You Might Remember Me The Life and Times of Phil Hartman

by Mike Thomas

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  Much to Lorne Michaels’s dismay—or so claimed a gossip item in the New York Daily News that Phil subsequently shot down—Phil announced that the 1993–94 season of SNL (his eighth) would be his last. The younger guard, though respectful of his status, was increasingly crowding him out. More important, he wanted to work on new projects, including a revival of The Phil Show. And so he bided his time and gave it his all, playing Clinton and Larry King, Michael Eisner and Frank Sinatra, creepy U.S. senator Bob Packwood, and (to his great delight) Jesus Christ while newer cast mates like Farley, Sandler, Tim Meadows, and David Spade soaked up ever more of the spotlight.

  As the season wore on, Phil was indeed featured in fewer and fewer sketches—sometimes only one or two per show, and nothing especially memorable except for his old standby characters, or maybe his Ned Land (a role made famous by Kirk Douglas) opposite Kelsey Grammer’s Captain Nemo in a parody of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. His work, as always, was never less than solid, but it seemed subtle and almost quaint in contrast to Sandler’s be-caped and clowning Opera Man or Farley’s hilariously spastic motivational speaker Matt Foley, who lived “in a van down by the river!” “It wasn’t just what was going on on-camera; I think he felt like he didn’t have peers off camera,” says Smigel, who left SNL in 1993 to become head writer at NBC’s then fledgling Late Night with Conan O’Brien. “I think he probably felt more like an island.” Carvey and Lovitz weren’t there anymore, either. And Jan Hooks was merely in and out for guest shots. Of Phil’s original writing crew, Downey and Franken remained, but Zander, Handey, and the Turners exited around the same time as Smigel. There was also this: SNL is a pressure cooker, even for the coolest of cats.

  New cast member Sarah Silverman felt it, too, and was delighted when Phil approached her about writing a sketch for them to do together. “This moment of paternal encouragement randomly collided in my brain with an odd bit of trivia I’d recently picked up: that flies live for only twenty-four hours,” she recalled in her 2010 memoir The Bedwetter. So she wrote a piece in which she and Phil were flies—one older, one younger—on a wall. At the end, as fly-Phil lies dying, the shot cuts to video of a dog shitting. “Go get it,” fly-Phil tells his young charge. “It’s beautiful.” And though the sketch didn’t survive past dress rehearsal, Silverman says, Phil “gave it his all. A lot of cast members would just bail on things they didn’t want to go through. But he was very sweet about it.”

  Jay Mohr was also among those who regarded Phil as an avuncular figure and something of a living legend among the veterans who remained. “He certainly stood out from the pack,” Mohr says. “He didn’t put on airs. He wasn’t a snob or anything. But you could just tell. It would be like if you’re on a football team, and the star quarterback walks in. He just carries himself differently. Phil wasn’t sittin’ around with Farley and Tim Meadows and Sandler, making fart jokes and trying to curry favor with the writers. You had to write for Phil. If Phil was in your sketch, it had a much better chance of getting on the air because there really wasn’t anything he couldn’t do.”

  Phil later admitted he was “emotionally stressed” throughout his entire SNL run. “The rejection and backstabbing could be painful, but the hardest thing was competing against your friends for airtime.” And from a purely creative standpoint, the shows were getting less sophisticated. “There’s less political satire. The younger audience loves Adam Sandler,” Phil told Entertainment Weekly in early 1994. “He appeals less to the intellect and more to that stand-up sensibility of ‘Let’s go out there and be insane.’ I like Adam Sandler, but that’s not my kind of comedy, so, yeah, in a way it makes me feel like, ‘Well, it’s time for me to go.’” Months afterward, much to Michaels’s displeasure, he likened his departure to getting off the Titanic before it sank.

