You Might Remember Me The Life and Times of Phil Hartman (34 page)

Now that I was safely out of the car, I remember just running out into the desert and running in circles and crying and screaming. It felt like the whole world had just fallen. I could not believe that two people who were such a big part of my life were suddenly gone. I couldn’t believe my cousins were now orphans. My heart hurt in a way it never has before or since that moment.

SPARKIE HOLLOWAY:

I’d seen a helicopter hovering over his house and went, “I wonder what that is.” I didn’t have the [TV] sound on. And then the first call I got was from work. I worked Fire Department dispatch and they had somehow leaked it back to the Fire Department dispatch that this was Phil. They all knew Phil was my friend, so I got a call at home: “Hey, Sparkie, turn on Channel 4. Somebody’s shot and killed Phil.’ And I turned that on. Phil was the best man at my wedding and there was another guy named Wally Montgomery who worked Robbery/Homicide. He called to tell me that they were investigating a homicide, and it was Phil. Then I had to sit and watch that stupid news coverage. They were talking about some other man in the house. And I’m going, “What the fuck is this? What are they doing? Do they have to keep talking, because none of this is going to be true. It’s all bullshit.”

MARK PIERSON:

We were all crying off and on for weeks. But I think Jon Lovitz, as much as anyone. Jon really knows that Phil opened doors for him and he wouldn’t be where he is today without Phil. Phil was Jon’s biggest benefactor.

JULIA SWEENEY:

The day he died, I felt a lot of compassion for [Brynn]. Because I had just gotten out of a relationship a couple of years before that with a very passive guy who was making me crazy with his passivity. And I could see how someone [like that] could make you go crazy. And I don’t even do drugs. I can only imagine how I would be if I was also doing drugs. That doesn’t make it right, but [it’s like], “Say something to me! Why aren’t you talking to me? Don’t look down! Or just say what you’re thinking about right now! Just talk to me. But don’t shut down when I’m upset.”

I really empathize with her, even though it was completely her fault and such a disaster how it came out. I also empathize with her about when she realized what she did. The bravest thing she did was kill herself. I thought it was a loving thing to do for Phil.

MIKE SCULLY (
THE SIMPSONS
):

The day it all happened was a day we were scheduled to have one of our Thursday morning table reads, which are always at 10
A.M.
And I found out literally at 9:55 what had happened to Phil. I think it was [writer] George Meyer who came into my office and told me the news. He had just heard it on the radio. It was just such a shock; you couldn’t believe it. And everyone had already arrived for the table read. I decided to cancel the table read and I went down [to the room], and most of the people had not heard yet. So I got up to say something before the read. Frequently the showrunner will get up and welcome everybody, maybe do one joke and then you get started. That day I stood up and said I had an announcement to make and I could see it in people’s faces: They were kind of expecting a joke. And then when I tried to explain what it was, it was really horrifying to see the look of shock and disbelief that fell over people’s faces. They just couldn’t process what they were hearing; it was such a shock to all of us. And then we just quietly left the room. It was a very sad, shocking day on the show.

ALAN CRANNIS (FORMER GROUNDLINGS BOX OFFICE MANAGER):

Phil always took the time to come into the Groundlings box office and say hi to everyone. “How’s everyone doing? How are things shaping up? What’s the show look like?” And he always took it upon himself, after the show, to thank me, to thank the lighting guys, the tech guys, the people who walked onstage and moved the props. That’s the reason why—and this sticks out so strongly in my mind—during that very confusing time when we all first learned about his death, and up to the memorial service that was held at the [Groundlings] theater in his honor—I started getting phone calls from former lighting technicians, former stage managers. All of these other people who, like me, were in the shadows nonetheless remembered how nice Phil always was and wanted to pour their hearts out about what a tragic loss it was.

VICKI LEWIS:

When he was killed and I was still in that relationship [with Nick Nolte], I would ask Phil, “How do I guide my way out of this?” In those moments of despair and loneliness and fear, I don’t know why I went to him but I did. And I felt like he was there. The day that he was murdered, I was asleep and Nick came in to tell me that he was killed, and I knew he had been killed. And I sat up before Nick said anything and I said, “It’s Phil.” I just knew. And so I do sort of always have him there, like a Christmas tree ornament in my mind.

