Live From New York - James H. Miller [259]
JAN HOOKS, Cast Member:
I’ll tell you who was really instrumental in getting me through was Mr. Phil Hartman. He was my rock. Luckily, I had a lot of stuff with him. He was just, you know, the Rock of Gibraltar. And we did a Third Rock together — less than a month before he died.
TERRY TURNER, Writer:
Phil was on the Third Rock from the Sun cliff-hanger. He played Jan’s psychotic boyfriend from Florida. He was on the cliff-hanger, and Third Rock was coming back the next season. And we were in New York, and we heard that Phil had been shot. We were stunned. I mean, it was one of those things where you think maybe I heard it wrong or maybe when I wake up tomorrow it won’t have happened, because he was such a great guy, such a great guy. Everybody liked Phil. Phil was like the centerpoint of the show. He was the thing that held everything together, and he could make the simplest stuff brilliant just by reading it a particular way, by his posture, by his look. We were devastated. I think everybody that knew him was. You couldn’t believe that it actually happened.
And it did have an effect I think on everybody, to think, “If that can happen to them, what’s to stop it from happening to any of us?” Sitting down to dinner one day, going to a wrap party the next day, and then the next day — you’re gone. It was really shocking. Of all the people you would have put into that scenario, the last one you would have picked would have been Phil.
ANDY BRECKMAN:
Just like baseball fans and baseball fanatics put together the best Yankee team ever, so the Saturday Night Live dream cast is another game that the writers play — and Phil Hartman makes almost every list.
JAN HOOKS:
My friend Bill Tush at CNN called me. He said, “Jan, there’s something coming through on the AP that Phil Hartman committed suicide.” And I said, “Oh yeah, right, Bill. Right, yeah. How are you, Bill?” And we chatted and he said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, there’s more information coming through.” Then he came back and said, “Jan, it’s true. Phil is dead.”
I went out and bought chocolate turtle ice cream and, I think, pizza rolls, and just stayed in bed for two days.
MIKE MYERS:
I was close to Phil Hartman. We both kind of came from the same place, which is we loved doing characters and came from ensembles. I just worshipped Phil. I looked up to him. I think he’s one of the best character-based comedians ever. My office was next to his. I used to just check in with him all the time, just pop into his office and shoot the breeze. He was extremely, extremely supportive and hilarious. He never gave up on a sketch and his work ethic was amazing and I just dug him. I enjoyed everybody, but if you’re asking me who was special, I would say Phil Hartman.
I sat beside him at the read-through table. They used to call him “the glue.” If he was at a read-through and in a sketch, Phil would be incredibly generous to some rookie writer by selling the hell out of this kid’s piece. He would never tank your piece. Afterwards you would just hear “glue, glue, glue” from people around the read-through table. And then someone would always have to tell Phil, “They’re not saying ‘boo,’ they’re saying ‘glue.’” He just really was a mentor for me.
The day he died was one of the weirdest days of my life. Just complete and utter disbelief, complete and utter despair. I’m sitting here talking about it not believing that we’re talking about this. I still can’t believe it, I’m still devastated by it. It is a profound sadness that we’re sitting here talking about Saturday Night Live and the question is about Phil Hartman’s death. I can’t get over it.
KEVIN NEALON, Cast Member:
I was coming back from somewhere, I didn’t know if it was a gag or what. I was flying at the Burbank Airport and I was walking from the gate to baggage right through the terminal, and I looked at the TVs over the bar and I saw shots of Phil. I