The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts

by Tom Farley

  The next morning I got to work about seven, my phone rang and it was the police department. They were wondering if Chris was around. I called the Red House, and they said Chris wasn’t there. I hung up, and then, about fifteen minutes later, two of the Red House guys showed up at my office. They said they couldn’t talk to me on the phone because their line had been tapped. I said, “Oh, come on. You guys are outta your mind.”

  They told me where he was. I called him in Illinois. I talked to him and told him to come back. Then I called his folks in Madison. They asked me to give them the name of a lawyer in Milwaukee, so I did. Between the lawyer and his parents it was decided that Chris would come to my office, we would all meet there, and then he would go and turn himself in.

  I called the police department, and I told them what the lawyer told me to say, that I knew where Chris was and he would come down there on his own the next day. Chris came back. The attorney took care of things. And after many weeks of delayed hearings and so on, Chris came away from it with a “dangerous use of firearms” charge, or something like that. He ended up with about thirty hours of community service, but he couldn’t get his diploma.

  In Tommy Boy, Chris’s partying, rugby-playing alter ego graduated from Marquette in seven years. In the real world, Chris squeaked out in four and a half. As a result of the smoke-bomb incident, he was put on probation, and university policy did not allow students on probation to graduate. However, he was allowed to walk in the graduation ceremony with his classmates, complete his course work at the University of Wisconsin in the fall, and receive a Marquette diploma the following December.

  Forced to return to Madison for school, Chris moved into an apartment downtown, close to many of his high school friends who had never left. Between finishing his classes and performing wherever and whenever he could, Chris took the only job offer he had. He went to work for his father.

  MIKE CLEARY:

  To understand Chris you have to understand something about Madison. Madisonians tend to be very educated, very literate, and upwardly mobile, but I would say that seventy-five percent of them have never seen the ocean. And I’m not kidding. Madison’s got everything you need—that’s the default mentality here. And Chris came back in large part because the family discouraged him from doing anything else.

  TOM FARLEY:

  Dad always wanted all of us home. It was almost like, “You can’t make it out east, and so you don’t need to try it.” Kevin bought into that at first, and Chris did for a while, too. Dad had tried it with me. After I left Georgetown, I said, “Hey, all my buddies are going up to New York. That’s where I want to go.”

  Dad sat me down and said, “You’ll never make it.”

  “Watch me,” I said. And I left.

  Dad and I butted heads throughout our lives. If he said something was blue, I said it was red. Chris was the opposite. Everything he did was to please Dad. At that point, he had done the plays at Marquette, but he really had no idea of how to go about making that into a possible career. Dad just said flat out, “No one’s going to offer you a job. You’d better come work for me.” So Chris went to work for Dad, but it wasn’t a two-man job, so there wasn’t a whole lot for him to do. The job was really a joke.

  KEVIN FARLEY:

  When Chris finally left and I came in to take over the job, we opened up the drawers of his desk and there was nothing in it but Cracked and Mad magazines.

  JOHN FARLEY:

  What did Chris do for my dad? Hell, what did my dad do? No one really knew. He’d take people to dinner, entertain them, and they’d buy stuff from him. That was our notion of work. Dad didn’t really have to sell his product. He was selling roads. Everyone needs roads, and all roads are basically the same. Oil plus gravel equals road. The funniest, nicest, coolest guy was going to get the bid from the county, and there was no better guy to hang out with than my dad. Add Chris to the mix and they could sell anybody anything.

  My grandfather was a salesman, and some days he had to go on four breakfasts, going town to town to town. Then he’d have to go to all these lunches, and then come home and have a dinner. It was the same for my dad. My dad knew every restaurant, every bar in Wisconsin. You’d drive by some place way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, and Dad would be like, “They can sauté a mushroom like nobody’s business. Good cheese-burgers. ”

  My dad’s clients were these farmers, these down-home guys from rural towns who just happened to sit on the county highway commission handing out multimillion-dollar contracts to pave roads. The big thrill of their month was when Tom Farley would drive out from Madison and take them out for a schmooze and a steak dinner. You know those square pats of butter they keep on the table? Farmers in Wisconsin eat those like appetizers, like a predinner mint. Just open ’em up and eat ’em. Sweet Jesus that’s insane, but it’s a very Wisconsin thing.

  Sit. Eat. Talk. Drink. That was the business. It was about putting on a show, buying the round of scotches, prime rib for everyone. That’s the key to who the Farleys are. We’d rather see a smile on someone’s face, even if it meant hurting ourselves. I don’t know why we did, but we did.

  TOM FARLEY:

  Chris was a great entertainer of clients, but for Dad to keep paying him twenty grand a year just to go to lunch was a bit much. So Chris started doing these open mikes at the student union. He bombed, failed miserably. He was getting up at the liberal, progressive University of Wisconsin and telling crude lesbian jokes. That went over like a fart in church. He’d get heckled and booed. Then he found improv at the Ark.

  TODD GREEN:

  Chris, Greg Meyer, and me all lived near each other downtown. And one night Chris said, “Guys, we gotta go to this thing, the Ark.”