JAY LENO:

Not much shocks you after a while, but I remember going to work and having the radio on and hearing “Comedian Phil Hartman was shot by his…” What?! You know, in the movies, when people react violently to something they hear on TV or they look shocked? I always thought that looked kind of crazy. It really did that to me. I remember stopping the car and pulling over and going, “What?” Grabbing at the radio. “We’ll be right back after this…” And I thought, “Jesus.” It was so shocking and it made absolutely no sense. When you do this job you don’t really get to know people outside the show because you’re never outside the show, so I would always see Phil in a professional capacity. And he always brought such life to everything and always brought a funny take and a funny way of doing it. It’s one of the great sadnesses of my life.

ED BEGLEY JR.:

I had a reaction that was quite immediate. I went, I think that same day or perhaps the next day, to get rid of a shotgun I’d had for years just for home protection. That opinion changed that day with Phil. I went, “Not even a shotgun. It’s not worth it.” I didn’t want a gun in the house after that. And let me be clear: This wasn’t for fear that my wife would use it. I just wouldn’t want to get up in the middle of the night to go after an intruder and then have a friend be at the back door [instead]. So I took it to the North Hollywood police station. I walked in without it and said, “I have an unloaded shotgun in the car that I want to turn in. I understand you’ll take it if I surrender it and the ammo. I want to get rid of this gun. I don’t want it in the world.”

*   *   *

When John arrived at the police station to be with Sean and Birgen, he was up front with Sean about what had transpired: “Mommy and Daddy” were dead. Upon hearing those horrible words, John told Larry King in 2004, Sean “immediately whimpered, then he cried out. It was like a fire rising up in his face and into his eyes.”

That night, as the two of them lay in bed, Sean told his uncle: “I think Mommy did it.” John agreed, but cautioned that they should wait for an official report from the police.

*   *   *

Phil’s family and closest friends were tight-lipped from the start. On the emphatic counsel of John Hartmann, everyone ultimately agreed that silence was the best course of action. “Greg Omdahl [Brynn’s brother] wanted to go on
Larry King
that week,” John says, “and I said, ‘What’re you gonna do? Say she was a nice girl? She was a cheerleader in high school? What do you think’s gonna happen on that show? You’re not doing it.’ And I had no authority, no power in this scenario other than pure meanness. But I would not let anybody talk to the media in either family.”

“You couldn’t go home,” John adds. “There were people in your driveway. And this awful, ugly idea that they have a right to know is absurd. I’ve spent my life in the media, so I know these things, whereas the guy in Peoria whose son kills twelve people in school doesn’t know that they don’t have to go on TV the next day and expose their pain. I did not want to see Birgen and Sean one day go seeking the heritage of this, the legacy of this, and find my mom crying, my brother hating their mother on TV, and all that stuff. And I absolutely hammered everybody to the floor.”

Instead, a press release was issued that effectively stated:
This hurts too much to talk about. Please leave us alone.

And so, while former nannies and mere acquaintances, bartenders, and law enforcement officials told what they knew, and even what they didn’t, Phil’s siblings, mother, and kids went into temporary seclusion on two floors of a Woodland Hills hotel whose access was restricted by a round-the-clock security detail. Although the families stayed on separate floors, they met in a common area for meals. Sometimes things got tense. During one gathering, Doris and Brynn’s mother Connie had a showdown of sorts. “It was insane,” John says. “And I went insane. I think everybody went insane. My mother went insane. Brynn’s mother went insane … Brynn’s mother tried to defend her, but my mother didn’t tolerate that and told her right to her face in front of everyone how she felt about it.” Paul Hartmann, too, was deeply upset and began enlisting support among his siblings to keep Sean and Birgen in California. But Phil’s will appointed Kathy and Mike Wright as the kids’ legal guardians, and contesting California law in this matter would very likely prove futile. At John’s urging, the issue was dropped.

When it came to retaining some measure of ongoing financial support for Doris, however, things got contentious. Phil had been sending checks to her and Rupert for years, but his last will and testament included no provision for their continuance. “It was like our family had no control over anything, and I think John really felt that,” sister Jane Hartmann says. “There was nothing left for my parents, and that was a
huge
ordeal.”

