Who am I? Why am I here?!
[narrator] A fixture on Saturday Night Live
in the early 90s,
Phil Hartman looked like the neighbour next door.
He was like a basic dude...
not someone that you would look at and think
that would be a funny guy.
That every man personality was a canvas for one of the
most dynamic comedic actors of his time.
You don't scare me.
I got chunks of guys like you in my stool.
[Laughing]
He was one of the great character actors
of our generation.
Filthy animals.
He's not Phil playing a character,
he's the character.
Oh too bad, you lose, nothin' for you.
But for a moment where you're like,
"Wow, this guy had me.
I actually believed him."
And that's where he was set apart as a genius.
-Damn! -[Laughing]
Okay, let's get it over with.
Phil had the ability to make any line funny.
Your Honour, I don't know spit about lawyering.
[Laughing]
If there's a laugh in your script, Phil will get it.
And he'll probably dig a couple of extra ones out that
you didn't even know you put in.
If he's in something, you just knew
it was gonna be good.
You were in good hands with Phil Hartman.
What is your definition of sex, Mr. President?
It's the same as the Bible's, Jay.
[Laughing]
Before long, Phil's talent gets him all over TV.
Oh, hi, I'm Troy McClure.
Hey buddy, how's it going out there?
With a swift kick to the gluteus assimus.
[Laughing]
But behind his success,
Phil leads a tumultuous private life.
She would do anything to try to
evoke a reaction out of Phil.
She would drink, do drugs.
There would be a lot of serious fights.
Phil's success was hard for her to deal with sometimes.
He used to joke about it. You know,
he was Ricky Ricardo and she was Lucy.
Always trying to get in on his stuff.
At the height of his fame, it all goes terribly wrong.
One of TV's favourite funny men is dead.
How did one of America's most beloved and
down to earth comics meet such a tragic end?
I was stunned.
A million things went through my mind...
not that.
[Overlapping voices] Ladies and gentlemen!
You are about to be entertained!
Getting the laugh is the greatest addiction.
They want more of it, they want more of it.
She was getting death threats. It [beep] with your head!
He's out of his skull! That's what took her down.
This is a crazy story.
♪
Phil was born in Canada,
the middle child of a lot of children.
Good Catholic family,
and they didn't have any money.
The mother was a stay-at-home mom and
the dad was a sales guy.
As the fourth of eight children,
young Phil often felt neglected.
He always felt like he was sort of
torn from the breast, literally...
because there was another sibling right behind.
It was like a conveyor belt of babies,
so he always felt that he didn't get the kind of
love and attention he needed.
Phil's older sister, Sarah Jane,
was born with a rare neurological disease
requiring constant care.
The mother, being a loving mother,
kept her daughter at home as long as possible, but,
I don't use the word lightly, subjected...
her other children to, really, a lot of difficulty.
The house was filled with vomit, and shit,
and he couldn't have friends over,
and all the attention was going to that issue.
At a certain point, Sarah Jane's care just
got to be too intense for the mother, for the family,
and she was sent to an institution to
live out the rest of her life.
The parents felt guilty for not being able to do
everything that you want to do for a child,
and perhaps the kids felt that guilt as well.
In the late 1950s,
Phil's dad gets a job in the United States.
The family ultimately settles in California,
leaving Sarah Jane behind in Canada.
♪
When Phil moved to Southern California,
he became a surfer. He was surfing every day.
Phil was born Canadian, but he was a beach guy.
He was a surfer.
He was through and through Californian.
In high school, Phil starts doing impersonations and
quickly learns just how funny he can be.
I was class clown in my graduating class.
Were you?
Westchester High School in West LA.
Is class clown something you're elected to?
It was an elected position, yes.
So Phil created a life for himself outside the family.
He was hilarious, and brilliant, and funny,
and sporty, and cute, and energetic,
and all those great things that is very, very attractive.
He could get all the attention he wanted.
He could always do impressions.
My name is Steven Small.
Phil Hartman was one of my best friends in my life.
Phil could go from a very serious conversation
and then all of a sudden just take off and
do an impersonation that was so right on.
One night he was John Wayne
having sexual relations with Richard Nixon,
and he was doing both voices.
I had to leave the table because I couldn't breathe.
That's... That was Phil.
Despite his charm and talent, after high school,
Phil drifts in and out of college and various jobs.
By age 24, he's already been
married and divorced once.
Their marriage did not work because
Phil wouldn't communicate with her.
As soon as they got married,
he seemed to lose interest in her.
