The Phil Hartman Story

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 17 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and it's just us.
Jerry's not here. And this is Stuff You Should Know.
The Invincible Duo. The ambiguously gay duo.

Speaker 2 Yes, sir, you after it.

Speaker 17 That was pretty good. I love it when there's like a impression of an impression.

Speaker 2 That's all I do.

Speaker 17 It's true.

Speaker 2 That's my specialty.

Speaker 17 But you do it so well.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that bit was

Speaker 2 obviously the great Phil Hartman, the late great Phil Hartman's Ed McMahon.

Speaker 2 And that was a

Speaker 2 that was something that in college, and you know, my college years were generally the Phil Hartman years on SNL.

Speaker 2 My good friend Eddie and I, you know, Eddie, we, for some reason, that one really took care of. And still to this day, one of us will say something and the other will go, yes, sir.

Speaker 17 Yeah. I mean, it's timeless for sure.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Really stuck with this.

Speaker 17 I'm sure there's even people walking around doing that who have no idea who Ed McMahon is.

Speaker 2 Yeah, probably.

Speaker 17 There's at least two. That's what I'm putting money on.

Speaker 2 You and someone else?

Speaker 17 I know who Ed McMahon is. I'm not a fully realized person.

Speaker 2 I know. I'm joking.

Speaker 17 We're not talking about Ed McMahon, though. Not really.

Speaker 17 We're talking about the first guy you mentioned you were doing an impression of, Phil Hartman who turns out to be a pretty great complicated tragic ultimately dude

Speaker 2 yeah you know actor and comedian known best for his work on probably Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons

Speaker 2 and Dave helped us with this and he wanted us to shout out a book by Mike Thomas called You Might Remember Me, Colin, The Life and Times of Phil Hartman, with one N, even though he was born with two N's on the name Hartman, right?

Speaker 17 Yeah, I thought that was

Speaker 17 pretty crazy. He dropped the second N for his,

Speaker 17 I guess, stage name.

Speaker 2 It looks like a typo, that would be my guess.

Speaker 17 The second N?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it just looks odd.

Speaker 17 Well, maybe they pronounced it a little differently, too, like Phil Hartman.

Speaker 2 Probably so.

Speaker 17 So when he was born in 1948, when he was still named Phil Hartman, he was born in Brantford, Ontario. And that might sound familiar to hockey fans because that's where Wayne Gretzky's from.

Speaker 17 But after Wayne Gretzky, I would say Phil Hartman's probably the second most famous person from Brantford, Ontario.

Speaker 2 And boy, I hope you're right.

Speaker 17 I'm totally not. There's going to be like Tawny Katayan or something will be from Brantford, Ontario.
Although she may still fall behind Phil Hartman.

Speaker 2 She passed away, too, I believe, right?

Speaker 17 I don't know. I stopped keeping up with her after she and David Coverdale broke up.

Speaker 2 I think Wayne Gretzky's alive, though.

Speaker 17 Yes, he is alive and slapping.

Speaker 2 That's right. Phil was a middle kid, number four of eight.

Speaker 2 And as oftentimes with a middle child, especially in Phil's case, when you have an older brother who is like super athletic and handsome, and a younger sister that needed special care because of a rare condition called Angelman Syndrome, Phil,

Speaker 2 it seems like, felt like he needed to sort of just attract attention by goofing off and being the class clown, the family clown.

Speaker 17 Yeah, that's what middle kids do. He had like Jam Brady syndrome, but instead of wearing an Afro wig, he became an actually funny person, right? Yeah.

Speaker 17 I guess one of the big things that happened to him was when he and his family moved to California when he was

Speaker 2 10,

Speaker 17 9, 8, something like that.

Speaker 17 He was around that age. And California like really suited his blood.
I mean, he was born in Ontario. When you move to like Malibu area, like you're, that's a pretty good move typically.

Speaker 17 I love Toronto, and I'm not like throwing shade on Ontario in general, but you know, when you move out to Southern California from there, it's, it's a little different, you know?

Speaker 2 Yeah, especially if it turns out you love surfing, sailing, and smoking weed or smoking grass at the time, I guess you would say.

Speaker 17 Yeah, the three S's.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because he,

Speaker 2 something that I learned yesterday was that Bill Hartman was a big pothead.

Speaker 17 Yes, but the kind that the cops wouldn't search your car if you got pulled over, which is a lesson to all those potheads out there. You don't have to look like a pothead to be a pothead.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. He can look straight and make the cops laugh, and they'll just say, go along your day.
You're just a fun kid.

Speaker 17 Exactly. I'll just totally ignore that smell coming out of your car.
Yeah.

Speaker 17 So, yeah, he was really into Southern California life. Apparently, he was a great surfer by the time he was 13.
This guy was just full of surprises. Yeah.

Speaker 17 And around this time, maybe even a little earlier,

Speaker 17 he started to get into comedy. He started doing the, he took the steps that every young comedian takes, and that's you start idolizing some different comedians, stand-up comedians.

Speaker 17 And his were Bob Newhart

Speaker 17 and the other one, and Jonathan Winters, who even if you don't know who Jonathan Winters is, but you're a more Mork and Mindy fan, he was the giant old baby that arrived in an egg.

Speaker 17 at Mork and Mindy's doorstep, I guess.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and Winters and Newhart, actually,

Speaker 2 they were sort of comedians, comedians back then in that era from like the 1950s and into the 60s.

Speaker 2 And both of them were just incredible stand-ups. Jonathan Winters was so funny, especially like with character work and stuff like that, which Newhart didn't do.

