The last days of Chris Farley

ver the course of several sea­sons on Sat­urday Night Live and the success of several theatri­cal blockbusters, Chris Far­ley established himself as the new John Belushi, the contemporary king of over­size manic comedians. Like Belushi, Farley's struggles with drugs and alcohol gave him an edge that simmered under the surface of char­acters such as his Chip­pendales Dancer and the van-dwelling Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker. When it came, Farley's death seemed like a sad cliche— however, it was anything but for those closest to him who watched his descent tragically, inexorably unfold. Here, in an excerpt from the forthcoming book The Chris Farley Show (Viking), family and friends, co-stars and colleagues recount the behind-the-scenes mayhem

in the year before his fatal overdose.

On January 17, 1997 Beverly Hills Ninja opened in theaters nationwide. Despite a unanimous criti­cal thumping, it earned more than $12 million on its first outing, topping the weekly box office. Following Tommy Boy and Black Sheep, it was

Chris's third-straight number one film.

That January also marked Chris's third-straight month of sobriety. After staying clean during the principal photography of Edwards & Hunt (the film's title was later changed to Almost Heroes), he relapsed again in September and, with vary­ing degrees of failure, cycled through j three separate rehab facilities over the next two months. Then, in late Octo- / ber, Chris showed definite signs of k improvement. When he celebrated his ky 99th day of sobriety in Chicago with fellow Second City cast member Tim O'Malley, there was cause for hope.

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But despite making money, Beverly Hills Ninja was largely an embarrassment. It bombed with critics and disappointed even hard-core fans. Chris found himself at a professional cross­roads. His successful partnership with SNL co-star David Spade was on the rocks. They had parted ways for a time over the stress caused by Chris's drinking and the strain of a romantic triangle with a young woman, Lorri Bagley. That partner­ship, which played out best in the now classic Tommy Boy, had been one of Chris's strongest professional assets.

Hollywood had typecast him as the clown, and he had been fully complicit in that, playing the part when­ever he was called upon to do so. Fortunately, a project had arrived with the potential to take Chris in a new direc­tion. Earlier that year pro­ducer Bernie Brillstem had brought Chris together with screenwriter and playwright David Mamet, and together they'd agreed to collaborate on Chris's first dramatic film: a biopic of Fatty Arbuckle.

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was a silent-film star bigger in his day than Charlie Chap­lin. He was on the receiv­ing end of Hollywood's first million-dollar contract. He was also on the losing end of Hollywood's first sex scan­dal, being wrongly accused of sexually assaulting and fatally wounding a young woman. Arbuckle watched his career implode even as his innocence was proven in

court. Brillstein was drawn to the story for its showbiz history and intrigue. Chris

was drawn to it tor the man

¦ / himself. After years of being

made to play the crazy fat

guy, Chris was being asked to

play the guy behind the crazy

fat guy. He was being asked

to play himself, a role he rarely

performed for anyone. Much like

Jackie Gleason's turn as Minnesota

Fats in The Hustler, this was the role that would have fundamentally altered the course of Chris's career.

With the Arbuckle biopic ahead of him and 99 days behind him, Chris was in Rood spirits. On the first weekend in

March, the U.b. Comedy Arts Festival in

Aspen, Colorado was hosting a reunion of

Saturday Night Live cast members, hosts

and writers. Several dozen stars from the

show's history attended, from founding

fathers Chevy Chase and Lome Michaels to

freshmen Molly Shannon and Cheri Oteri. For

Chris to share that stage was an honor beyond anything he could have imagined growing up. It should have been one of the highlights of his career. It wasn't.

JOHN FARLEY, brother: I don't know what the hell happened. I remember everything had been fine in Chicago, but on the flight to Aspen he was acting strange. He may have relapsed that morning or the night before. I just remember sitting on the plane, thinking, Oh no. CONAN O'BRIEN, writer, SNL: When we were in Aspen you could tell the trolley was barely making it around the curves.

PLAYBOY PHOTOGRAPHER DAVIS FACTOR CAPTURES THE MANY FACES OF FARLEY (1997).

