Phil Hartman Days IX: Fortune Cookie

My favorite dance partner


I loved my office but I loved the VP office more. It was empty when I started working for Bob and for a short while I considered just moving in there one day, kind of like a sly cuckoo, and hoping that the desk made the woman. But it was not to be.

I was rudely pulled out of my reverie a short time later when Bob announced that he was interviewing an experienced development exec for the senior position. Apparently it had been a tough negotiation because she had insisted on getting the title of VP, Production & Development, the hot title de jour, which stretched the limits of credibility since she'd never actually been on a film set. However she prevailed and the deal was done. I was crestfallen but still, I did have an office and I wasn't typing anyone's memos.

Sharon arrived shortly afterward, a beautiful, polished blonde with an impressive resume and a gigantic rolodex (these were the days of the huge paper wheels that spun around and took up a quarter of your desk). Not a hair out of place, perfectly manicured nails, and $300.00 silettos. As she was being introduced she shook my hand warmly and smiled.

I was horrified.

Standing before me was the very development executive I had been assigned to on that awful day when I trudged out of the secretarial pool into her office at MGM. Tell me it wasn't so!! I scanned her face for any sign of recognition and when only a blank, friendly look was forthcoming, breathed a sigh of relief. Slowly I turned (step by step) and went back to my office and sat there wondering if it would continue to haunt me, this fear that one day she would see me in a certain light, glimpse a certain shrug of my shoulders, or the sound of my voice, say, answering the phone, and recognition would slowly, ever so painfully, ever so delightfully dawn. Get those phones working girlfriend!! It would all over town that I was just an imposter, not really one of them. Let's just say D-Girls were a clubby lot.

I had to get over it and focus on feathering my own career nest. I took in an inordinate amount of (script) reading for Sharon, sharpening my analytical skills and writing some pretty nifty coverage. Although plowing your way through the hundreds of scripts making their way to any development director's office can be tedious, it is a necessary evil and I got to be really good at it. Coverage is a kind of Reader's Digest version of the script that starts with a log line ("Mysterious chemical turns man into a hybrid monster who kills all of Chicago before being captured by aliens"), followed by a paragraph summary of the story line, then a longer version in case the first two items piqued the interest of the boss. The last part was always the most fun - the Siskel and Ebert moment where you got to decide the fate of the poor screenwriter who had poured his heart, soul and sweat into the masterpiece, whose life is now hanging in the balance based on your recommendation. Pass or Recommend. Yay or Nay. Thumbs up or thumbs down. Oh, the power!

The best readers were obviously frustrated writers because this was where you put your personality into the coverage (and showed your boss how much brighter you were than the screenwriter). There were many clever ways to skewer bad material and it was kind of like riffing off an idea in a comedy routine. Or, conversely, proving how invaluable you were by demonstrating your sophisticated grasp of character development, story arc, and ratio of connectivity to audience demographics if you were actually going to recommend the material be read by your boss (which was a rare occurance). It was expected that I would read 30 scripts for every recommendation, which meant about one a week would make it up the chain of command.

So while I was having lunch all over town, reading scripts, napping on my office couch (reading is very tiring), and paying very little attention to my marriage we got word that Phil was coming to town and wanted to have dinner. We promptly invited him for a home-cooked meal and he left a message saying he would be delighted and would it be okay to bring his fiancee.

We were a little taken aback because until then we hadn't heard of any fiancee. It was just another indication of the distance that had grown since Phil had left and virtually disappeared from our lives. It was odd to see him reappear again first on our television, a familiar face amongst an ever-changing sea of celebrity guest hosts, doing all the same schtick he did at our dinner parties. Except now he was becoming a television star, a recognizable face, a beloved object of admiration, desire, and envy. Our Phil had made it!

I remember that evening very well. At night our house, an old, polished Craftsman bungalow, mellowed into a rich amber glow as the candlelight reflected off the cherry, mahogany, and oak walls that lined every room. It made for intimate spaces created by the pools of light from lamps and the old chandelier hanging over our dining room table. I'd picked a huge bouquet of mixed summer roses from our garden (half of which the cat ate before we shooed him off the table....but hey this isn't a Martha Stewart commercial). Back then I liked to have white linens and silver napkin rings, and we spared no expense on the wine or the food that night, hoping to impress the woman who was about to claim our friend. It hadn't been that long since Phil had been a daily fixture in our lives and I still felt very attached to him, and very protective too.

At first Brynn looked no different than the string of attractive blondes Phil had been dating. She was requisitely cool to the touch, thin, wearing a simple, elegant outfit and hanging on to Phil's arm. It was then that I realized she was quite nervous. Insecure, even. She stood a little apart in our kitchen, an old-fashioned butter & mint colored room with a huge old gas range and a cook's table around which we always gathered to open and drink our first glass of wine. At first I took her stonyiness for shyness - after all, she was a stranger in a home full of west-coast film people and she was....well at that point I knew nothing about her except that she was an aspiring actress. I'm sure it felt a bit intimidating.

We sat down to dinner and Phil most of the talking. We were amazed to discover that despite his burgeoning celebrityhood he was taking the bus and subway home from taping the show every week. "The kind of people you see on the bus at two o'clock in the morning are not watching Saturday Night Live," he explained with a grin, "So they don't know who I am." He was also still the same old Phil, talking about scripts that he was writing (which would never be finished), and glancing with shy admiration over to where Brynn sat, solemn and watchful.

In recent weeks I've read as much as I could find about what people said about Brynn. Grim fascination, I suppose, about what makes a person do what she did. Oddly, I couldn't find much more than the typical "she seemed nice" observations. But the fact that it is hard to reconcile the "sweet and normal" personna with what happened is telling.

I can only give you my own observations and they are based on two evenings with her. That's all. Two meals, both lasting about three hours, including drinks in the kitchen beforehand and the lingering send-off afterwards. But I have that woman's intuition going for me, and I wasn't someone Brynn needed to impress or get along with. As much as I had come to love Phil he was moving out of our lives and we all knew it. This night we were in the slow and painful process of letting go and perhaps for that reason I saw a true glimpse of all that she was.

I saw a woman who watched me with the concentration of a street cat. She was polite but just this shy of nice, and although I cut her some slack on the first meeting, it didn't improve the second time and by then I was getting the message loud and clear: don't!

Don't come near, don't try to come between Phil and I (who's trying?), don't be try to be my friend, don't, don't, don't.

The second time we saw Phil and Brynn they were married and came to dinner toting their infant son, Sean. Phil was clearly a doting father and most of his attention was focused on the baby which seemed to both annoy and satisfy Brynn. I learned later that she'd gotten pregnant on their third date.

We said goodbye at the door and I was dismayed to see that Phil had that look again, abashed, embarassed, and a little like someone who wasn't sure what was coming next. Then the heavy oak front door closed and they were gone.

Next: Our lives finally separate for good