I missed the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live” the other night. Nonetheless, in honor of its return, I’ve got some cool audio to share.Did you know that Chris Farley’s “Matt Foley” character – always a favorite of mine – was actually created in Chicago in 1990, when Farley was a cast member at the Second City?
To hear the “Motivational Speaker” sketch, recorded live on stage at the Second City Theatre, click here. Farley’s castmates included Tim Meadows and Bob Odenkirk.
This sketch and others from the Second City vaults are available on a bonus CD (narrated by Robert Klein) with this DVD package.
One of the more heartbreaking bits of Live From New York: An Oral History of SNL is Odenkirk's telling of a night on the town with Farley that ended in Farley tearing up his apartment in a drunken rage, then asking Odenkirk "Do you think Belushi's in heaven?"
ReplyDeleteOr Tim Kazinursky: "We all tried to get him into rehab, get him help. But when you make 3 million a picture, you can go out and buy new friends."
What I wonder, Dan, is whether one can separate the comic energy from the madness in Farley's case. If he was a mentally healthy, at-peace soul... he wouldn't have thrown his body into his comedy like he did.
ReplyDeleteWhat I wonder, Dan, is whether one can separate the comic energy from the madness in Farley's case.
ReplyDeleteAs someone with Bipolar Disorder, I suspect the answer is "no." My creative energies come from the same part of me that makes my moods so off-kilter. I see connections that others don't (and are really there) because I have, to borrow Kay Redfield Jamison's phrase, an "unquiet mind."
She wrote a book called "Touched by Fire" about the link between mood disorders and the artistic temperament: creativity does seem to be, at least much of the time, a sort of good news/bad news joke.
^ Fascinating. Thanks, Roberto.
ReplyDeleteI do a great imitationof this character, lol.
ReplyDelete"What makes you crazy, makes you creative."
L