Speaker 2 So between the two of those, he got a pretty like well-rounded comedy education, memorizing those albums, doing like I did as a kid, memorizing comedy albums, performing bits for friends and family, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 that. And especially on Winter Side, those impressions that Jonathan Winters would do,

Speaker 2 Phil Hartman would copy those and then come up with his own.

Speaker 17 Yeah, and very quickly, he excelled past even Jonathan Winters. Like he was in Rich Little area by the time he was probably, you know, mid-teens.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's a great story Dave found. I think it was from the book that he and a bunch of friends went skiing at Mammoth Mountain outside of L.A.

Speaker 2 And as the story goes, they were hanging around at the hot springs that night. And Phil's friend said, hey, man, start, you know, doing some of your, your bits here for everybody and impressions.

Speaker 2 And this sounds like one of those stories has sort of, you know, grown over the years

Speaker 2 because they say over two hours, Phil performed basically in front of 100 strangers.

Speaker 2 I'm not quite sure if I believe that part because I've been to parties at ski resorts, hanging out at hot springs, and I'm sure he got a lot of jokes in, but I'm not sure if everyone wanted to sit there for two hours and watch some guy.

Speaker 17 Right. And then one of his friends announced, ladies and gentlemen, that was Mr.
Phil Hartman, and someday he's going to be a big star. Remember this night.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe it happened, but it's quotes. It's probably apocryphal, but I bet a version of that story happened where Phil was like the life of the party, essentially, is my takeaway.

Speaker 17 Yeah, from a pretty early age, right?

Speaker 17 So he's clearly funny. He's really good at impressions, but his path to

Speaker 17 comedy, I guess, was kind of circuitous because he,

Speaker 17 well, his brother, his older brother, the handsome athletic one you mentioned earlier, John,

Speaker 17 John decided he wanted to try to get into acting. And I guess this was before Phil could even get a chance.

Speaker 17 And John went to Hollywood, came back reporting that he was not okay with how seedy Hollywood was. Amoral, not anything like

Speaker 17 an Ontarian would be okay with.

Speaker 17 And so he said, I'm not going to do acting. And I think that kind of scared Phil a little bit or at least guided him away from acting for a little while.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it seems like it. John went into the music business and co-founded a management company called Hartman and Goodman.
And it seems like they had a real,

Speaker 2 had their thumb on the pulse. Thumb on the pulse? Sure.
You can do that, right?

Speaker 17 Yeah, you could use your thumb for you.

Speaker 2 They had their thumb on the pulse of that Laurel Canyon sort of

Speaker 2 country rock scene because they ended up managing the likes of Neil Young, America, Buffalo Springfield, Eagles, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Brown, Mamas and the Papas.

Speaker 17 Wow.

Speaker 2 Kind of that whole scene they were management for.

Speaker 17 That is a mellow roster, man.

Speaker 2 It is and probably a lot of grass being smoked.

Speaker 17 Yes, and Phil smoked a bunch of it too. He got brought on eventually.
He went to art school for a little while, tried to go to the University of Hawaii, was turned down.

Speaker 17 And I'm sure he wanted to go to the University of Hawaii to surf.

Speaker 2 That's exactly what I thought.

Speaker 17 Yeah. So his older brother was like, hey, man, you're not doing anything.
You got some art school under your belt. Why don't you come and work for me as a roadie?

Speaker 17 Because that's what people who go to art school end up doing almost invariably.

Speaker 2 Yeah. He hooked him up with a little hippie rock band called Rock and Foo.

Speaker 2 F-O-O.

Speaker 2 Did you listen to any Rock and Foo?

Speaker 17 I didn't. I looked up the band members, though.
One of them was

Speaker 17 It was a child actor prior to Rock and Foo. He was on F-Troop, Gun Smoke, a bunch of other stuff.
And then another one was the guitarist on a lot of the monkeys hits.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's cool. I listened to like three Rock and Foo songs and I liked it.

Speaker 17 Oh, okay. I saw a photo of the band and I was like, I'm not listening to that.
Well,

Speaker 2 it's probably not your bag, maybe.

Speaker 17 It was that sort of,

Speaker 2 you know, kind of that, again, that Laurel Canyon sort of country rock thing. I dug it.

Speaker 17 I thought it was pretty cool. Hey, I love America.
Don't get me wrong. I think they're great.

Speaker 2 You're no communist.

Speaker 17 Out of all of the list of bands that you rattled off,

Speaker 17 I like that band the most.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's just not your bag. I get it.
I'm not bagging on you.

Speaker 17 Okay. Thanks for not bagging on it.
I mean, for it not being my bag.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, you like craft work, for God's sakes, and elevator music.

Speaker 17 I like most stuff. Just

Speaker 17 like the bands that you rattled off. Definitely.
No.

Speaker 17 No. Yeah.
I'm virulently opposed to listening to Eagles.

Speaker 2 They managed Sonny and Cher, too. You probably like them the most.

Speaker 17 They're fine.

Speaker 17 I don't remember what I said on our Sonny and Cher episode, but I don't remember ever being like super into their music. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 17 I guess none of this really matters because what we're really talking about is Phil Hartman and him being a roadie. Yeah.

Speaker 17 He kind of started living the rock and roll lifestyle as a roadie for some of these bands.

Speaker 17 And because he had some art school and he was kind of a developing artist at the time, his brother was like, hey, why don't you do some of these album covers for some of the bands? And he did.

Speaker 17 And at least one of them was pretty good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he did two for Rock and Foo. I think they only did two albums.
So he dominated their album cover art. Nice.