After the divorce, Phil reinvents himself
as a graphic designer.
He was extremely talented in terms of graphic arts.
He was working at an ad agency.
He was an illustrator for album covers and
he was doing people's business cards
and that sort of thing.
The album covers that he did, the Poco, America,
there's that horse album.
He did a group called The Firesign Theatre,
and those are just amazing album covers.
So as a fine artist, Phil could've worked and
had a great living doing that.
While Phil's design career takes off,
he doesn't realize that a night of improv is
about to change his life.
For Phil Hartman, the Groundlings were
the beginning of everything.
[News report] For the Groundlings,
LA's largest comedy troupe,
learning on your feet is what improv is all about.
The Groundlings was, and continues to be,
the premier improvisational school and
theatre in Hollywood.
My name is Tracy Newman.
We started it actually in 1972,
and as time went on,
it sort of became the farm company for SNL,
Saturday Night Live.
In 1975 it was my 33rd birthday,
and we went to the Groundlings.
Phil loved going to the Groundlings as someone
in the audience, and that day he was so inspired,
never having done improv comedy,
he got out of the audience,
went on stage and started improvising.
He got on stage to entertain his friends,
because it was a party.
He liked making people laugh.
He particularly liked making the girls laugh, the ladies...
you know, and he definitely made me laugh.
We were backstage getting ready to go on and
we heard laughter coming from the audience and
we thought, "What's going on"?
So we all sort of moved out and watched from the back,
and it was Phil on stage doing impressions.
And he was, of course, incredible.
He and Paul Reubens got into a riff.
Paul would say one thing and then Phil answered.
It went back and forth, and everyone was cracking up.
Now they could have called the cops.
Instead they made him a part of the show,
so he started taking classes and he made it quickly
into the main troupe.
[Applauding]
[Speaking German]
Phil's new peers at the Groundlings are
blown away by his talent.
It's hard for me to really believe that Phil Hartman
had never been on stage before.
In improv, commitment is one of the number one rules,
and he just had that.
Because he wasn't scared.
Hi, my name's...
[Laughing]
Improvisation actually gave Phil the opportunity to be
all the characters that he could possibly imagine and
he could bring them fully to life,
and that was his huge talent.
I mean, he was really a genius at that.
Phil becomes so popular that he takes over the show.
There were complaints back then that
he was on stage too much.
Then we would say,
"Well, what should we take him out of"?
We didn't know how to make him sparse in the show.
He was the show.
Between his design work and
growing success with the Groundlings,
Phil is finally making the most of his talent.
He obviously created an entire new life for himself.
He was having a great time.
He was living at the beach. He was happy.
I can say that without any reservations,
that was him at his happiest.
Along with that happiness though,
comes a fear that it could all get taken away.
I was at Phil's house one day, just the two of us,
and he said, "Hey, I want to show you my toys."
And he comes out with three handguns and
he puts them on the table.
And I was like, "What"?
I never thought guns were toys.
I was very shocked.
Some people close to Phil worry that his fear
could lead down a slippery slope
to something more sinister.
He told me that he was afraid of a home invasion and
wanted to be able to defend himself.
Unfortunately, that's just a fantasy.
And I said, "You're out of your mind.
I know you love guns,
you're fascinated by them as machines."
I was very worried about Phil, because I know that
he's just going to brush off the red flags.
♪
It was 1956, Pee-Wee.
I just won the World Series pitching for
the New York Yankees.
At the Groundlings, Phil develops
a friendship with Paul Reubens,
and soon the two start working together.
Around 1980, I had the idea of doing a late night
television show that looked like a kids show,
but would be very subversive.
So one day at my house,
Phil came over with Pee-Wee,
and what we created was 'The Pee-Wee Herman Show',
which involved many actors from the Groundlings.
Phil said, "I'm gonna be in the cast too.
I'm gonna play a character called 'Captain Carl'."
Captain Carl!
Permission to come aboard, Pee-Wee.
You have to know the password.
-Spaghetti. -Nope.
-Sardine. -Nope.
Paul was this hopeful 10-year-old, really,
if you think about that character...
he was brilliant by himself.
Now then to a guy like that you add Phil Hartman,
and Lynne Stewart, and Edie McClurg and
John Paragon, and you've got gold.
[Cheering]
We ran it at the Grounding Theatre in the midnight hour,
and our last show there was taped for HBO,
and that's the show that you could still see on TV now.
-Can I light it or ya? -No.
-Why? -Because.
-Because why? -Because I said so.
-Why'd you say so? -Because.