  All through our childhood we always knew that Chris was going to do something. We just didn’t know what. That night they were doing some skit and they needed audience participation. Chris started to get into it, and he completely stole the show from the performers. That was the start of the whole thing.

  DENNIS KERN, director, Ark Improvisational Theater:

  Chris always spoke fondly of his days at the Ark, and I was always very appreciative of that. We sort of took him in off the street—quite literally—and gave him a home. He showed up at the theater one night after a show and stumbled in through the door. He was so drunk he could barely even form coherent sentences. He was just going on, like, “Wanna do . . . comedy . . . improv, I wanna—gotta do this . . .”

  I could barely understand him. To be honest, I thought he might be retarded. I didn’t think he’d remember anything that I told him, so I said, “Look, we’re having a rehearsal tomorrow. Why don’t you come by and join us then?” Then I showed him out the door, thinking that was the end of the whole episode.

  The next day I got a call from my wife, who was at the theater. “Did you tell some big guy that he could come to our rehearsal today?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I didn’t think he’d actually show up.”

  “Well, he’s here. And he brought a case of beer.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Attacking the Stage

  BRIAN STACK, cast member, Ark Improvisational Theater:

  Keith Richards said that the first time he heard rock and roll it was like the whole world went from black-and-white to Technicolor. That’s how Chris always seemed to describe finding comedy.

  As a city, Madison, Wisconsin, has something of a split personality. On the one hand, it’s a typical Midwestern town with no shortage of beer, football, and competitive bratwurst eating. On the other hand, thanks largely to the University of Wisconsin, Madison carries with it a long history of liberal, even radical, politics. Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator Robert LaFollette launched his left-wing Progressive Party in Madison. And in the late sixties and early seventies, the university itself saw some of the country’s most violent antiwar protests, culminating in the bombing of the school’s Army Mathematics Research Center at Sterling Hall.


  In such a hothouse political environment, a small but vibrant arts community was bound to spring up as well. It would still be a few years before enterprising UW students hatched the Onion, the satirical newspaper that eventually found its way to Internet fame and glory. In Chris’s day, if you lived in Madison and had a notion to seek a career in comedy, you went to the Ark.

  Dennis and Elaine Kern founded the Ark Improvisational Theater in Madison in 1982. Both professional actors and directors, they had left New York City determined to do theater on their own terms and, God forbid, actually make a living at it. For its first two years, the Ark staged weekly shows at a local bar, Club de Wash, and offered classes in improv and acting. It quickly became recognized as a stepping-stone for those on their way to greater opportunities in neighboring Chicago. Joan Cusack, who had joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1985, was among the Ark’s alumni.

  As the theater grew more established, the Kerns purchased a defunct downtown building that had once housed a Brinks truck garage. They gutted it and installed a small one-hundred-seat theater. It was that converted garage that Chris Farley stumbled into late one night in August of 1986. For over twenty years, he had been a performer in search of a stage. He had finally found it.

  JODI COHEN, director/cast member, Ark Improvisational Theater:

  I was there the day that Chris came to audition. I forget what the scene was, but as part of it he fell out of his chair and—smack—landed on the ground. I thought he’d really had a heart attack. My first reaction was: Is the theater insured for this? What’s going to happen? That’s how convincing this fall was.

  Elaine and I didn’t want him in the company. He seemed like a wild card, and he didn’t seem very focused. But Dennis said, “This guy is really talented. He should be in the group.” We formed a company called Animal Crackers, and Chris performed with them.

  BRIAN STACK:

  I had never met anyone like him before. He had such incredible enthusiasm in everything he did. One thing that gets lost a lot is that when it came to the work, he was always very serious about it. He was always on time for rehearsal. In fact, he was usually there before everybody else. I never, ever remember him being late for a show.

  I don’t know if Chris had ADD, but people who have a lack of focus, when it comes to something they’re passionate about, they hyperfocus. Chris was certainly like that when it came to acting. Our group’s shows were mostly short-form, game-oriented improv with a lot of audience suggestions. But we also did some sketch-type stuff, and Chris was great with both of them. He was just a blast to work with from day one.

  One thing that always amazed me was his ability to do things that if I had done them would have put me in the hospital, and then he’d get right up from them. He could slam into walls and slam down on the stage. He was such a natural athlete. He was almost like a ballet dancer. Even though Chris is known for being a great physical comedian, some of my favorite things were the subtle little characters he would do.

  DENNIS KERN:

  The Motivational Speaker appeared onstage for the first time at the Ark. It wasn’t the same as on Saturday Night Live, but it was there in its infant form.

  PAT O’GARA:

  The Motivational Speaker actually started back in high school and was based heavily on our coach, Joel Maturi, who would go off on these inspirational speeches. He’d be prepping us for the game, briefing us on the other team’s defense and all that, and Chris would be right there behind him, imitating him, making all these faces and forcing us all to laugh.

  JOEL MATURI:

  The Motivational Speaker is based in part on me; there is some truth to that. Mostly some of my mannerisms, the hiking up the pants, the spreading the legs and crouching down to get serious. I was pretty vocal with the pep talks and the Knute Rockne speeches. Those kinds of things. I think the more philosophical side of the character was actually based on his dad.

