Phil Hartman IV:Have I Got a Deal For You
Yesterday a travelling examiner came to give me a comprehensive medical check-up to qualify for life insurance. Having my blood drawn at the dining room table and an EKG while lying on the couch is a strange enough experience but it got even stranger when the person, a pleasant, talkative woman smartly dressed in a black suit and jet accessories, turned out to be separated from my life by a mere whisper during the time that I had become friends with Phil Hartman. This city may make it impossible to know all the connections we have with others, so anonymous is the web, but once in a while a little magic settles on a perfectly innocent encounter and all the hair on your neck stands on end.
"You know, I've had an interesting life", she said out of the blue as we were getting ready to wrap up the exam and go our separate ways. "I dated Phil Hartman." Her eyes were glowing and the world took a little skip. I stared at her in utter amazement.
Why this woman decided to tell me about her fling with Phil is a mystery. She didn't know anything about my film career (I'd listed my profession as 'writer' and told her I was a freelancer) so it wasn't as if she had an inkling that we might have something in common. But Phil, it turns out, was her brush with fame. Her memorable moment, a little jewel to take out of the box once in a while to admire.
It was the timeframe that was also so extraordinary. Candy (that's her name) came into Phil's life just as he was about to enter mine. For a heart-stopping moment I was sure she was the blonde woman who'd been Phil's date to the red-carpet premiere of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. It seemed an unbelievable coincidence.
My understanding of Phil's love life was tied up in his dwindling relationship with wife Lisa who treated Phil like the disposable appendage he was about to become. I'm not criticizing the woman - in this freer social climate where intimate relationships come and go we often treat those we've once loved and protected with our lives in ways that we would later find shameful. And back then especially,it was politically incorrect to be admonished for it (I gotta be me. Keep it real, and all that).
So Phil was dealing with a blow to his ego when I met him - his pretty, ice-queen wife with the glossy, razor cut helmet of dark hair and the size 2 figure, probably wasn't giving him much in the way of strokes. In bed or otherwise. Perhaps that's why Phil seemed a little embarrassed and somewhat emasculated at this particular period in his life. And perhaps that's why I felt drawn to him - I knew what it was like to be in a place where body and soul were out of sync. We both had demonstrated lousy instincts when it came to the people we chose to let into our lives and we were both all the more vulnerable for it.
I didn't realize it until much later but as middle children both of us had the veneer of likeablility. In our cases, being easygoing just meant we never got what we really wanted and in Phil's case the classic clown response kept him at arm's length. I have to say I admired him for it because at least he was getting something out of the deal. He was truly funny, and his gift for impersonation was breathtaking. It would pop out of him at the best times, when for instance, there was an akward silence at a dinner party when everyone had run out of interesting things to say, Phil would ask for more pie in a John Wayne voice and then riff on the pie thing for a good ten minutes. By then the mood at the table would have taken a turn upwards and almost as if he had sprinkled a bit of fairy-dust, everyone would suddenly get their game back. It was the reason we saw Phil as the perfect dinner guest - Lisa had disappeared by then and he was single, willing to fill an empty chair, and always made us look good.
So when Candy decided to tell me about her moment with Phil, I felt as if I had been given a gift. A part of Phil I had never seen, a passionate, sexy, confident man who had been such a remarkable lover that the one night he'd shared with her had never been forgotten. "It was an amazing experience," she remembered, and told me that if it hadn't been for the fact that she was getting out of a divorce, she would have, might have, could have made it much, much more than one very magical night.
I had to wonder about all the things about Phil I didn't know. Why I saw only the parts of Phil that I understood and empathized with. Perhaps it was that I wanted to know I wasn't alone in my isolation, that there was someone like me who was making all the same mistakes and yet perched on the edge of greatness. I wanted to know that potential would out in the end. And Phil was on the verge of a great change in his life. He was at that apex of a realization of the kind of dreams that people have in their secret thoughts but never see come to fruition.
In Hollywood we were surrounded by people like this. They were crushing in their numbers and all of us were only too aware of how few would actually get there.
Spring came and we started shooting Pee-wee's Big Adventure. The director was a young filmmaker who had made a little short called Frankenweenie about a dog who had been brought back to life by it's young master. Tim Burton, his dark, quirky take on reality adding to the mixture of kitch and syrup in Pee-wee's world, joined our team and as the project began to pick up speed, Phil hung around the edges like an eager puppy, looking for a way to get in. He was digging around for some small scraps as befitting a guy who lived in a tiny house in the Valley, drove a clunky old car and showed up on time for every audition he never got.