KEVIN FARLEY, brother: When I arrived he was already well into it, drinking and doing coke. From there it was just a total disaster. Spade really looked after him that weekend. DAVID SPADE, cast member, SNL: I went to meet him in his room to go to dinner with Lome [Michaels], and when I got to him he was already so messed up. We walked into the restau­rant, and it wasn't just Lome. It was Lome, Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd. Chevy Chase and Bernie Brillstein. all these people Chris looked up to at this really nice formal dinner. I said, real quick. "Hey, Chris, come over to the bathroom. I gotta tell you something." And I took him into the kitchen, out the back door into the alley, and I said, "We're getting the fuck out of here. You can't sit with these people in this condition."

These strangers showed up. and he started drinking with them. I tried to stay with him. but eventually I just had to go to bed. I was at lunch the next day. and he walked in. He was with the same people and obviously hadn't gone to bed. They were all wired, and Chris's eyes were rolling back. He said, "Davy. Davy, please stay with me. Don't leave me with these people." JOHN FARLEY: One day we had lunch at the restaurant on the top of the mountain. While we were eating, Chris started crying, saying, "I can't stop. I just can't stop." He was crying his eyes out right in the restaurant. BERNIE BRILLSTEIN, producer: During the reunion Chris was out onstage with about 40 people from SNL. They were just tell­ing stories, but Chris was crazed. I thought he was going to have a heart attack onstage. Finally. Dana Carvey quietly took him off. CHEVY CHASE, original cast member, SNL: I read him the riot act that weekend. Everybody did. Chris was drunk and

stoned and. on top of that, way overweight. I sat with him, and I said. "Look, you're not John Belushi. And when you overdose or kill yourself, you will not have the same acclaim that John did. You don't have the record of accomplishment that he had. You don't have the background that he had. And you don't have the same cultural status that he had. You haven't had the chance to get that far, and you're already screwing yourself up."

He kept saying. "I'm just trying to level out." That's what he said he was doing with the drinking and the cocaine. It's so silly. It means if you took nothing, you'd be level already. Why take all this shit that's killing you? And I told him that. I said, "I've experienced this. I've seen who dies. I've seen how far you think you can go, what you can take and what

you can't. You're just going to end up being an overweight guy who could fall on his stomach and had one or two funny things in his career but nothing that ever really stood out. You'll be a blip in the New York Times obituaries page, and that'll be it. Is that what you want?" BOB ODENKIRK, cast member, Second City: I was at a party for Mr. Show. Some­body came in and said. "Chris is out back. He wants to talk to you." I go out back, and there's a limo. I go to the door and knock and the window rolls down. There's Chris, and he's packed in there with girls and hangers-on and this fucking scumbag who was pushing coke around. Chris is bloated and red-faced; he hasn't shaved. We talk for a few minutes, but there's really noth­ing to say at those times.

I'd seen Chris fucked up before, but this time he looked as bad as anyone has ever looked. It was a horrible thing to watch. It's one thing to shake your fin­ger at a friend and say. "You're gonna kill yourself." It's another thing to look at him and know he's going to do it. TOM FARLEY, brother: After Aspen his managers said. "He's going to rehab, and we're serious this time. He's going away for 13 weeks, and he's not coming back—

except to present at the Oscars." KEVIN FARLEY: Brillstein-Grey sent him back to the lockup down south, but they thought it would be okay for him to go to the Oscars, under supervision, and present an award. TOM FARLEY: This woman who ran the facility said the only way they'd let Chris go was if he was there with someone from treatment. The next thing you know, she's the one who's going with him, and she

made him pay her extra for her time, buy her first-class airfare, buy her a dress and do the same for her daughter to accompany her. I don't think that helped. It just made him feel used.