  DENNIS KERN:

  We taught Chris the basics of improv and scene work at the Ark, but the natural talent he had was already present. As a performer, he was just there in the moment, like Johnny Carson used to be on the Tonight Show. What Carson was so brilliant at was just reacting and responding naturally to the environment around him in a way that made you laugh. Chris had those same instincts. He just knew what to do.

  BRIAN STACK:

  He could do the same thing fifty times and somehow always make it funny. If a pretty woman walked by he would drop and start doing push-ups, starting out “. . . 198 . . . 199 . . . 200.” I’d seen him do that lots of times. It shouldn’t have been funny to me anymore, yet it always was. It’s hard to explain why it was; it just was. You could videotape it and analyze it with a computer, like you would a golf swing, but you still wouldn’t understand it, and you could never hope to replicate it.

  One night after a show we went to this bar, and Chris was making this middle-aged couple in the bar laugh. He was dancing with the guy’s wife and doing these cat-eye things with his hands. The husband was laughing so hard that he was actually falling off his bar stool, and he eventually said to Chris, “What’s your name? I want to be sure and remember it. I’ve never laughed like this.” It was strange. Everyone sort of sensed that there was just something unique about him. Chris wasn’t famous, but it was the same reaction he would get years later after he left Madison and became a movie star.

  DENNIS KERN:

  Chris and Brian Stack had just started rehearsals on Cowboys No. 2, a Sam Shepard play that we were going to put on. And Chris, meanwhile, had been taking trips down to Chicago here and there with his father. Then it became clear what all those trips to Chicago were for.

  BRIAN STACK:

  When Chris decided to leave, it was pretty upsetting. He loved the Ark, but he was bursting at the seams to get out, and Chicago was the first step. I think Dennis was happy that Chris was leaving to pursue his dream, but he seemed kind of angry on his last night.

  DENNIS KERN:

  I was happy for him, but at the same time I thought it was too soon. I thought that he needed to be more in contact with the source of his creativity before he went to try at the professional level. I always knew he would make it, but I don’t know that he was grounded enough in the technique of acting to have something to hold on to. He was immensely talented, but that talent was sort of at the whim of whoever needed the next laugh.

  TOM FARLEY:

  The experience he had at the Ark told him he had to get out of Madison. Plus, he couldn’t take the job at Scotch Oil anymore. As much as he wanted to please Dad, after a year of selling asphalt even Chris was like, “I gotta get out of here.”

  JOHN FARLEY:

  Dad had made the ultimate sacrifice. He would have been a great lawyer, smartest man you ever met. Dreamed of going into politics. But he had given all that up to raise a family. And so he wanted everyone to stay in Madison, because that was what he’d sacrificed everything for. Years later, Chris had to cry for this scene when he filmed Black Sheep. So he turned to me and he said, “Johnny, make me cry.”

  I said, “Well, Dad’s all alone in Wisconsin with two ladies. All his boys have gone and moved on with their lives.”

  “Shut up.”

  He really got angry that I had said it. Somehow it had triggered the wrong emotion.

  MIKE CLEARY:

  When Chris was working for his dad, he called me up one day and said, “I gotta talk to you about something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, I have an opportunity to go to Chicago to study at Second City. What do you think?”

  I really wasn’t sure about taking risks like that. I said, “Chris, you need to just work with your dad. Establish a solid career and maybe do this stuff on the side.” That was totally my mentality. Finally, I said, “Well, what does your dad say about it?”

  And his exact words were, “My dad says I should definitely take the opportunity and go for it. He’s gonna back me one hundred percent.”


  I said, “Well then there’s no conversation here. You have to go.”

  TOM FARLEY:

  We thought Chris would come running home in six months, and he never came back.

  In June of 1987, Chris left for Chicago. He moved into a small apartment off Armitage Avenue, just north of Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood. There he rejoined his Marquette rugby and acting friend Pat Finn.

  The yellow porch light of Second City had led Chris to Chicago, but he quickly found that the doors of the renowned comedy institution did not immediately open for untrained unknowns fresh off the bus from Wisconsin. Forced to look elsewhere for a place to learn and perform, he found it at ImprovOlympic.

  Today, ImprovOlympic has become an industry mainstay in its own right, producing a steady stream of bankable film and television stars, among them Mike Myers, Vince Vaughn, John Favreau, Andy Richter, Tina Fey, Steven Colbert, the Upright Citizens Brigade, and director Adam McKay, not to mention a healthy chunk of the writing staff at Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

  But when Chris arrived, ImprovOlympic was still a fledgling outfit of vagabond comedians looking to make the funny anywhere they could. Teacher and director Charna Halpern had founded the group in 1981 with several goals in mind. Second City used improv as a means to create sketch comedy. Halpern wanted a curriculum in which improvised performance was the end in itself. At Second City, only a handful of seasoned performers trickled up to the main stage. Halpern gave ImprovOlympic a communitarian ethos, allowing even new and less-experienced students the chance to practice and learn in front of a paying audience.