Before the world met Chris Farley

Though he’d spent years dreaming about this moment, he hadn’t really planned what he’d say once he was up there.

It went downhill fast.

“What he was doing wasn’t really stand-up, he was just making stuff up on the spot,” recalls local comedian Eric Alver, who watched it unfold. “There was no structure whatsoever. He was just being kind of manic and out of control.”

Onlookers quietly stared at the big guy, unsure what he was even attempting to do up there. After a few more awkward minutes, it was over. Farley gave a defeated “thanks” and walked off to a smattering of polite applause. There’d be no sympathetic pats on the back from the other comics milling around that night as they purposely kept their distance from him. Feeling dejected after attempting another open mic there with the same result, Farley stopped coming around.

“Everyone had told him his whole life that he was so funny, he just thought stand-up is what you do,” remembers his older brother Tom Farley Jr. “But he bombed so badly and just didn’t get how it derailed so fast.”

Farley’s ill-fated stand-up career was grounded before liftoff. It was the kind of painful gut punch that can destroy an aspiring comedian’s confidence. Most people would have moved on, satisfied that they’d given it the old college try. But most people weren’t Chris Farley. Comedy was already his lifeblood. It was his everything. And in just five years he’d be performing to an audience of over 10 million people every Saturday night.

Born to Run

Christopher Crosby Farley was born in Madison in February 1964, the third of five children in a tight-knit Irish Catholic family. It was a household full of laughter, and not surprisingly, Farley was often the instigator.

After graduating from Edgewood High School in 1982, he went off to Marquette University, majoring in business studies. Although he didn’t enjoy much academic success his freshman year, he joined the rugby team and excelled, both on the field and off, with the close group of teammates shaping his social life.

During his sophomore year, Farley met a new freshman teammate named Pat Finn. The two bonded over their shared love of comedy and became fast friends.

“We would meticulously read National Lampoon and watch David Letterman, Newhart and ‘Saturday Night Live.’ Anything we could get our hands on, comedy-wise. We’d learn all the skits and try to do them ourselves,” recalls Finn.

The pair soon earned a reputation as two of the funniest guys at Marquette, leaving laughter echoing behind them in classrooms, bars and parties across campus.

When Farley learned that Wimpy’s Hunt Club, an eastside Milwaukee bar, hosted weekly open mics, an idea formed: The two could perform there together — their first step in becoming a comedy dream team. Finn was apprehensive. Performing onstage in front of strangers was a big leap from goofing at a house party. But he agreed to do it if they had material ready, so the two headed back to Farley’s room for a writing session.

“What should we write about?” Farley asked. “You know, airplanes can be pretty funny,” replied Finn. Farley’s face lit up. “Yeah, and airplane food!”

Two ideas in the can. Finn jotted them down. “Awesome! What else?” he asked. They stared blankly at each other. Nothing. A half-minute of silence went by before Farley said, with all sincerity, “Man, comedy writing is hard!” Hoping to jog loose some creativity, he mixed a few greyhounds and, over the next hour, the drinks flowed a lot more freely than the funny ideas. Eventually, they wrapped the writing session and headed to the bars. Finn opened his notebook the next day in class and saw only three words: “Airplanes — Airplane food.”

When the pair arrived at Wimpy’s that night, a large man approached them wearing an old patchwork sport coat. He turned out to be the manager. Chomping on the nub of a fat cigar, he barked out the lay of the land. “This is how it works. You got five minutes up there. You do well, I’ll put you on the bill again. You do really well, I’ll see about getting you some cash.” The two signed up, then peered nervously through the smoke-filled bar. Carnegie Hall it was not. The stage, if you could call it that, was a hasty construction of a dozen upside-down plastic milk crates duct-taped together and stuffed in a corner. The audience was primarily disengaged, consisting mostly of late-shift workers on their lunch breaks from a nearby watch factory.

The two were counting on their natural chemistry to win over the crowd. Their friends thought they were hilarious — naturally the barflies at Wimpy’s would too, right? But as they waited to go up, doubt began to surface. Farley turned to Finn, “If it’s not going good, we’ll need an out.” Finn agreed. “OK, you’ll be Gilligan, and I’ll be the Skipper,” Farley said, “and I’ll start hitting you with my hat.”

