David Spade Explains the Origins of 'Fat Guy in a Little Coat' From 'Tommy Boy'

By the time audiences discovered the magic of the “Fat Guy in a Little Coat” dance — one of the most memorable scenes of the 1995 Chris Farley-David Spade comedy Tommy Boy — the gag had already cost Spade a whole bunch of Levi’s denim jackets.

While visiting his old Saturday Night Live pal Conan O'Brien on Monday to promote his new memoir Almost Interesting, Spade delighted fans by recalling the origins of that iconic and very silly scene from the cult-hit comedy. Watch Spade talk about it above, and check out the scene below:

Farley and Spade shared a writing office while both were co-starring on SNL in the 1990s. They also shared a similar dynamic to the one portrayed in Tommy Boy: Spade was always trying to work, while Farley preferred to goof off and distract his buddy.

Also read: Kevin Farley on Growing Up With — and Getting Beat Up By — His Brother Chris Farley

“Chris was always bored and I was trying to scribble away and write some crummy sketches,” Spade recalled. “And he’d go, ‘David, turn around.’ And I’d go, 'If this is Fat Guy in a Little Coat, it’s not funny anymore, I don’t like it.’ And he’d say, 'No, it’s not, I’m working on new stuff. And I’d turn around, and he had on my little Levi’s jacket…”

Well, you can guess what happened next.

The gag made it into the film because, as Spade says, “We didn’t have much to do in there… It was stuff in Tommy Boy that was funny to us that we just hoped was funny to other people.”

That Spade is still getting laughs from these memories 20 years later shows just how funny audiences did find their inside jokes — and how tragic it is that Farley died at the age of 33 in 1997.