Nearly Three Decades Later Patrick Swayze And Chris Farley's 'Chippendale Sketch' Endures As One Of SNL's Greats

Jun 01, 2020 by apost team

Kevin Nealon, Mike Myers, Jan Hooks played the role of a panel of judges watching two dancers, Adrian (Patrick Swayze) and Barney (Chris Farley), perform wild and sexy dances to earn a spot as a Chippendale in a 1990 episode of Saturday Night Live.

Need a good laugh? Saturday Night Live is a sure-fire remedy. Since its inception in 1975, the program has launched the careers of many of the brightest comedy performers of their generation. In this sketch, Patrick Swayze was simply the setup for the punch line of Chris Farley, whose very presence on stage was enough to set the crowd into hysterics.

Barely anyone knew who Farley was then. He was 26 years old, from Madison, Wisconsin, and, according to The Ringer, never had anything resembling a serious job David Spade, who called his new SNL office-mate “Wisconsin Dundee,” said in his 2015 memoir Almost Interesting that, in those early days, Farley would take out just $20 at a time from the ATM, presumable unable (or unwilling) to accept the fact that he had NBC money now. 

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It was Farley’s fourth show but he never starred in a sketch. Within seconds of his appearance, however, the crowd's response was enough to know that Farley was going to be staying in SNL for a while.

The Chippendales skit is easily one of the most beloved SNL segments of all time, and understandably so: Farley and Swayze dancing to Loverboy’s Working for the Weekend very suggestively. The judges, taking their dance seemingly seriously, manage to keep a straight face throughout, something that is practically impossible to do if you are not a trained actor like they are.

Kevin Nealon, one of the judges in the skit, said it was one of the hardest times he’d ever had not cracking up.

Mike Myers, also a judge in the skit, said in the 2015 documentary I Am Chris Farley that he had to resort to a tight-lipped, quizzical expression he described as “dog hearing a weird frequency” to keep it together.

RIP Patrick Swayze and Chris Farley! Pass this gem of a skit to your loved ones to brighten their day.