Fat Guy in a Little Legacy

The Behind-the-Scenes Chaos, Cult Status, and Secret Sadness of Tommy Boy

Jun 13, 2025

The year is 1995, and Saturday Night Live is being torn apart in the press. The critics say it’s too many guys yelling. The cast is too bro-y. The sketches go nowhere.

And yet, somehow, the movies are working.

Wayne and Garth have already ruled the box office twice. Adam Sandler is about to take off with Billy Madison. And now it’s Chris Farley’s turn.

The plan? A script called Billy the Third: A Midwestern, a summer shoot in Toronto, and a starring role opposite Rob Lowe. But that plan lasts about five minutes. The title is scrapped (can’t have two “Billy” movies), Rob Lowe gets demoted to “secret lover posing as stepson,” and David Spade is brought in to co-star with Farley—because they already share an office at 30 Rock.

The script? Barely exists. The schedule? A nightmare. The writers? Swapped mid-stream. But what starts as chaos becomes one of the most enduring comedies of the ‘90s—Tommy Boy.

Critics hated it. Roger Ebert gave it one star and called it “an explosion down at the screenplay factory.” But audiences showed up. Tommy Boy opened at #1, made $33 million, and turned Chris Farley and David Spade into movie stars. Quentin Tarantino reportedly owns a 35mm print and calls it one of his favorite comedies of the decade.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE

BUT FIRST BLOOPERS

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Chris Farley (on his dynamic with Spade)

“David’s the smart one. I’m the dumb one. He’s skinny. I’m fat. That’s the formula. It works.”
(Rolling Stone, 1997)

David Spade

“We had one script at 9am, a totally different one at lunch, and then Chris would just start doing cartwheels. I was like, ‘I guess this is the movie now.’”
(The Howard Stern Show)

Rob Lowe

“I was supposed to be his brother. Then I was his mom’s lover. I think I played both roles in the same scene at one point.”
(People Magazine, 2024)

Peter Segal (Director)

“It was beautiful chaos. But Farley was magic. Every time he said ‘housekeeping,’ the crew would lose it—even on take 12.”
(Consequence of Sound, 2015)

Fred Wolf (Screenwriter)

“There wasn’t a second draft. Just a deadline. I’d hand Chris pages and he’d eat them. Literally. Once.”
(SNL oral history interview)

Roger Ebert (Critic)

“An explosion down at the screenplay factory.”
(One-star review, 1995)

Lorne Michaels (Producer)

“It didn’t have to work. But it did. Because Farley gave everything—even when he didn’t know what the hell the movie was yet.”
(SNL retrospective interview)

What Quentin Tarantino says about Tommy Boy

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FARLEY AND SPADE GET SERIOUS

From Billy the 3rd: A Midwestern to Tommy Boy

FR. TOM GANNON, S.J., friend:

People always ask me what kind of guy Chris Farley was, and I say, “Go and see Tommy Boy.” That’s Chris Farley.

One of the earliest scripts, titled Billy the Third: A Midwestern, focuses on Chris Farley and Rob Lowe as brothers running a brake-pad factory.As Bonnie Turner’s brother‑driven draft gave way to the Farley–Spade odd couple, only one scene survived from her original screenplay: Tommy changing in the airplane bathroom. Everything else—including character roles and motivations—was rewritten on the fly. Director Peter Segal brought in SNL writer Fred Wolf to overhaul the script during filming, often faxing new pages to set daily. Even after production wrapped, a handful of scenes—mostly sales calls and transitional beats—were reshot in L.A. to clarify the plot and tighten the pacing.

PETER SEGAL:
Fred and I would meet for dinner, or lie out on the floor of the hotel room with note cards, talking about things that’d happened to us. Fred would say, “I once left an oil can in the engine, and the hood flew up in my face.”
And I’d say, “Great, put it down on a card. It’s in.”
Then I told him how I was once backing up at a gas station in Glen-dale and I hyperextended my car door on the cement post. So that went in. We just started building these stacks of cards.
After that, Fred and I would go to dinner and watch Chris and Dave interact, and we’d literally just start taking notes on things that they would say to each other. One day on the set, Chris came out with a new sport coat, and he said, “Does this coat make me look fat?”
And Spade said, “No, your face does.”
I stopped what I was doing and said, “Wait, wait, wait. What was that? Say that again! That’s gold! We gotta put that in the movie!”

A full breakdown of the intense production can be found in THE CHRIS FARLEY SHOW in a chapter called 66 PAGES.