  Despite his disappointment with Phil for being so publicly impolitic, Michaels understood what was going on. Leaving SNL was “very emotional for Phil,” he says. “I honestly never took it [as] a real insult or anything. Saying good-bye to the show was really hard for him. I think he underestimated how attached he was.” The firmer the attachment, Michaels says, the more forceful the detachment. “It’s how people break up. They pick a fight.” Not long after, Phil “apologized profusely” to everyone he’d insulted.

  During his Later appearance with Greg Kinnear, he was equally sanguine about the prospect of leaving his professional home of many years. Asked if it “bothered” him that he’d depart without a big-time breakout character to his credit, Phil affected a deeply hurt look and replied in a high-strung tone, “You mean does it bother me that I’m a loser? Is that what you’re saying? No, no,” he went on, chuckling nervously, “I enjoy that. I enjoy the obscurity that I’ve had. Why should I be concerned that twenty-year-olds are running off and making two-hundred-million-dollar movies?” Then he dropped the act. After watching Dana Carvey launch a film career with the extremely successful Wayne’s World, and Lovitz land a role in the enormously successful A League of Their Own, Phil admitted his confidence took a hit. But once he stopped comparing his career with anyone else’s, those feelings of insecurity went away. “In truth, I am very happy with the kind of career I’ve had on Saturday Night Live,” he said. “I haven’t had that breakout character that went to the stratosphere and ended up on a T-shirt or a coffee mug or something. But I’ve done a lot of work that I’m very proud of, and I get fan mail from people who say I’m still their favorite person on the show. Not that that’s the requirement.

  “Look, this is comedy. I’m having the time of my life. I got this job when I was in my mid-thirties [actually, he was thirty-eight]. I had decided to quit acting and suddenly this dropped in my lap. So I see it all as a gift, and I think that’s the way we should look at this life.”

  He wasn’t taking any chances with his post-SNL career, though. So before making his escape, Phil began formulating an exit plan.

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  Sometime in the fall of 1993, in his SNL office (#1719) at 30 Rock, Phil received a packet of comedy-writing samples from two Greenville, Rhode Island–based brothers named Brian and Kevin Mulhern. They’d seen him talking about The Phil Show (then targeted as a mid-season replacement for the spring of 1994) on a Letterman appearance and were eager to contribute material. The Phil Show, as Phil described it some months later, would “reinvent the variety form the way David Letterman reinvented the talk show” via “a hybrid, very fast-paced, high energy” format “with sketches, impersonations, pet acts, and performers showcasing their talents.” He also envisioned having “an interracial cast of at least two or three males and females.”

  However, since both Mulherns were then only in their early twenties and short on experience (Kevin was still in college; Brian worked as a pharmacy technician and radio station intern), they figured nothing would come of it. “We had made so many submissions [elsewhere] and gotten no response, so we were basically just wasting a lot of postage,” Kevin says. Then Phil called and left a message. Their mother retrieved it, not knowing who this Phil Hartman guy was, and passed it along. They phoned him back the next day. Phil dug their samples, he told them, and wanted to meet them in person to further discuss possible writing roles on his show. Thrilled, the siblings soon headed to New York and 30 Rock, where they hooked up with Phil and pitched him ideas in his SNL dressing room. “When Brian and I walked out, we’re like, ‘What the hell does he need us for?’ Kevin says. “‘He doesn’t need us! I hope he hasn’t realized that.’”

  During their brief meeting with Phil in New York, Brian remembers, Phil was eager to make Brynn a central part of his new venture. “There was a lot of talk about her and her role,” Brian says of discussions then and thereafter. “He was hell-bent on making that happen and making her a cast member and trying to get her career off the ground. That was the one thing that kind of had a nepotism feel to it.” Brynn, Phil gushed, was a beautiful, statuesque, talented actress with whom he had “great chemistry” that wo
uld “translate well over the airwaves.” Although the brothers pushed for Jan Hooks to star alongside Phil, Hooks wanted to stay in New York rather than relocate to L.A., where The Phil Show would shoot. “He definitely had [Brynn’s] best interests at heart,” Brian says, “and he was hopeful for her that this would work.”

