Trivia / Black Sheep (1996)

• Creator Backlash:
  • David Spade was disappointed by the final result of the film and feels that Penelope Spheeris was the wrong person to helm it.
    Spade: Trouble started right away. Penelope told us right off the bat that she didn’t love Tommy Boy and that she knew how to make Chris and me funny. That’s where someone should have pulled the plug.
  • Chris Farley said that he "wasn't crazy" about the script after reading it, but he was coaxed into doing the film by David Spade.
• Executive Meddling: The whole movie was birthed because of this. Paramount, who were caught off guard by the surprise success of Tommy Boy, basically strong-armed Farley and Spade by contract into doing the film so they could get a quick cash grab.
• Hostility on the Set: Penelope Spheeris had notable disagreements with writer Fred Wolf and David Spade throughout the entire production of the film. Spheeris fired Wolf from the film three times (he was hired back twice by Chris Farley and once by Lorne Michaels), then refused to speak to him and finally banned him from the set. Her relationship with Spade was equally as tumultuous. Speaking to Farley's official biographer, she said, "I don't think I've ever even smiled at anything David Spade's ever done... I still have a recording of a message David left on my answering machine. He said, 'You've spent this whole movie trying to cut my comedy balls off.'" In that same book, Spade said the studio gave Spheeris too much credit for the success of Wayne's World (with him maintaining it was more because of his fellow Saturday Night Live cast-mates Mike Myers and Dana Carvey) and her decision to put more emphasis on the Donnelly brothers' relationship hurt the film.
• Looping Lines: A lot of the lines in the movie had to be dubbed in later because Penelope Spheeris didn't like the lines that were recorded first.
• Money, Dear Boy: Penelope Spheeris admitted in Chris Farley's biography she only took the directing job because Paramount offered a $2.75 million salary.
• Production Posse: Another film by the comedy duo of Spade and Farley, with SNL Lorne Michaels again producing. Michaels had worked with Spheeris before on Wayne's World, which featured Farley in a minor role.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • The bouncers Mike meets at the Rock the Vote concert are played by two of Chris' brothers, John and Kevin Farley.
  • The older woman who accuses David Spade of playing "pocket pool" is Penelope Spheeris' mother 'Gypsy' Spheeris.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Fred Wolf claimed the studio told him to "deliver a finished script by midnight on Sunday, the last day Chris was contractually allowed to get out of the movie. If I didn't have a finished script - any finished script - they were going to sue me." Wolf wrote 45 pages within only a few days, and dropped the script off at Paramount 15 minutes before his deadline.

---