The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts (37 page)

The next day we celebrated mass and then walked several hours to our truck and drove to a village called Santa Cruz, where there was a phone line. There was a message telling us that we had to come home, immediately. And to be out on a journey like that and to get a message that you had to come home, it could only mean one thing. It meant that someone had died.

After Ted and Johnny went home, Chris stayed out, partying with his newfound companions. As Tuesday night surrendered to Wednesday morning, he left the Hunt Club, hit a few more bars, and eventually wound up at the home of a commodities broker in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, where the party was in full swing until sunrise and beyond. Chris’s host offered to hire a call girl for him. According to tabloid accounts of her story, she arrived at the party around eleven A.M.

In midafternoon, having missed his lunch with Joyce Sloane and Holly Wortell, Chris went with the escort back to her apartment. There he joined her and a friend, smoking crack cocaine and snorting heroin for several hours. Chris called a car service to take them to dinner, but when the car arrived she suggested that he was too worn out to go to a restaurant and that they should just go back to his apartment in the Hancock Center. They did.

Once Chris got home, his brother John called and invited him to dinner with Ted Dondanville and friends at their hotel. Chris declined. He stayed in the apartment, where his binge continued into the night. At that point, Chris had been awake for four days, ever since Jillian Seely’s party Sunday night. At ten-thirty Wednesday evening, he took Jillian’s phone call, assuring her that everything was fine and that he would call her back.

Chris and the escort began arguing over money. Around three in the morning, she decided to leave, collected her things, and headed for the front door. Chris stood up to follow her and collapsed in the middle of his living room. She turned around, walked back over, and knelt down next to him. He was having trouble breathing. She stole his watch, took pictures of his body, stood up, and walked away. Before passing out, his last words to her were “Don’t leave me.”

On her way out, believing Chris to be safely unconscious, she stopped by a side table in the foyer. She took out a pen and a piece of paper and left him a short note, saying that he was just so much fun, and she’d had such a lovely time.

Johnny and I woke up on Thursday. I needed something out of Chris’s apartment, but I didn’t have my keys. Johnny had a set, so we checked out of the hotel and he came with me to the Hancock on his way to Second City.

Teddy and I walked in and saw him on the floor. At first, of course, I thought he was joking. Then I realized he wasn’t. I dropped to the ground beside him and started giving him CPR. That didn’t work. I turned to Ted and told him to call 911. He ran to the phone and called for an ambulance. He told them it was for Chris Farley. That was a mistake.

I was at work and they pulled me aside and told me there were these reports going around. I didn’t believe it. I went to the Hancock and tried to get the doorman to let me up, but he wouldn’t. I kept calling different phones in the apartment. Eventually Ted picked up. I said, “Are they giving Chris CPR? Is he okay? Is he going to be okay?”

He said, “Jillian, it’s not a good time. We’ll call you later.”

I sat in the lobby. Nobody was telling me what was happening. I started getting hysterical. All these news crews started showing up. The EMS teams were coming through the lobby, but they were coming through really slow, taking their time, like there was no more emergency.

The paramedics arrived. They tried to revive him, but they couldn’t do anything. When they pronounced Chris dead, Teddy knelt down and put a rosary in his hand.

The media latched onto it: “He died clutching a rosary. It’s a sign!” But, no, I put it there. I told Johnny I’d handle everything with the paramedics and the cops, and he should go in the other room and call his parents before the story broke.

I went into the back room and called my dad. That was horrible. That was the worst phone call anyone could ever make.

I was in my apartment in L.A. I had just rehearsed Tom Arnold’s show that morning. I came home around noon, and there were all these messages on my machine. They all said there was something wrong with Chris, and I needed to call home. I called Dad immediately. He answered the phone, and I said, “What’s wrong with Chris?”

There was a very long pause. “We lost him.”

The room started spinning, and I hit my knees. I didn’t believe it. My mind wouldn’t even go there. I was lying there, half crumpled on the floor, when Tom came in the front door and said, “We’re gonna help you.”

It was raining the day he died. It doesn’t rain much in L.A., but this was one of those days where it just poured. My wife and I had gone out to lunch with our two little girls and we’d just come home. I was outside with the girls, playing in one of the puddles in the street. My wife came back out of the house and told me I needed to come inside. There were twenty-six messages on the answering machine.

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.

I stayed in the back room, so I didn’t see what was going on. Teddy was handling it.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

They had to do an autopsy, so that took a little while. Dad started taking care of all the arrangements for the funeral.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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, that motherfucker, he loved Chris. Come hell or high water he was gonna make that funeral.

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.

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.