Speaker 2 He did some for Crosby Sills and Nash, or Sills and Nash.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I wrote that too.

Speaker 2 America, he did one for your favorite band, America. Yep.
Did one for Poco that's probably the most noteworthy for their album Legend of this. It's a very minimalist

Speaker 2 artwork of a horse.

Speaker 2 And I wanted to mention, it is all over the internet that he did the cover for Steely Dan's seminal album, Asia,

Speaker 2 and he did not. But it's everywhere on the internet as fact, and it's apparently not true.

Speaker 17 What a weird rumor because that's just such an arcane fact about him that he ever designed any album covers. But then for a rumor to be about him making one that he didn't, that's really bizarre.

Speaker 17 But that's the internet for you, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I'm pretty positive it wasn't him because because other people sleuthed it out and dug up the actual artist.
And

Speaker 2 so if you're about to email and say, dude, he did Asia, I think he did not.

Speaker 17 No, the one who, the guy who actually did it was Phil Hartman with two N's.

Speaker 17 That's why people were confused, I think.

Speaker 2 Yeah, good point.

Speaker 17 So around this time also, Phil kicked off, and by the way, we're on a first name basis with Phil Hartman, so we're just going to keep calling him Phil.

Speaker 17 He kicked off what would become essentially his trademark for his love life, which was he would fall head over heels for a very, very pretty girl and they would be hot and heavy for a while.

Speaker 17 And then he would get married and then basically be like, this isn't working out after a couple of years.

Speaker 17 And the first person he did that with when he was, I think, 21, maybe 22, was a 19-year-old woman from Malibu named Gretchen Lewis.

Speaker 17 And she got pregnant pretty quickly while they started dating, but they didn't keep the kid, but they got married after all.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 They divorced in 1972. So I guess either two years or a little under two years.

Speaker 2 And after that, he got his first professional stage credit when he played

Speaker 2 Harold Hill in The Music Man for the Santa Monica Theater Company.

Speaker 2 And Mike Thomas, the guy who wrote the biography, had a quote from one of Phil's co-stars in The Music Man that said, Phil was a true artist.

Speaker 2 He didn't really march through the same drum as other people, although it was a part of him that wanted to be perceived as normal.

Speaker 2 He went through life trying to find a character that he could present to the public that seemed normal and wholesome.

Speaker 2 And that is also sort of a repeated theme when you talk to friends and colleagues and family over the years was that no one knew the real Phil. And I've known people like that.

Speaker 2 It's an interesting thing to sort of create personas rather than be yourself. And that seemed to kind of be the case with him.

Speaker 17 Yeah, he was heavy into impression management basically everywhere in his entire life. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 17 In all corners, right? Yeah.

Speaker 17 And also just one thing about his first acting credit being playing Harold Hill, because he went on to play Lyle Lanley or Lanely, I can't remember which one, who was basically the

Speaker 17 Simpsons version of Harold Hill from the music man in the monorail episode.

Speaker 2 Written by Conan O'Brien.

Speaker 17 Man, yeah, he was one of the better Simpson writers early on.

Speaker 2 He was.

Speaker 2 But on that thing about not seeing the real Phil, there was one friend who later said that there was a small room inside inside Phil that no one will ever get to.

Speaker 2 So, just sort of kind of reinforcing that idea.

Speaker 17 And the friend said, I hear it stinks of feet.

Speaker 2 Should we take a break?

Speaker 17 I think it's time, yeah.

Speaker 2 All right, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about Phil's entry into the Groundlings right after this

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Speaker 17 So, Chuck, we've surely talked about the Groundlings here there.

Speaker 17 There's just no way we haven't, but just to refresh, they are a sketch and improv comedy troupe founded in LA

Speaker 17 who've basically launched the careers of tons and tons of comedians, including a lot of people on Saturday Night Live. Apparently, Saturday Night Live drafts heavily from the Groundlings, Second City,

Speaker 17 and that's it.

Speaker 17 But some of the people from Saturday Night Live who were Groundlings, including some who were Groundlings with Phil Hartman,

Speaker 17 John Lovitz was one. Sherry O'Terry, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wigg, Will Farrell,

Speaker 17 and the list just keeps going on.

Speaker 2 Forte. Got to mention Forte.

Speaker 17 He wasn't on Saturday Night Live, though. That's why I didn't mention him.
What?

Speaker 17 Was he?

Speaker 2 Well, Forte was Magruber, my man.

Speaker 17 Oh, I didn't realize that was a Sarah Night Live character. Sorry, Will.
Sorry. And the Falconer.
I didn't realize that he was on Sarah Night Live. I thought those were like standalone things.

Speaker 2 No, he, I mean, I just mentioned that because Forte is one of my all-time favorite actors and SNL character members, cast members.

Speaker 17 I'm sorry. I'm sorry you both then.

Speaker 2 No, he didn't insult me. I just love Forte.

Speaker 2 He did the weirdest characters on that show kind of consistently. And I always just respected him for that.

Speaker 17 Nice. um well that's great was he the last man on earth yeah yeah okay

Speaker 2 yeah he's wonderful i like him a lot i like him separately i also um like the last man on earth so now that the two are joined i really like him even more yeah my only will force was uh i think i've mentioned this before but he was an attendee at a good friend's wedding and my friend sat me uh sat emily and i at his table because he knew i was such a fan and i partied all night with will forte and he was the coolest funnest dude.

Speaker 17 Oh, that's that's a great story.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just a real sweetheart.

Speaker 17 So, um, yeah, oh, so we were talking about the groundlings, right? Yeah.