I didn't get it. Chris's managers were the ones busting him the hardest for fucking up at Aspen, and then two weeks later they were the same ones lobbying for him to come back and present at the Oscars. It was a money thing. The Oscars are exposure, and exposure means money. I guess they thought Chris needed it to help his career. BERNIE BRILLSTEIN: A few months earlier I'd taken him to New York to meet with David Mamet about the Fatty Arbuckle story. That story has always fascinated me, only because Arbuckle was innocent. Chris came to the meeting at a little restaurant down in the Village, and he was the good Chris, the well-behaved Chris, because he couldn't believe David Mamet even wanted to meet him. Mamet (continued on page 120)

CHRIS FARLEY

(continuedfrom page 56) loved him. It was a great meeting. He said yes before we got up from the table, and he wrote it for Chris. To this day I know it would have changed his career. Tom farlev: As soon as he heard little bits and pieces about Arbuckle's life, he said, "This is me." It was the whole idea that nobody understands the real person underneath. "I'm going to tell them about the real Fatty ArbuckJe, and maybe they'll understand the real Chris Farley." ERir.ll "Mancow" mlller. friend and shock jock: Chris had all these pictures of clowns in his hallway. He said that they frightened and fascinated him and that he found them sad. When he was drinking he would always talk like Burl Ives and sing old Burl Ives songs. He"d go, "A little bitty tear let me down, spoiled my act as a clown."

He'd sing that over and over and over. father tom c;annon,s.J .friend: He felt his career was in trouble and not just because of the drugs. Sometime that year he told me. "I can't keep this up. I can't keep falling down and walking into walls.' But people wanted him to keep doing the same thing because it assured them financial success. Brian dennehy. co-star. Tommt Boy: Myself, I never understood why you'd want to be the 2Oth-best dramatic actor in the movie business when you were already the best comedian in the movie business. But there is this impulse that comedians have to do serious work. Interestingly enough. I think with the right part and the right director Chris could have clone it. There was a sad­ness and a vulnerability and a fear that existed in his face and in his eyes.

There are two ways to act, and some people are good enough to do both. One is to erect this very complicated, layered

character around you in order to hide behind it. in order to disguise and pro­tect yourself. It's a kind of architecture. The other way to act is to absolutely strip away everything that keeps you and your soul and your mind from the audience. You rip it away and say. "How much more of myself can I expose to help the audience understand this character?" It's more difficult, and it's more profound because ultimately the real challenge of art is to understand more about your­self. And I think Chris could have done it. I think he would have done it. had he lived. But most comedians, in fact most actors, are not capable of that.

With Tommy Boy, Black Sheep and Beverly Hills Xitija, Chris had joined the ranks of elite Hollywood stars who could "open" a film—a certain core audience could be counted on to turn out for any Chris Farley movie. Even if Chris wasn't thrilled with the reigning defini­tion of "a Chris Farley movie." it was an envi­able place to be and a strong place from which to make a bold, smart career move.

But that spring Chris's dance card was strangely empty. As a rule, studios take out short-term insurance policies on their lead actors to cover any possible interruptions in the production process. Many of those insur­ers were refusing to underwrite Chns's films until he could once again prove his depend­ability. And so, while the Arbuckle project plodded along at the glacial pace of most Hollywood development deals. Chris was having trouble getting even a typical Chris Farley movie off the ground.

In this troubled time one good project did come his way, a voice-over gig for a little animated movie called Shrek, hi 1997 computer-animated moi'ies were still in their infancy—Pixar's trendsetting Toy Story had opened only 18 months before—so there was little reason to believe this fun sideline project would go on to spawn one of the most popular, highest-grossing film franchises of all time. Chris took it on almost as a lark.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, head oj DreamWorks Animation, had procured the film rights to Shrek, a popular children's book by William Steig. Chris was his first choice to play the title role. According to everyone involved, Chris Farley s Shrek was one of the funniest, most heartfelt performances he ever gave. Tragi­cally, no one has ex'er heard it.

terry rossiu. screenwriter, Shrek: Chris was the number one choice, and everyone was thrilled that he agreed to the proj­ect. For an animated feature, his voice was perfect, very distinctive. Also, you know, Shrek kind of looked like Farley, or Farley looked like Shrek.

The recording sessions were essen­tially everybody in the booth rolling off our chairs onto the floor, laughing our asses off. I brought my daughter, who was 12 years old at the time, to one of the sessions at the Capitol Records build­ing. It was her first time ever coming in

with me to work, and she concluded I had the best job in the world, listening to funny people be funny. andrew \das\so\. director, Shrek: The char­acter of Shrek is to some degree rebel­ling against his own vulnerabilities. And I think that's probably a reason Katzen-berg went to Chris, because there was an aspect of that in him, covering vulner­ability in humor and keeping people at arm's length. Within minutes of meeting Chris you saw his vulnerability. Some­times he would switch on this very gruff persona, and you realized it was because he felt like he was exposing too much.

