The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts (29 page)

I used to work at a company called Motion Picture Corporation of America. We’d had some success with the Farrelly brothers. We did
Dumb & Dumber
and
Kingpin
. We did
Bio-Dome
with Pauly Shore. Then we got ahold of
Beverly Hills Ninja
. If I recall properly, Dana Carvey had been attached to it at one point, and Chris held Dana in such high regard that he was open to looking at the script. Chris really was the first guy that we went to. We offered him a ton of money.

One day while we were filming
Black Sheep
, Chris’s agents showed up. Agents always stand out because they’re the only ones in L.A. who wear dark suits. They were really happy, really up. They came rushing in and met Chris in the trailer.
Beverly Hills Ninja
was a movie that he had rejected a number of times. “No, thanks. Pass.” But this time the script came in with an offer for $6 million, which at the time was like a three hundred percent increase in what Chris was making. All of a sudden it was like, “Eh, maybe the script isn’t so bad after all. . . .”

Marc Gurvitz and I, we told him not to do
Ninja
. It was about a fat guy in tights. Let’s face it, who wants to see Chris like that? It was an embarrassing film. But the offer was $6 million, which even then was a lot of money. Chris called up and said, “I have to do it. My dad says I can’t turn down that kind of money.”

After his father weighed in, there wasn’t much of a conversation. I remember sitting with Chris in his trailer at Paramount, telling him that there would be other big paydays down the road. It was one of those situations where you want to advise your client not to do it. But you could see that as soon as you told him the amount of money involved, the ship had sailed.

It was a bad decision in that no one was telling the truth and people had all kinds of different agendas. There are so many rationalizations: “It’ll get your price up.” “It’s important to keep working.” “Not every movie’s a masterpiece.” But Chris was an incredibly sensitive kid. No matter what he did, he always had some kind of hope for pride in his work, and so for Chris to do something that empty just didn’t feel right.

It was fear. He took that movie out of fear. Chris’s only goal in life was to be on
Saturday Night Live
, and after that was over he would always say, “I never imagined myself being a film actor.” And I’d think, oh shit, he’s out of his comfort zone. Movies and Hollywood and all that are out of his comfort zone, and things are going to get difficult.

Chris loved football, and he loved being part of a team.
Saturday Night Live
, Second City, those are team sports. Chris was competitive. He wanted to win, but he wanted the whole team to win. Winning doesn’t mean anything if you can’t share it with someone.

When you’re a movie star, all the pressure is on you as an individual. But if you put too much pressure on one player, you’re not going to win ball games. On a film, clearly one guy is making the most money, and they’re banking on him, win or lose. His career is on the line. In Hollywood, you’re kind of alone.

The crew used to joke that when the
Beverly Hills Ninja
action figures came out, the Haru figure would come with its own Ted figure. Unlike most personal assistants, I was never out running errands and taking care of other things. Chris always wanted me to delegate that stuff to other people so I could stay, literally, right next to him all the time. We’d work all day and he’d be like, “No, c’mon. I’m taking you to dinner.”

On that movie he was hung out to dry. That was a Chris Farley movie from start to finish. Except for those few Chris Rock scenes, every scene hinged on him.

Farley wanted Chris Rock in the movie. He was very adamant about that. It was almost to the point where he wouldn’t do the film if Rock wasn’t involved. I think it was a bit of a life raft for him. I distinctly remember that Chris’s best days on the set were the days that Rock was there.

Whatever reservations Chris may have had, to me he was just so appreciative, and grateful, and he really felt a personal responsibility that came with taking that much money. I had never experienced that with an actor before. He was so excited that we were hiring him, let along paying him so much, that during shooting he’d often say to me, “God, I hope I’m doing okay. Are you guys happy?”

And that kind of raised the bar for us. After he’d say those things to me, I’d walk away going, “Oh jeez, I hope
I’m
gonna deliver for
him.
”

Chris also helped develop the script. When we went into
Ninja
, we wanted it to be a really broad, adult movie, and, to his credit, Chris really took it more in the direction of being a movie for kids and families. That’s what he wanted. And thank God he did. It wasn’t a huge success, but kids loved it. They really turned out, and that’s where the movie made its money.

The producer of
Beverly Hills Ninja
had done a movie that I was in, and I got cut out of that one. But he said I’d be perfect for this. I remember going to audition for it. I had to run into a wall and fall down. That was the audition. When they said I had the part, I got real excited. I got to play Chris Farley as a little kid. At the time, what could have been better? He was one of my heroes.

For my big scene, I was supposed to flip a stick around and accidentally hit this kid on the head. The director said, “You can hit him as hard as you want, because he has padding.”

So we do the scene. We’re twirling the sticks around, and I smack him on the head, only not on the part where he has padding. The kid goes down for the count. I just remember turning my head over to the right, looking at the director and seeing Chris going
“Oh, fuck”
and laughing his head off. He had this expression like, yup, he’s just like me.

The role of the young Chris Farley is supposed to be this shitty little ninja, right? Well, Jason Davis literally was a shitty ninja. He was such a bad athlete and such a spastic little kid that it was funny to see him play this idiot. Chris saw this kid who was just a mess, and that amused him.

Chris liked that kid a lot. He always used to say, “That kid reminds me of me when I was little.” Jason was kind of an out-of-control little guy. He’d go up and talk to anybody. Since Jason looked up to Chris so much, Chris kind of took him under his wing whenever he was around.

For the three days I got to work on the movie, I got to hang out with Chris a lot. Then, about a week later, he called me and said, “Hey, we should go out to lunch.”

