The Full Biography
Chris Farley. Comic. The Madison wrecking ball who treated a live studio as a contact sport and did not live long enough to learn a quieter instrument.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man in a Chippendales tie, opposite Patrick Swayze, sweating through a joke that is also a kindness, or a motivational speaker who lives in a van down by the river. The years were 1990 to 1995 on Saturday Night Live. What the still cannot show is Christopher Crosby Farley of Madison, Wisconsin, a Catholic football house, a Second City graduate who loved Belushi too much, and a life that was not long enough: dead at thirty-three in a Chicago apartment, the same plot the people who loved him had already seen once.
He was born on February 15, 1964, in Madison, the fourth of five children of Tom and Mary Anne Farley. His father sold oil. The family was loud, faithful, and physical — Redmond Avenue, Edgewood High School, a parish that knew the boys by the noise. Marquette University, class of 1986, communications and theater. He was not a writer first. He was a body that could take a fall and make the fall a character. ImprovOlympic, Del Close’s room, then Second City in Chicago. In 1989 he was on the main stage. Chicago taught the fall as craft, not only as appetite. Lorne Michaels brought him to New York in 1990, into a cast that already had the next decade’s faces — Sandler, Spade, Rock, Hartman, Myers still in the building. Farley became the thing the balcony wanted.
The Chippendales audition, October 27, 1990, opposite Patrick Swayze, is the civic object. Two men in cuffs and bow ties. Swayze is the body the room was told to want. Farley is the body the room was told to laugh at. The joke, if you watch it again, is also a kindness: Farley commits to the dance as if the job were real. He does not wink. He sweats. He is precise inside the wreck. That precision is the part the balcony sometimes missed. Matt Foley, the motivational speaker, arrived in 1993, written by Bob Odenkirk, worn by Farley until the suit and the glasses were a national weather. “Van down by the river” is a joke about failure he already knew. The Superfans. The Gap Girls’ noisy friend. The Bennett brothers with Spade. A man who would throw himself at a wall if the wall might laugh. Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Phil Hartman — the cast around him was a decade’s worth of faces. He was the one the balcony paid to see fall. He knew it. He still took the fall as craft. Chicago had taught him that a fall is a sentence, not only a crash. New York paid him to repeat the sentence until the body was the only punctuation left. The balcony laughed. The craft was in the landing, every time.
The live years were a weekly contact sport. He hosted the show. He played a Chippendale, a motivational speaker, a Superfan named Todd O’Connor who loved Da Bears with George Wendt, a Gap Girl who could not stop talking, a Bennett brother who could not stop touching Spade. He threw himself through coffee tables. He also, in the rare still moment, could play a man who knew he was the joke and did not want to be only the joke. Castmates have said the off-camera man was shy, parish-raised, a boy who called his mother. The balcony wanted the wreck. The wreck was real. The shy man is the part the writing has to keep, because the only face on this page is an Imagine portrait from a still the desk provided, not a public-domain photograph.
He was not only live. Wayne’s World (1992) put him in a security-guard bit that the picture still gets a laugh from. Coneheads (1993). Airheads (1994). Billy Madison (1995), a bus-driver scene for Sandler that is a small, complete performance. Then Tommy Boy (1995), with David Spade, is the picture that lasts. A fat son, a thin friend, a road, a company to save, Rob Lowe as the slick villain, Bo Derek as the stepmother, Brian Dennehy as the father who dies in the first act and leaves a brake-pad company hanging. It is sweeter than the live work and just as physical. Farley plays Tommy Callahan as a man who wants to be good at something and is not, yet, except at being liked. Spade is the brake. Farley is the engine. The picture still works because it likes him. That liking is not automatic in a fat-suit decade. The movie earned it. Peter Segal directed. The road gags are the ads. The diner scenes are the life.
Black Sheep (1996) reteamed them: Spade a candidate, Farley the brother who must be hidden. It paid. It did not solve anything. Beverly Hills Ninja (1997) paid more. Hollywood wanted the crash. He gave it, then had to go home and be the person who had crashed. He loved John Belushi the way some men love a saint who died of the same thirst. That love is not cute. It is the file in advance. Friends — Spade, Sandler, Farley’s brothers — have said they tried. Interventions are in the public record. Rehab is in the public record. So is the night of December 18, 1997, in a furnished apartment at the John Hancock Center, cocaine and morphine, a body that had already been asked to do too much for a camera. The talk-show circuit of those last two years asked him to be the crash on command, a late-night bit that treated the sweat as a product. He gave the bit. Then he had to be the person who had given it. That is the job the writing has to carry. The Imagine portrait is a likeness. The tapes are still the face.
I wanted to be Belushi. I just didn’t want to die like him.Chris Farley, to friends, in the last years
The turn never arrived. That is the fact a Wolper hour has to hold. There is no second act in which he becomes a character actor, loses the weight, hosts a quiet show, or learns Murray’s disappearing trick. There is a man who could be delicate inside a wreck — watch the Chippendales piece again — and a calendar that stopped before the delicacy got its own picture. The page carries an Imagine portrait from a desk still. The writing still has to carry him. It can. The work is on tape.