It didn't make the final film, but at one stage there was a moment in the script where Shrek was walking along, singing "Feelin' Groovy," Simon and Garfunkel's "59th Street Bridge Song." Chris was just so into it. When we were record­ing, 1 kind of got the impression that he wasn't sure whether he was supposed to be doing a comedic take on the song or a sincere, heartfelt one. He was sing­ing and putting himself out there in a way that was very touching. It made me see the longing in him to do something more genuine with his career. It made me feel bad because we were in fact ask­ing for a "funny" version. But that he was willing to give it to us, even though he felt so vulnerable about it, made it a very sad and touching moment. terry rossiO: We spoke about the essence or wellspring of Chris's humor; much of it was the humor of discomfort. He would occupy a space of discomfort until it became funny. Shrek, in the Chris Far­ley version of the story, was unhappy at his place in the world, unhappy to be cast

as the villain. So for me, Chris's comedic persona was key to the creation of the Shrek character—a guy who rejected the world because the world rejected him. ANDRtw adamson: After Chris died, we all had personal thoughts about whether we could use his voice track and find someone to impersonate him to finish the film. We definitely thought about whether that was the appropriate thing to do, but ultimately we felt we weren't far enough along in developing the story and the character. The animation process depends a lot on the actor. His death was quite devastating, both personally and to the process of creating the film. We spent almost a year banging our heads against the wall until Mike Myers was able to come on board. Chris's Shrek and Mike's Shrek are really two completely different characters, as much as Chris and Mike are two completely different people. terry rossio: They're both great in their own way. Mike created a very interesting character, a Shrek who has a sense of humor that's not that good but makes him happy. Chris's Shrek was born of frustration and self-doubt, an internal struggle between the cer­tainty of a good heart and the insecu­rity of not understanding things.

By the time he finished voicing Shrek in earl\ A/av, Chris's ability to maintain his sobriety had all but vanished. His relapses started coming randomly, suddenly and with alarming fre­quency. Chris, a devout Roman Catholic who attended mass several times a week, xi<as rapidly being consumed by shame and guilt over his inability to grapple with what he felt were griev-

ous sins committed iti the throes of his disease.

One of Chris's counselors described him as having the most severe addictive personality he'd ever seen—this in several decades of help­ing patients. As Chris surrendered his hold on sobriety, his compulsive overeating ran rampant as well. Chris had fought a constant battle with his weight since childhood. Those who knew him well knew it was the bane of his existence. Given the severe health risks of obesity. Chris was doing almost as much damage to himself with food as he xvas with dmgs and alcohol.

After presenting at the Oscars on March 24 Chris had returned to rehab in Alabama, emerg­ing sober to work on Shrek in April and early May. Following yet another relapse he returned to the outpatient program at Hazrlden 's Chicago location on May 19. It accomplished little. June and July were spent in and mostly out / rehab, ami by August the situation was catastrophic.

Chris's relationship with Lorri Bagley, rocky and unstable in the best of times, was severely broken. It never ended, but the blow­outs got bigger and more explosive, and the separations grew longer and longer. Friends who were active in Chris's recovery, like Jil-lian Seely and Tim O'Malley. did their best to keep him on the straight and narrow, but their efforts were increasingly frustrated. Chris would either insulate himself from his friends in order to use or insulate himself in order not to use. He had so removed himself from his usual social networks that many assumed he was simply off'somewhere else, stone sober and hard at work. Chris had never let the trap­pings of Jame and success put any distance between him and his loved ones. But addiction finally succeeded where fame could not.

