THE CHRIS FARLEY SHOW: A BIOGRAPHY IN THREE ACTS, by Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby, Viking, 348 pages, $26.95, two photo inserts

Chris Farley, who died from an overdose of drugs at age 33, was at the peak of his soaring career as a comedian in television and movies.

This compelling oral biography, researched and arranged by his older brother, Tom, and his friend Tanner Colby, biographer of John Belushi, is filled with pointed personal comments about the gifted young man by family members, friends and representatives of the entertainment world.

The book is both funny and tragic and captures the ambiguity of Chris Farley, the talented star, as well as Chris Farley, the troubled, addicted public man. The two authors interviewed numerous people, both famous and not famous, and just let them talk.

The result is spontaneous and hard-hitting.

From the first day Farley started appearing on TV's "Saturday Night Live," in 1990, Farley was being compared to John Belushi, even though there were many more differences between them than similarities. Lorne Michaels, who created the show in 1975, hired Farley after watching him perform.

"I'd had some of a concern that maybe he was too big, personality-wise, to play on television. Theatrically, he was sort of playing to the back of the house. But after we saw him, there really wasn't much doubt," Michaels said.

David Spade remembered meeting Farley and finding him to be "a genuine, sweet guy" and they became buddies instantly. Chris Rock, who was hired the same day, said, "Two guys named Chris ... one's a black guy from Bed-Stuy and one's a white guy from Madison, Wis. Now, which one is going to OD?"

More and more it was obvious to everyone who worked with Farley that he had trouble with alcohol and drugs. Michaels remembered telling him that Belushi's death, also at 33, was not romantic.

"I said, 'John missed most of the '80s, all of the '90s, and I don't think that was his intention.' I was pretty brutal with Chris. I mean, we buried John."

Farley finally went into a rehab center, but three years later he returned to his old ways. On the air, Farley became famous for trying to break up his fellow players, which Michaels didn't like.

Norm MacDonald remembered Farley's way of telling a story: "Like, anyways, Norm. Did I tell ya I seen my friend Bill the other day, and I says to him, I says, I look him right in the eye and I says to him, I says, I says to Bill, I says to him, get this, what I says to him is, I says, get this, what I says you won't believe what I says to him, I says ..."

MacDonald said, "The joke was that he'd never get to what he's actually said to the guy. And Chris could keep this going for twenty-five minutes straight ... It would just get funnier and funnier."

So, MacDonald got him to do it on "Weekend Update," and the idea was that he would do it for 30 seconds, but MacDonald knew that wasn't long enough for it to catch on, so he told Chris to do it for four minutes. That was when he realized he should have told him to go eight minutes.

"But he never got to do it on air, because Lorne went ballistic on me," MacDonald said.

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