Part 30 (1/2)

CHRIS PARNELL, Cast Member: I introduced myself to Tom Brokaw in the NBC gym locker room one day. I said, ”I'm the guy from SNL who does an impression of you.” He said, ”Oh, right, I've heard of that.” We had a pleasant conversation, actually. He told me about the old days of the show, when Belus.h.i.+ and those guys were on and he used to come and watch it with his daughters. And he talked about his daughter having gone to Marci Klein's sweet sixteen birthday party at Studio 54.

He was not naked, no. I think I waited until he was getting into his gym clothes to talk to him. It's a beautiful body, though. Glorious.

Although the Sat.u.r.day Night Live casts of the eighties and nineties hardly had the reputation for sybaritic self-indulgence of the original seventies cast, the show's mortality rate continued to be distressingly high. Among the most shocking deaths in the history of the series was that of Phil Hartman, who'd been with the show from the mideighties to the midnineties playing a whole chorus of characters and perfecting particularly deft impressions of Bill Clinton, Ed McMahon, and Frank Sinatra. Hartman was shot to death by his wife, Brynn, who then killed herself.

Far less unexpected but obviously as tragic was the death of Chris Farley, the tubby and childlike cutup who had tried - too hard and too successfully - to pattern his life and career after John Belus.h.i.+'s. Farley died at the same age, thirty-three, and of essentially the same cause: heedless and delirious excess.

JON LOVITZ:.

Because Phil could do anything, he had more stuff. He'd be in like eight sketches, you know. He used to go, ”G.o.d, it's too much,” because I'd have like five sketches, which was great, but he'd be in like eight or ten every week. But he loved doing the show, you know. He did.

The first time Phil was offered the show, he turned it down. And then later on he said yes. I said, ”So did you say yes, Phil, because I said you've got to come on and do this?” He said, ”Well, no.” I said, ”Well, why did you say yes?” He said, ”Because Joel Silver called me and told me I'd be crazy not to take the job and do it.”

I'll say this about missing him: He was my favorite person to work with. He was my older brother. I loved him. I idolized him. I liked him and yet he was like my grandmother - he'd be so excited to see me he just made me feel great about myself. He could do anything. He would just get into something and learn everything about it and go on to the next. The last acting job he had was on a pilot that I did. That was the last job and three weeks later he was killed. It was awful; it was so horrible. In my life there is just a huge gap that will never be filled and part of me just feels lost.

JAN HOOKS, Cast Member: I'll tell you who was really instrumental in getting me through was Mr. Phil Hartman. He was my rock. Luckily, I had a lot of stuff with him. He was just, you know, the Rock of Gibraltar. And we did a Third Rock together - less than a month before he died.

TERRY TURNER, Writer: Phil was on the Third Rock from the Sun cliff-hanger. He played Jan's psychotic boyfriend from Florida. He was on the cliff-hanger, and Third Rock was coming back the next season. And we were in New York, and we heard that Phil had been shot. We were stunned. I mean, it was one of those things where you think maybe I heard it wrong or maybe when I wake up tomorrow it won't have happened, because he was such a great guy, such a great guy. Everybody liked Phil. Phil was like the centerpoint of the show. He was the thing that held everything together, and he could make the simplest stuff brilliant just by reading it a particular way, by his posture, by his look. We were devastated. I think everybody that knew him was. You couldn't believe that it actually happened.

And it did have an effect I think on everybody, to think, ”If that can happen to them, what's to stop it from happening to any of us?” Sitting down to dinner one day, going to a wrap party the next day, and then the next day - you're gone. It was really shocking. Of all the people you would have put into that scenario, the last one you would have picked would have been Phil.

ANDY BRECKMAN:.

Just like baseball fans and baseball fanatics put together the best Yankee team ever, so the Sat.u.r.day Night Live dream cast is another game that the writers play - and Phil Hartman makes almost every list.

JAN HOOKS:.

My friend Bill Tush at CNN called me. He said, ”Jan, there's something coming through on the AP that Phil Hartman committed suicide.” And I said, ”Oh yeah, right, Bill. Right, yeah. How are you, Bill?” And we chatted and he said, ”Wait a minute, wait a minute, there's more information coming through.” Then he came back and said, ”Jan, it's true. Phil is dead.”

I went out and bought chocolate turtle ice cream and, I think, pizza rolls, and just stayed in bed for two days.

MIKE MYERS:.

