Live From New York - James H. Miller [260]
DAVID SPADE:
Toward the end, when Chris was getting too drugged-up and too out of control, it was hard, because I don’t drink that much, I drink a little bit. I couldn’t keep up with him, and I didn’t want to. Plus it was like I used to tell him that he gets a little bit “moody” and “crabby” — which was another way of saying, “tearing the office apart and screaming.” It just got to a point where we had different lifestyles. And I was even okay with realizing that he was the funnier one out of the little duo, and that he was being offered more money. Even when we were in movies together, he would be offered three times as much as me. I would just take that as one of the realities of it and not be too offended and say okay. Because I would pay him more. He is definitely fun to watch and is definitely a big draw. If I could play off him, and be in the movie with him, that was fine.
We kind of drifted apart toward the end and then started to hang out again, and then talked about what we could do together again, because he said that the only thing people talked about was Tommy Boy. And they didn’t care about Beverly Hills Ninja or whatever else, so he wanted to get back to that. And I said I agreed, that was kind of the consensus at my little camp too.
I was at work when I heard. I fell apart. Mark Gurwitz, my manager, called me on the set during a Just Shoot Me rehearsal and said, “I want to tell you because you are going to get hit with all the press in about five minutes.” And I walked back onto the set, started to rehearse, and then collapsed and just fell apart, and I had to go into the other room and just cry for twenty minutes straight. I was like hyperventilating, it was too much. It was one of those things that I thought early on, when we were together, that something like that could happen, but he was such a truck that I got to a point when I thought nothing could happen to him. I just couldn’t handle what he did, but he was made up differently and he could handle it.
CHRIS ROCK, Cast Member:
Farley was crazy, man. He gave me a little part in Beverly Hills Ninja, one of the worst movies ever. Nevertheless, it was some money when I needed some money. I think we have the same birthdays too.
Two guys named Chris, hired on the same day, sharing an office, okay. One’s a black guy from Bed-Stuy, one’s a white guy from Madison, Wisconsin. Now — which one is going to OD? That just goes to show you.
Let’s trace back. I remember I was on tour. I saw Chris in Chicago and he was just really fucked up really bad. He just couldn’t behave himself. He couldn’t put it together for fifteen minutes. He was in my limo and he just couldn’t hold it together. And he wanted to show me his apartment, but I couldn’t deal with it anymore, so I dropped him off at his place. “Come on, Rock, come on see my place.” And we were driving off and I thought that might be the last time I’d see him. And three months later, four months later, I get a message to call Marci. And I called up SNL and the switchboard was busy and right then I knew he was dead. And I said, “Ah, fuckin’ Chris. The switch-board’s never busy. Something must have happened. Ah, shit. Fuck, man. Lost your boy.”
ROBERT SMIGEL:
You have arguments and you cry and you have dramatic confrontations where you’re begging him to take care of himself and you feel like you’re helping. You can do that and feel like you’ve done something, but the only thing that I had seen that had worked was the actual threat of losing something that was carried out — Saturday Night Live. And after that it seemed like people could only make threats, but it was not as easy to cut Chris off from show business. Once you’re out in the movie world and you’re a movie star, chances are there will always be producers willing to give you work.
BOB ODENKIRK, Writer:
Like everybody else, I was worried about Chris the whole time I knew him. I mean, he had terrible drinking problems back at Second City. I think when he got to New York, he got introduced to harder