-Because why? -Just because no!
[Laughing]
I'm Lisa Jarvis.
I'm Phil Hartman's second wife.
I was 22 when Phil and I met,
and he was working on
The Pee-Wee Herman Show with Paul Reubens.
He just pulled me right into this world of all this
excitement and it was marvellous.
We met at a club in Los Angeles called 'Madam Wongs'.
I was just dancing and running around on the
dance floor, and he came up to me and he said,
"Can I have this dance"?
He was a really good dancer and
just fun and lively and creative.
That was the real Phil.
I think I fell in love with the real Phil at that point.
We moved in together pretty quickly and were married
a little while afterward. But when we were at home,
I'd get up in the morning and he would be in
some insane costume.
He would just be entertaining,
not in a way that he was trying to make you laugh,
but you couldn't help laughing at him.
But as with his first marriage,
Phil quickly loses interest.
It just sort of fell apart as soon as we got married.
Something odd happened where he went into his shell.
He would spend a lot of time in his room writing for the
Groundlings, drawing, doing voice over,
really involved in his career.
And, you know, here I am a 22-year-old, you know,
pistol, thinking I was gonna have this really lively,
really fun, really fabulous life that I'd married...
and he disappeared.
-No women! -No women!
-Women! -Women!
-Dames. -Dames.
-Women. -Women...
-Women. -Women.
Phil's character of Captain Carl
actually was his way of living,
especially as it pertained to the women in his life.
He didn't want to have confrontations and
he didn't want to have to compete with
a female or wife.
As Phil shuts down, so does his marriage.
In 1985, he and Lisa get divorced.
I remember once we were in the middle of a major
emotional scene, it was nearing the end of
our relationship, I was weeping and begging him
for something, and he just turned around and said,
"I can't do this. I'm not doing this.
I'm going to bed."
This is probably the 8th or 10th time,
or 20th time he'd done that to me.
And he went in the bedroom and just got in bed and
absolutely blacked out.
He had this ability to just completely and
utterly disappear in the middle of the
most extreme emotional experiences.
It was enough, it was done.
I was over it, I just was done.
While Phil's personal life falls apart...
[Yelling] Geronimo!
The Pee-Wee Herman Show gets
turned into a major motion picture.
Despite having no prior screenwriting experience...
Pee-Wee Herman is Pee-Wee Herman.
Hello! [Laughing]
Phil co-writes Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.
I didn't really care about being famous,
I just wanted to make a living doing something
that was fun, and I really love writing.
But when Pee-Wee Herman's Show was remade for
Saturday morning television as 'Pee-Wee's Playhouse'...
Goodbye, everybody!
Phil is no longer involved.
You're at odds with him, aren't you?
-Yeah. -Why?
Because you felt you helped develop the Pee-Wee Playhouse
and you never received credit or money for it.
We had a contract that said that we get 3% of
whatever happens with this show.
Right.
And then I went on and I co-wrote
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure with Paul,
and I worked with him on that.
-A huge movie. -Yeah.
And then he decided to do the TV show and all of us were...
-Out. -Out.
You called him probably and said,
"Hey Pee-Wee, what's the deal?
Paul, what's the deal"?
Well, in truth, I didn't.
-Argh! -Have a nice day!
Phil never really stood up for himself against Pee-Wee,
even though he knew he was being ripped off,
he didn't want to confront anybody.
Later that year, Phil's friend and
longtime Groundlings collaborator, Jon Lovitz,
gets him a career changing opportunity...
an audition for Saturday Night Live.
Just some characters and different things.
I won't take a lot of your time.
What happens next will permanently
change the course of Phil's life.
Your contract isn't being renewed,
the studio is letting you go.
Level with me.
If you're unhappy with my work, tell me now.
Alright, everyone says you're the
worst doctor in town.
Don't leave me hanging by a thread.
If you're unhappy with my performance,
just give it to me straight.
Alright, you're through, do you hear me? Through!
You'll never work in this town again.
Your life is finished.
What's the word on the street?
[Laughing]
In 1986, Phil stars in his first
Saturday Night Live sketch.
So long, sucker.
See you sometime in late January.
As an actor working with him, you felt at ease watching.
You weren't like, is something bizarre gonna happen?
It was just very easy and fun watching.
She's disqualified!
Oh, boy.
The previous season of SNL had seen poor ratings.
Phil's first episode kicks off with Madonna
poking fun at the show's problems.
It was all a dream, a horrible, horrible dream.
[Laughing] [Clapping]
Don't leave me hanging by a thread.
