#225 | Tragedy or Comedy? The LIfe and Legacy of the Beloved Comedian Chris Farley

episode SUMMARY:

Douglas Vigliotti discusses the emotional and powerful biography "The Chris Farley Show" by Tom Farley Jr and Tanner Colby, providing insights into the tragic life of the celebrated comedian and actor Chris Farley. The book explores the contradictions and complexities of Farley's persona, from his immense talent and popularity to his deep-seated insecurities and addiction struggles. This episode is a poignant exploration of the masks we all wear and the importance of vulnerability in overcoming one's weaknesses.

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Welcome back to “Books for Men”, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So this is the last official book week of 2025, and I have a special nonfiction book to share with you. It is called “The Chris Farley Show” by Tom Farley Jr. And Tanner Colby. It is around 400 pages and it came out in 2009 or 2008, something like that. Anyway, alright, so I have a lot to share on this book, takeaways, what it's about, all that good stuff. But before I do that, I would like to remind you that I have a new book out and it is titled “Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story”. This is more than likely not the first time you've heard me say this, and you'll probably hear me say it a few more times, but if you want to learn more about that book, all you have to do is visit AristotleforNovelists.com where you could find links to buy the book in all of its formats, ebook, paperback, or audiobook, as well as download a 10 question assessment that will help anyone determine if they have a working story based on Aristotelian principles on nifty little resource that I designed to go along with the book.

(01:34)

But yeah, all of that can be found on the website AristotleforNovelists.com. And of course, the link for that will be in the show notes. Alright, so now let me turn to the book that I'm sharing with you today because it is a special one, one that I wanted to end the year with for very specific reasons, and I will share those reasons as I get into this episode. So first things first, I don't want to downplay the authors, but I probably won't spend too much time on them In this episode. Tom Farley Jr. Is Chris's brother, also someone who put together the documentary, “I Am Chris Farley”, which is also excellent and I highly recommend, I do think that being his brother lends a unique angle and a type of access that perhaps a typical biographer wouldn't have. And so that makes both that documentary and this book unique.

(02:31)

And of course, Tanner Kolby is the actual writer on the project. I've talked about this before, but it's worth noting that many celebrity books and business mogul books are written by writers, even self-described memoirs or autobiographies, and some credit the writer, some don't. Something that I've talked about on this podcast before, some books that I've shared on here that come to mind are, “Life” by Keith Richards, in which the ghostwriter did an amazing job sounding like Keith Richards and the Michael K. Williams book. I'm sure there are others. But anyway, writing a good book is hard and time-consuming and requires an element of, for lack of a better term, knowing what you're doing. So enter a writer in most of these situations, and Tanner Colby is that individual here. Okay, so now let me pivot into the book the story. Most obviously, it is about the tragic life of Chris Farley, the man, the character, the celebrity, and honestly one of my favorite childhood characters.

(03:35)

I guess the others would probably be Rocky, Hulk Hogan, and Aladdin. I do consider Chris to be in that character category, especially after reading this book. There is to me a delineating difference between those descriptors that I utilized to describe him, the man, the character, and the celebrity, and the person that we knew as the general public was indeed representative of the spirit of who he was and a large faction of who he was. But man, was there. Just this whole other aspect to the man, Chris Farley, and this was probably one of the more emotional books that I've ever read. When I said before that he was one of my favorite childhood characters or heroes, I really meant it. And there's actually a funny story of when I was a kid and I made the entire family watch “Tommy Boy” over and over in a Mark III van on a road trip from Connecticut to Toronto for a hockey tournament.

(04:43)

We rented a van and had one of those TVs up in the top, and I just made them continually watch Tommy Boy over and over and over again. Or at least that's how the story is told to this day in my family. But honestly, I don't think there was anybody who had a problem with it because as this book reminds you, everybody loved Chris Farley. He was a rare talent that comes along once in a generation, and this is what makes the book so heartbreaking. But I do think it also shines a light on a much bigger issue or much bigger issues. It's told in a unique way passages from people throughout his life. So names you've heard of and names you haven't, people like, I don't know, Lorne Michaels and Mike Myers and Chris Rock and Alec Baldwin and David Spade, and you just name it.