Next: Phil and Saturday Night Live
"You know, I've had an interesting life", she said out of the blue as we were getting ready to wrap up the exam and go our separate ways. "I dated Phil Hartman." Her eyes were glowing and the world took a little skip. I stared at her in utter amazement.
Why this woman decided to tell me about her fling with Phil is a mystery. She didn't know anything about my film career (I'd listed my profession as 'writer' and told her I was a freelancer) so it wasn't as if she had an inkling that we might have something in common. But Phil, it turns out, was her brush with fame. Her memorable moment, a little jewel to take out of the box once in a while to admire.
It was the timeframe that was also so extraordinary. Candy (that's her name) came into Phil's life just as he was about to enter mine. For a heart-stopping moment I was sure she was the blonde woman who'd been Phil's date to the red-carpet premiere of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. It seemed an unbelievable coincidence.
My understanding of Phil's love life was tied up in his dwindling relationship with wife Lisa who treated Phil like the disposable appendage he was about to become. I'm not criticizing the woman - in this freer social climate where intimate relationships come and go we often treat those we've once loved and protected with our lives in ways that we would later find shameful. And back then especially,it was politically incorrect to be admonished for it (I gotta be me. Keep it real, and all that).
So Phil was dealing with a blow to his ego when I met him - his pretty, ice-queen wife with the glossy, razor cut helmet of dark hair and the size 2 figure, probably wasn't giving him much in the way of strokes. In bed or otherwise. Perhaps that's why Phil seemed a little embarrassed and somewhat emasculated at this particular period in his life. And perhaps that's why I felt drawn to him - I knew what it was like to be in a place where body and soul were out of sync. We both had demonstrated lousy instincts when it came to the people we chose to let into our lives and we were both all the more vulnerable for it.
I didn't realize it until much later but as middle children both of us had the veneer of likeablility. In our cases, being easygoing just meant we never got what we really wanted and in Phil's case the classic clown response kept him at arm's length. I have to say I admired him for it because at least he was getting something out of the deal. He was truly funny, and his gift for impersonation was breathtaking. It would pop out of him at the best times, when for instance, there was an akward silence at a dinner party when everyone had run out of interesting things to say, Phil would ask for more pie in a John Wayne voice and then riff on the pie thing for a good ten minutes. By then the mood at the table would have taken a turn upwards and almost as if he had sprinkled a bit of fairy-dust, everyone would suddenly get their game back. It was the reason we saw Phil as the perfect dinner guest - Lisa had disappeared by then and he was single, willing to fill an empty chair, and always made us look good.
So when Candy decided to tell me about her moment with Phil, I felt as if I had been given a gift. A part of Phil I had never seen, a passionate, sexy, confident man who had been such a remarkable lover that the one night he'd shared with her had never been forgotten. "It was an amazing experience," she remembered, and told me that if it hadn't been for the fact that she was getting out of a divorce, she would have, might have, could have made it much, much more than one very magical night.
I had to wonder about all the things about Phil I didn't know. Why I saw only the parts of Phil that I understood and empathized with. Perhaps it was that I wanted to know I wasn't alone in my isolation, that there was someone like me who was making all the same mistakes and yet perched on the edge of greatness. I wanted to know that potential would out in the end. And Phil was on the verge of a great change in his life. He was at that apex of a realization of the kind of dreams that people have in their secret thoughts but never see come to fruition.
In Hollywood we were surrounded by people like this. They were crushing in their numbers and all of us were only too aware of how few would actually get there.
Spring came and we started shooting Pee-wee's Big Adventure. The director was a young filmmaker who had made a little short called Frankenweenie about a dog who had been brought back to life by it's young master. Tim Burton, his dark, quirky take on reality adding to the mixture of kitch and syrup in Pee-wee's world, joined our team and as the project began to pick up speed, Phil hung around the edges like an eager puppy, looking for a way to get in. He was digging around for some small scraps as befitting a guy who lived in a tiny house in the Valley, drove a clunky old car and showed up on time for every audition he never got.
Next: Phil and Saturday Night Live
posted by vallie at 12:38 PM
<< Home