Phil Hartman VI: Sidelined
When Pee-wee's Big Adventure began shooting I was working as a freelance production coordinator. I had just finished an episode of a new comedy series on PBS and ours was directed by Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, The Manchurian Candidate) and featured the acting debut of the very strange David Byrne of The Talking Heads. This was a low-rent production typical of public television and we had no money for a wrap party so I volunteered to have it at our house. The two clearest memories of that night were one of Byrne standing perplexed before a tray of iced petit-fours ("What are these?", he asked wide-eyed before turning back to study them intently). The other was sitting cross-legged on the floor of our study, knee-to-knee and eye-to-eye with Byrne, who could outstare a cat, discussing the reliability of technique for an actor. Since he was considering a career change from musical superstar to serious actor and I was a recent graduate of theatre school and could spout theory from Michael Chekov and Stanislavski, he was mine, all mine for the night.
My husband was equally busy. With great excitement the Pee-wee Gang moved into the very spacious production bungalow on the Warner Brothers lot occupied by one of the film's producers (and former studio head) Bob Shapiro. It was a first-class ride and we were all a little giddy, even those of us who were attached to the whole thing only by the thread of marriage. Although I'd worked at MGM on several television shows this was my first close encounter with a major feature film and I wanted in really badly. Something. Anything. But I didn't have the clout to get an Associate Producer's job (and was stalemated by Michael's producing partner who despised me at this point....long story some other time) so I started hanging around the set trying to figure out how I could be helpful. Michael and Phil were both sidelined to crew chairs, the fate of most film writers before they start directing or producing their own material, so we spent a lot of time inside Paul's trailer doing pretty much nothing. He had a very handsome massage therapist/personal trainer at the time so he was always around as well.
One day Paul, who was a huge fan of the old high-school yearbooks that were strewn around his trailer, asked me if I wanted to take on a job producing a crew gift for him. I heard the word "producing" and jumped in with both feet, brain last. Finally feeling useful, off I went tra la, tra la to make a faux 60's style yearbook about the film, aptly named "The Adventurer", to be limited edition printed and distributed to cast and crew at the wrap party.
What was I doing, you may ask? One thing about me is that I'll take on just about anything even if I've never, ever done it or anything remotely like it before. Like the 3 tiered wedding cake I made for a friend's wedding (they had no back-up plan in case I failed). I had to go to culinary school part-time to figure out how to make the damn thing but in the end it was a thing of butter-icing beauty. So when Paul gave me a job (a paid job at that) I jumped at it.
Turned out to be a lot of fun. I had a 35MM camera and access to everyone on the film, including the studio executives on the picture (Mark Canton and Lisa Henson, who had yet to ascend to Studio Chiefs of Warner Brothers and Columbia pictures respectively). It was a shmoozers dream and I made the most of it, chatting up everyone from top to bottom. I was busy and happy. Michael and Phil were still hanging around the set doing nothing.
And that's what I remember about the weeks we were shooting. Phil kind of disappeared at this stage of the production. He was there, but like Michael, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the creative process, now dominated by Paul and director Tim Burton. Tim was always aloof from the OG - he was already on his own star track and I often felt annoyed with him for not really giving credit to the writers for the extraordinary imagination and vision they'd provided in the material. I knew the script backwards and forwards and Pee-wee's Big Adventure came to him almost fully formed, story, characters, costume and production design, rythmn, humor. In later reviews I would be incensed at how much they attributed to Burton. I mean the guy is a genius to be sure, but he doesn't get the creative credit for this film - and I said as much in a couple of letters to the newspapers after the reviews came out in which they barely mentioned the writers. Tim was the luckiest guy on earth to have been tapped for the job because it greased the wheels for his truly meteoric rise. That's my opinion.
I didn't see much of Phil during the first weeks, so busy was I with my little project, but he was always on set, standing a little apart during the general hubub that surrounds a set, and I would always seek him out when I could. We were both a little introverted when out of our element and besides that I could always count on him to be happy to see me. We often ate lunch together when Paul and Tim were conferring, and he told me he was really trying to get more auditions to capitalize on the Pee-wee buzz. He wanted to continue writing but I knew that his real talent was as a performer.
One day, he confided in me that he really wanted a part in the film but had been too shy to really press Paul and too intimidated by Tim. The film was populated by many comedic character actors, some of them friends of Paul's (like Jan Hooks, who gives a memorable performance as the tour guide at The Alamo). But Phil didn't fit anywhere so he resigned himself to making hay while the sun shone. He started looking for work in earnest: I remember him auditioning to be the host of a talk show, and then came the audition for SNL, which no-one thought he would get, genius as he was.
Finally they came down to casting some bit parts and found something for Michael, Phil, and even Bob Shapiro, who appears as a hobo at the end of the film. The scene where Pee-wee becomes a hero after his life story is made into a film is where you'll see Phil for a second, posing as a reporter, hovering around Paul, a second-banana on film as in life. Michael is even more invisible, he gets out from behind Paul for a
split second before putting a flash camera in front of his face.