(05:35)

There are tons and tons of people who contributed to the book, of course, his brothers and family members and close friends and people of that nature. There's actually a Hunter S Thompson book that I like called “Gonzo” that utilizes the same format. And I think it's a really great way to structure a biography because it gives so many angles on the subject and it provides for a really entertaining experience in this vein, one memorable section when they're in the part of his story on when he first got hired at SNL and also his first big break at SNL and all of that stuff. And Chris Rock has this funny passage in the book where he says, “Two guys named Chris both got hired on the same day and share an office. One's a black guy from Bed-Stuy and one's a white guy from Madison, Wisconsin. Now, which one is going to OD?”

(06:31)

And of course, there's a lot of black humor in this, but I thought even that shines a light on an issue that keeps coming up in this biography, which is many things aren't what they seem to be. And I'll get into that more as this episode continues. It's sort of an inescapable theme in this book, even as that passage continues. So yeah, there's black humor, but they're covering the point when Chris got his first big break on Saturday Night Live, which happened almost immediately in the tenure of his career there, the fourth show I think it was, or something like that. And it was the Chippendales skit, which most people remember with Patrick Swayze. And I mean even Mike Myers said in the book when they saw it in rehearsal, he knew that a star was being born. But even this moment is a weird moment for Chris Farley.

(07:29)

Chris Rock goes on to say in that same passage that I was sharing before, and he continues by saying, “As funny as that sketch was, and as many accolades as he got for it, it's one of the things that killed him. Something happened right then.” And of course, he's talking about the commodification and saleability of Chris's weight problem and being overweight and having his own insecurities built into this character that we all knew and loved and people wanted to pin on him continually throughout his Hollywood career and creative career. As the book points out, there's much more to the man, but it really keeps coming back to this idea of the fat goofy guy and then having to play that role because not knowing who else to play in society in fear of not being loved for anything other than making people laugh and being the fat funny guy who everyone gets to make fun of and laugh with, and now combine that with an insane level of actual talent.

(08:48)

And so I hate to keep going back to Chris Rock, but in that same passage, he goes on to compliment Chris so profoundly by saying, “You never really shared the stage with him. It was always his stage and deservedly so. The weird thing is that nobody got mad about that. There was a lot of competing on that show, but no one was competing with Farley.” Again, this is all reiterated in many ways throughout this book, through many different characters, his talent level, his sincerity, his kindness, his humanity, and then of course the very heartbreaking element, which is him ultimately succumbing to his addiction. I found myself almost coming to tears a few times while reading this book right at the beginning. It hits you right in the gut because it opens with this speech, motivational speech, anyone who's followed his career and knows the motivational speaker, but this was a very sincere one where a sober Chris was giving a speech to a large group at a drug rehab center that he attended multiple times among many, many others.

(10:03)

And he says so many things that just let you know this is going to be a roller rollercoaster ride of a biography, even though you know the story and the arc of how it goes already. Things like, “I was totally full of fear. I'd do anything for you to like me, including doing things I didn't want to do.” Or one that is just so heavy and so brutal of a scenario to imagine and picture in your mind. He said, “I like to have an icy cold Guinness on St. Patrick's Day. I'm Irish! And I remember pacing back and forth in the rain, outside a bar, crying. I was so scared, and I was just crying and crying and praying to God to help me.” And for me, it really just hammered home how deep the addiction was. I mean, the amount of times that he was in and out of rehab, a hard to even summarize or recount in this episode because it's innumerable, but it was so bad that at one point he was actually getting cocaine while inside the detox ward of a rehabilitation center that he was staying at. It was just so insane.

