Phil Hartman Appreciation Thread

You'll never work in this town again! You're through! You're finished!

Give it to me straight! What's the word on the street?

 

I remember him from such shows as The Simpsons go Hawaiian and Battle of the SNL Stars.

 

One more for the road. Bursting with adequatulence.

 

"The Sinatra Group"..........Nancy needed to chill

 

Back in 1998, I bought my first big expanded Pro Tools 888 audio system from a music dealer on Ventura Blvd. I noticed there was a lot of police activity on the block over, and I asked the guy what happened. He explained, "oh, that guy from Saturday Night Live got shot and killed by his wife last night. The neighborhood has been crazy all day." I was floored to find out that we were just a block away from Phil Hartman's house. When I drove down Ventura Blvd. a few minutes later, I counted about a dozen live news vans doing reports from the street, and cops barricading the whole area. Awful, just a horrible event.

Important safety tip: if you're going to divorce your wife, and she's crazy, don't tell her the night before and let her think about it while you go to sleep. Instead, tell her as you're leaving the house to go far, far away.

 

And don’t leave guns around either

 

Loved Phil.

Can't believe it's been 20 years..

 

I often used to say, the only post-1980 SNL actors I can think of who could've held their own with Ackroyd, Belushi, and the original cast were Phil Hartman and Eddie Murphy. Those two guys were brilliant in everything and actually elevated otherwise bad sketches. The 1990s SNL people used to call Hartman "The Glue," in that he held his sketches together just by being in them, somehow making them work much better than they would have without him.

 

I remember sitting on the couch watching hours of news footage as the details came rolling in and crying my eyes out. Such a terrible loss.

 

Even when the material he had to work with was weak (e.g. Greedy), Phil Hartman never phoned in a performance. He enriched everything I ever saw him in.

 

He did a great Ed McMahon.

 

Sassy!

 

Phil was also supposed to be the voice for Futurama's Zapp Brannigan - he auditioned for the part and 'nailed it'.

 

Given where we are, let's not forget that he initially worked as a graphic designer and commercial illustrator, and did a bunch of album covers - mainly for smooth LA-type bands - before getting into comedy. I had no idea he did the cover for Aja until fairly recently...

 

According to this thread from 3 years ago (Did Phil Hartman design the Aja album cover? ) he didn't actually do Aja. But I can find plenty of sources that say he did. Can anyone give reasons for thinking he did not? Or how the rumour spread if he did not?

 

Well I guess there's a good reason I didn't know about it earlier! Indeed it's weird how the story got around, since the album credits would be easy enough to check.

 

For me, his best Saturday Night Live Sketch was Robot Repair. Such as simple concept (robot gets more and more irritated over the changing title of his program) that just featured Phil Hartman. It takes a while to build but the payoff is great.

 

Phil Hartman was one of my favorite actors when I was younger. I remember first becoming aware of him when Pee Wee Herman hosted "Saturday Night Live" in 1985, and Pee Wee brought in Phil to help write his sketches. I was an avid watcher of SNL, and I remember thinking that it was very unusual for SNL to give a special credit to a guest writer. Then I heard a few months later that he was hired to be in the SNL cast. I recorded every episode of SNL and I would watch them over and over, practically memorizing all the best sketches. Phil never had a 'dud' moment, let alone a dud sketch.

His death was so sad and senseless. One of the few celebrity deaths that shook me to my core.

 

"Robot Repair" was BRILLIANT. One of my all time favorites. One of the fake show titles ("Let's Fix, Robots!") reminds me of the infamous Lionel Hutz business card ("WORKS ON CONTINGENCY? NO, MONEY DOWN!") -- also involving Phil Hartman.

Here is the sketch

 

My favorite lines in the sketch are (I'm working from memory so I hope I got it right):

"Unlike the other titles of this show, this one must be considered almost intentionally deceptive."

and

"It makes one wonder if the producer has even seen the show."

 

I was 17 and downstairs in my parents' basement playing guitar. My amp picked up signals from radio towers just a couple miles from my folks' house, and I heard a news report come though when I stopped playing. Pretty chilling memory.

 

Let’s not forget the anal retentive chef......that was always one of my favorites along with the Bill Clinton fast food sketch on the first page. Classic.

- Buck