100 Books in One Year. #2: The Chris Farley Show by Tom Farley, Jr. and Tanner Colby
Book Reviews | September 11, 2008 | Comments (8)
This book broke my fucking heart. It’s such an incredibly sad tale, reading about Chris Farley and what he could have been. It’s done exactly in the style of the “Saturday Night Live” book Live From New York, almost transcribed like a documentary film with quotes. Only in this one, Janeane Garofalo isn’t being a totally neurotic cunt and people aren’t trashing each other. It’s like being in the corpse house for the wake.
People loved Chris Farley. He was a big fat spaz who wanted to be loved by making people laugh. He hated his body, and never got the girls. He was an incredibly devout Catholic who doted on his family and friends. He spent his formative years just getting trashed, trying to be like his hero John Belushi.
What they never touch on is why. Why he destroyed himself with drugs, when he had so much to live for. Because he tried. He went to rehab something like 33 times, at many different facilities from the day spa at Promises to the boot camp in Alabama. He tried. But in the end it didn’t work, and he died, on the floor in a hotel room, after binging on crack, cocaine and booze for four straight days, while the hooker he hired stole his watch and took pictures of him sprawled on the floor.
Amazing to me is the what-could-have-beens of Farley’s life. He actually recorded the original voice of Shrek, and only after his death did they go with Mike Myers doing a milder version of Charlie’s Father and Fat Bastard. He was supposed to be the lead in the original version of The Cable Guy, until Stiller, Apatow, and Jim Carrey turned it into a dark comedy. He was also working with David Mamet on a biography of Fatty Arbuckle. I think he would have won the Oscar had it ever come out.
It made me want to work harder to be famous and to do something with my life. It’s really a sad story, about a man who just wanted everyone around him to be happy.
This review is part of the Cannonball Read series. You can read more about it, here.
Comments
Posted by: Alabamapink at September 11, 2008 11:27 AM
We watched Shrek last weekend. I tried to hear Farley's voice a few times. I think it would have worked. Then I got mad at Mike Meyers using his fallback accent. Apparently, he recorded most of the voice, then had the production scrap it all so he could redo it in his Scottish accent.
Chris Farley just cracked me up just looking at him. He had that whacked out expressive face. Seeing him in the final shot of an SNL episode mugging about, was enough to send me into fits.