I was close to Phil Hartman. We both kind of came from the same place, which is we loved doing characters and came from ensembles. I just wors.h.i.+pped Phil. I looked up to him. I think he's one of the best character-based comedians ever. My office was next to his. I used to just check in with him all the time, just pop into his office and shoot the breeze. He was extremely, extremely supportive and hilarious. He never gave up on a sketch and his work ethic was amazing and I just dug him. I enjoyed everybody, but if you're asking me who was special, I would say Phil Hartman.

I sat beside him at the read-through table. They used to call him ”the glue.” If he was at a read-through and in a sketch, Phil would be incredibly generous to some rookie writer by selling the h.e.l.l out of this kid's piece. He would never tank your piece. Afterwards you would just hear ”glue, glue, glue” from people around the read-through table. And then someone would always have to tell Phil, ”They're not saying 'boo,' they're saying 'glue.'” He just really was a mentor for me.

The day he died was one of the weirdest days of my life. Just complete and utter disbelief, complete and utter despair. I'm sitting here talking about it not believing that we're talking about this. I still can't believe it, I'm still devastated by it. It is a profound sadness that we're sitting here talking about Sat.u.r.day Night Live and the question is about Phil Hartman's death. I can't get over it.

KEVIN NEALON, Cast Member: I was coming back from somewhere, I didn't know if it was a gag or what. I was flying at the Burbank Airport and I was walking from the gate to baggage right through the terminal, and I looked at the TVs over the bar and I saw shots of Phil. I thought, ”Oh, he must have a movie coming out.”

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 rehea.r.s.e, 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 f.u.c.ked 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, f.u.c.kin' Chris. The switch-board's never busy. Something must have happened. Ah, s.h.i.+t. f.u.c.k, 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 - Sat.u.r.day 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 drugs that, of course, made it much, much worse.

There was a Sat.u.r.day Night Live reunion at the Comedy Festival. And we had a ”Mr. Show” party, and Chris showed up. He wanted to speak to me, and somebody came to get me, and I went out and Chris was in the alley in a limo with like five a.s.shole party kids from Aspen. They were all smoking pot, and he just looked like - I just knew he wasn't going to make it. He was going to pop. He was bloated and flushed and looked terrible. That was the last time I saw him.

The more interesting thing than seeing him in that state was when I saw him probably a year and a half before that. He was with David Spade at a party in L.A. I'd never seen Chris say no to a drink, but they had a keg at this party and Chris was turning them down. And he seemed incredibly in control - like a different person. He seemed really empowered, whatever he'd been going through, and in control of himself. And I thought that he'd really turned a corner, and that was almost more amazing than seeing him the way he was in Aspen a year later. It was to see him and think, ”Wow, there's really hope,” you know?

I think his life was pretty chaotic. Between flying around the country and being in these different sorts of spheres of influence - L.A. with his friends, and Chicago with probably a different group of friends, and maybe Madison with his family, and who knows where else when he was on location. I think it's a pretty chaotic lifestyle, and without the structure of Sat.u.r.day Night Live around him, that might have been all Chris needed to get really screwed up.

DAVID SPADE:.

On the first day of Tommy Boy, he was so nervous he drank twenty-nine cups of cappuccino throughout the day and thought it was a big joke. I thought, I couldn't do that, and if he can do that, and he can drink and he can get up, and he can go out all night and be more chipper in the morning than I am, and I slept fine, then I said, ”Okay, we are just built differently.” And then when I heard that he had died, I thought, ”Yeah, there is some stuff that he can't handle.” It goes too far, but when you keep chasing a high like that and you can handle it, then there is no reason not to go to the next level.

TIM HERLIHY:.

Chris Farley's death was the most devastating thing that happened while I was there, for sure. Everybody was very emotional and it was very hard that week. That's probably my hardest week. And I feel bad. I think Samuel L. Jackson was the host, and I think everybody was so full of emotion that, you know, we probably could have done a better job.

Chris was such a great weapon in the writers' a.r.s.enal. If you were like writing a sketch and you got to page six and nothing was happening, you would just say, okay, ”Farley enters.” I did that so many times in so many sketches. It was a trick that always worked and never failed, especially in read-through.

NORM MACDONALD:.

