Phil Hartman VII: When Jupiter Aligns with Mars

Every morning when I came to the Big Adventure production offices at Warner Brothers I had to contend with Evil Pee-wee before my morning coffee. Evil Pee-wee was a life-sized Pee-wee Herman doll some fan had sent to Paul, a spooky stuffed mannequin complete with too-small grey pinstriped suit, red bow-tie and the famous Bob's Big Boy dollop of hair in front. It was one of those "Ew, yuck," kind of gifts but fascinating in a scary way. And since we didn't know what to do with it we draped it over the top of the refrigerator in the office kitchen. With its staring eyes and manic smile it was an overwhelming presence in the small room - we especially disliked the fake fingernails and eyelashes - and it lay sideways with shod feet in red striped socks sticking over the end like the Wicked Witch of the West. You had to manoeuver around it to get to the coffee machine and inevitably there were comments: "Get any last night, Pee-wee?" "Come on, we know you come to life at night and party with the shoemaker's elves." We didn't want the thing in the building but no-one seemed willing to throw it in the trash. We were afraid some crazed fan would use it for a voo-doo ritual or a personal sex toy.

One thing about being famous: if you can help it, don't be. I tried to explain to my family back home in Canada when I started working at MGM that it was an awful life, but I think most of them were skeptical. We were raised to worship movie stars, after all, and they looked so goooood.

But I knew better. I remember being at the premiere party for Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, a very clever film starring Steve Martin that overlaid a faux film-noir murder mystery with footage from old films so that actors like Bogie appeared to be talking to Martin and vice-versa (Woody Allen used the same technique later in Zelig). By then I was social friends with Bill McEuen, who was Steve's long time manager from his stand-up days. More recently Bill had gone into business with Michael and Rich, so at this party we were part of the inner circle of guests. I was kind of naive back then: I fancied myself a bit of a clothes dandy and had designed a plaid dress for the premiere and I'm sure I looked fresh in a back-home kind of way, or maybe I just looked like a hick, who knows. I was fairly new at the business but I knew my way around a television set and was privy to the inner workings of the studio system so I was comfortable in this melieu.

While the boys were chatting at the table over stuffed mushrooms and tuna sushi (around this time sushi was considered the coolest food on the planet and just about as exotic) I decided I would introduce myself to Steve Martin, who was standing nearby in a beautiful silver-grey suit and starched shirt. He had a drink in his hand and was talking earnestly to someone from the film crew. I came from his blind spot and thought nothing of it until I touched his arm to get his attention. He must have leapt back a foot, spilling his drink, and the look of pure terror on his face was shocking. So shocking that for some bizarre reason I felt the urge to pretend I was someone I wasn't. Okay this is very odd (and even odder to recall) but as he stood there, stock-still, face frozen in an expression between fear and distaste, I started gabbling on about how I had won a contest to the film premiere and I was from Oklahoma and I was just absolutely thrilled to be there and the people in charge had said it was okay to come over and shake his hand.

You know, I haven't thought about this incident for 20 years. Buried it, I suppose, out of sheer embarassement because to this day I have no idea what possessed me to lie the way I did. The only thing I can imagine is that I felt humiliated to be reduced by his very look into some kind of stalker, and all my carefully cultivated sense of belonging to this protective and pretentious inner circle disappeared in a hole of insecurity.

But it was the look of terror that I remembered long after I forgot about my bizarre reaction. This man had truly been afraid of me. Despite my one-degree separation from him I really was no different than the millions of people who felt as if they knew him, had made an intimate connection in a darkened theater and felt entitled to seek him out as if to an old friend. In reality I was an unknown entity, perhaps a potential threat, at best a total stranger who wanted a piece of him even if he didn't want to give it. When I touched him I also think I broke some kind of personal taboo, which is why he looked like he wanted to wipe off the spot where I'd put my hand.

I don't know what Steve Martin was like before he signed his life over to the fans but I do know what Phil Hartman was like, and because they were both comedians, I suspect that there were some similarities. Phil had a quiet, shy side to him, in later paparazzi photographs of his walks through the park wearing baggy farmer overalls and pushing his toddler in a stroller were always an endearing reminder of this.

