In compiling the stories of Chris Farley's life, we had far more than we could actually fit into a book that any publisher would be willing to publish. A complete digest of the funny things Chris did in his life would run roughly the length of Marcel Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, only with fewer baked goods and more potty jokes. Many of these "Chris stories" were funny, smart, and illuminating, yet still couldn't be fit into the larger story we were trying to tell. So, we present them to you here, much like those "deleted scenes" you're always disappointed by on special edition DVDs. Only, hopefully, these won't disappoint. Read on.

On Chris’s first trip to SNL:

STEVEN KOREN, writer, SNL: 

I started out as a tour guide for NBC. That’s how I got into Saturday Night Live and became a writer. I was trying to do anything I could for SNL at the time. Chris was visiting, his first time coming to the show, ever, and they asked somebody to show him around. I just happened to be there. 

It’s the kind of thing I normally would have forgotten, because I did it all the time for people’s friends and things like that. But I recognized him because he had been in a spread in GQ Magazine when he was at Second City. He was Whale Boy, or something like that, and his picture was just really striking, very memorable. So when he showed up for the tour, I recognized him. He was wearing an English driving cap and standing in the hallway outside of Letterman’s studio. I brought him up to Studio 8H for the first time. I will just always remember that moment, because I was like, “Hey, I saw you in GQ and you’re gonna be on Saturday Night Live. That’s great.” 

I showed him the studio and told him a little bit about it. He just stood there, amazed, because he was such a huge fan of the show. There was a look on his face, just a childlike wonder, like a kid who couldn’t believe where he was. That’s how I remember him.

On Chris’s talent:

NORM MacDONALD, writer, SNL: 

I’ve never met a smart person who didn’t know they were smart, but I’ve met smart people who don’t know when someone else is smarter than them—and that is Saturday Night Live in a nutshell, I can tell you. I knew Chris was smart. He was a hell of a lot smarter than the Harvard writers that were writing for him. He knew more about comedy than anyone at that show by a million miles. He wasn’t just a clown that had to have a staff of writers put words in his mouth. He knew way more than they did.

I’m basically a writer. I’m not a performer. Most performers are idiots. They’re one-trick ponies and you have to write them their kind of comedy even if you think it’s stupid. Chris was a real student of comedy, and also a bit of a savant. You could introduce an original thought to him, and he’d immediately understand it and home in on it. A lot of people thought Chris was stupid. He himself would always say, “I’m not much for book learnin’.” But if that kind of instinct isn’t smart, then I don’t know what smart is. 

MICHAEL McKEAN, cast member, SNL: 

The first show I did, the best thing on it was a pre-taped sketch that they had done down at the skating rink at Rockefeller Center. It was the sketch where Chris was skating with Nancy Kerrigan, and he was her partner who’d packed on a lot of weight since their last competition. Chris was so beautiful out there on the ice. I don’t mean this to be hurtful, but it was like those graceful hippos in Fantasia. I just think it’s gorgeous. That was the best thing on that show, for sure. He was a really good skater. He really made us believe that this was a professional skater who had just packed on a few pounds more than he should. It was really lovely.

And “Chippendales” was an amazing piece. The sort of thing that lets you know: there are no stops here. It surprised me how modest he was about it, though. “Yeah, I didn’t want to do it because I had to take my shirt off,” he said. But that was the beginning of the funny part. It was his fearlessness that made it take off. He seemed innocent about what was really funny about it. But he admitted that it had brought him a lot of attention. 

On writing for Chris:

DAVID SPADE, cast member, SNL: 

I was good at remembering little things he’d say, little riffs back and forth that we would do, and then I’d put them in the sketches. Every night at dinner he’d say or do something like that, and you’d make a mental note of it to try and put it into a good position in a sketch where it would score. 

With the Gap Girls, I just wanted to write something that we could all be in together in rehearsal. That was always the most fun part of the week, sitting around and bullshitting and making each other laugh. Gap Girls turned into me, Adam, Rob, and Chris and whoever the guest star was. One of my favorites lines was when he was nibbling at my fries and then goes, “Leave me alone I’m starving…diet starts Monday!” 

TIM HERLIHY, writer, SNL: 

I put Farley in pretty much every sketch I ever wrote. I wrote for him all the time, almost to my detriment. One night Sandler needed help writing a song, and I said no, because I was busy writing a sketch for Chris. It was a sketch where he played “Freshy,” a little green pine-tree air freshener that hangs from a rearview mirror. So I sat and wrote that sketch. Sandler went off to write “The Hanukkah Song” with some other writer who’s currently off on his yacht collecting royalties, and I’ve got Freshy the Talking Air Freshener, who never saw air. 

