Bob Odenkirk on the Best Line He Ever Wrote — And the Only Person Who Could Have Made It a Classic
Over the years, actor, comedian and writer Bob Odenkirk has been responsible for some of the most memorable and seminal television moments to come out the small screens, thanks to his legendary tenures on influential shows such as Saturday Night Live, Mr. Show with Bob and David, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Ben Stiller Show, just to name a few.
For GQ’s online segment, “Actually Me,” Odenkirk went online to answer fans’ questions directly, offering the truth straight from the source. In it, he was asked which line he was most proud of having written.
For that answer, Odenkirk had to go back to his Second City days, back when he first worked with Chris Farley. It was there that he first created Farley’s iconic Matt Foley character, a down-and-out motivational speaker who scares kids straight with tales of his terrible life.
“So, I wrote the motivational speaker sketch for Chris Farley when we were at Second City together,” recalled Odenkirk. “In the course of rehearsal, I got to know Chris, and one night, I went home and I wrote that sketch, the way it’s done.”
Odenkirk played to the Farley’s strengths of physical comedy and his ability to become wildly animated as he portrayed a human cautionary tale in a pastel checkered suit.
“I’ve written hundreds of sketches. Maybe a couple thousand, maybe. That’s one of the few that is in its final form, pretty much exactly what I wrote in my apartment alone one night in Chicago, which is cool and weird and rare,” said the multihyphenate.
“So, my favorite line, ‘Is that Bill Shakespeare over there?’ Just kills me,” said Odenkirk. “I mean, I’m a Midwestern guy. I’m always going to call William Shakespeare ‘Bill Shakespeare.'”
NBC/Everett Collection
He then shared stories about the departed comedian, who died in 1997 at the age of 33 years old.
“We did the sketch at Second City first, and I was in the cast, and I played the dad, the part that Phil Hartman played on [Saturday Night Live]. Chris would not leave that stage until her made every other performer laugh every single time he did the sketch.”
“My daughter, when she was six, asked me, ‘What’s the most fun you ever had in show business?’ And I said to her, ‘I did a sketch with a guy named Chris Farley once at Second City. And every night that I did that sketch, every single time I did it, it was the most fun I ever had in show business.'”
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