Early in his run on Saturday Night Live Farley played an aspiring Chippendale’s dancer opposite Patrick Swayze in a starmaking sketch. For Chris Rock and Bob Odenkirk the sketch was straight-up fat person minstrelry, an insult to Farley’s dignity disguised as a showcase for his skills. Odenkirk and Rock feel Farley should have turned the sketch down. But when you’re young and desperate to make an impression on a show you grew up worshipping projecting a fat-positive image is probably not high atop your list of priorities.Intrigued, I went to Amazon's "inside the book," and here's their [edited to be SFW&OHSAR] quotes, about which you may have something to say:
Odenkirk: "I didn't like the fact that the first thing he became known for was that Chippendales thing, which I hated. F---ing lame, weak bulls---. I can't believe anyone liked it enough to put it on the show. F--- that sketch. He never should have done it."
Rock: "'Chippendales' was a weird sketch. I always hated it. The joke of it is basically, 'We can't hire you because you're fat.' I mean, he's a fat guy, and you're going to ask him to dance with no shirt on. Okay. That's enough. You're gonna get that laugh. But when he stops dancing you have to turn it in his favor. There's no turn there. There's no comic twist to it. It's just f---ing mean. A more mentally together Chris Farley wouldn't have done it, but Chris wanted so much to be liked. I wanted to be liked, but I had no problem saying something was racist and I wasn't doing it. Imagine if they'd had me in that sketch and then said at the end, 'Oh, we can't hire you. You're a n-----.' Would I have done a sketch like that? If I had, ten years later I'd want to shoot myself."
I always used to love that sketch, but now I feel complicit in a crime.
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