Speaker 17 And this is, I don't know, this story doesn't seem to be apocryphal. It seems to be actually true.
It's just exactly how it played out is kind of under question.

Speaker 17 But there was a birthday party that a friend of Phil Hartman had. I guess a group of them went to a groundling show.

Speaker 17 And before the show, Phil Hartman just decided to get up on stage and start start doing some of his act.

Speaker 2 Could that be true?

Speaker 17 Supposedly, I don't. I mean, somebody who's hungry for the stage, I guess.
Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 17 Right. And so for two hours, he had a hundred strangers just totally enrapped.
No. A hot springs developed in the room.

Speaker 17 But no, apparently he

Speaker 17 definitely killed on stage. And

Speaker 17 the story is that the groundlings came up to him after he got off stage and were like, you're in. You want to be in? That seems to not be true.

Speaker 17 It seems to be that he went up to them afterwards and was like, hey, what do you think about me getting

Speaker 17 an audition now? And they said, sure. And he went and auditioned and they said, you're in.

Speaker 2 Yeah. See, that's the first part of the second part was the part that I don't believe.

Speaker 17 Right.

Speaker 2 Because I don't see how there's any way at an improv theater. I know a lot of people in those theaters.

Speaker 2 over the years and for someone just to jump up on stage and do a bit, I bet they would not have been like, you're wonderful. Can you join? They would have been like, dude, don't ever do that again.

Speaker 17 Right, exactly. Like, if they went up to him afterward, they probably would have said, like, please leave.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So who knows? But it's a good story. I would love to eventually to do episodes on the Groundlings Second City and UCB as just like a little trifecta suite.

Speaker 17 Okay, great.

Speaker 2 At any rate, no matter how it happened, Tracy Newman, who was the founding member of the Groundlings, said that Phil Hartman walked into the Groundlings ready to go.

Speaker 17 Right. And that would also, there was a similar quote, I think, from Lorne Michaels years later that said he basically was ready the moment he walked in this Air Night Live, too.
Yeah.

Speaker 17 He was just a very dedicated actor.

Speaker 17 And one of the people who really looked up to him became one of his best friends, a fellow Groundling John Lovitz.

Speaker 17 And he was saying that he would

Speaker 17 call him the king of the Groundlings, which is pretty cool. But

Speaker 17 as he, as his like career went on, he became known as the most reliable actor in any group. Like he would stick to

Speaker 17 the

Speaker 17 sketch. Yeah.
Even if it was going badly, he would hang in there. He wouldn't bail on it.
He would just keep going into the end. And usually the impression I have is that if he was in a sketch,

Speaker 17 if it would have gone badly otherwise, if other people were in it, if he was in it, it probably wasn't going badly in the first place, which makes it easier to stick to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he just seemed kind of unflappable.

Speaker 2 We'll talk about some SNL stuff in a bit, but yeah, I'll save it for then.

Speaker 2 But one of his most popular Groundlings characters was Chick Hazard, who was the hard-boiled detective, like out of the film noir.

Speaker 2 And that's a character that he would sort of reprise in different ways over the years.

Speaker 2 He was a good, he was just good with his mouth and good with words and could just rattle off really complex, long strings of comedic dialogue, like, you know, pitch perfect without missing a beat and just very, very skilled.

Speaker 2 Like some people are funny and some people are super skilled. And he was one that was both.

Speaker 17 Right. Yeah, well put, Chuck.
I think we can end the podcast there.

Speaker 2 Or we should talk about his second marriage.

Speaker 17 Okay, well, first, though, we should say he was with the Groundlings for 11 years, and that is quite a while

Speaker 17 for being a member of a sketch comedy troupe, including one that

Speaker 17 doesn't have a TV show or anything. It's like a live theater group.
It's a long time.

Speaker 17 But I think that's kind of like an indicator of the dedication that he brought to

Speaker 17 acting, comedy,

Speaker 17 comedic acting. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, he didn't sort of make it in the public eye until he was in his late 30s, and that's just a long time to hang in there. Yes.
Especially in comedy.

Speaker 2 It's not like late 30s is old, but if you haven't made it by that time as an actor or comedian or something, you're probably sort of wondering, like, well, should I take up, you know, surfing again?

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 17 To those stuff you should know listeners out there in your late 30s trying to break into acting, still do not be discouraged by what chuck just said just keep going guys no don't start surfing

Speaker 2 i mean we i didn't uh get into my career until my late 30s and didn't get really success until my 40s so i'm i'm living pretty i mean you're younger than me so you are just a pup

Speaker 2 no that's not true i was in my mid 30s when things started to pick up for sure no But I mean, it's funny that I said that because we're good examples of like, hey, you never know what's coming around the corner.

Speaker 17 Oh, that's absolutely true. Boy, I could tell you some stories of times when I thought this life is not going to work out for me.
Oh, boy.

Speaker 2 You and me both, man.

Speaker 17 So

Speaker 17 we said that he got, he split up with his first wife, Gretchen, in 1972. He did the bachelor thing for about another decade, and he ran into a woman named Lisa Jarvis.

Speaker 17 I'm not sure how they met or even necessarily when, but I know in 1982 they got married 10 years after his last divorce. And it basically followed the same pattern as his first marriage.

Speaker 17 He just like, it just was like fireworks, and then it cooled off, and then he lost interest.

Speaker 2 Yeah, their marriage only lasted a few years. They divorced in 1985,

Speaker 2 the same year that he ended up having some of his first big successes.

Speaker 2 And that was because five years prior, a guy walks into the Groundlings in 1980 named Paul Rubens with a character named Pee Wee Herman under his arm or under his belt.

