A very important message from Chris Farley--from beyond the grave.
Eight years after his fatal overdose, the late Saturday Night Live funnyman has been resurrected for a series of billboard advertisements plugging a new treatment for drug and alcohol abuse from Hythiam Inc.
Farley's body was found Dec. 18, 1997, in his Chicago apartment. A coroner ruled that Farley died inadvertently as a result of a deadly cocktail of morphine and cocaine. He was 33.
The first sign, set to go up today in Los Angeles, features Farley's image with the slogan "It wasn't all his fault." The billboard will be erected on the Sunset Strip adjacent to Hollywood's Chateau Marmont, the famed hotel where Farley's idol and another SNL star, John Belushi, died in 1982, also at the age of 33 from an accidental overdose of heroin and cocaine.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the ads mark the first time that Farley's estate has okayed the use of his image for commercial purposes since his death.
Hythiam, a fast-growing Los Angeles-based medical firm, reportedly paid $25,000 to his family for the right to use the image. The company's chief executive, Terren S. Peizer, says the ads will let people battling drug and alcohol addiction know that there are alternative treatments for their disease.
The billboards focus on a new outpatient prescription drug treatment called Prometa.
"We felt it was an effective way of getting people to focus on our message point, because it's unusual to see a celebrity in this fashion," Peizer told the Times.
But the ads are not without controversy.
"It's completely tasteless to harness the dead for commercial gain," Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert--a nonprofit advertising watchdog based in Portland, Oregon--told E! Online.
"The ads are deceptive because they suggest Chris would still be alive today if he took Prometa. What evidence is there that's true? My understanding is that Farley died of an overdose of morphine and cocaine, and the drug doesn't even treat opiates," he added.
"This is part of a trend by ad agencies that shows no respect for the dead. It's also part of how the greed in the advertising industry has no shame at all, and neither does the company."
In recent years, Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Louis Armstrong and Steve McQueen have made posthumous appearances in TV and print campaigns.
Farley's brother, Tom, however, says he doesn't see a problem, saying the billboards provide a way for younger addicts to get help.
"It really wasn't about the money for us," Tom Farley--who runs the Chris Farley Foundation in Madison, Wisconsin--told the Times. He says using his brother's fame to increase awareness "has always been something we've done with the foundation, so I liked their mindset."
Other estates share similar motivations. For instance, John Wayne's family agreed to let Coors use the legendary actor for TV ads in exchange for the beer company making donations to the John Wayne Cancer Institute.
Five more Farley billboards are set to be unveiled in Los Angeles within the coming weeks. Hythiam is also negotiating with the estates of other dead stars to resurrect them for a marketing campaign geared toward older addicts, though Peizer declined to name names.