I'm Not High (25 page)

But by late Tuesday night, things with Chris got shady again. The office that we shared had a fogged glass door. You couldn’t exactly see through it, but you could see shadows. During show week we practically lived there, and it was extremely late at night when we heard a slight yet persistent knock on the door.

Now I began to sense an evil feeling, way darker than the vibe I felt when Chris was sweating in the pitch meeting. A woman’s silhouette took shape in the glass. I opened the door and there stood a tall, young, upscale (somewhat) brunette hooker. And next to her stood a slightly stockier hooker. Both looked to be in their late twenties, in cocktail dresses, and they looked
messed up,
definitely not caring about who I was or what the show was.

They had gruesome, vacant, hell-beast looks in their eyes, and they marched right past me to our couch. Chris teetered behind them, disheveled and sweaty in a button-down shirt and blazer, and he followed them directly in.

“Meet my friends,” he slavered. His manic, happy charisma had given way to something completely deranged. He sat down in my chair and motioned to the door. “Shut it,” he whispered. From his suit coat pocket he pulled a big plastic bag and from it, onto my desk, he dumped a mountain of white powder. I looked at the hookers. They were all business. This was routine for them but not my thing at all.

I bailed. I walked down to the writer Tim Herlihy’s office. I was freaking out. The whole exchange was weird and disgusting. I popped my head in Tim’s door.

“I just wanted to let you know,” I said, “because I already got in trouble once this week, that Chris is in our office now, with two hookers and a big pile of powder.”

And Tim just chuckled to himself and said, “Yeah it’s bad.” He knew it couldn’t be stopped. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing you can control. You’re not going to get in trouble for this. Go home.”

So I went and walked around the city, wondering if this was really what success was all about.

The next day there was a dry read of all the sketches that were being considered for that week’s show. Even as you got further into the week, you were never sure what skits were going to make it or what might be introduced late in the game. Sometimes Thursday would roll around and Lorne would say, “We could really use a Goat Boy this week.”

And I’d be like, “Really? It’s
Thursday
. Are you sure? It’s gonna be awful.”

The bizarreness with Chris continued. He was sitting between Lorne and Molly Shannon and he leapt up to do the moshing part of “Break Time.” He jumped around and shook his head violently. So far so good. But while Chris was shaking his head, a giant, bloody booger came flying out of his nose and landed right in front of Molly.

“Ewwww!” she gasped loudly.

Without missing a beat though, Chris, still violently shaking his head, swiped a hand down across the bloody chunk and put it in his pocket, like it was a quarter or something. Colin Quinn had been laughing his ass off, and when he saw that he froze like a cartoon. Chris finished the sketch and acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

To this day, to me, it was all very confusing. Here we have an extremely talented, funny, beloved guy surrounded by hookers and drugs, who has giant bloody boogers rumbling out of his nose and is sweaty and twitching 24/7. Where are his people? Who is watching him? Who is supposed to be helping him? Nobody apparently. Though there was no shortage of enablers and hangers-on making sure they partied with Chris.

Throughout it all, my wife kept telling me to pray for him. And I did, over and over. I was confused and bummed out. I’d started out thinking, “Wow. Chris Farley. It would be awesome to do movies together one day,” but ended up thinking, “Keep this guy away from me! He’s possessed!” On Thursday night I went home for a little bit to be with my wife and a friend. The phone rang. It was very late. No call that late is ever good. It’s always a stomach sinker.

My wife answered. My friend and I looked at one another like, “Who’s it gonna be?” And pretty soon, we heard my wife say, “Sure, hold on a sec, Chris. He’s right here.” She looked at me and mouthed, “Chris Farley,” and pointed the receiver at me. I remember wondering, “Me? Why does he want to talk to me? How did he get my number?”

I took the phone, and Chris asked if I could meet him. I said, “Well, it’s late and I’m visiting with my wife and a friend—we’ll see each other tomorrow, you know?”

“C’mon!” he said, trying to convince me to join him at the hotel room he was staying in.

“Who are you with?” I asked. I didn’t really need to know. I had a pretty good idea it was no one too helpful to his cause. Then an overwhelming feeling hit me. Instead of freaking out about him, I just thought, “Okay, I should try to talk to the guy for a minute. He’s just a person. He’s reaching out to me for some reason.”

“You doing okay?” I asked.

“I’m great!” he shouted a bit too overzealously. “Come hang out, man!”

“Hey,” I said, “the show is almost here! It’s late. We should both get some rest. You sure you feel okay?”

He took a second to respond. And when he spoke, it wasn’t the crazy party guy nor the movie star—it was just Chris, the kid who grew up in Wisconsin. I’ll never forget what I heard in his voice. It wasn’t quite desperation but real uncertainty.

“Jimmy,” he asked, “am I
funny
?”

This set in motion a longer conversation and a whole cavalcade of questions. And I responded with only the truth—that everyone around the set pretty much laughed their asses off whenever he did anything. He liked to hear that. And then he said, “Like who?”

And I named cast members and people on staff whom he’d had laughing out loud all week. But then the heavier questions started again.

“Am I just the fat, dumb guy?” he asked.

“No!”

“But, you know, you saw me, I could only get hookers, right, Jimmy?”

“C’mon, Chris,” I said. “You know that’s not the truth.”

My wife kept gesturing for me to go find him and hang out, but I knew that on this night, with who he was likely hanging with, it wouldn’t be productive. It wasn’t going to be a big catalyst for change for the guy. He only wanted to know, in this moment, that he was funny and not just a fat buffoon. It was so sad. Ten million a movie! And he was more insecure than a lot of us nobodies were.

