Chris Farley's comedy was often a bit terrifying. He could tap into his cyclonic inner life and discover characters whose exaggerated everyday weaknesses induced a sense of squirming self-recognition. Farley was the heir apparent to his fellow "Saturday Night Live" alumnus John Belushi, and the symmetry of the two men's untimely deaths, both at age 33, has forever linked them.
Now, a new oral history, "The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts," has arrived to cement Farley's place in a unique Hollywood pantheon: young artists whose untimely ends are supposed to alert us to extreme creativity's sometimes grim trajectory. But a fresh look at Farley's case shows yet again that they rarely do. In addition to Belushi and Farley, this dark collective includes River Phoenix and, most recently, Heath Ledger. Something in Hollywood's collective DNA seems to insist on this cycle: Behold the damaged, substance-abusing genius, and prepare for his demise.
At Book Soup several weeks ago, the book's co-authors -- Tom Farley Jr. (Chris' oldest brother) and Belushi biographer Tanner Colby -- joined college friend and actor Pat Finn, "Tommy Boy" costar Julie Warner, and brother John to ponder Farley's significance and revisit both his raging inner demons and his generous, mirthful heart. Throughout the event, however, the specter of Farley's fatal addiction to drugs and alcohol remained. And to his credit, Tom Jr. embraced it.
"This is going to be an important book in the recovery world," said Tom Farley, a former alcoholic who once worked at Bear Stearns but is now president of the Chris Farley Foundation, based in the Farley clan's hometown of Madison, Wis. The organization, whose motto is "Think. Laugh. Live," is dedicated to educating youngsters about the perils of addiction.
His and Colby's goal in assembling the book was not to capitalize on Farley's ongoing fame, which has entered a fourth act in the Web 2.0 generation (as Colby pointed out, there are more Chris Farley groups on Facebook than "SNL" groups). "We decided that this book wasn't going to be 'ha ha, he was funny and now we miss him,' " Tom, 46, insisted.
Instead, Chris' older brother and apparent conscience of his Midwestern Irish-Catholic bloodline has set a difficult task for himself. Chris was the product of a family of alcoholics (all of whom eventually got sober, although Tom Sr. lived only a year after Chris' death and, by the end, weighed almost 600 pounds). The theory behind the Book Soup event -- and a panel the next day at the iO West Theater, the Left Coast outpost of the Chicago improv troupe that gave Farley his start -- was that family and friends would pay homage to Farley's talent and establish a tone for a discussion of his contribution to pop culture.