Speaker 17 Yeah. Have you seen the documentary yet?

Speaker 2 I still have not since you asked me yesterday.

Speaker 17 I know. I thought maybe you would have gone and watched it last night or something, but okay.

Speaker 2 So it's so close to being on my TV. You have no idea.

Speaker 17 It's really good.

Speaker 17 But he, so there's a lot about him developing the Pee-Wee Herman character, Paul Rubens, at the Groundlings with a lot of help from other Groundlings.

Speaker 17 Apparently, and they show some of the early stuff on this documentary. He was much more like obnoxious.
He threw tootsie rolls at the crowd, he would insult the crowd. Wow.

Speaker 17 And then, even after he kind of started to get Pee Wee like developed, those early stage shows were full of like sexual innuendo and stuff that a little kid wouldn't pick up on, but adults would find funny.

Speaker 17 But there weren't little kids at these shows anyway, so it didn't matter, right? Right. But one of the one of the people, my point was that really helped develop it was Phil Hartman.

Speaker 17 And I think even up to the first season of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, he played Captain Carl. His character was, he played a character on Pee-Wee's Playhouse for the first season.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the surly boat captain, Captain Carl. There were other Groundlings around as well, either

Speaker 2 in the show with him or writing for him. And Phil was one of the writers as well.

Speaker 2 And they were selling out every night. They ended up at the Groundlings.
They ended up moving to the Roxy Theater, which is a little bit bigger,

Speaker 2 which we talked about in our Sunset Boulevard episode. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And, or if it hasn't come out yet, we will talk about it on that episode.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then in 1980, there was a producer named Paula Kaufman who said she wanted to create a kid show for adults, saw Pee Wee at the Groundlings and was like, this is it.

Speaker 2 This is the show.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Again, this documentary, so like this particular part when they're developing the TV show is just, it's just not so amazing, right?

Speaker 2 I can't wait.

Speaker 17 So Phil was there when Paul Rubens did an HBO special. It was essentially one,

Speaker 17 I guess, a HBO version of the stage show that it started out as. That caught the attention of other people in Hollywood, and they said, hey, how about a movie?

Speaker 17 And they did Pee-Wee's Big Adventure together. Phil Hartman was a co-writer on that.
And that was 1985. And so things are finally starting to like pick up in ways that Phil Hartman had been hoping.

Speaker 17 Like He'd been writing scripts. He'd been auditioning for TV shows.
Now, all of a sudden, he had a hit movie writing credit under his belt.

Speaker 17 So he's thinking, okay, things are about to take off, which explains why in 1985, when Lauren Michaels came to him and said, hey, do you want to audition for

Speaker 17 Saturday Night Live? He said, no, I'm good. I'm going to pass on that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this was

Speaker 2 Lauren Michaels' return to SNL. He very famously had an absence from the show, and the show kind of did not fare well without Lorne Michaels, the creator.

Speaker 17 You weren't a fan of the Tim Kazarinsky years?

Speaker 2 I mean, no, some of that stuff is okay, but just as a general

Speaker 2 success, the show was kind of going downhill.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I did. I get your joke, first of all, Tim Kazarinski.

Speaker 17 He was funny, though. I like that.
Oh, no, he was. He was like perfect for the characters he played, like on Police Academy.
I can't remember his characters now. He was great on it.

Speaker 17 He was the same guy.

Speaker 2 I forgot about that. Yep.
But Lorne came back to

Speaker 2 save the show

Speaker 2 in 85, 86.

Speaker 2 He, again, like you said, asked Bill to come aboard. He said no because he was, you know, he thought he could make it as an actor, you know, in just regular comedies.
And John Lovitz joined instead.

Speaker 2 And then John Lovitz got him another audition

Speaker 2 for the 86, 87 season.

Speaker 2 He went in.

Speaker 2 He had already met Lorne a couple of times. One when he met Lorne Michaels, I believe at the

Speaker 2 I think when Rubens hosted SNL for the first time. Yes.
Is when he first met Lorne. But then he was also had a small part in Three Amigos, which Lorne produced.
And then

Speaker 2 if you ever have a chance, just sit down on YouTube and watch the Phil Hartman audition for SNL.

Speaker 2 He did that chick hazard character first.

Speaker 2 He did one of the fake commercials, and that's where you can tell just how skilled he is because it's one of those fast talking commercials where he's talking like this about about a product, but it's not, you know, he's not reading cue cards.

Speaker 2 It's just in his brain and memorized and he just, it's flawless. And you hear something that you

Speaker 2 just never hear in an SNL audition, which is people laughing. They're very famous for just sort of sitting there stone-faced, even if you're doing well.
And you hear people laughing in the background.

Speaker 17 Right. Yeah, that is very telling for sure.

Speaker 17 So

Speaker 17 there's one part of his audition reel

Speaker 17 where he does an impression of a German comedian doing impressions of famous people. It was so good.
He said

Speaker 17 the funniest man in Germany, Gunther Johann, right? Yeah.

Speaker 17 And so Gunther does impressions of like Jack Nicholson, John Wayne, Jack Benny, but they're all speaking German. And it's just like a spot-on impression of John Wayne speaking German.
And he's doing

Speaker 17 an impression of a German comedian doing these impressions. It's just amazing.
He goes right into it. it.

Speaker 17 It really does show off his talent. Plus, it's also hilarious, too.
Yeah.

Speaker 17 You know, a lot of times when you talk about people being funny, it loses its funniness. Yeah.
So just go watch it.

