our relationship was unusual, my father’s and mine. Our family was classically Irish Catholic in the sense that the family was unquestionably the most important aspect of all of our lives, and yet we were not close, if that makes any sense. There is an emotional distance between us that exists today.

Philip Larkin, a British poet whom I love very much, wrote a poem that really says it all: “They fuck you up, your mom and dad / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.” And that’s not a criticism of parents, but I think it says that there’s something inevitable about it. Your parents want you to know things that they’ve learned, but they can only do so much. You’ve pretty much got to learn it yourself.

Knowing more now about his relationship with his father, I recognize a lot of things in hindsight. Chris was a really good athlete. He idolized his coach, who was also a father figure. And I realized that the best way to work with Chris was not as a director but as a coach.

For example, take the day he shot the scene where he looks at his grades and says, “A D plus! I passed!!!” He wasn’t getting it right, and he was so furious with himself. I told him to go out and run around the quad a couple of times and come back in. I said, literally, “Take a lap.” There were times when he’d be so amped up with coffee and cigarettes that I’d have him drop and do twenty push-ups. I just needed him to work it off. He’d go, take the lap, do the push-ups, then he’d come back and he’d look at me like I was about to put him into the game. And that was okay. Every actor is different, and that was how I had to deal with this particular person. In that instance, I was his coach. He would have walked through a brick wall for me if I’d asked him to.

Pete Segal is a comedy mathematician. He really understands the timing and the beats in a way that a lot of other directors don’t. And Chris’s style was very wild and unstructured and, frankly, lacking in technique. So it was a good mix between the two of them.

I’m sure Paramount wasn’t thrilled about the amount of money that was being spent, but Pete knew there was a gold mine there, and he was determined to get at it. He knew that the movie was only going to work if Chris was free to have fun, and that meant making sure he felt safe and not pressured. He gave Chris the trust and patience that I don’t think he found anywhere else. Once Chris felt that safety, he was able to shine.

What people responded to in the movie was the comedy, number one, but also this underlying heart that’s woven through it. They’re dancing at the wedding, and Brian Dennehy suddenly drops dead of a heart attack. I mean, what comedy has one of the main characters drop dead a third of the way through the movie? This is a comedy that people thought was just light and fun, but it also dealt with real things in a real way.

We were just a little movie, and by the end of the shoot Paramount didn’t really want to spend any more money on music or anything. They said, “Here’s the money to make the movie, and not a penny more.”

Then Sherry Lansing saw the first screening. I was sitting across from her, and as the lights came up I could see there were tears running down her face. We went outside; she gave Pete a big hug and gave me a hug and said, “My God, where did all that heart come from? That wasn’t in the script.”

It was just one of those rare things that happens in movies sometimes. It all came together. Then they approved the extra money to do a real score and everything.

The critics totally missed the point of
Tommy Boy
, and, of course, history has proven them wrong. It’s seen as this mini comic gem. A few years ago,
Time
magazine listed the “Top 10 Movies to Watch to Make Yourself Feel Better.” It went all the way back to
Adam’s Rib
and
Cocoanuts
with the Marx Brothers, and
Tommy Boy
was on that list. That was really great to see. I wanted to fax that to every movie critic in America.

To this day, people stop me on the street and say they love
Tommy Boy
. It’s the ultimate movie for fifteen-year-old boys. And if you compare
Tommy Boy
to what they’re making today for fifteen-year-old boys, it’s the fucking
Magnificent Ambersons
.

Looking back it feels like it was a big hit, even though it wasn’t. It did all right. It just has nice memories about it. It’s the most-talked-about movie that I’ve ever had any part of, certainly, and that’s ninety percent because of Chris.

The premiere was very small. The movie was about to start and everyone had gone to their seats. I was nervous as hell, and I went into the men’s room. Chris came in behind me. He said, “Well, this is it.” He was nervous as hell, too. We knew we had been through a real war together. On the same side, but still a war. To this day it’s the most difficult shoot that I’ve ever experienced.

We stayed there in the men’s room and talked for a little while, knowing that the movie was starting. It was like that moment when you buckle yourself in to a roller coaster and you know that, as afraid as you are of going up that first hill, there’s nothing you can do about it. I gave him a hug, and he said—and he was very adamant about it—he said, “Please don’t leave me. Let’s do this again. Promise me we’ll do this again.”