Chris Farley + Patrick Swayze = Ridiculous Dance Off

I recently purchased The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts. Now to be fair I haven't read it yet. But I did look at the back cover and was intrigued by a quote from Chris Rock where he argued that Farley's legendary Chippendales sketch was the worst thing that ever happened to him. I'm sure I'll learn more when I get into the book. In the meantime, I want to run a post that I wrote several years ago for yet another contest I did not win. Unfortunately losing hurt because this was the prize. Quit Your Jibba Jabba! Clearly at the time I did not share Chris Rock's point of view.

P.S. - The contest was about the greatness of Patrick Swayze. And before anyone gives me some crap about Ghost or Dirty Dancing just remember he was in Road House, Red Dawn, and Youngblood - 3 of my favorite movies of all time. As a side note I may have lost because I spent so much damn time talking about Farley instead of Swayze. Alas.

In 1998 Tommy Boy was my favorite comedy and not surprisingly I was a huge Chris Farley fan. Granted Farley let me down at times. Beverly Hills Ninja, a train wreck of a movie, comes to mind. I recall attending the premier at my local movie theater. After an hour and a half of uninspired, weak attempts at comedy I stumbled out dazed confused, and questioning the man I had considered a genius. When I got wind of Farley’s next project, Almost Heroes, I vowed to boycott it out of principal. I just did not like the idea of Farley hitching his wagon to Chandler Bing. (To this day I have not seen it.) Of course in a short period of time Farley was dead from “an opiate and cocaine induced overdose.” The mere announcement of his death was a JFK type event for me. I still remember exactly where I was, whom I was with, and what I was doing. I felt guilty about turning my back on the man that brought me so many hours of laughter.

Needless to say I purchased “Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Farley” the day it came out. Soon I laughed all over again at the comedic hijinks of Matt Foley, Bennet Brauer, El Nino, and various other Farley characters. But then there was a skit that I had inexplicably forgotten about in the nine years since its original airing. There before my eyes Chris Farley was on stage with the immortal Patrick Swayze. The skit was from 1990, which coincides with the point in Swayze’s career where I believe his contracts called for him to be shirtless at some point. The SNL writers and Farley, always the good sport, obliged. As a result SNL treated fans across the nation with the ridiculous premise that Farley and Swayze or Barney and Adrian respectively, competed for a Chippendale spot. With Loverboy’s “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend” blaring in the background the two men faced off in an epic dance off. The chiseled Swayze and the obese Farley posed, jumped, twirled, and gave it their all. Clearly the image of Farley jiggling across the stage in nothing but a black pair of pants and a bow tie is enough to make any actor break character. However, Swayze, the ultimate professional, was not fazed. Unlike countless other performers featured on Farley’s DVD, such as David Spade and Christina Applegate, Swayze held it together to push the skit to the next level. Witness the following exchange:

Farley: “Oh, Adrian, you were great out there, man! I know it's gonna be you.”

Swayze: “Oh, Barney, what are you talking about? You got it, and you know it!”

The mullet man who had brought the house down as Jed Eckertt, Johnny Castle, and James Dalton served notice that he still had his A game. Granted Swayze went onto carry Keanu Reeves in Point Break. And Farley’s brief but memorable movie career was a few years away. Yet I firmly believe that on that fateful night in October of 1990, Swayze and Farley brought out the best in each other and reached previously unimaginable heights. It was the Saturday Night Live equivalent of Ali and Frazier in Manila minus the violence and the brutal hatred those two men shared.

Is there are lesson for the rest of us? Of course there is. Courtesy of Kevin Nealon who said it best, “Barney (Farley), we all agreed that your dancing was great…your presentation was very sexy. I guess, in the end, we just thought Adrian's (Swayze’s) body was much, much better than yours.”

And therein lies the lesson. No matter who you are, Swayze’s body is “much, much better than yours”.