The film was almost finished. Despite the euphoria this wacky production was in uncharted territory and we were heading who knows where. We'd heard the studio had tested Pee-wee's name and it came last on the list after Burt Reynolds and even Debbie Reynolds for all I know. We were all praying the ride didn't come to a screeching halt.
Next: Phil does the impossible and lands a job on Saturday Night Live
My husband was equally busy. With great excitement the Pee-wee Gang moved into the very spacious production bungalow on the Warner Brothers lot occupied by one of the film's producers (and former studio head) Bob Shapiro. It was a first-class ride and we were all a little giddy, even those of us who were attached to the whole thing only by the thread of marriage. Although I'd worked at MGM on several television shows this was my first close encounter with a major feature film and I wanted in really badly. Something. Anything. But I didn't have the clout to get an Associate Producer's job (and was stalemated by Michael's producing partner who despised me at this point....long story some other time) so I started hanging around the set trying to figure out how I could be helpful. Michael and Phil were both sidelined to crew chairs, the fate of most film writers before they start directing or producing their own material, so we spent a lot of time inside Paul's trailer doing pretty much nothing. He had a very handsome massage therapist/personal trainer at the time so he was always around as well.
One day Paul, who was a huge fan of the old high-school yearbooks that were strewn around his trailer, asked me if I wanted to take on a job producing a crew gift for him. I heard the word "producing" and jumped in with both feet, brain last. Finally feeling useful, off I went tra la, tra la to make a faux 60's style yearbook about the film, aptly named "The Adventurer", to be limited edition printed and distributed to cast and crew at the wrap party.
What was I doing, you may ask? One thing about me is that I'll take on just about anything even if I've never, ever done it or anything remotely like it before. Like the 3 tiered wedding cake I made for a friend's wedding (they had no back-up plan in case I failed). I had to go to culinary school part-time to figure out how to make the damn thing but in the end it was a thing of butter-icing beauty. So when Paul gave me a job (a paid job at that) I jumped at it.
Turned out to be a lot of fun. I had a 35MM camera and access to everyone on the film, including the studio executives on the picture (Mark Canton and Lisa Henson, who had yet to ascend to Studio Chiefs of Warner Brothers and Columbia pictures respectively). It was a shmoozers dream and I made the most of it, chatting up everyone from top to bottom. I was busy and happy. Michael and Phil were still hanging around the set doing nothing.
And that's what I remember about the weeks we were shooting. Phil kind of disappeared at this stage of the production. He was there, but like Michael, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the creative process, now dominated by Paul and director Tim Burton. Tim was always aloof from the OG - he was already on his own star track and I often felt annoyed with him for not really giving credit to the writers for the extraordinary imagination and vision they'd provided in the material. I knew the script backwards and forwards and Pee-wee's Big Adventure came to him almost fully formed, story, characters, costume and production design, rythmn, humor. In later reviews I would be incensed at how much they attributed to Burton. I mean the guy is a genius to be sure, but he doesn't get the creative credit for this film - and I said as much in a couple of letters to the newspapers after the reviews came out in which they barely mentioned the writers. Tim was the luckiest guy on earth to have been tapped for the job because it greased the wheels for his truly meteoric rise. That's my opinion.
I didn't see much of Phil during the first weeks, so busy was I with my little project, but he was always on set, standing a little apart during the general hubub that surrounds a set, and I would always seek him out when I could. We were both a little introverted when out of our element and besides that I could always count on him to be happy to see me. We often ate lunch together when Paul and Tim were conferring, and he told me he was really trying to get more auditions to capitalize on the Pee-wee buzz. He wanted to continue writing but I knew that his real talent was as a performer.
One day, he confided in me that he really wanted a part in the film but had been too shy to really press Paul and too intimidated by Tim. The film was populated by many comedic character actors, some of them friends of Paul's (like Jan Hooks, who gives a memorable performance as the tour guide at The Alamo). But Phil didn't fit anywhere so he resigned himself to making hay while the sun shone. He started looking for work in earnest: I remember him auditioning to be the host of a talk show, and then came the audition for SNL, which no-one thought he would get, genius as he was.
Finally they came down to casting some bit parts and found something for Michael, Phil, and even Bob Shapiro, who appears as a hobo at the end of the film. The scene where Pee-wee becomes a hero after his life story is made into a film is where you'll see Phil for a second, posing as a reporter, hovering around Paul, a second-banana on film as in life. Michael is even more invisible, he gets out from behind Paul for a
split second before putting a flash camera in front of his face.
The film was almost finished. Despite the euphoria this wacky production was in uncharted territory and we were heading who knows where. We'd heard the studio had tested Pee-wee's name and it came last on the list after Burt Reynolds and even Debbie Reynolds for all I know. We were all praying the ride didn't come to a screeching halt.
Next: Phil does the impossible and lands a job on Saturday Night Live
posted by vallie at 12:18 PM
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