Let me know where I stand!
In his first season, Phil's brilliance helps
carry the struggling show back from the brink.
I believe the first breakthrough
in that era was Jon, and then Phil and Dana,
and they definitely turned it into
something that was much more popular than
what immediately proceeded it.
-Women. -[Laughing]
Are exploited in relationships because
there's a lot of men out there who lie to them,
who cheat on them, who live off them,
and then when they're done using 'em,
throw 'em out like last night's garbage.
[Applauding]
In the same year, Phil goes on a
blind date with Brynn Omdahl.
It's love at first sight.
I had heard about her because Phil was telling myself and
other friends, "She's just beautiful."
She was a former bikini model.
She's unbelievably gorgeous,
she's just a goddess.
A year later they get married and soon have two kids.
I met Brynn and would see her every Saturday night,
and his kids would come, and they would have dinner,
and it was like, well, here are all these lunatics,
all of us eating, and there's Phil having,
you know, his wife and his children having
this beautiful dinner together.
And it was really nice, very normalizing.
As Phil grows his own family,
he also becomes a household name.
You enjoying your middle class tax cut?
[Laughing]
He did very broad, over-the-top versions.
His Frank Sinatra, for example.
Okay, next issue.
Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner, who would you rather nail?
I disqualify myself 'cause I've done 'em both.
I love when he played Reagan.
Don't make me have to kill you.
[Laughing]
Ed McMahon, because he just did it so brilliantly.
This is our final show and Ed is drunk.
[Laughing]
You are correct, sir, yes!
Maybe Bill Clinton was the game changer for him at SNL.
Well, I just want to mingle with the American people.
Talk with some real folks,
maybe get a Diet Coke or somethin'.
Fine, but please don't tell Mrs. Clinton.
Jim, let me tell you something.
There's gonna be a whole bunch of things
we don't tell Mrs. Clinton.
[Laughing] [Clapping]
Fast food is the least of our worries.
Okay, buddy?
Oh my god, it's Bill Clinton!
Phil did not have, until that point really,
a signature character where you could always go,
"Oh, that's Phil Hartman."
But he looked enough like Bill Clinton,
and his impression was spot on.
See, right now we're sending food to Somalia.
But it's not getting to the people who need it because
it's being intercepted by warlords.
[Laughing]
[Garbled] And it's not just us!
It's other countries too.
Like your McNugget, it's released from
Great Britain to Somalia, intercepted by warlord.
[Laughing] [Clapping]
[Dave] Phil quickly became the writing staff's
favourite mouthpiece.
Aid from Italy, warlord.
Because you could hand anything to Phil and just be
guaranteed that if there's a laugh in your script,
Phil will get it.
Hakuna Matata, Jay.
You know, and he'll probably dig a couple of extra ones
out that you didn't even know you put in.
I prayed to you all the time.
-I know. -[Laughing]
That's why I've come to talk to you.
Phil was the glue of the show.
He was the one that you could count on,
that if things fall apart,
he's gonna pull it back together.
You could get mixed up or go off,
and Phil would bring you back around.
I was at a party with all the SNL people,
and I went up to Lorne and I said, "Well, so,
how does it feel to have Phil Hartman in your cast now"?
And he said, "I barely have to go to work now."
Phil's work on Saturday Night Live earns him
a primetime Emmy in 1989.
[Cheering & applauding]
But his rising stardom leads to tension in his marriage.
Brynn always had show business in her mind.
She wanted to be in show business.
Phil told her, "Stick with me, baby,
and you'll be famous."
Phil would be embarrassed because he had to shop stuff
that she had written with a friend of hers.
I don't think Phil was that impressed with it,
but she's your wife, what are you going to say?
She's the mother of your children.
When the show films a new opening sequence,
Phil uses his status on SNL to try and get Brynn a break.
In Phil's opening credit shot,
he's sitting at a bistro with what is obviously
a mystery blonde, and she has this very large,
chandelier-like set of earrings.
And although she's facing him and standing still,
her earring is moving, it's swaying back and forth,
and that's because when they were trying to shoot that,
whenever they said, "Phil Hartman,
ladies and gentlemen"!
He would turn and smile at the camera,
and Brynn apparently would turn and face the camera also.
And they would say,
"Brynn, that's not what you're supposed to do.
It's Phil's shot."
So she kept, back and forth, back and forth,
and so this earring was going.
So, finally they confused her enough that she was
looking at him with the back of her head to the camera.
Phil was facing the camera and the earring was
still moving and they went with that.