Speaker 2 Agreed. Totally agree.
He was hired with pretty rock star cast, all new members, Jan Hook, Stana Carvey, Victoria Jackson, and Kevin Nealon.

Speaker 17 Man, what a dream team.

Speaker 2 Yeah, pretty good. And that really kind of helped bring the show back.

Speaker 17 And how? I mean, to me, that's like the golden age. I think it destroys the 70s.
The 70s was cool and like amazing and, you know, really energetic, but the 80s were just like pro.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 17 To me. Okay.
So it could be just, that's one, the one I grew up with. Who knows?

Speaker 2 But I mean, there is that theory that whatever age you were in high school, I think is your favorite, what you think is the best SNL cast.

Speaker 17 Okay. Well, I might subscribe to that theory.

Speaker 2 No, I love, I love that era.

Speaker 17 So

Speaker 17 let's back up a second because you said that he met Lauren, Phil Hartman met Lauren Michaels when Paul Rubens, Pee-Wee, hosted Saturday Night Live in 1985.

Speaker 17 And the reason that he was there was because Paul Rubens brought Phil Hartman along and another collaborator from the Groundlings, John Paragon, as his writers to work with the Saturday Night Live writers to make good sketches for Pee-Wee Herman for that episode, right?

Speaker 17 So Pee-Wee, or Paul, introduced Phil to Lauren. Lauren comes to Colin the next year and the year after that.
And eventually, Phil says, Hey, Paul, I've got to go.

Speaker 17 I finally got my break. I'm going on a Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 Paul was not happy about that. If you've seen the documentary, which I know you haven't, they covered this.

Speaker 17 I watched it real quick. Just now? Okay.

Speaker 17 So you know, then they covered this in the documentary.

Speaker 17 Apparently, it's not a very well-known or it's kind of a forgotten story, but they had a a falling out and they didn't really talk or ever reconcile for the rest of Phil Hartman's life because Paul was, and there's really no other way to put it, very, very jealous.

Speaker 17 He felt spurred,

Speaker 17 jilted, spurned,

Speaker 17 jilted, spurred to action.

Speaker 17 And he was also, yeah, very jealous. because he had tried out for Saturday Night Live and did not get picked up.

Speaker 17 And I can't remember who got the spot instead of him. And then,

Speaker 17 yeah, and then Phil Hartman left Pee Wee's Playhouse to go to Saturday Night Live. So Paul was kind of a

Speaker 17 not the most forgiving person from what I can tell from the documentary. So he just held that grudge for the rest of Phil Hartman's life.

Speaker 2 Oh, man. That's sad.

Speaker 17 It is sad for sure.

Speaker 2 I hate hearing that. I might pause that part or skip over it when I watch the documentary tonight.
Okay.

Speaker 17 It's at 1.23.36 is when it starts.

Speaker 2 Shall we take our final break?

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right, let's take another break and we'll talk about a meeting in 1985 that would change the course of Phil Hartman's life right after this.

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Speaker 2 All right, as promised, a meeting in 1985 would change the course of Phil Hartman's life, and that is when Phil met a woman named Bryn Omdahl at a party.

Speaker 2 She was a tall, beautiful blonde from Minnesota, but moved to LA to be a model or an actress or both.

Speaker 2 And previous to meeting him in the late 70s and early 80s, she had an alcohol problem, she had a cocaine problem, but had gotten sober to her credit and was looking for a good dude to hook up with.

Speaker 2 And when she met Phil, he was, this is sort of right before

Speaker 2 Pee Wee's Big Adventure came out and he got the offer to, you know, be on SNL. So he was at a pretty low point auditioning and his coming out of that second marriage.

Speaker 2 And so he was like, all right, this beautiful woman loves me and then maybe validates me in a certain way. And so they got together.

Speaker 17 They did. And it was just like all the other ones, except this one was like

Speaker 17 when it burned red hot, that could also be really bad, too. Yeah.
It wasn't just like two people super into each other. It was also two people who like couldn't, couldn't like just

Speaker 17 clashed a lot, right?

Speaker 17 So they would get in really big fights and then they would make up and they would get in another fight and then they would make up.

Speaker 17 And despite this, early on, they still ended up getting married and went on to have two kids, Sean and Bergen. I think Sean was the oldest,

Speaker 17 and he was the boy, and Bergen was their little girl. And

Speaker 17 from all accounts, like

Speaker 17 Bryn was a really good mom and really loved Phil Hartman, but there was a huge issue in that she was an aspiring actress and she wanted to, I think she wanted Phil to help her career more than he was comfortable helping it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 17 And I totally get this. He was not the kind to like be like, hey, can you get my wife on your show? Or, yeah, you know, have you you seen my wife act? She's great.
Why don't you give her a shot?

Speaker 17 He just would not do something like that. Right.
So that then and there caused

Speaker 17 some pretty, pretty serious static between the two. And then on top of that, after they got together, his career actually started taking off.

Speaker 17 So in addition to him not helping her, he, she was like living in his shadow. So that was a big source of conflict between the two.

Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure. So he's got this marriage that starts, you know, that's, you know, rocky like his other relationships have been, but it has staying power more than the others.

Speaker 2 He was 37 when SNL started, right kind of when they got together. And his nickname on SNL was the glue.

Speaker 2 You kind of talked earlier about how he was always sort of looked at as a stabilizing force in the Groundlings and SNL.

Speaker 2 And his nickname was the glue because he was just perfect, basically, whenever he performed.

Speaker 2 We got to talk about some of his best characters.

Speaker 2 Phil Donahue was one of my favorites when he did Phil.