joki. mi'rray. cast member, Second City: The people who loved him didn't want him to drink, so he couldn't be with us anymore. I'd invite him over to barbecues and stuff out in L.A., and I could tell he had a whole other thing going on. It wasn't a celebrity big-shot kind of thing; it was an "1 gotta go do this stuff that I don't want to tell you about" kind of thing. He was the worst liar in the world, so he'd just kind of be evasive. Next thing you know, he's hanging out with nefarious types who just want to wind up the comedy toy, and that's never good. david SPADK: There's no shortage of those sorts of people. I've talked to Aykroyd about Belushi, and it's the same expe­rience. Friends you've known for three days aren't friends I want to hang with. I was working in TV, he was oil doing his movies, and we'd just slowed down a little bit. It wasn't Lorri. That was done with, but we'd been a little bit on the outs, and because of that I got a lot of shit toward the end about "Why weren't you there for him?" But being that close, I dealt with it all the time. And in that situation, before the guy's dead, he's just kind of an asshole. Truth is, you get a junkie who's wasted all the time and moody and angry and trying to knock you around, you say, "Okay, you go do that, and I'll be over here." I think that's understandable.

ill) dondanvii.i.k. Jriend and personal assistant: Chris never had any animos­ity toward Spade at all; he had just respected Spade's decision to walk away lor a while. But after being all alone on Ninja and Edwards is Hunt [later titled Almost Heroes] Chris started to realize how much he needed his friend. It was like Mick Jagger after those first two solo albums—maybe it was good to have Keith Richards around. him iAKi.iv I always told Chris, "You love humor, but look around at the peo­ple you're with when you're doing these drugs. These people have no humor in lheir lives. You keep this up and you will end up surrounded by people who are not your friends." And that's exactly what happened.

nokm macdonai.I). fast member, SNL: Sometimes you'd see him with prosti­tutes. That was mostly at the very end, like when he hosted SNL [in October]. The amazing thing was how well he Mealed them. He really fell for them. He'd take them to dinner and treat them so sweetly. He'd treat them equal to any other person at the table. He'd introduce them to you as his girlfriend. i im oM.u.i.K.Y. cast member. Second City: Escorts and strippers are just part of the deal when you're lonely and lost. It's like phone sex. trying to reach out and talk to somebody. Every phone book has a hun­dred phone numbers in it; you can always dig up someone to spend time with you.

I went into his apartment one night, and he said. "Yeah, I relapsed last night. I had a pizza, and 1 figured since I'd relapsed on my Overeaters Anonymous program I'd have a bottle of scotch, and (hen 1 went to the Crazy Horse and I spent I 1 grand. "

"|csus. you were giving the girls 500 a dance?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"Because I know how it goes. You were trying to get some girl lo come home with you by overtipping her, and those girls don't want anything but more money. First of all." I told him, "separate your food program from your alcohol problem. Food's not going to kill you tonight." kkvin faki.kV: For Chris, by that point every relapse meant going all the way. Some addicts will put a toe back in the water, but Chris would always dive back into (he deep end. And that's whal hap­pened when he went lo Hawaii. l>AVii>sp\i)i I was at the Mondrian in I..A., and Chris was there. He was doing an interview, and he had one of his sobriety bodyguards with him. It was kind of sad because 1 hadn't seen him in a while. He came over to my table—the bodyguard let him come over alone for a bit—he came over and he said, "Nobody cares about anything but loiinny Hoy. Can we do another one? Can we do...something?"

"Of course. There's always scripts they want us to do. I didn't know if you wanted lo do anything anymore."

"We gotta do it. because that's the only one that matters."

"Okay," I said. "Let's find something."

Then these two cute girls came over. They said, "Hey, come party with us. We're in town with Spanish imaykoy." Or something ridiculous like that. Chris said, "1 can't."

"Oh, c'mon," they said. "Just come up to our room for a bit."

Chris looked at me. I said, "I'll cover for you. 1 can buy you about five minutes."

"Thanks, Davy."

He took off, and then the bodyguard came over and said, "Where's Chris?"

"He went to the bathroom."

"Which bathroom?"

"There's one in the hotel."

"You fucked this."

"Sorrv." __

It was the wrong thing to do, I know. But we'd had a really nice moment together, and I liked that. It proved we were still close, could still be friends, and I wanted to help him out. But then they couldn't find Chris. He disappeared, and it just turned into chaos.

