At 1 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 17, Farley arrived at one of his regular spots, the Hunt Club, an upscale sports bar in Chicago's Rush/Division district, with his brother and his personal assistant in tow. According to a source close to Farley's family, he left at 3 a.m. in the company of two women. He then returned to his apartment, where he received several emphatic messages from a fellow reveler, urging Farley to come join a party at his home in nearby Lincoln Park. Farley allegedly arrived around 6 a.m. and stayed several hours, hanging out with a group that included a stripper named Heidi, who has claimed that Farley was tearing through a witches' brew of cocaine and heroin all day long. (She later gave her story and a photo of a passed-out Farley to the Globe.)
Around 10 p.m., Seely spoke to Farley by phone and begged him to take care of himself. "I thought to myself, this was going to be one of Chris' binges and then he was going into rehab." He promised he'd call before he went to bed. But the call never came. At 2 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 18, Farley's comedian brother, John, 29, discovered him sprawled across the floor of his swank, 60th-floor apartment in Chicago's John Hancock building, lying on his back, dressed in pajama bottoms and an unbuttoned shirt, with blood-tinged fluid coming from his nose and white froth coming from his mouth--dead at 33. A Cook County medical examiner's toxicology report is still pending.
No one saw River Phoenix's OD outside the Viper Room coming. No one predicted Robert Downey Jr. would pass out in a neighbor's bed or that Christian Slater would bite a man in a drug-fueled fit. But among the many grief-stricken friends and coworkers interviewed for this story, few seemed particularly shocked that Farley would wind up in a grave before his 34th birthday. The almost universal refrain is that the comedian--an insecure Midwestern son of an overweight father--was a 300-pound time bomb on the brink of detonation.
"It wasn't a total surprise," says Saturday Night Live cast mate Al Franken. "Everyone was concerned." Adds Farley's close friend Chicago deejay Mancow Muller, "There were times I talked to Chris where I thought it would be the last."
Apparently his agents and lawyers had the same fears; they routinely hired counselors, personal chefs, and companions to attend AA meetings with him. Over the years, everyone from SNL producer Lorne Michaels to Tom Arnold had tried to intervene. (Arnold was one of Farley's early sponsors.) Anyone who came in contact with Farley quickly became protective of him--but seemed unsure of how to help. Brian Dennehy, who played Farley's dad in Tommy Boy, agrees, recalling a recent conversation he had with David Spade while guesting on Spade's NBC sitcom, Just Shoot Me. "I had seen a clip of Chris at Planet Hollywood, and he looked awful," says Dennehy. "He looked huge and was sweating terribly. I said to David, 'Jesus, I hope he's okay.' And David said, 'We have this same conversation all the time, and all you can do at some point is hope he's taking care of himself.'"