I think that speaks volumes about what she wanted
from her relationship with Phil Hartman.
He told me that it was her expectation that
her face would be seen.
That was a big issue that kept coming back up
after he left the show.
While Brynn continues to take care of the household,
hoping for her big break, Phil's career is unstoppable.
♪ The Simpsons! ♪
The Simpsons was new then.
It was a phenomenon. It was, like, amazing.
So when we were casting the episode,
Bart gets hit by a car, there was a part for
the sleazy lawyer, Lionel Hutz,
and I wanted Phil Hartman because we loved SNL.
Hutz is the name Mr. Simpson.
Lionel Hutz, attorney at law.
Here's my card.
It turns into a sponge when you put it in water.
Ooh, classy.
If you think about Phil's voice, you go,
oh, that's perfect.
It's like an old-time radio voice.
And funny.
When Phil reads the character,
he doesn't disappoint.
He comes in and he gets these enormous laughs.
As a writer I'm always pretty nervous,
and so anytime something gets a huge laugh,
I'm pleasantly surprised.
I'm sorry, Mr. Simpson,
but you can't copyright a drink.
Oh!
Oh this all goes back to the Frank Wallbanger case of '78.
How about that? I looked something up.
Phil becomes a Simpsons regular,
and goes on to voice some of the show's most
memorable characters, like Lyle Lanley.
And I come before you good people tonight with an idea.
Probably the greatest.
And Troy McClure.
Hi, I'm Troy McClure.
You may remember me from such nature films
as 'Earwigs: Ew.'
And 'Man Versus Nature: The Road to Victory.'
Alongside these personal successes,
Phil's marital problems intensify,
and start to bleed into his professional life.
Brynn would do anything to try to evoke
a reaction out of Phil.
We were all sitting around the table at SNL,
all the writers and the actors,
and she would come in and sit on guy's laps and
try to get some jealous reaction out of Phil,
and he was like, eh,
you know, he just didn't care.
If you asked the question, was Philip confrontational?
I would answer absolutely not.
The worst thing you could ever say to Phil is,
"We need to talk."
He would go away and you would not be able
to have an adult conversation with him.
He was unwilling to deal with trouble,
any kind of trouble. He couldn't do it.
He was emotionally unable to confront.
♪
Well, darling, I'm afraid you'll have to.
You did sign a prenuptial agreement.
[Laughing]
We're getting a real look behind the scenes of
Phil Hartman's life.
In an appearance on Entertainment Television,
Howard Stern confronts Phil about
his troubled relationships.
And what is it about you that is so difficult to live with?
Are you a tough mate?
Phil's response is uncharacteristically candid.
What goes wrong is that
I think that I know it all,
and I marry women who get hysterical and
extremely emotional, and men often think,
"That's wrong. What's wrong with them?
They're not like me.
I'm cool, calm, and collected."
But, I'm also passive-aggressive.
I'm also...
I'm with a woman now who won't take that kind of bull.
-She won't take any of that? -No.
She brought me out of a typical male neurotic mindset.
His personal transformation
isn't the only revelation of the interview.
And Phil says that this will probably be
his last season on Saturday Night Live.
Yes, it will be, definitely. My eighth year.
-I think this is a mistake. -Nothing against New York.
I like New York, but I love California.
He was thinking, "I'm 46 years old,
I'm married, I've got two children.
I want to go back to the west coast where my family is and
I can make more money there."
Plus he had movie connections,
he had commercials he could do.
Everything was pointing for him to go west coast.
There's another major reason Phil is ready to leave SNL.
No the truth is, I have a deal with NBC
to do my own show in primetime.
It's not exactly a sitcom, but it will be done
in front of an audience with four cameras.
It's gonna be very different and somewhat ambitious.
He said, "Well, NBC is throwing money at me and
they want me to do anything I want in primetime."
So he asked me to help him develop something called
'The Phil Show.'
The Phil Show promises to be a major step in his career.
Even though he was well paid,
and paid more than most cast members,
it was still late night money and
NBC wanted to make Phil primetime.
And he plans to use it to launch
Brynn's acting career as well.
It was basically our take on the old 'Jack Benny' show.
'The Phil Show' will be you doing a variety show and then
you come home to Brynn, and it will be really Brynn.
And I thought, you know, this could really work
because it'll make her happy.
It'll make Phil happy.
Everyone's getting something they want out of this.
And she's funny, she's beautiful,
she's fresh to the public. Why not?
The gears are in motion for Phil to star in
his own show and save his marriage.