(11:19)

Not only does it speak to what people are willing to do for celebrities and famous people and the power that these types of people have on others, but it speaks to the addiction of how committed one is to making the pain that they are in stop. And I know we're pretty deep into this episode, so I will try to wrap this up here, but I wanted to point out that this book is a really good example of the masks we all live in to protect our insecurities. And with Chris, it was evident by his own words and the people around him in his most intimate moments, that was his weight, his discomfort with women, and his lack of self-esteem. And the lengths we will go may not be as far as what Chris did or it might be, but the lengths we will go to hide that pain is remarkable.

(12:17)

This book should be a reminder that being vulnerable and allowing people in is a strength, not a weakness, and denial is only going to make it worse. One of the things his brother is really adamant about in the book, and I pulled actually a quote that I wanted to share because it really hit me was, “Nobody was willing to face the truth. Nobody confronted Chris about his problem because doing so would've meant acknowledging that Dad had a problem. And that we all had a problem.” And so people wanted to pretend that he was okay because it made them feel better inside thinking that there wasn't an issue. But ultimately, like all tragedies, we see how that story ends. It's the truth like all tragedies reveal, but it's not a feel-good story. The only way this pulls into a comedy in Aristotelian comedy is by overcoming those obstacles, by moving away from your weakness.

(13:22)

And that is required by secondary characters as much as it's required by the protagonist. If nothing else, this book is a great example of a tragedy, a super high, someone at the peak of their career, fame, money, and love, and then falling and not overcoming those obstacles, both internal and external, resulting in a tragic ending. And look, this book will show you the journey of Chris Farley, all the highs, all the lows. But one of the hardest things for me to hear was, I believe it was the final relapse time or close to it, he got scared that “Black Sheep”, which he was forced to do contractually, which he thought was shitty, and saying yes to “Beverly Hills Ninja” was sort of like the straw that broke the camel's back because he was convinced to do it after multiple times, turning it down. It's like that fat guy in tights role that he just couldn't escape from his entire life, but for, I don't know, $6 million people wouldn't let him turn down that kind of money. People in his own life.

(14:29)

Then it screens and he basically has a meltdown. His manager says, “After the first screening of ‘Beverly Hills 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'd ever been through.” And what made it even worse was earlier that year, she had brought Chris together with David Mamet, someone who you've heard me talk about on this podcast that featured one of his books. And I had no idea about this story. And together they agreed to collaborate on his first dramatic film, which was going to be a biopic of Fatty Arbuckle, which for all intents and purposes, was going to finally shine a light on this character who is loved for something that he's struggling with. And Brillstein even says Mamet loved him. And he wrote the biopic for Chris, and she knew that it was going to change his career.

(15:29)

So it was almost like all great tragedies right on the brink of something super special. And then this just complete meltdown occurs where he died. He was in a hotel room with a hooker or something like that, and they found him overdosed and just this completely, completely terrible ending to an absolutely brilliant career. But it's like his brother says, “He was hilarious, yes, but he was also very religious, very caring—and very troubled and addicted person. It's a sad story, no question about it. But it's Chris.” All right, so I've been going on long enough, probably longer than I should have, but this book and this individual has captivated me for a very long time. And even just speaking about it touches me. So obviously I think you should go read the book. There is a lot of humor in it, and there is a lot of darkness in it, as I have alluded to, but I do think it will shine a light on some huge themes that we all face.

(16:36)

And I want to remind you, if you are someone who is facing addiction of any kind, to go seek help because there are people out there who love you for who you are and not the character that you are playing to protect the pain that you are experiencing. Okay, so now as I close this up, I just wanted to remind you of two or three things. One, most obviously I have a new book out “Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story”. If you want to learn more about that, the link will be in the show notes. Also, if you enjoyed this episode, please remember to click subscribe on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on. It is the best way to get it in front of more eyeballs, in ears, and in return, inspire more men to read. If you want to connect with me, you can two ways, either on my website, DouglasVigliotti.com, or on Instagram @DouglasVigliotti. It's the only social media that I have. And lastly, I wanted to thank you so much for tuning in and listening. If you want more information on this podcast, including signing up for the monthly newsletter, all you have to do is head over to the website BooksforMen.org.