When comedian and Madison native Chris Farley died in 1997 at the age of 33 from the effects of substance abuse, it seemed he would simply become the next name on \Saturday Night Live""'s list of dead cast members. His family, however, had no intention of letting Farley's death end the laughter he created in life.
Following his death, Farley's immediate family began going to schools to speak to children about substance abuse. This led to the creation of the Chris Farley Foundation, an organization that aims not only to give kids the tools to say no to drugs in creative and informed ways, but also to use comedy to raise awareness of substance abuse issues.
Though still a budding organization, the Chris Farley Foundation has become well known in the Madison community and around the country, thanks in part to its annual comedy benefit show, Comics Come Home.
Hosted again by former ""SNL"" member Jim Breuer, Saturday's 2001 Comics Come Home benefit rocked a sold out Wisconsin Union Theater. The benefit displayed a range of humor from the offensive to the bizarre to the downright childish. Acts included an impressive list of local and national comedians. As diversified as the ensemble was, however, one thing remained constant, and that was laughter.
Comics Come Home opened with the Farley family members introducing themselves and thanking the audience before taking their seats in the front row. This small effort served to relax the audience and give the show a loose, less formal atmosphere.
This carried through when Breuer entered the stage with messy hair and an outfit that looked as though it had been dug out from the bottom of his dirty-clothes hamper. Breuer successfully played off his unkempt image with his down-toearth, unpolished humor. Breuer opened the show with overtly racial attacks on the situation in Afghanistan. As politically incorrect as his jokes sometimes were, Breur's average-guy humor and looselimbed, off-the-mark impressions made Breuer too lovable to offend and kept a liberal Madison audience laughing.
As the evening progressed, it was Breuer's charisma that wove the show together. His short bits between acts sometimes dealt with personal issues like his wife's pregnancy, or were short anecdotes, like a run-in he had with Jack Nicholson on the set of ""SNL."" Through each of these varying gems of sets, Breuer's friendly attitude kept the audience receptive and warm for each new act.
From Breuer's first monologue, the show took a break from stand-up with some improv from members of Chicago's famed Second City Theater Group, responsible for being a stepping stone for many ""SNL"" cast members. Not only did the show's improv company include both of Chris Farley's brothers, who trained at Second City, and local comedian Dave Gray, but also the winners of this year's Chris Farley Foundation scholarships to Marquette University. The program wisely kept the improv light and short, although another helping of Second City's improv ran too long during the second half of the show.
Second City was followed by a string of four side-splitting stand-up artists. A Madison favorite, Kevin Bozeman, started out the group with his disarming smile and fast-paced delivery. He dealt out digs at Madison's white culture, college and sex without losing his friendly charm. Feeding off Bozeman's successful set, Eddie Gossling, former hockey team mascot and current rising comedian, slammed the audience with his routine featuring his own off-beat, self-deprecating interpretation of everyday life.
After the break, Los Angeles comedian Maria Bradford finished up with her pitchperfect impressions of average women and the hypocrisies of feminism in America. Closing the show was nationally respected actor and comedian Dave Chappelle, best known for his roles in ""Robin Hood: Men in Tights"" and ""Half Baked."" Chappelle's dominating stage presence and methodical delivery provided a sharp contrast to most of the other comedians of the program. Often, instead of trying to be charming, he bounced his humor off the audience's discomfort over issues like racism and sex. What resulted was a shockingly hilarious flex of one of America's most talented comedic muscles.
From start to finish, Comics Come Home was nothing short of comedic joy. With such a talented ensemble of performers gathered to help others, Comics Come Home is a new tradition Madison can be proud to call its own.