IAN MAXTONE-GRAHAM, writer, SNL: 

I wrote one sketch that twice went to dress and got cut. It was based on the experience of seeing him flirting with and chatting up the receptionist at SNL. In the piece he was acting very suave and cool while waiting for the elevator, and every time he delivers his suave closing line, he turns and the elevator doors close, or the elevator’s full or it’s going the wrong way. Then he has to turn around and be cool again, having totally lost his momentum. Then, when he can’t take it, he finally charges through the elevator doors and plummets into the basement just to get out of it. We did it twice at dress. They built an elaborate set, and we were never able to pull it off. But that’s an example of how our writing was totally based on observing him. So I give him great credit for having that instinct for a comic moment, and give myself no credit for being able to make it work on the stage.

DAVID SPADE: 

Mondays we’d have our meetings with the host. Everyone crams in there and you go around and say who you are and what your ideas are for the week so the host will relax and think that everyone gives a shit about the show. Most people have fake ideas, like, “You’re a caveman who’s afraid of caves.” Things that sound like ideas, but they’re really not. Chris would always sit on the floor and pull on his hair because it was getting closer and closer to him, and he never had an idea. He’d say, “Davy, give me fake ideas.” 

And Lorne used to push everyone to be topical and do political things. So they get to Chris and he goes, “Um, I rented that movie…Marty, with, um, Ernest Borgnine, you know?”

“Yes,” Lorne says.

“Um, thinking ’bout doing something ’bout that.”

Everyone’s silent, and Lorne says, “Well, this is the week for that. Everyone’s going to be looking for that Marty sketch. What’s Saturday Night Live got to say about this Marty situation?” 

Chris is like, “Stupid…I knew it was a dumb idea.” Classic Chris.

On Chris’s Newt Gingrich impression:

DAVID MANDEL, writer, SNL: 

I think Chris would have been the first to say that the political stuff wasn’t his forte. Ironically, years later, Chris became the Newt Gingrich of the show. We did a sketch on the show where they were passing a new Contract with America. It got such a strong response that we got an invitation to Washington, D.C., to address a Republican caucus event of some sort. I don’t even remember what exactly it was. I went down there with Chris and had to write material for him to do at this thing. He opened this caucus meeting by announcing a newer, quicker Contract with America. We did some real inside-the-Beltway stuff about school lunches and Dick Armey, the stuff that was going on. Chris went on the Conan show a couple of days later and they showed footage of him in Congress. Conan started asking him all of these serious political questions, and Chris just did that thing he always did where he’d get really serious and then totally break character and yell, “I don’t know what I’m talking about! Mandel feeds me the lines and I just say them!” 

And to some extent I had to teach him a little bit about Newt Gingrich and kind of prepare him with things to say to these people. At the end of the speech, everybody was coming up to him. They all loved him. And we had prepared a lot of the one-liners he used in his conversation. We’d be walking across the Capitol and you’d hear, “Hey, that’s Chris Farley!” And you’d have to whisper in Chris’s ear, “Okay, Chris. That’s John Kerry. He’s a senator.” And Chris would go, “Hi, Senator Kerry!” It was a little like Cyrano de Bergerac, only with politics. 

The day he died, the worst thing I can say is that I was unfortunately not surprised, and yet I choose to remember him in those moments like when we went to Washington and the whole city opened their hearts to him. He could not have been more beloved by Democrat and Republican alike. We were walking through the United States Capitol building and Chris was just getting stopped time after time after time. That’s the great moment. That’s how I’ll remember him.

On Chris’s propensity to “borrow” from other sources:

DAVID SPADE: 

We were doing a bit that I wrote, and Chris had added some stuff to it over the week, just riffing and coming up with new lines. He’d say, “Hey Davy, how about this?” And he’d throw me a line and I’d put it in. So we’re about to go on air with this sketch. We’re walking out live on air to do it, and we’re coming by the page desk on the way back from commercial and Chris kind of tugs on my arm like he’s nervous and he goes, “David!” 

I know the face. “What’s the problem?” I say.

“David, in the thing where I say the thing about the pizzas, that’s funny, right?”

“Yes, it’s funny. It’s gonna kill.”

“It was in Stripes.”

“What?!”

“It was in Stripes. John Candy said it in Stripes.” 

“You fuckin’ asshole! No wonder it was funny.”

“David, it doesn’t matter. No one will know.”

“I can’t do it.”

And the director is like, “Okay, in ten seconds, nine, eight….”

“What are we going to do?” I say.

“I’m just going to say it!”

“We’re going to get in trouble!”

“And…action!”

So we did it, and afterwards I told him, “You can’t fucking do that.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m mad, too.”

“No, you’re not.”

On Lorne:

BOB ODENKIRK, writer, SNL: 

One time Chris came to me about three months into his run at SNL. He was almost in tears. “Odie, I don’t know what’s going on.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t get it. Every time I do bad onstage, Lorne says, ‘That was the best you’ve ever done.’ Then, every time I do good he says, ‘Eh, you can do better.’”

He was really messed up about it. But that’s just Lorne’s way of motivating people, by fucking with their heads. Most people get that pretty quick, but Chris was just like, “What’s happening?”