I could hear voices in the background saying, “Tell him to come and hang out!” Girls laughing and partying. The conversation ended with his asking yet again if I wanted to hang out.

“Dude,” I said. “I’ve got to get some sleep. You should, too.”

Two nights later, he was hilarious, of course, on the show. For as truly screwed up and dark as the week had been, he absolutely destroyed us all on Saturday night. And this is when he really taught me a few things. He did “El Niño,” where he played the hurricane, and then he did the final Matt Foley, the motivational speaker who lives “in a van down by the river.”

For this Matt Foley sketch he played a health instructor. So Chris came in and Cheri, Will, and I were riding stationary bikes, just peddling away. I remember rehearsing the skit and he would fart, and Cheri and the girls would be like “
Ewww!
That’s disgusting!” And each time we rehearsed it, he would change it up, but it was always something little and gross and not a big deal.

But during the live show, he had a prop that wasn’t there before, a pot of coffee—obviously not hot—and he just slammed the whole thing. And instead of swallowing the coffee he spit and sprayed it all over everyone. It was dripping off Cheri’s face. The crowd lost it. I lost it. I am glad the camera was not on me then.

He waited until we were live before he pulled out the crazy stuff. Because during the dress show, I had thought I held my own. But once we were on the air he smoked me, and smoked me hard. He smoked everyone, just with those little nuances like that. And I wasn’t like, “Oh, that bastard outdid me!” It was more an aha moment. As much of a mess as he was, he knew how to steal a scene. He knew how to blow the place up.

After the show, I didn’t see much of him. Before the traditional
SNL
after-party even got started, I could see the vultures circling him, and man, I didn’t want any part of it. He was surrounded by filthy people. Drug dealers. Leeches. Satan’s ring, I called them. My wife and I were puzzled by how these people could get access and control Chris. I headed home.

“Jimmy,” he called out with a laugh. “You comin’?”

“Hey,” I said. “I don’t feel the greatest. I’ll catch you later.”

I paused for a second. That was BS. This guy was a legend to me now, and I couldn’t and wouldn’t hang. I didn’t like the contradictions and the conflict that were piling up. He had just blown me away onstage, and now . . . ugh.

“Thanks, man,” I said, genuinely. “Thanks for being part of my sketch. And thanks for flooring me.”

He laughed, and that was that.

A few weeks passed, maybe more than a month. I started getting an overwhelming urge to call Chris. My rational side kept telling me he’d call if he wanted to. Spiritually, on some level I knew it was up to me, though, and the feeling would not go away. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. Still, I’d ultimately talk myself out of it. “Jimmy,” I’d tell myself. “He’s Chris Farley. Someone close to him will take care of him. Don’t worry about it. We only talked that one night. He’ll be fine.”

But the feeling would return. He, in some way, trusted me. I thought I shouldn’t ignore that. I asked my wife what to do.

“God’s telling you something,” she said. “Listen.”

And it was true. God talks to us a lot of the time. It’s up to us to listen to His voice.

“Oh yeah? So what should I say when I call him?” I asked, then I didn’t wait for her response. I quickly called my manager and said, “I’ve gotta talk to Chris Farley.” He said he would get me his number.

The next week rolled around, and of course, I became immersed in the show and talked myself out of the urge to call him. This feeling came and went several more times. And as time passed, I knew that the urges I felt were God telling me what to do. I called my manager and he apologized for not getting me the number. The weekend was coming, and he promised to have it to me by Monday. He never got me the number. He’s not to blame.

Chris died the next day. I don’t want you to think that I feel like I am personally to blame or that I’m narcissistic enough to think what happened to Chris directly relates to me. I believe only that I had a chance. I had an opportunity to reach out to help. Would it have done any good? Who knows? I know only that God was telling me to reach out to another human being. I felt it, and I truly heard it loud and clear, and I ignored it. I will never turn my back on Him again. I felt like God wanted Chris to stay here with all of us, and in the end, his death was a terrible loss to pure evil. I dropped to my knees and apologized for turning my back and not acting on the messages that were sent to me.

I know it feels weird and kooky and surreal. And we are conditioned to tune out or fear that kind of stuff. I’m here to say, “Don’t.” You can make a difference. And when the big man gives you that urge, do yourself a favor and at least just give it a shot.

Meeting the Mayor

A couple weeks after Chris Farley’s appearance, our host was New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. Unlike a lot of stars, the man kept to a schedule, moved with precision, and when the Monday meeting came, he and his security detail made their way politely through the building. He pulled up a chair next to Lorne, and you could tell he was completely tickled to be there. At the same time, he regarded it as a serious meeting, as he was eager to hear everyone’s ideas and get down to the business of making a great show. He wanted it to be as memorable as we did.

We knew Giuliani’s presence would give us great ratings, so the cast came armed with their A-list characters. Will had prepped a “Janet Reno Dance Party,” Molly had a Mary Katherine Gallagher idea, Cheri had one for her old-lady character Rita Delvecchio. I was hoping to finally break in the Shut-up Guy. My idea was to have him serve as Giuliani’s new press secretary, silencing any member of the media who dared question the mayor. The Shut-up Guy hadn’t made a show yet, so I didn’t have a ton of hope for him, but whatever happened, I knew it would be a historic show, so I was content to just fit in somewhere. “I’m very excited to be here,” were the first words out of the mayor’s mouth. He looked around the room and continued. “I’m excited to work with each and every one of you, and I don’t mean to disrespect anyone, but where is Jimmy Breuer?”