I never thought Chris would die, because first of all, I don't think anybody will ever die. It just seems like if you're alive you'll stay alive. But also because he was so strong, you know. Like, I would always worry about myself, because I can't drink and I can't smoke and I can't do drugs. I'm always freaked out about like I'm too fragile and I'll die. Spade seems to me like somebody that's very mortal, but Farley was this big, strong guy. It seemed like he could do anything. He was the funniest, that guy. Chris Farley - oh my G.o.d.

His comedy was like soph.o.m.oric in the best sense of the word. He would just do any crazy thing for a laugh. He'd get naked and act like a little girl. He'd put a pool cue up his a.s.s or something. One time, when I first met him, I was at this retreat right before Sat.u.r.day Night Live started, he just kept breaking me up. You'd laugh and he'd try to do more and more, and then by the end of the night he was like doing his impression of a salad. He'd take all this salad dressing and pour it over his head and then put like tomatoes in his a.s.s and stuff. It was great. He could make anyone laugh - smart or dumb, young or old. If you liked him, if you hated him, it didn't matter.

I did a movie with him; it was like the last movie he ever did. It was the summer of his death, so I saw him then. I worked with him for six weeks. And oh my G.o.d, he was big. He had gained a lot of weight. And he was just crazy, reckless, at that point. And when he came back and hosted the show, it was like madness.

ALEC BALDWIN:.

I like all of them, but the person I did have a special fondness for was Chris Farley. Even if you were somebody who was on the wagon and didn't drink and didn't take drugs, you wanted to go out and just get completely loaded with Chris. You wanted to go out and be with him and do whatever you had to do and just ingest whatever potion you had to ingest to make you look at life the way Chris did. He was so crazy and free and fun. And he was so childlike in a wonderful way, you thought, ”How can I get to where he's at?”

TIM KAZURINSKY, Cast Member: I have a bunch of breakfast buddies in Chicago who were all in Chris Farley's company, and I told the Trib I didn't want them writing a thing about how his friends ”didn't care.” I have breakfast with all the guys in his former company at Second City, and some are AA, and they would not go with him to a place where alcohol was served. They'd say, ”Come on over here for breakfast.” They would not be a party to his doing drugs, and they did say, ”f.u.c.k you, you're killing yourself.” Those buddies - one of them was his AA sponsor - they didn't leave him in the lurch. They talked to him all the time, and they just said, ”It's your choice. You hang with us, or you die.”

When you're getting $6 million a movie, as one of them said, you can buy a lot of new friends overnight. And he did.

AL FRANKEN, Writer: With Belus.h.i.+ we did not know that you died that way. We didn't understand what addiction does and what was going on. With Farley we understood it, he understood it, because he went to rehab about twelve times. He honestly, honestly struggled and tried. He was a wonderful, sweet, loving guy. He was a fan of other people. He loved his family. I don't know what it was. That was really sad.

ROBERT SMIGEL:.

After Chris died and I thought about the things that could have been done and talked to people who were close to him, I came to realize that no matter what I felt, no matter how frustrated I was, I hadn't seen a lot of Chris in those last few years. He'd been on the West Coast doing his movies, and every now and then I would hear something or see something and get frustrated and make judgments and confront people - but then I would retreat back into my own problems. So when it came time to talk at Chris's memorial service in New York, there was a part of me that wanted to address my frustration without placing blame on any individuals, because I didn't feel like I was involved enough to make those kind of judgments. So when I spoke, I talked about the disappointment I felt in what had happened, but from my own perspective, and just apologized to Chris personally for whatever I hadn't done. I felt like if anyone heard something in what I said that struck a chord with them, then good, then I could speak for them a little bit too. But at the end of the day, I felt like I could only really speak for my own feelings of letting him down.

Sat.u.r.day Night Live had celebrated, in restrained ways, its fifteenth and twentieth anniversaries. There'd been no fifth-anniversary party, of course, because in its fifth year the show had gone all to h.e.l.l. But it was nothing if not resilient, and that resilience was commemorated in the show's biggest-ever blowout, a three-hour prime-time twenty-fifth-anniversary party on September 26, 1999. Of those still living who'd ever been part of the SNL family, Eddie Murphy was probably the only major graduate who stayed away, reputedly out of some ill-defined animosity toward the show that had made him first famous, then rich, then a movie star. Otherwise it was as gala as galas get, with expatriates and former foes burying hatchets to join in the celebration and more than 22 million viewers watching from their homes. Highlights and oddities from a quarter-century of salutary troublemaking pa.s.sed in review.