Speaker 2 Ed McMahon, of course,

Speaker 2 the aforementioned Ed McMahon was one of my favorites.

Speaker 2 I really, for some reason, loved the Frankenstein Tonto Tarzan bit that he and Kevin Nealon and John Lubbitz did.

Speaker 17 When they did Lil Drummer Boy?

Speaker 2 It was so silly, but I loved it.

Speaker 17 It's pretty good. He was Frankenstein, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, he was Frankenstein. I think Lubbitz was Tanto when Neal was Tarzan.
If you haven't seen it, look it up. But basically, the whole point is none of them speak English.

Speaker 2 And so they would do like Christmas songs and Frankenstein would just go.

Speaker 2 And Lubbitz did Tanto. And,

Speaker 2 you know, looking back, it was probably a fairly racist depiction of a Native American.

Speaker 17 Yeah. And then you said Nealon was Tarzan.

Speaker 2 And I don't even know what Tarzan did, probably just like jungle grunting.

Speaker 17 It was very good. I mean, like, basically, we could just sit here for the rest of the episode and talk about Phil Hartman's sketches because each one was better than the last.

Speaker 17 Like, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 17 First of all, what a, what, like, just an exceptional idea to start with. But he's, he just pulls it off so perfectly.

Speaker 17 This Smarmy lawyer, who's an unfrozen caveman, who went to law school and became a Smarmie,

Speaker 17 I guess, a personal injury lawyer. Yeah, I think so.
And again, like, we can talk it out and it will kill any funniness to it. Just go watch that one.

Speaker 17 Go look up Colin Blow, the Saturday Night Live commercial.

Speaker 2 Yeah, classic.

Speaker 17 It is.

Speaker 17 And then Ronald Reagan Mastermind, did you watch that one?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I remember. I didn't re-watch it, but I remembered it.

Speaker 17 I re-watched it and I remembered it. It came out around the time the Iran-Contra affair scandal broke.
And at the time, Ronald Reagan was like, I don't know anything. Like, I didn't know.

Speaker 17 Who knows who knew? Like, I didn't know this was going on. So they make fun of him

Speaker 17 and his public persona, just kind of being this doddering old man who

Speaker 17 doesn't really have his finger on the pulse of his own administration to this when people aren't around and it's just him and his staff, him just like barking orders and being totally super sharp and being the mastermind behind everything.

Speaker 17 It's in like the his just turning public Reagan on and off and then turning that private like aggressive Reagan on and off.

Speaker 17 It's just, I mean, like you really see like this guy was amazing, like like, like one of a kind, basically. I can't think of anybody who could do the stuff that he did before him or since.

Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.
Well said.

Speaker 2 He would go on to do another president very famously in 92 when Bill Clinton won the presidency, and he had a just a dead-on Clinton impersonation. Just not only the voice, but just his sort of

Speaker 2 the smarmy kind of Bill Clinton thing and the ego. Like they, they.
lampooned him very, very well, very effectively.

Speaker 17 Yeah, there's one where he was jogging into a McDonald's while he was running for president, doing like a campaign stop. And he's like, you know, about to kiss a baby.

Speaker 17 And he looks past the baby and says to the mom, like, hey, are you going to eat the rest of those French fries? And it just goes from there. Oh, my God.
It's perfect. So

Speaker 17 one of the things about Saturday Night Live that I learned even as a young viewer, if you're on beyond a certain number of years, it starts to have a certain kind of look.

Speaker 17 Like it kind of shows the world like you are perfect for a Saturday Night Live, but for some reason, it's not clicking outside of that.

Speaker 17 So you just hang in there as long as you can at Saturday Night Live. And what's astounding and nuts is that that happened to Phil Hartman.

Speaker 17 He was there through a couple of cast changes, like big time, huge cast changes where it went from like Kevin Nealon and Jan Hooks to Chris Farley and David Spade

Speaker 17 and Chris Rock too at the same time as well. I think Sarah Silverman came in around that time too.
So like he was in for a huge transition. He straddled two big transitions of Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 17 And that's a, just like with the Groundlings, this is a really long time to be a member of Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 17 And I think he felt overlooked because a lot of his colleagues were starting to get their own movies and he was not.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, he was on for eight seasons. Over those eight seasons, he did, he was in more sketches than any other cast member.

Speaker 2 When he retired from SNL, they gave him, on the show, they gave him a little statue of an Elmer's glue, like affixed to a trophy kind of thing

Speaker 2 because of his nickname, The Glue. But yeah, he definitely was getting side parts in these movies.
Like he was in So I Married an Axe Murderer. He was in Cone Heads, but he wasn't the star.

Speaker 2 And by the time he was Rock and Sandler and those guys came along in Farley, he was in his 40s, and he was kind of playing the straight man roles, like the old man of the family.

Speaker 2 One, you know, sort of obvious example is the Matt Foley,

Speaker 2 you know, living in a van down by the river, the motivational speaker sketch. Phil Hartman was the dad, and no one remembers that because everyone remembers Chris Farley.

Speaker 2 Quick aside, that sketch was created and written by Bob Odenkirk.

Speaker 17 Oh, I forgot he wrote for Saturday Night Live, too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and the reason I know that is because I watch Kevin, I follow Kevin Nealon on Instagram, and he does this. I don't know if he releases them as a podcast.

Speaker 2 I'm going to have to look, but he does these hikes through one of the canyons there in L.A. in the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 2 And he interviews people on these hikes and he was interviewing Bob Odenkirk and they were talking about that sketch. That's awesome.
Yeah, it's cool.

