Fans of comic Chris Farley, who died from a drug overdose in 1995, are angry at DirecTV for splicing old footage of Farley into a commercial for satellite television service. (Watch the DirecTV ad featuring Chris Farley.) In the ad, Farley's friend and comedy partner David Spade plugs DirecTV while Farley, digitally inserted into the same room, does his "fat guy in a little coat" routine from the movie Tommy Boy. Was the ad effective, or in bad taste?
This is an affront to Farley’s memory: What a despicable thing to do, says Josh Tyler in Cinema Blend. It's bad enough that DirecTV would turn a dead celebrity into "an unwilling corporate shill." But it is unspeakably "creepy and wrong" for David Spade to mock his poor, dead friend by turning his ghost into a "corporate monkey."
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