I thought we were going to discuss your hot butt.
[Laughing]
He performs in his last episode of
Saturday Night Live.
I can't imagine a more dignified way
to end my eight years on this program.
♪ [Singing] Goodbye... ♪
♪ Goodbye... ♪
♪ Goodbye. ♪
[Applauding & Cheering]
But then, NBC decides to shelf 'The Phil Show.'
While we were waiting to hear whether
we're going to a pilot,
there was another team producing an ensemble show
for NBC primetime called 'NewsRadio.'
NewsRadio was a sitcom about a 24-hour
news station in New York City.
Despite scrapping Phil's variety show,
NBC offers him the lead role as an amoral anchorman
in their new series.
He called me and said, "You know,
I'd rather do this show where all I have to do is show up
and be an actor, and I don't have to worry about the
scripts, and I don't have to worry about being a producer,
and it's just what I would rather do."
Sup y'all? Brother Bill McNeil in your ears.
What's up y'all?! Bill McNeil here.
Bill?
So I was upset about it a little.
You know, I mean, gee, it was a fun idea.
-And I know what it is. -What?
-Insanity. -[Laughing]
But the person who was most devastated was Brynn,
because that was her shot at fame working with
her husband, and there goes that show.
He did not support her career.
He had no interest in promoting her career
outside of the house.
He wanted her home taking care of the kids.
Listen to me, this stuff is available everywhere.
I mean, if it were only sold through the classifieds
in the back of porn mags.
Porn mags have classified ads in the back?
-Yes. -[Laughing]
So I hear.
Meanwhile, Phil gets to pursue the
opportunity of a lifetime.
Listen, to be a regular on a TV show is
such a rarefied position.
He did some movies before that.
His career was just taking off in general.
His work ethic was intense,
and he was also just so impeccable.
He was a lot sillier, I think, than most people know.
And he enjoyed laughing, he enjoyed when
other people were being funny,
and would often giggle uncontrollably
when people did something that pleased him.
With or without her husband's help,
Brynn tries to revive her acting career.
She lands a minor role as a cocktail waitress
in Rob Reiner's movie 'North.'
-One Coca-Cola. -Right here.
And one sex on the beach.
But the reviews are scathing.
Phil told her that he would help her career,
he'd introduce her to producers,
but that never happened, and she was very
frustrated by it and he used to joke about it.
You know, he was Ricky Ricardo and she was Lucy,
always trying to get in on his stuff.
And that made her depressed.
I think that was the beginning of the end
for Brynn.
♪
An inspection, sir.
I wish we had a little more time.
We're not really prepared.
It just always gives me a thrill to see what a real
first rate top kick can do with a platoon.
Between seasons of NewsRadio, Phil stars in movies opposite
actors like Steve Martin
and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Ted, I need to speak to Liz. Could you get...
Mm! Oh, Howard, excuse me,
but your wife's cookies are out of this world.
What? Who told you you can eat my cookies?
I remember him as like the dad in 'Jingle All The Way.'
He was that character, and he was really likeable too,
even when he was playing, like, kind of douche bags.
He also continues his work on The Simpsons.
As of this moment, Lionel Hutz no longer exists.
Say hello to Miguel Sanchez.
And appears in many commercials.
Actually, it's a premonition.
Since the great American sandwich sale.
Enthusiasm, I like that.
Between TV, film, and commercial success,
Phil has reached the upper echelons of fame.
I was never surprised that Phil became who he became.
He had that thing, he had that sparkle,
he had that star quality.
Phil wasn't satisfied with all that he had achieved
for a long time.
I think he always felt frustrated that he hadn't
quite crossed over into a level that
he wanted to get to.
And during NewsRadio,
Phil was actually starting to feel
very content, creatively and career-wise.
That was a frustration for Brynn.
Phil's success I think was hard for her to deal with.
Phil also becomes more emotionally distant
from Brynn, spending more time away from home
on his boat.
The boat was his escape.
When we went to Catalina,
it was just to get away from the family.
He took Brynn on the boat once when it was white caps,
and it was going back and forth, and she said,
"I'll never get on this boat again."
And I knew that that was his plan.
It wasn't an accident, it wasn't fortuitous.
[Indistinct chatter]
Most comedians have a number of issues that
they carry around with them in life,
and that they bring to everything they do.
Including, sometimes wonderfully, to their art.
Pick a number between one and a hundred.
-Seriously? -Yeah.
Uh... 68.
Popeye. Wow, all right, Olive.