  While Phil finished out his final season on SNL, he and the Mulherns worked on sketch ideas. Most of them played to Phil’s proven strength as the Man of a Thousand Voices—or at least a hundred:

  Frank’s Place: Phil plays the Chairman hosting a talk show from his home in Palm Springs.

  Hollywood Babylon: Phil plays a gossipy Tony Curtis.

  Happening L.A.: Phil plays “Bobby Vaneare,” a showbiz cheeseball who wears metal-tipped cowboy boots and a leather jacket with fringe.

  Collage: Phil plays an approximation of PBS talk show host Charlie Rose refereeing a bunch of loudmouths.

  Inside the Third Reich: Phil plays Hitler’s “personal architect” Albert Speer, who somehow abides his evil bosses’ bad behavior in the name of career advancement.

  Hollywood Tribute: Phil plays “a Beverly Hills matron” who interviews people famous and obscure and not at a charity event—just because.

  Rescue 911: Phil, as William Shatner, hosts a parody of the reality television show.

  Bosun Bob’s Kartoon Korner: Phil plays Bob, a 1950s throwback, who doodles, plays with puppets, and raises weighty political issues.

  Edge of Love: A soap opera parody with well-coiffed stars.

  Hell’s Kitchen: Phil plays New York–based PI Chick Hazard solving ridiculous cases involving monsters, aliens, and mummies.

  Ed McMahon’s World of Weirdness: Phil plays the former Tonight Show sidekick as the host of a bizarre interview program.

  Action Figure Theater: Exactly that—action figures doing theater.

  Lightman: Phil reprises his light-wearing, mind-reading Groundlings character.

  Phil’s feedback on the Mulherns’ contributions was always upbeat and constructive. Often, he left critiques and updates on their answering machine. “Way to go, guys,” he praised in one. “It makes me feel great to know that I’ve got buddies who can deliver, and it bodes well for your future, I might add.”

  Early in 1994, Phil added Joel Gallen (with whom he shared a talent manager in Brillstein-Grey’s Sandy Wernick) to the Phil Show’s team as executive producer. His old Groundlings pal Tom Maxwell and Maxwell’s writing partner Don Woodard were in talks to be the show’s head writers. “It looks like we’re making some incremental progress,” Phil said in another message to the Mulherns. Once Maxwell, Woodard, and Gallen were “in place,” they could “work out an overall strategy and start staffing up for the pilot.” Things looked more promising by the day.

  “He really felt like this was going to be his big solo break,” says Gallen, who thought likewise. “It had so much potential to be a really groundbreaking, unique sketch comedy show from a different point of view.”

  * * *

  As Phil’s days on SNL waned, his presence on the storied stage of Studio 8H remained greatly diminished. “He was upset by it,” Michaels says. “It was a time of turmoil. He had grown comfortable, and so had I. And at the same time, the network was being critical of us, so we were fighting on all sides.” Even on May 15, during his record-setting 153rd and final appearance as a regular cast member, he was unusually light—industry lingo for short on stage time. Except for a cold open with guest host Heather Locklear (Phil played her first of several sex partners) and his part as a besuited emcee in the show’s last sketch, a spoof of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound of Music, he had little to do and there was no fanfare to trumpet his exit after eight exceptional seasons. But his final appearance was indeed memorable.

  “So long, farewell … Hey, what am I chopped liver?” Chris Farley yawningly warbles in the guise of plaid-jacketed motivational guru Matt Foley. As he wearily plops down on the stage’s apron and sings, “I need … to sleep … in a van down by the river,” Phil emerges from the wings and sits beside him. Except for a spotlight shining on the two of them, Studio 8H is dark. Draping an arm over the slumbering man-boy as Farley rests his head on Phil’s chest, Phil addresses the small audience before him and the millions of viewers in TV land: “You know, I can’t imagine a more dignified way to end my eight years on this program.” Smiling, he then sings, in a faltering head voice, “Good-bye … good-bye. Good-byyyyyyyyyye.” The spotlight remains on Phil and Farley. Phil waves as the audience applauds. The camera zooms out as the spotlight shrinks. Fin.