Onstage, they started riffing on their first comedy goldmine: airplanes. No laughs, only stares. Airplane food didn’t fare any better. “It was the feeling of, ‘Wow, this really is a lot harder than we thought,’ ” remembers Finn. Panic began to set in, but before Finn could even attempt to right the ship, Farley was yelling, “Gilligan!” and wildly whacking him over the head with his hat. They were only a minute into their set.

Farley’s outburst elicited smirks from a few of the patrons. It wasn’t much, but it was something. “To be fair, Chris always had a pretty solid Skipper impersonation,” laughs Finn. But those smirks were close to the only reaction they’d receive that night. They planned to return the following week but backed out when their rugby teammates caught wind. “No way did we want our other friends to see us. We were awful,” says Finn.

(That early disappointment didn’t stop Finn: He went on to a successful acting career in movies, television and commercials, with memorable appearances in both “Seinfeld” and “Friends.”)

Farley continued to struggle academically, finding it difficult to focus on business classes when he mostly just wanted to make people laugh. He contemplated dropping out, but with advice from the dean and backing from his parents — who said they’d support whatever he wanted to do as long as he had a degree — he switched his major to communications and added a minor in theater.

Wary of how a rugby player in the theater department would be perceived, Farley played it safe at first and mostly assisted with building stage sets. But after landing a small role as a patrol officer in the school’s production of Sam Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class,” his reservations vanished. When the time came for him to take the dance class that was a prerequisite for his degree, he chose ballet — and approached it with the same determination he showed on the rugby field.

In the fall of Farley’s junior year, Farley, Finn and a few other friends signed up to perform a parody of “The Dating Game” at the Marquette Follies talent show. They attempted rehearsals at campus-area bars, but those proved to be unproductive — 50-cent beer specials were the main culprit. On the night of the show, they found themselves about to go on in front of 800 students, clueless about what they’d do. Farley quickly sprang into action and assigned roles to everyone: “You’re the emcee, you’re the farmer, you’re the cool guy.” He then pulled out a pair of glasses, put them on and said, “And I’m the nerdy guy. Let’s go!”

Miraculously — and even though they didn’t have a bachelorette for the bachelors in their parody — the skit worked. When the emcee called for Bachelor No. 3, Farley sprinted out from behind the curtain at full speed and purposely tripped. The spotlight followed him as he slid nearly the full length of the stage on his stomach. The crowd erupted with laughter and applause. He stumbled up, clumsily knocked over his stool and, shortly thereafter, fell off it. The crowd went wild.

Their act wrapped to thunderous applause. As they left the stage, an elated Farley grabbed Finn by the lapels, looked him in the eyes and shouted, “We’re gonna be doing this for the rest of our lives!”

After graduation, Farley was back in Madison and took the only job he could land: working for his dad at the family business. The Scotch Oil Co., which had family roots dating back to the 1930s, secured road-paving contracts with the state and county and distributed the work to contractors.

“There were literally no expectations at all for Chris from Dad. It was all just a relationship game and he thrived in that environment,” says his brother, Tom Farley. “Chris couldn’t even spell ‘asphalt’ but Dad put him in front of clients and they loved him.”

The job was easy — and unfulfilling. Farley’s passion for laughs hadn’t wavered, but with limited opportunities for performing live comedy in Madison and his wounds from The Comedy Cellar still fresh, he was at a crossroads, and the smoothest way forward was clearly paved for him in asphalt. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life,” he’d later recount about this period. “I was very fearful.” Then one night, Farley, quite literally, stumbled into The Ark and everything changed.

The Raider of The Ark

Dennis Kern and Elaine Eldridge met while working on a small theater production in New York City in the late ’70s. Both came from classical theater backgrounds, but Kern grew tired of trying to make a living in big-city theater. The couple compromised on moving to Madison instead of the northwoods in 1981, with visions of starting their own theater company. They wanted to present a mix of both scripted repertory productions and improvisational comedy revues.

They named their new endeavor The Ark, and their first performances occurred at Memorial Union and Dragonwood Pub. After a year, they began permanent weekly shows at Club de Wash.

Open auditions attracted actors from the Madison community, and the university supplied them with a steady stream of eager students wanting to perform. They soon developed a loyal following. Noisy bars were not the most ideal place for live theater, so in 1985 they were able to purchase an old Brinks armored truck garage on Bassett Street and, on a shoestring budget, transformed it into the 99-seat Ark Improvisational & Repertory Theatre.

By the time Farley heard about The Ark, in 1986, the company had already helped develop SNL alumna Joan Cusack and a string of others who had gone on to Chicago’s legendary improv troupe The Second City.