I wanted Phil to succeed but as we were nearing the end of production on Pee-wee's Big Adventure I wasn't sure it would happen for him. He was getting offers to write but I knew that he was better in a pitch meeting than creating a viable story structure and feared the scripts would end up in a development pile somewhere before he faded back into obscurity. His two-second cameo at the end of the movie was eclipsed by the strange apparition of still-hunky James Brolin squeezed into a little grey suit, red-bow tie and short pants for his role as Pee-wee in the movie within the movie (that was an eyeful). Phil was trying out for everything his manager could get him, from crappy cable shows to bit parts in B movies.

The boys didn't seem inclined to stay together as a writing team so there wasn't much energy in that direction, in the end it looked like Paul and Tim Burton were going to come out on top. But as fate would have it, there were a few surprises in store for the gang.

We were preparing to organize the end of film activities when we got news that both Phil and Jan Hooks were auditioning to become part of the new cast for Saturday Night Live. Neither of them had more than The Groundlings and the equivalent of regional theatre going for them at that point but everyone knew they were both very talented. And funny. Still, this was the big leagues and I honestly didn't hold out much hope they would make it to the finals.

The wrap party was held at an old Vaudeville Club in downtown Los Angeles where Milton Berle had once performed (he also had a bit part Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Phil swore he'd heard from the secret inner circle of comedians that that he had a humongous piece of equipment and libido to match). We were about to head into post-production and I had taken a job as a development executive with Bob Shapiro's company.

I was feeling pretty good despite the fact that days before I'd been on Bob's couch crying when he told me that the only credit I'd get on the film was as his assistant. "But I wasn't your assistant! Those guys get coffee and kiss ass," I wailed, humiliated. "I don't want any credit if that's all you can offer!" We had a face-off: Bob had been a former uber-agent for stars like Barbara Streisand and his negotiating skills were far superior to mine - He was dangling a job offer as a reward for cooperating. And I knew he wanted to have an assistant listed in the credits because his producing partners, Rich Abramson, Bill McEuen and even Paul had one, and it was all about keeping face. So in the end I folded like a sissy girl.

Once again the writers and I herded together during post-production, hanging around the scoring sessions, editing sessions, watching rough cuts and test screenings, and the momentum began to build. By the time we were putting the premiere arrangements together I was fending off desperate calls from every important person in Hollywood who simply had to be there.
Even my little project, the fake yearbook, The Adventurer, was in such high demand that I could have sold my copy for hundreds of dollars and I had to keep the box of remaining copies for the crew hidden away to prevent pilfering.

The night of the premiere arrived. I had my hair styled into a lot of moussed-up spikes and wore a black sequined dress and chandelier earrings that weighed a pound a piece. Phil came over to our apartment with his date, bleached blonde, very tanned and also spiky haired. We were all giddy and when we came out of the limo I heard people yelling, "Look over here!" and cameras flashing. Someone said "I know her!" as we made our way down the red carpet at Mann's Chinese Theatre. It was silly and funny and exhilarating. The wrap party was a huge circus created on the top floor of a nearby parking lot and I was in heaven because I could play all the midway games for free.

In the weeks that followed Pee-wee's Big Adventure became a cult phenomenon. And in the midst of it all we heard that both Phil and Jan had won fianlist spots for the cast of SNL. I was overjoyed. I knew that Phil had finally pulled himself out of the little house in Encino and was about to find a national stage for his enormous talent.

Shortly afterward we got word that CBS had decided to hire Paul and friends to write and produce a new Saturday morning television show loosely modeled after his successful stage act, which included a group of oddball characters including Phil's Capt'n Carl and a genie who lived in a box, was obviously gay, and started every appearance with the chant, "mecka, lecka, hay, mecka hiney ho!". Paul, Phil, and Michael (who for some reason doesn't have credit in IMDB for his contribution in the first season) joined up with several other writers to crank out the first 13 episodes and we thought we could ride the Pee-wee train for years to come. It wasn't long afterward that the happy group began to unravel.


Next: Pee-wee's Playhouse debuts and redefines children's television