But he also goes- [Chuckling]
There's this thin membrane between reality and
dreams and dreamland.
Uh... 81.
81 is Jim Nabors.
You know, like, I got a Thanksgiving gift for you,
Sargent Carter. -[Laughing]
An artist like Phil has extremely thin membrane,
because that allows him to go into
another person's persona.
Which is a gift, it's a blessing.
But it also comes with a curse...
and that is, there is nothing left of you.
You're going into this person,
you're going into that person, but where's Phil?
The real issue is very simple.
I have mob ties.
The answer is that he needed to be alone.
Anything and anyone that interfered with that,
and that person was Brynn,
she wouldn't leave him alone.
And that's marriage.
He told me enough for me to formulate an opinion that
he was suffering from attachment disorder.
[Off-screen] What is attachment disorder?
Attachment disorder stems from
when you're abused as a child.
It carries on into adulthood.
Simply means that you have a very difficult time
attaching to other people.
Somewhere in his childhood he suffered,
and that resulted in this attachment disorder.
And the fact that he was married three times
is a good indicator.
You could love him,
but you could only go so far.
You weren't welcome in that little room.
Phil's wife Brynn is a recovering addict
who has been sober for a decade,
but then she relapses.
We were both married to addicts.
I lived with Nick Nolte,
I don't think it's a secret at this point,
but when I met Nick, he was sober.
We were all at the Golden Globe Awards at the table,
and I was with Nick, Phil was with Brynn...
all of a sudden, Nick and Brynn,
like it was like an aberration,
and they've both decided to take a drink.
And it was like, what's happening?
She went on to become an alcoholic.
She did cocaine.
She did Zoloft, which was an antidepressant.
She was not in a good place, and that made Phil
even more remote with her.
She had been in rehab twice that I was aware of,
and in each case it was regarding cocaine.
Phil communicated to me more than once that
if she continued with it,
the marriage was gonna be over.
One day at work when we were filming NewsRadio,
he came in and I noticed that there were marks
on his cheek, and I said,
"Are you doing okay, buddy"?
And he said, you know,
"I slept on the house boat again."
Implying it was another horrible night.
I was sad for him.
No one could project what would
ultimately happen, but at one point I said,
"Why don't you leave her? Or like get a divorce"?
And he was like, "Honestly,
I don't want to lose my kids."
And I think he was genuinely so in love with her,
that of course it was something
he didn't want to consider.
In 1998, Phil's marriage is as bad as it's ever been,
but his career continues to peak.
At NewsRadio we think big, big, big!
He's everywhere on TV.
I am like up to my elbows in a midlife crisis,
let's be honest.
I can't cheat on my wife, she's psychic.
[Laughing]
If I look at another woman, she comes home:
"Who's Laura?" I go, "I didn't get a name"!
[Laughing]
"She's a Sagittarius, you know."
Okay, okay. Geez.
So I, I, I... I buy toys.
On Brynn's 40th birthday, she and Phil have dinner.
What did he give her for a present?
A gun.
He may have given her other gifts too,
but the gun was the one that would make
a devastating appearance later on.
She wanted a gun for protection.
It was a pearl handle gun.
You know, as the pieces fell together after that
horrible day, I was like, "Oh my god."
♪
At 6:20 this morning, residents of this upscale
Encino neighbourhood called police to report gunshots
coming from the Hartman's gated estate.
I was home, I was watching television,
and the reports said that there was a fatality
at the home of Phil Hartman.
Phil was the one with the guns,
so I called my friend and I said, "Oh my god,
I think Phil shot Brynn."
And then I watched more TV and it
turned out that, no, Phil was the victim.
Officers arrived to find a nine-year-old boy and
a six-year-old girl by the front door,
both obviously upset.
As they were taking the children out of the house,
officers heard a gunshot in the master bedroom.
There they discovered comedian Phil Hartman dead.
Authorities say it appears his wife Brynn shot him,
then the turned gun on herself.
Word of Phil's tragic murder is all over the news.
One of TV's favourite funny men is dead.
Phil Hartman, who gained fame
on Saturday Night Live,
was found shot dead in his home.
Police are still trying to figure out exactly what
happened, but clearly something went very wrong.
After the initial news bulletin,
I'm glued to the television.
I'm sitting on the floor weeping and weeping.
I'm just... just the pain.
'Cause it...
♪
He was, he was my husband.
I was in court. My wife called me and said
Phil had been shot. I got as far as the tree
outside the courthouse before I started crying.
I thought I had lost my whole world.
