Friday, December 9, 2011

Chris Farley as Newt Gingrich

April 4th 1995 was the day Chris Farley barreled into a republican congress meeting impersonating the speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich. Having the number one movie in America at the time, Tommy Boy, Chris made the otherwise stiff congressmen laugh as he portrayed the Newt as he had done so many times before on SNL. I had actually written CSPAN on several occasions over the years to obtain this clip. Unfourtunatley they never released it to me. A few years back their website was not as user friendly as it is today. Charging $106 for this ten minute bit. Therefore I had forgotten/gave up on this event until I was able to view it on the Huffington Post website (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/08/chris-farley-impersonatin_n_1136927.html). With this renewed interest in the subject I found CSPAN also updated their archives making it less expensive to own this piece of political comedy history on dvd, mp4 or for free (http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/NewtGi) or just watch the embedded version below. It should be noted that although claiming no interest in politics while alive, Chris' family were republicans. Recently his older brother Tom ran for city council and in the past made a bid for lieutenant governor of Wisconsin (http://farleyforward.org/). Chris Farley's view on politics is more accurately portrayed in this SNL sketch of Spade in America: