Chris Farley Was Offered A Massive Payday To Star In The Cable Guy

Per a 2016 article from Uproxx, David Spade knew that the final decision about whether or not “Black Sheep,” the follow-up for the not-so-dynamic (but hilarious) duo got made, was in his hands. If he enjoyed the script and was willing to do the project, Spade could negotiate a much higher rate for himself, and by association, so could screenwriter Fred Wolf. He’d done some extra work polishing up the final screenplay for “Tommy Boy” and had been hired to tackle the script for “Black Sheep.”

According to Spade’s autobiography “Almost Interesting,” it seems he did in fact like the script (even if he would later detest its final iteration). “That night I read it and realized it wasn’t perfect but there was a funny movie in there,” he wrote. “I thought we could work with Fred, pepper in our extra jokes, and everything would work out fine.”

Everything did not work out fine.

The movie tried to replicate that magic that made “Tommy Boy” so wonderful, except seemingly without actually understanding what made the movie work in the first place. It just did more and did it bigger, louder, and more obnoxiously under the assumption that that’s why audiences loved the first film (it wasn’t). At the end of the day, it was a missed opportunity, and Chris Farley missed the chance at a potentially explosive moment in his career.