I thought, wow, that’s really awesome. So we went out to lunch, and from then on we just really clicked. We’d hang out. We’d go and do stuff together.

What I loved about Chris was that he was the only person who ever understood me. For a period of time, if I needed to count on anyone, it was Chris. I was like eleven or twelve, and my mom wanted to send me away to fat camp. I was trying every which way to get out of it. I was praying for Chris to kidnap me and hold me for ransom so I wouldn’t have to go. But Chris would talk to me about being a kid with a weight problem, and he really helped me a lot. I could call him and say, “My mom’s being a bitch. I’m pissed off. I want to run away. I hate it here. What should I do?”

And he’d be like, “Relax. You’re obviously going through denial. Your mother loves you. Don’t run away. Besides, you’d have to stop at McDonald’s every other block just to survive.”

Jason saw a side of Chris that maybe a lot of other people didn’t see. Chris understood what he was going through, and touched Jason in this amazing way. He really did. When Jason was filming
Beverly Hills Ninja
with Chris, he was going through a hard time in his life. His father and I were getting divorced, and Jason had some similar issues with Chris, some weight issues, really deep father issues, and maybe Chris saw that in Jason. It was like he could just sense it, and he really made a point of helping him to deal with it. People are so afraid to talk about what’s bothering them, and Chris really got him to open up about it. Jason’s always been quirky and different, and Chris gave him the strength to think that was okay.

When I first started working for Chris, he’d been sober for about two and a half years. He was doing really well. He was very comfortable in his sobriety, and very strong. After that first relapse, he was very different. It changed him. He was still sober most of the time, but it was not the same strength and confidence you saw before. He’d be on edge about it. He used to never care if I drank around him. Now, if he found out I’d been out drinking, he’d get angry. So after that first relapse, there was a change. After the second, third, and fourth, they were all kind of the same.

It was no secret that he was battling addiction. In preproduction he had it down. He didn’t talk about it. He didn’t need to talk about it. But then, during filming, he would struggle at times. And by struggle I mean that his actions were a little more overt. He would talk about his need to stay sober. There were a few more mood swings, but his commitment stayed the same. You could tell he was just trying to buckle down and get through it. I appreciated that he was open about it, and we all tried to support him.

The whole time we were shooting
Ninja
, there were no problems whatsoever. He had the first relapse before shooting, and then the second relapse came after—idle time.

When he came back for reshoots, he was a different person. I wasn’t there that day, but I got calls about all the problems. They couldn’t make the film match. He’d put on weight, and he looked horrible. He wasn’t the same old Chris. They kind of had to shoot around him different ways.

When we wrapped shooting, I could sense that he was starting to feel that the movie wouldn’t turn out how he’d hoped. Chris went into it thinking he was making a good, earnest film for kids, but in the end he wasn’t proud of it the way he was about other movies.

After the first screening of
Ninja
, I took Chris into the bathroom and he just cried on my shoulder. Cried and cried. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever been through.

I was disappointed, too. It didn’t turn out as I had hoped. Thank God it played with the kids, because it missed with the older crowd. Not everything turns out the way you want; some things fail. I mean, you’re talking to the guy who produced
Bio-Dome
.

There’s a reason they give the Best Picture Oscar to the producer, because it’s a collaborative effort and the producer is responsible for bringing all those collaborators together. But Chris felt like the whole thing was
his
failure, and it wasn’t.

Principal photography on
Beverly Hills Ninja
wrapped in March of 1996. Without the incentive to stay clean for work, Chris relapsed a second time and returned to Hazelden in Minnesota. Other than the reshoots on
Ninja
, he spent the spring and early summer in Chicago, passing time with friends and family and working his twelve-step program. It was a frustrating time. Chris would maintain his sobriety for six weeks, two months at a stretch, then head angrily back to the starting line and begin again. It was not easy, but no one could say that Chris was not trying in earnest.

In May, he returned to Marquette to receive the speech department’s Distinguished Young Alumnus Award, an honor of which he was exceedingly proud. Then, in June, he joined David Spade at the MTV Movie Awards to accept the Best On-screen Duo award for
Tommy Boy
.

Chris went back to work that August, taking the lead role in
Edwards & Hunt
, a satirical spoof of Lewis and Clark’s historic journey to find an overland route to the Pacific Ocean. Before the film’s eventual release, the studio’s marketing team found cause to change its name, and it has gone down in history as
Almost Heroes
.

Chris had been cast in the role of Bartholomew Hunt, master tracker and woodsman.
Spinal Tap
veteran Christopher Guest signed on to direct. The producers set about assembling a comedy ensemble to flesh out the exploring party, including Eugene Levy and Bokeem Woodbine. Several actors were considered for the lead role opposite Chris, and the part ultimately went to
Friends
star Matthew Perry.

Beverly Hills Ninja
had been a bad choice, and
Black Sheep
was no choice at all, but at the time
Edwards & Hunt
was a good bet. On paper, the script recalled the absurdity of classic Mel Brooks, and it was widely thought to be one of the funniest unproduced scripts in Hollywood. As the cast and crew began shooting in the forests and small towns of northern California, everyone believed, somewhat prematurely, they had a bona fide hit in the works.

Tom Wolfe and I were working on a sitcom with our third partner, Boyd Hale. One Sunday, we decided to skip a trip to Anaheim to watch the L.A. Rams—it was raining—and had some beers at a bar in Venice instead. Boyd came up with the original concept of a Lewis and Clark comedy; the ideas flowed freely from there, and we wrote the script in a couple months. Our agent Rob Carlson also represented Steve Oedekerk, who had written for Jim Carrey, and with Steve’s help the script made the rounds.