One fall evening, Farley invited a few friends to check out one of The Ark’s Saturday improv shows. They agreed, but only after pit stops at a few campus-area bars. When they finally arrived, they were quite inebriated and had missed half the show.

Even so, Farley was mesmerized. During an audience participation portion, he began shouting outrageous suggestions and getting some of the biggest laughs of the night from both the performers and fellow audience members. He knew he had to be part of this. After the show, he stuck around to search for whoever was in charge.

“It was late, I was getting ready to go home and I see this drunk guy walking toward me,” says Kern. “I thought, ‘Oh shit, this is all I need.’ ” A disheveled Farley, barely coherent, mumbled, “Wanna do this … uh, to do this improv. Comedy. I do this.”

“I was just being polite,” remembers Kern, “and told him, ‘Yeah, yeah, come on by tomorrow’ — thinking he wouldn’t remember anything.” He politely shooed Farley out the door, believing that would be the last he’d see of him.

Come morning, Farley did remember and, as luck would have it, his timing was impeccable: The Ark was holding auditions that very afternoon for its new troupe. Animal Crackers would be The Ark’s answer to the increasingly popular theater sports phenomenon, an offshoot of short-form improvisational theater where performers are divided into teams to compete against each other in a series of fast-paced scenes.

Milwaukee-based ComedySportz had expanded into Madison in 1985, and the weekly shows were well attended, especially by college crowds. Kern detested the format, but as its success started cutting into The Ark’s, he hatched a plan to attract its audience without sinking to its level.

“The idea of using improv games to score one team or player against another runs in direct opposition to the craft itself,” he explains. “So we created a big spinner with various animals on it that audience members could spin. It allowed them to become more physically involved in the action without the ‘sports’ and competitive antics.”

Kern and Eldridge would oversee Animal Crackers with a seasoned improviser, Jodi Cohen, serving as a mentor. “He really had no sense of how it all worked,” says Cohen of Farley on audition day. “He had a friend with him and started smoking a cigarette during his audition. Things you just shouldn’t do.”

Minus the smoke, Farley’s audition was fairly tame until he suddenly clutched his chest, hurled his body off his chair and hit the floor hard. Remembers Cohen, “My first thoughts were, ‘My God! What’s happening? I hope we have insurance.’ But it was just part of his audition.”

Eldridge and Cohen weren’t sold on Farley. He seemed too unruly for the new troupe — but he definitely had something. Kern would be holding additional auditions the following week, so Farley was told to come back for a second round.

Jesse Lee Montague was auditioning on that second day and remembers a nervous Farley pacing back and forth in The Ark’s lobby as he waited his turn. Kern called them into the theater one by one. Each audition consisted of simply reacting to an imaginary phone call. It was a technique straight out of The Second City playbook, and Farley impressed him with his performance.

“Afterwards he was asking Dennis a million questions,” recalls Montague. “ ‘What’s going on? When will we know?’ He was still super nervous but really pumped up and excited, just being very overzealous about it all.”

Farley soon learned that he’d made the cut, and he was beside himself. For the group’s first rehearsal, he showed up all smiles, carrying a case of beer. When a taken-aback Cohen told him, “Absolutely not,” he laughed. “But I’ll share!”

Brian Stack, a tall, curly-haired UW–Madison grad student, also earned a spot in the new troupe and remembers meeting Farley that day. “He was wearing his blue Marquette rugby jacket, just like the one in ‘Tommy Boy,’ and had a bandana around his head. I thought, ‘Wow! Who is this guy?’ ” He adds, “In so many ways Chris was the polar opposite of me. He’d be slamming off the walls while I’d be sitting in a chair, barely bending my knees. But we both just loved comedy so much that we immediately bonded.”

(Stack would go on to a successful career in the world of late-night comedy, spending 18 years writing for Conan O’Brien and the past seven years with Stephen Colbert.)

With six weeks to go before their first show, the Animal Crackers rehearsed in earnest. In addition to learning the foundations of improv, the troupe had to know the dozens of short-form improv games they’d be performing on any given night. Every show would follow the same formula of five games in the first act, an intermission and five additional games. They debuted on Jan. 8, 1987. Though uneven at times, overall it went well and the green cast meshed together nicely on stage.

For Farley, group improv proved a stunning revelation. It was as if he’d been storing an enormous well of comedic energy his entire life and had finally found the proper channel through which to release it.