Six things most people never knew
- Madison, not a coastal factory, is the house. Catholic, five kids, a father in oil. The wrecking ball had a parish.
- Second City came before the balcony. Chicago taught the fall as craft, not only as appetite.
- Matt Foley was a suit and a warning. The van down by the river is a joke about failure he already knew. Odenkirk wrote the frame. Farley wore it until it was climate.
- Tommy Boy is the tender film. Spade is the brake. Farley is the engine. The picture still works because it likes him.
- He was in talks to voice Shrek. He had recorded most of the ogre. The part went to Mike Myers after Farley died. Another year that did not happen.
- The death copied a myth he had studied. Belushi, 1982. Farley, 1997. The people in the room had already watched the movie.
His brothers Kevin and John stayed in the business. Their mother, Mary Anne, outlived the famous son and the private grief. The family has been careful and raw in public, which is harder than a foundation dinner. They have asked that he be remembered as funny first. He was. He was also ill. Both sentences belong.
The later years
There were almost none. The last stretch is 1996 and 1997: pictures that used the body, a talk-show circuit that asked him to be the crash on command, friends who hid car keys and could not hide a city. He left Saturday Night Live in 1995 with Sandler and Spade, the way a class leaves a school. The features were supposed to be the second instrument. They were, instead, the same instrument at feature length. Black Sheep and Beverly Hills Ninja asked him to fall in daylight. He fell. Audiences paid. The nights after the call time are the part the balcony did not buy a ticket for.
He had recorded most of the voice for Shrek’s title ogre. DreamWorks recast the part with Mike Myers after the death. Almost Heroes, with Matthew Perry, was released in 1998 with Farley already gone — a Lewis-and-Clark joke that the picture cannot carry without the living man. A cameo in Norm Macdonald’s Dirty Work sits in the same unfinished pile. The quieter instrument — a character actor’s middle age, a host’s stillness, a voice role that did not require the sweat — is the career that exists only as a list of what was booked or talked about. The man does not get those years. The catalog does.
Friends have described the last months without making them a true-crime hour. He was in and out of treatment. He was trying, in the way a man tries when the habit is already the day. Chris Rock, Sandler, Spade, the brothers — the interventions are not gossip. They are in the biographies and the 2015 documentary I Am Chris Farley, which the family allowed. On December 18, 1997, a woman left him in the Hancock apartment. A brother found him the next afternoon. The Cook County medical examiner said morphine and cocaine. He was thirty-three. The coroner did not have to guess an older age, as Belushi’s had. The age was already a warning. The funeral in Madison was a parish event. The balcony, for once, was not the point.
The remaining years of the name are tribute specials, that documentary, a generation of comics who cite the Chippendales sketch as the moment they understood that fat could be precise, and a caution that would have embarrassed him and also, perhaps, not surprised him. SNL still plays the Foley clip when it needs a floor to shake. Tommy Boy is a comfort movie for people who were children in the 1990s. The Imagine portrait is a likeness, not a public-domain still. The sketches and the one tender feature have to be the stills. They are enough if you actually watch them. The sweat in the Chippendales piece is not only appetite. It is a man doing a dance as if the job were real. That is the craft Chicago taught. That is what the short calendar stole from the quieter instrument.
The family asked, after the funeral, that he be remembered as funny first. The request is honest and incomplete. He was funny. He was also a man with a disease the business treated as a bit. The 2015 documentary, which the brothers allowed, holds both sentences. Kevin and John stayed in the work — voices, stages, the long middle a comic is supposed to get. Mary Anne kept the Madison house. Tom, the father who sold oil, had to bury a famous son. The Imagine portrait does the face. The family asked that he be remembered as funny first. The Chippendales tape, the Foley suit, the diner scenes in Tommy Boy — those are the photographs. They are enough if you watch them as craft and not only as appetite.
What 1996 and 1997 actually were is a working comic after the live show: two more features, a voice job that would be recast, friends hiding keys, a parish family trying to get him home, and a death in a tower in the city that had taught him the fall. He did not get the second act. The writing has to say that without turning the life into only the death. Foley, Tommy, the Chippendales stillness inside the sweat — those are the work. The Hancock night is the stop. Both belong. Neither should be allowed to erase the other. The quieter instrument stays a list. The wrecking ball stays on tape.
After he was gone
SNL still plays the Foley clip when it needs a floor to shake. Tommy Boy is a comfort movie for people who were children in the 1990s. Belushi and Farley are now a paired caution in every comedy book, which would have embarrassed both of them and also, perhaps, not surprised them. Kevin and John kept working. Mary Anne kept the house. The documentary is the family’s allowed record. The tapes still do the remembering. The portrait on this page is Imagine, from a desk still, not a public-domain photograph.
He came out of Madison, took Chicago’s stage, threw himself at New York, made a motivational speaker and a salesman’s son, loved a dead comic too hard, and died in a tower in the city that had taught him the craft. If you only remember the fall, you have the balcony. If you remember Foley, Spade, and the Chippendales stillness inside the sweat, you have him.
Portrait: Imagine portrait from a still provided to the 50 Plus Hub Nostalgia desk. Not a public-domain photograph.