“I demanded that she be protected,” John says of his stern efforts on Doris’s behalf. “I said, ‘Don’t make me play hardball with you. I’ve spent my life fighting record companies on behalf of artists, and if you think I care more about you than I do my mother, you’d better not challenge me.’ And they did, and I let ’em have it. And I let ’em have it in a vicious, vicious way. And so they don’t like me. I knew there’d be a price, but what do I care? In all honesty, I was never close to them. They’re good people and they did a brilliant job with the children as far as I’m concerned—under horrid circumstances.”

At the time, using his will as a guide, various publications placed the value of Phil’s estate at only $1.2 million. But attorneys say that number almost certainly represents just a fraction of his assets not held in what’s called a revocable trust (used to avoid a probate court hearing and for tax-saving purposes). The amount would rise as assets—including Phil’s house, cars, boats, motorcycle, and plane—were sold off in the ensuing months. According to instructions in his will, there were to be distributions for living expenses and schooling, with the remainder paid to Sean and Birgen in equal portions starting when each turned twenty-five and ending ten years later if and only if a bachelor’s degree was obtained from “a four-year university accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges or some comparable nationally recognized organization.”

In general, though, civility ruled during the strange and strained converging of clans. “I wanted to be mad,” says Phil’s older sister Martha, who fought the urge to ask Brynn’s parents, “Why did your daughter have to do this?” “We treated them all with respect. Of course, they were scared to death. They didn’t know what they were coming to.”

Outside, journalists and paparazzi were ready to pounce. A couple of them even made their way over to Catalina Island, where Debbie Avellana—Phil’s acquaintance from Armstrong’s restaurant—did her best to evade their most tabloid-ish inquiries. Namely, this one: Was Phil leading a gay lifestyle? Avellana scoffs now as she scoffed then. “Like you could pull off something like that around here, where the houses are five feet apart and you know how many times your neighbor pees,” she says. “There is no walk of shame here. We’re proud.”

As John Hartmann later described the increasingly surreal atmosphere in which he and his family were forced to exist, “Reporters descended on our world like locusts, and they were insatiable. We became a form of prey and were forced into hiding to conceal our tears and protect the dignity of our family at a very difficult time. We were all dazed in the first days following the tragedy and any statement would have projected only anger and pain … There was no flavor that would turn that pill sweet.”

*   *   *

On the day Phil was murdered, his former Groundlings co-star Phyllis Katz got a call from her friend in New York wondering if Katz had heard the news about Phil. She had not. She turned on her television—and left it on for hours, until Katz could take no more. Not knowing where else to go, she drove to the Groundlings Theatre on Melrose with the hope that some of Phil’s other former cast mates might have the same notion. They did not. So Katz just sat in the office, wondering what to do next. Then the phone rang. It was Laraine Newman, who was calling from the gathering at Jon Lovitz’s house. As she and Katz talked, they devised a plan—at Newman’s suggestion—to honor Phil at an invite-only Groundlings send-off. Word soon went out.

Starting late afternoon on Wednesday, June 3, the Groundlings Theatre began filling up. Paparazzi were stationed outside on Melrose but barred from entering. Before long all of the venue’s ninety-nine seats were occupied by family members (including John and Paul Hartmann and Paul’s wife Christie), friends, and former colleagues. Lorne Michaels and Steve Martin sat together. Marcia Clark of O. J. Simpson trial fame was there, too. “Tom Maxwell and I were standing in the lobby,” Katz says, “and the doors opened and all these people came in. And there were people who hadn’t spoken to each other in years, people who had had arguments, people who left the Groundlings disgruntled and had said, ‘I’m never going into that building again!’ All of these things were forgiven and forgotten, because people were there to say good-bye to Phil.”

As Craig Strong remembers the proceedings, “It was typical Groundlings: over-the-top funny, over-the-top drama, over-the-top egos trying to outdo one another with their stories about Phil.” Strong also recalls some “bizarre stuff” from Paul Reubens, one of many speakers. Randy Bennett has the same memory. “He and Phil were always on and off, and he was trying to say something about this [being] his fault and that he was a terrible friend. On the one hand it was like, ‘Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ And on the other hand it was so tragic. It was so heartbreaking that he had let this enormous friendship go by the wayside.”