KKVIN KAKl.KV: Us

magazine was doing a big feature arti­cle on him at the time, and Chris was spending his days with this reporter. Chris woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me if 1 wanted to come down and take a whirlpool with these girls he'd met. He'd already relapsed and started drink­ing. I said no and went back to bed. I figured he'd play in thejacu/.zi and then go up to his room and sleep it ofl. But

I got up the next morning and lound out he'd relapsed hard, bought these girls plane tickets and gone to Hawaii. When that Us reporter showed up and there was no Chris, the shit hit the fan. Gurvitz [his manager] had to put that fire out.

When 1 talked to Chris about it later, he didn't even remember going to Hawaii. He just woke up there. But when he called Dad from Hawaii, Dad was like, "Hey, you're on vacation!" The level of denial at that point was just crazy. KVlllKRlOM cannon: You cannot under­stand Chris Farley without grappling with the relationship between him and his father. That was the dominant forte 4 in his life. He talked to his father every

day on the phone and was constantly Hying to please him. And 1 think he did please him. But the family, which looked so normal on the outside, was terribly dysfunctional. kric: kv.wmak. production associate. Tommy Boy: If you were a shrink, you could retire on that family. tom aknoi.I). /rirnd it nil actor: Even when he was 30 years old. Chris would literally sit at his dad's feet and tell him stories. I don't think anything made him hap­pier than to sit at the foot of his dad's recliner and tell him stories about show business, or food.

There were a couple other times where 1 went with Chris to the Taste of Madison, which is this festival in the city

square where every three feet there's a booth of a different kind of food. All the conversations Chris had with his dad that weekend were just "Hey, did you have that pork chop on a stick?" "Yeah, that was good. Did you get some of this?" You know, they were surface conversations, the kind 1 would have with my dad, the kind that don't really go deep. Because if you get deep, it's pretty painful. hoi.i.v woKini.l.. cast member. Second City: His dad was of a different generation. They didn't go to see "headshrinkers." Chris told me his father finally agreed to go with him to this weight-loss clinic once. They were sitting in a group ther­apy session, and everyone was going

around the circle talking about their issues with food. His dad just stood up and said. "Let's go." They got up and went outside, and his dad said. "We're not like these people. They've got prob­lems. That's not us. We're leaving.' kathk.k tom cannon: They walked out. checked into a resort on an island oil the coast of Florida, took out a room and proceeded to go on a binge together. With that kind of enabling, the kid didn't stand a chance. The father was in denial. but in all fairness I don't think the broth­ers were straight with the lather either. Dad knew about the drinking but not so much about the drugs. The lather never accepted that Chris was a drug addict until the verv end, even though the

two of them talked every day. So there was a lot of postur­ing going on.

TOM ARNOLD: It's not

his father's fault, what happened to Chris. It's not. Chris had access to every tool in the world. He went to the best treatment centers, had the best people-being of service to him, leaching out to him.

It's not like I didn't sit with him .1 dozen limes where he looked me in the eye and knew what he had to do to stay sober. You can't blame your circum­stances, and after .1 certain point you can't even blame your father. You can't blame him; you have to have compassion 1 o r him. It all comes down to you, and you've got to be a man about it. K R1 <: 11 " m a n (: o \v " MLL1.ER: That May

Chris Rock was performing in Chicago. Farley called me and said. "I've broken out of prison. I'm out. I want to go see my boy Chris Rock!" Chris broke out of rehab to go to this show. I met him at his apartment, and I was begging him not to drink. I was sitting there, going, "No. No, Chris. Please."

He said, "]usl a little splash." Thai's how it started off, a Coke with a splash of whiskey—and I mean just a drop. Then an hour later it turned into a glass of whiskey with a splash of Coke. We went to the conceit to meet Tim Mead­ows and his wile, and I spent the whole night lighting Chris. tim mkadows. cast member, S\'L: We went

backstage after the show to see Rock, and Farley was chunk, fooling around in front of these girls. We'd been talking about going out for dinner alter the show, but Rock and I looked at each other, and I said, "I can't do it. I can't be around him anymore like this."

Rock said, "Yeah, I know what you mean. I'll take care of him tonight." ciiKis rock, cast member, SX/.: He was so fucking drunk, drunk to the point where he was being rude and grabby with girls. He would go too far and you'd call him on it. and he'd give you his crying apol­ogy, the Farley Crying Apology. We prob­ably had about lour of those that night.