“Alone on stage just didn’t work,” says his brother Tom Farley. “He was built for ensemble.”

Improv was Chris Farley’s equalizer. He was now boundless.

“Look at That Guy!”

Out of the gate, Farley seemed to be operating on a different level, displaying a remarkable degree of fearlessness rarely seen in someone so new to the craft. “When I saw him take those first steps onstage, I thought he was just raw talent,” recalls Kern. “He had the ability to completely penetrate a moment and just be there.”

Unhindered by the inhibitions that hold so many fresh-faced performers back, Farley immediately began creating and performing several of his own characters on The Ark’s stage to hilarious results. Perhaps the most famous of these was an early version of Matt Foley, the motivational speaker. While Foley wasn’t yet “living in a van down by the river,” the mannerisms were there, along with his unmistakable, exasperated voice.

Chris would also do characters that likely mimicked the businessmen he encountered while working for his father, often presenting them as sleazy and operating on a few scotches: “How you doing, sweetheart? I got $50 in my expense account, so I’m gonna buy you a drink.”

While his weekly performances featured the same loud and boisterous energy and spectacular crashes that he’d later become known for, his characters didn’t always fall into that category.

“Some of my favorite things he did at The Ark had nothing to do with his physicality or size. They were just subtle, little character choices he’d make, like his heartbroken TV weatherman,” says Stack, deploying his best Farley impression: “ ‘Hi, um. Before I do tonight’s weather forecast, I want to apologize. I didn’t predict the storm and I got a letter from this little girl who said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was going to rain? You ruined my birthday picnic.’ … I am so sorry! I didn’t know! I screwed up!’ ” Stack continues: “It was such a vulnerable and sweet character, much like the ‘Chris Farley Show’ skits he’d later perform on SNL, where he’d be smacking himself in the head.”

One of Farley’s jovial characters was Mr. Carruthers, who would usually be hosting a backyard barbecue and obsessively talking about the Johnsonville Brats he was grilling. Farley would also pull out a “Godfather” impersonation from time to time, although it was hard to say if it was his own interpretation of Marlon Brando or simply a version of the one his idol John Belushi performed on SNL in the ’70s.

“Chris had an arsenal of hilarious characters that he could spin in a million different directions,” remembers Animal Crackers member David Rubin. “It was that ‘living by your wits’ nature of improv, where everything was an amalgamation. So sometimes one of his characters would play a shoe salesman, while at other times a scientist frantically fighting a Mothra in some dysfunctional sci-fi scene. It was always super fun to see where they would pop up, and he just found a wonderful way to cohabitate with them.”

The all-hands-on-deck approach of a small theater meant that on more than one occasion, Farley and Stack spent Saturday afternoons handing out “two-for-one” admission coupons to passersby on State Street. “No one wanted to take them,” recalls Stack. “We’d be like, ‘Hey, you want to see a comedy show? No? Live Comedy?’ They’d walk right past us.” With boredom setting in, Farley tried a different approach. “He started running up to people and shouting things like, ‘See more of your family!’ And they’d be like, ‘Huh?’ They’d be baffled as they walked away, but they’d have that coupon in their hand.”

By the spring of ’87, it was clear that Farley had something special. “He was just funnier than anybody,” says Montague. “If anything was falling flat, he would just turn around and show plumber’s butt. Pretend he was working on a car or something. It was his ‘old reliable’ and it always brought the house down.”

Madisonians were starting to take notice of Farley as well. Word spread and audience numbers increased — to the point where they even saw the occasional full house. Everyone wanted to see Farley.

“What amazed me was for a man his size, how agile and in control of his body he was,” Kern says. “It added to his audience appeal because who would ever suspect a man that big could balance on one leg like a ballerina?”

Farley’s comedic exploits weren’t limited to just The Ark’s stage. On occasion, the company was booked for private events in and around Dane County. Seeking any opportunity to perform, Farley would often volunteer. While not the most glamorous venues for shows, they provided opportunities for him to demonstrate his versatility and appeal to different audiences.

One memorable show occurred at a frat house on Langdon Street. “My God, those fraternity brothers just bonded with Chris,” says Eldridge. “He had that ‘I’m going to make something happen’ quality that they just immediately identified with. He was living with fire inside and they could feel it.”