Jon Lovitz hosts an impromptu ceremony in Phil's honour
with his friends and former castmates.
Jon was furious, and all the friends who gathered at
Jon Lovitz's house that night were mad at Brynn and
just couldn't believe that she would be
so cruel to do this.
Jon was heartbroken and angry,
and I'm sure in that moment,
wanted somebody to be able to blame.
You always want to, like, "You did it!
You're the reason." You know, when it was really just a
complicated, perfect storm
of horrible, horrible things.
I think that he died in his sleep because I think that
he did that thing he does, which is in the middle of
the most intense experience,
he blacks out.
I think that he did that in the middle of some
knockdown drag out with Brynn and
she got a gun and did it.
Listen, it's time I let you in on a little secret, Marge.
While the world grapples with the tragedy,
the shows Phil was working on find ways to pay tribute.
It was Mike Scully who said
he didn't want to continue the characters.
I think that was totally the right decision.
His characters on The Simpsons have
never come back out of respect for Phil.
NewsRadio, which revolved around
Phil's character, Bill McNeal,
will never be the same.
When Phil died, as a group,
we decided we didn't want to
move on with the show.
He was the grounding force in it,
and to think of doing it without him was...
you know, nobody wanted to entertain that.
I think it was our director, Tom Cherones, who said,
"Brynn took Phil away from us.
Let's not let her take each other away."
I think I kind of agreed with that argument and
I think everyone had mixed feelings about it.
"...That about wraps it up for me."
Um...
"Farewell,
take care of each other, and I'll..."
♪
"...see you all when you get to wherever it is
that I am now."
That's it. Um, Matthew-
I remember watching the episode of NewsRadio
where he died, and I don't think I've ever cried
at a TV show as much as that episode,
and you could just tell,
it was the actors were not even being the characters.
They were just themselves.
Too bad we don't have any marshmallows.
[Laughing]
For everyone close to Phil,
the big question remains unanswered.
What led Brynn to take his life
and her own that night?
Phil was murdered by his wife,
and as much as I'm angry at her for doing that,
you don't want to kill your husband and then yourself.
No one wants that life, right?
Like, no one wants that to be their story.
♪
Whatever you've done, whatever you were,
doesn't matter to you, or me,
because I love you.
While friends and family continue to mourn Phil,
more details emerge about the night before the murder,
sparking speculation about what happened to Brynn.
Her friend who she had dinner with was a writer on SNL...
You know, it was just a normal dinner.
She actually told the waiter,
"Oh, I'll bring Phil in next week."
So, you know, it was like a happy dinner.
It wasn't foreshadowing of anything that
was gonna happen...
so something set her off when she got home.
What I believe from what I heard,
'cause obviously I wasn't there,
I don't think that she would've
come home sua sponte,
just, and shoot him. No.
He had told me that
there wasn't gonna be a third rehab.
So if she came home and she was high,
and he would've said to her, "We're done."
And that would've left her in a terrible place.
But could cocaine and an argument really be enough
to lead to this tragedy?
Or could something else have sparked Brynn's
final act of violence?
♪
Brynn's autopsy results lead to more speculation
about what happened.
She had Zoloft in her system in therapeutic amounts.
That's an antidepressant.
She had a high blood content for alcohol
as well as cocaine.
Brynn's brother, Greg Omdahl,
files a wrongful death suit against Pfizer,
the manufacturer of Zoloft.
His lawyers argue that the drug was
improperly prescribed and its violent and
suicidal side effects led to her and Phil's deaths.
The only person who will ever know
what went on that night was Brynn.
Obviously she was dealing with terrible problems.
Whenever I saw her, she was lovely
to her children, lovely to Phil...
and she must've been tormented,
and you have to feel great compassion for her.
Still makes me sad,
you know, to think about the
kids losing him and their mom.
And, uh, you know, still miss him.
The children were adopted by
the sister and her husband
who lived in Minnesota,
and they raised those kids,
and they're wonderful adults today.
There's no question in my mind that Phil's
greatest achievement was his children.
That was what he came to Earth for,
and he knew that.
Phil's last wish, should he die,
was to have his ashes scattered over
the southern California ocean.
People just weren't ready to say goodbye to him.
We didn't get enough of him,
and we were just getting started, I felt like.
Look, would you two just shut up and
get back into the booth?
Look, you can say whatever you want to me,
but you do not tell the lady to shut up.
[Laughing]
I think his real legacy is just the number of people
around the world that he made laugh repeatedly.
And that's a fine thing to do,
but I'd rather he had a long life than a legacy.