Released 30 years ago this month, Tommy Boy is one of the most iconic ‘90s comedies and an all-time great comedy filled with one ridiculous and hilarious scene after another. As strange as it may sound, a lot of those moments came from real-life events. And better yet, a lot of those ideas came about when the Chris Farley and David Spade classic was on the verge of almost not happening.
Ahead of the Tommy Boy 30th anniversary, I sat down for a chat with director Peter Segal. During our conversation, he opened up about how shooting around Farley and Spade’s Saturday Night Live schedule was initially something that almost led to him quitting before he and screenwriter Fred Wolfe took a step back and retooled everything. As Segal put it, they started over and pulled from their memories to create what would end up being some of the movie’s best moments:
We didn't really have a script, and so I knew that I wanted to take the story in a slightly different direction than was originally written. And that would involve a road trip. I had just tried to fill my wife's car up with gas at the gas station. I didn't park close enough to the pump. I backed up and I hyperextended the door and couldn't close it. And so we wrote that down on an index card. And then [Fred] said, ‘Yeah, a while back, I was driving and my hood flew up on the freeway because I left an oil can under and you can't latch the hood.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that might be something.’ We wrote that down.
The hood blowing up on the highway, Tommy breaking Richard’s car door, and all those other unforgettable moments were stories that Segal and Wolfe peppered in throughout Tommy Boy, which allowed them to start piecing together a great road trip comedy.
Segal, who would go on to direct hilarious Adam Sandler movies like The Longest Yard and 50 First Dates, added that the great scene where Tommy and Michelle’s (Julie Warner) date is ruined by a group of heckling kids on shore was inspired by something that had happened to him prior:
I went to high school in Arizona and learned to sail on a boat in McCormick Ranch Lake. I was on a date and it was a dead calm, and some kids started heckling me from the shore. We knew we wanted to get a Farley screaming moment in because that's what he was kind of known for. And so here's an opportunity.
All of this came out when I asked Segal how Farley’s outrageously funny “Fat Guy in a Little Coat” scene came to be. Basically, it was something that the late comedian would do on the SNL offices for laughs, and they thought it’d be a good bit to include.
After hearing these behind-the-scenes stories from what has been one of my favorite movies for 30 years, I think it’s about time to watch it again (maybe I’ll even show it to my kids). And with multiple ways to watch Tommy Boy, including streaming on AMC+ and the new 4K Blu-ray, maybe it’s time I retire that old VHS copy of mine.
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