Sunday, January 25, 2009

Artie Lange: the next Chris Farley...dead!!

Today I received the February 5th issue of Rolling Stone, with the Boss on the cover, and quickly flipped to read the article of my current favorite "FAT" comedian, Artie Lange, entitled: America's Biggest Loser. The article details the tremendous success he is currently obtaining: $700,000 a year as a sidekick on the Howard Stern Show, $3 million on the stand up circuit, Too Fat to Fish on the New York Times best seller list with Random House paying $800,000 for a follow up book. Reading this you would assume that Lange is on the top of the world, but then you get to looking at his lifestyle, past and current failures that coupled with his appetite for heroin and food you can not help to compare the similarities between Chris Farley and Lange.

Farley was also featured in an article in Wenner Media's (publisher of Rolling Stone) US magazine detailing his destructive behavior during the most successful part of his career, titled: Chris Farley: On the Edge of Disaster. As you will see in the US magazine article (Click Farley's photo below, opening photobucket, click the pages and select full size to read.) The article starts very similar to Lange's explaining his current success in movies: David Mamet (writer of Hoffa, Wag the Dog, Hannibal and more) wrote a script specifically for him, the trio of movies that made him a star (Tommy Boy, Black Sheep & Beverly Hills Ninja) and also mentioning being one of Hollywood's highest paid comedians making $6 million a picture. Both articles talk about recent trips to rehab, both mention the need to lose weight; Farley for a movie role in the Gelfin was to be shipped off for two months to a fat farm, Lange to a 21-day program of cucumber juice, therapy and wheatgrass enemas in Florida, both programs were never completed. Farley talks about a year and a half long relationship with a girl (Lorri "Kit Kat" Bagley, learned about in the Chris Farley Show book) that he lived with and was ready to propose to when she broke up with him, he says "It is hard when they break your heart.” Lange’s girl, Dana (Cironi), left him three and a half years ago - and he is still heartbroken about it. The other woman in these guy's lives were/are their mothers. Farley's mom often accompanied him to movie premiers, late night talk shows and SNL (Mary Anne Farley was on a Mother's Day special) and Lange's mom has and still takes care of her 41 year old son, decorating his house and supplying it with the necessities. As you can see...Chris and Artie have A LOT in common.

Farley's US article was published in September of 1997, three months before his death. You can see where I am going with this. Are we witnessing the eventual death of Mr. Lange? If things pan out like they did for Farley, Lange will be dead by June.

In the Rolling Stone article Lange mentions Farley:

-but Chris Farley's death, from booze and speedballs, shook him to the core. "I'd just been with him, (Chris filmed his role in Dirty Work in early September of '97) and I'd even tried to bang the same hooker he had - just so I could say I'd done it" says Lange. "I couldn't believe he died."



I hope that we are not saying the same thing about Artie Lange.



bigjon9981/ChrisFarleyUSMagazine

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanx for letting us read the article, I looked for it once and had no luck.

But the girl he means about the one year and a half and about to propose.. wasn't Lorri, it was a girl called Erin, also in The Chris Farley Show book :)

xxx

Anonymous said...

Yes, thank you I looked for the article everywhere and this is the only site that had it. I was just going to say the same thing about the girl Chris wanted to propose to. She was Erin Maroney, Lorne Michaels assistant during Chris's early years at SNL.

Lorri, or Kit Kat as her nickname goes, was in a tumultuous and not altogether healthy relationship with him before he died. And, I'm not sure which one of them was more unhealthy for the other, him or her.