  Afterward, Phil’s fellow cast members and others gathered backstage to present him with a special keepsake—a token of deep appreciation for his outstanding service. Phil had previously won an Emmy and an American Comedy Award, but the bottle of clear wood glue secured to a small pedestal that was bestowed by his peers that night immediately became his most cherished honor of all. As he had when daughter Birgen’s birth was announced on the show two years earlier, Phil tried and failed to stave off tears. “It meant as much as an Academy Award, because it symbolized how they felt about him,” says Norman Bryn, who was there. “And you could see that he was genuinely moved. There was a totally open, vulnerable human being there. Other than his falling apart during the night when Brynn really got to him, that was Phil as [emotionally] naked as I’d ever seen him.”

  Michaels was unsurprised by Phil’s reserved but deeply genuine reaction. For eight years SNL had been “his life,” after all. “He loved it. And it’s the best work he ever did. He was not unaware of that.”

  Chapter 13

  Phil as Bill McNeal on the set of NewsRadio, 1995. (Photo © Alan Levenson/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank)

  In the summer of 1994, Phil left an answering machine message for Brian and Kevin Mulhern regarding progress on The Phil Show. There were no new developments yet, he told them, because NBC was “preoccupied with the problems of the new season,” replacement shows were low-priority, and Phil himself had been busy with other work. Ideally, Phil said, he and a few other writers would begin outlining and scripting the program sometime in early October, after which the Mulherns could fly out to L.A. and join them. Nothing, however, was written in stone.

  * * *

  A couple of weeks after Phil bugged out of SNL, he spent a month or so shooting the comedy Houseguest in and around Pittsburgh with comedian Sinbad. Phil’s character, a well-off but somewhat dense lawyer and father of three, marked his first co-starring role in films. Director Randall Miller told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Houseguest was for Phil “a way to move into being a mainstream leading man,” just as the The Jerk had been for Steve Martin. And, in fact, Phil was then in talks to play the lead in a movie called Secret Agent Man, but that project ultimately fizzled.

  When Houseguest wrapped in late June, Phil was able to devote more time to shepherding The Phil Show into existence. Frustratingly, as he made clear in his message to the Mulherns, NBC suits kept dragging their feet. “I think they were just worried,” Gallen says. “For some reason, they just never really felt like they had a shot to make it.” It couldn’t have helped that another SNL alum, Chevy Chase, was fresh off a disastrous stint on Fox’s The Chevy Chase Show, which lasted just five weeks and cost the network millions. Chatfests featuring Martin Short, Robert Townsend, and Paula Poundstone had flopped, too. Over at NBC, newish 12:30 A.M. host and David Letterman successor Conan O’Brien’s quirky program garnered consistently low ratings, tepid-to-poor reviews, and teetered on the brink of cancellation. Granted, those folks were all late-night personalities, but if they couldn’t cut it during bedtime hours, how would the nontraditional Phil Show fare during prime time?

  As Phil toiled to bring his vision to fruition, Brynn had a tiny career breakthrough of sorts when friend and director Rob Reiner hired her for his film North, which opened July 22, 1994. Appearing in only one brief scene as a diner waitress, she speaks a single line while serving bever
ages: “One Coca-Cola right here. And one Sex on the Beach.” Her close-up, such as it is, lasts approximately five seconds. In retrospect, though, she was probably fortunate; the $40 million comedy—written by Alan Zweibel and based on his novella of the same name—crashed big and earned what Zweibel later described as “a veritable avalanche” of scathing reviews. Roger Ebert’s was especially crushing. “I hated this movie,” he famously wrote-stabbed. “Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.”