Chris also performed with The Ark at area high schools and instantaneously had a natural bond with the young adults. “Those kids immediately said, ‘Look at that guy!’ ” adds Eldridge. “It was like we had a secret weapon and after a while, it turned into ‘How can we just get out of his way and support him?’ ”

Whether under the glow of the stage lights or the harsh fluorescent lighting of an office conference room, Farley brought the same intensity to every performance. “I remember the absurdity of it all,” says Animal Crackers member Stacey Rippner. “Here’s Chris, chugging a bottle of Pepto Bismol right before we had to do skits based on suggestions from insurance salesmen.”

Farley wanted to take part in The Ark’s repertory productions as well. In late spring, he landed the lead role in “The Ruffian On the Stair,” a dark comedy by Joe Orton. Traditional theater wasn’t new to him from his days at the Marquette theater department, but balancing the extra rehearsals with his weekly improv performances and working full time for his father proved to be a challenge. After a few rehearsals, Farley pulled Eldridge aside to tell her he was bowing out. “I told him how great the part would be for him,” remembers Eldridge, “but he just said, ‘No. I’m sorry. I just can’t do it.’ ”

Farley and Brian Stack were later picked for “Cowboys No. 2,” a two-person, single-act play by Sam Shepard. Stack says Farley brought a wonderful vulnerability, comic sensibility and charisma to his character, Chet, a cowboy lost in modern-day urban sprawl.

The two ran lines together in early August. Everything appeared normal, but in truth, Farley was keeping a secret.

Pat Finn, a year behind him at Marquette, had just graduated and was about to move to Chicago. With the confidence gained from his experience at The Ark and the financial support of his parents, Farley was ready to join him, and the two would pursue comedy in the Windy City together. Having already secured an apartment and classes at The Second City’s training center, Farley would be leaving in a few weeks.

Farley broke the news to Stack. “He told me that he had to go, and I understood why,” says Stack. “It’s not that he wanted to leave Madison or The Ark, he just had to go to Chicago and pursue his dream. He couldn’t wait any longer.”

While Kern was happy for Farley, he was also frustrated by his decision. “The talent was there, and I didn’t want to hold him back, but I thought it was too early,” says Kern, who felt Farley needed to be more grounded within the craft of improv and also get a better handle on his own personal issues. Farley’s family had their reservations, too. “We thought he’d be back in Madison in six months,” says Tom Farley Jr., “but he never came back.”

With fond farewells and gratitude to everyone at The Ark, Chris Farley packed his bags and headed to Chicago in the summer of 1987.

Climbing Into the Cannon

Soon after, Farley began performing with the ImprovOlympic under the tutelage of Charna Halpern and Del Close, the renowned Second City guru who’d mentored a generation of comedy legends, including John Belushi. Classes at The Second City not only helped build a better foundation for Farley’s talents but also made it easier for the company to spot a true gem.

The Second City hired Farley for its touring company in January 1989, and he was quickly promoted to the Main Stage. It was a seismic jump that routinely took months or years for even the brightest up-and-comers. For Farley it took weeks. Farley’s nightly performances created a buzz in comedy circles that hummed as far away as New York City. He was soon singled out by a “Saturday Night Live” talent scout, prompting SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels to fly to Chicago in August 1990 to watch Farley perform. Michaels hired him the next day without even so much as a standard audition. Just three years after leaving The Ark, Chris Farley was now SNL’s newest cast member.

After saying his goodbyes in Chicago, Farley came home to Madison before setting off for New York. Just days before he was to report to SNL, writer and cartoonist John Kovalic interviewed him for a Wisconsin State Journal profile at his parents’ Maple Bluff home. Kovalic was surprised to find Farley rather quiet and self-effacing that day, quite in contrast to the larger-than-life personality he was expecting.

Their conversation flowed naturally, void of comedic outbursts. Farley was in the calm before the storm — both humbled that his dreams were about to come true and uneasy about the tidal wave of change that would soon be crashing down on him.

When Kovalic asked if he was nervous about making the big jump to SNL, Farley admitted, “I’m shaking in my boots.”

Farley then peered out to Lake Mendota. Its calm waters spread peacefully across Madison for him like a faithful security blanket. It was the same serene backdrop that had watched over him since he was just a funny kid, showboating in his parents’ yard with friends.

“Someone described live TV like being shot out of a cannon,” continued Farley. “It’s going to be a shock but a welcome one.”

Farley’s eyes then returned to Kovalic’s, and he smiled.

Kurt Stream is a freelance writer and author born and raised in Madison and currently residing in Tacoma, Washington. @kurt_wawi

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