Lorne was like the Wizard of Oz to Chris, just mythical.

On (still) being the class clown:

KEVIN FARLEY, brother: 

The first time I ever went up there, Chris told me to come up to the seventeenth floor, and there was nobody there to meet me. And I’m thinking, I’m not supposed to be here. This is their work environment. It’s a real high-pressure, high-stress work environment. There’s a lot of stressed-out people walking around SNL. The vibe in the whole place is real electric, so I’m nervous as shit. I don’t know where Chris is. I get off the elevator and I’m walking down the hall and this guy comes out and says, “Can I help you? What are you doing on this floor? Who let you up here?” 

“Uh…my brother is Chris Farley.”

“I have no idea who that is. We don’t know any Chris Farley. You’re going to have to go.” 

Then he calls security on me. Finally, Chris comes out laughing. He’d set the whole thing up. The guy who was yelling at me was Conan O’Brien.

BOB ODENKIRK: 

When we were in New York, he’d fall in the street, do his “fatty falls down” thing.  No one could fall like Chris. He would go down hard—smack—on the pavement. This was on a Fifth Avenue sidewalk in the middle of New York City. Everyone would laugh.

It was funny, because one day he’s doing it and nobody knows who the fuck he is. They’re just bewildered by it. Then, four months later, everyone knows who he is. It was funny when he was doing it just for his friends, but when he was doing it and you knew everyone was watching, it was kind of sad. 

You know, Charlie Chaplin used to go down to Hollywood Boulevard on Sunday mornings and do the Tramp for tourists. This was when he was famous, and he did it outside this restaurant where all the stars went for brunch. That’s the sad element of it for Chris. It was like, “Dude, stop performing. You don’t have to do that.”

DAVID SPADE: 

We’d walk to Wally and Joseph’s, a steakhouse where we’d always go to have dinner. Usually it was with Adam, Chris, me, and Timmy or Schneider. We’d go down there, and sometimes Chris would talk to girls and be like, “I’m a trainer. I work at a gym nearby. I’d like to show you gals the proper way to do push-ups.” This is on the street in Manhattan. He’d start doing push-ups, and if they knew who he was, they’d laugh. If they didn’t, they just thought he was weird. 

Once we saw a cute girl getting into a cab. He goes, “She’s hot.” So he runs up behind her and goes, “Hey hon, let me jump in here. I’m going uptown, too.” He climbs in, and she starts kicking him and screaming. 

He was like, “What a bitch.”

I said, “Dude, if they know who you are, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to them. If they don’t, you’re just a sweaty rapist climbing into their cab.”

On meeting Chris:

JAY MOHR, cast member, SNL: 

I met Chris on my first day at SNL. I wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. I was sort of directed into the writers’ room, which is a really large area with a bunch of tables pushed together in a giant square. Everyone was kind of sitting around. Then Chris came in. It’s weird. There was just this sense of relief in the whole room when Chris showed up. It was like, okay, now the party can start, even if the party was just us being happy and working in the room. 

Jim Downey said, “Chris, this is the new guy, Jay Mohr.” 

Chris went, “Oh, really?” 

And then he just started acting super-high, drunk and weaving his way over to me on the couch. He tripped and landed with his head practically in my lap. Then he mimed vomiting into my crotch. And he really sold it, the sounds and the commitment. I had to look down to see if he’d actually vomited in my crotch. He looked up at me. His face was beet red and he had this snot bubble hanging from his nose. He said, “Oh, hey. Sorry, dude.” 

Then he got up and weaved away, half in character. By the time he was ten feet away from me, he was the same Chris Farley who’d walked in. And nobody seemed to think this was odd.

MARK McKINNEY, cast member, SNL: 

I found him really charming and innocent, which was amazing considering that by the time I met him he was such a big star. I first met him on the set of a movie he was filming in Toronto. We were sharing the same producer on Tommy Boy and Brain Candy. But the main thing I remember was just going down the elevator with him at SNL after a rehearsal on a Friday. We were standing in the elevator quietly. We hadn’t really been introduced. He mostly hung out with Spade and Sandler. And it was one of those years where you needed a traffic cop to keep track of all the cast members coming and going. We were just making small talk, and I said, “Where are you going? Taking off for the night?”

And he said, “Well, you’ve heard about me, right?”

“No.”

“Oh, well, I’m going to a twelve-step meeting.”

I asked him about that, and he said he’d been through a lot and he told me about it. I can’t remember the specifics of it, but I do remember being struck that he was so honest and sweet and vulnerable about it. That’s what he was about at that point in his life. Then we got to the bottom and walked out of the elevator. At that time, walking out of the Saturday Night Live elevators with Chris Farley was something else. There were always fans hanging around, and they started getting thicker around Friday. And you could see this whole other thing he was dealing with. A roar went up from the crowd. I had a couple of fans there, too, but mostly they were there to see Chris. We nodded to each other, and off he went.