I remember dropping him oil at his apartment. He wanted me to come up

and see his place, and I just didn't have it in me. He was so fucked up. I just couldn't go up there. And as I drove away, I knew. It had gotten to that point. I knew that was the last time I'd ever see him alive. |il l ia\ nkh.y. friend: 1 was waiting for Chris to pick me up for the Chris Rock show, and 1 got a phone call from him saying there weren't enough tick­ets and so I couldn't go. That was Sun­day. Then Tuesday I got a call at nine o'clock at night from a nurse at the Northwestern psych ward. Hazelden had to send him to the hospital lo get sober before they'd let him back into treatment. Chris got on the phone. "I'm really scared," he said. "I totally relapsed on Sunday and went back to treatment,

and they made me come here. Will you come and see me?"

So I went over to Northwestern. I went up to Chris's room, and 1 heard him go, "Hey, hey, in here."

He was in the bathroom blowing his cigarette smoke into the air vent. 1 looked down at this stainless-steel paper-towel rack, and there were lines of cocaine on it. Chris had gotten one of the hospital staff to bring him coke in the detox ward.

1 said. "I'm totally telling on you." 1 went out into the hallway and started yell­ing, "Chris is doing cocaine in his room!"

They came in and restrained him. He was screaming at me, "You're a

fucking narc! I hate you!" It was like a scene out of a bad movie. It was hor­rible, really horrible. kk.vin fari.ky: The fact that Chris was able to score cocaine inside the detox ward was just insane. When you're famous there aren't any rules. That's when I knew things were getting bad. He was in a mental ward. You couldn't get any lower than that.

As a kid, when he watched The Exorcist, he was terrified of the idea that some­thing evil could take over your body, possess you and make you do things you can't control. Here he had this thing that was eating away at him from the inside, and he was powerless to stop it. And that scared the living shit out of him.

father IOM gannoN: Chris thought of his addiction in terms of good and evil, that drugs were the devil's way of control­ling him. and I tried to sleer him away from that way of thinking because il isn't very helpful. Like many Irish Catho­lics', Chris's spirituality was sort of a mix between religion and superstition. tom kaki.ey: He told me heroin was the devil. "I've seen the devil. Tommy." That's what he told me after he'd tried it. kevin KARi.hY: Chris would talk about his addiction in those terms because that was the vocabulary he had for it. A lot of people laugh at thai concept, but I think it's as good a framework as any. What is a demon? A demon is some-

thing that wants you dead. And what­ever was in possession of Chris certainly wanted him dead.

riM o'MAi.i.KV: They say you should go back to your faith when you get sober, but it's up to the individual the role that their faith plays. I don't think Chris ever got a chance to really clarify or learn properly some of the ways to sort out your life. So I think he used religion and did the best he could with it, still trying to be a good Catholic boy using the garbage we were taught by the nuns—the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. It's a fifth grader's view- of spirituality. kathkk tom ciANNo.v The old view of spir­ituality was that life was like climbing a

mountain. \ou have to light onward and upward, climbing with your spiritual crampons until you reach the top—and that's perfection. You pass the trial and you pass the test and you get so many gold stars in your copybook.

But that kind of faith only gets a person so far. Your spiritual life isn't like climbing a moun­tain, waiting to find God at the top. It's a journey, full of highs and lows, and God is there with you every step of the way. The first approach is really a whole lot of smoke and mirrors. It's only the second one that allows a person to grow.

Chris didn't feel he was worthy of God's love. He felt he had to prove himself. Well, you're never going to get very far in any rela-

tionship with that kind of belief. Imag­ine if you had to prove yourself to your spouse every single day; that's not the way love works. In all of our talks, that was the one thing I really tried to work with him on. adjusting to this different idea of faith, but he never really moved from one to the other. It's hard. It takes a long time to come around to that way of thinking, and Chris just ran out of time.

(.'/ira Farley oivrdosed on December 18, 1997. He was 33 years old. Mis hotly was discovered in his Chicago apartment by his brother John. He hyj.v alone when he died.