Speaker 17 It is a great sketch, but you can kind of see how like Phil Hartman's super pro,

Speaker 17 really contained and perfect delivery and style, it doesn't jibe well unless he's just playing it straight to somebody like Farley just going berserk. Right.
You know? Totally.

Speaker 17 So yeah, he finally he left. He left on great terms.
He just killed Saturday Night Live. He became a legend on Saturday Night Live.
And he went on to still have a pretty great career.

Speaker 17 He went on to do four seasons of News Radio, which is one of the great

Speaker 17 underrated office comedies, along with

Speaker 17 Working, the one that Fred Savage was in. Did you ever see that one?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 17 It was good. And Just Shoot Me is the other underrated office comedy of all time, I think, from the 90s at least.
But he was on four episodes of News Radio, had a great character. Four seasons, yeah.

Speaker 17 Four, what did I say? Episodes. Yeah, seasons for sure.

Speaker 17 Had a great character, Bill McNeil.

Speaker 17 And he just basically picked up a second part of his career. And then also, simultaneously, he was doing The Simpsons, too, which is where a lot of people fell in love with Phil Hartman.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just a little show called The Simpsons. He was asked in 1990 to do some voiceover work for that show.
And he said, yeah, I'll do it, but just one time because he.

Speaker 2 Apparently had a pretty bad experience doing voiceover for animation for the Dennis, The Menace animated show.

Speaker 17 I remember that.

Speaker 2 But he said, I'll do it just once. But then, of course, that didn't last because he was great on it.
And he started working with the writers, started developing characters.

Speaker 2 And for eight seasons, he voiced some of the most iconic characters.

Speaker 2 Of course, the great Troy McClure and

Speaker 2 Lionel Hutz, Attorney at Law, are the two sort of most notable

Speaker 2 because, you know, they would come on as their little side bits here and there. But Troy McClure actually ended up getting a pretty major storyline when he hooked up with,

Speaker 2 which one was it?

Speaker 17 I think Patty, I don't remember.

Speaker 2 One of Marjor's two sisters. I couldn't remember if it was Patty or

Speaker 2 Selma.

Speaker 2 Selma, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 17 It was one of them.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they fell in love. And that's from one of my favorite lines from Troy McClure was after they went out on a date, he sees her the next day.

Speaker 2 His famous line was, you may remember me from whatever,

Speaker 2 like acting role that he was in. And in this case, he said, I'm Troy McClure.
You may remember me from certain dates like last night.

Speaker 17 Yeah, he was well known for that. You may remember me from such educational films as The Decapitation of Larry Ledfoot.
Oh, man. Or Here Comes the Metric System.
Yeah.

Speaker 17 He was great. Yeah.
And like he had one episode where he was big, but the rest of the time it was just, like you said, a little side thing. And he still created a legendary character times two.

Speaker 17 And as a matter of fact, when he died, The Simpsons are like Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure will never appear on The Simpsons again. They just couldn't, no one else could do it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 17 So speaking of him dying, this is going to go long because this is kind of an involved story, but

Speaker 17 he, like I said, he and Bryn had a lot of tension. Apparently, Phil Hartman had an anxious avoidant attachment style.

Speaker 17 When she wanted to talk, when she was conversational, he would basically get in a sailboat and sail off to Catalina Island

Speaker 17 alone, I take it, but he was just, he would withdraw. You couldn't get to him.
That was the way that he dealt with it. And she did not like that.
I think it made her feel very lonely.

Speaker 17 And then again, she was living in a shadow. He wasn't helping her career.
They had two kids. And again, she was a really, really good mom by all accounts.
She also had

Speaker 17 some former demons that she had conquered, including an alcohol addiction and an addiction to cocaine.

Speaker 17 And she was clean when she and Phil met, and she stayed clean for a while.

Speaker 17 But she got back on the cocaine train after she did coke with Andy Dick at a news radio party, Christmas party in 1997.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, we don't know if that's the first time she started back again, but as the story goes,

Speaker 2 he offered her cocaine.

Speaker 2 He said that he didn't know that she had had a drug problem before,

Speaker 2 did not know that apparently she had been clean. And John Lovitz for many, many years was very public about blaming Andy Dick for, you know, for her falling off the wagon.

Speaker 2 And it led to a crazy story where in 2007, John Lovitz assaulted Andy Dick at the Laugh Factory and like got into a,

Speaker 2 I mean, I was going to say a fistbite, but it doesn't sound like it was punchy, but more John Lovitz, at least as the way he tells it, ramming Andy Dick's head back into the bar like repeatedly and said, I would have kept doing it too, but the bartender stepped in.

Speaker 17 I'm Frenchy. Yeah, he apparently he took over for Phil Hartman after Phil Hartman died on news radio.

Speaker 17 And one of the first days, he said to Andy Dick, I wouldn't be here if you hadn't given cocaine to Bryn. So he blamed Andy Dick for the death of Bryn and Phil.

Speaker 17 So Andy Dick didn't like that. Later on, he said he saw they saw each other at a restaurant and he said, I put the Phil Hartman hex on you.
You're the next to die.

Speaker 17 And then the next time they saw each other is when John Lovitz beat up Andy Dick, which, I mean, had no idea about that, did you?

Speaker 2 No, I didn't know that story until today or yesterday, whenever you sent it over, which is just one of those crazy stories.

Speaker 2 But very sadly, it was May 27th. And, you know, we should say Bryn at this point, she was upset about Phil's,

Speaker 2 you know, smoking too much. weed.

Speaker 2 She had an anxiety problem. She was suffering through some depression.

Speaker 2 She got on antidepressants,

Speaker 2 started drinking again.

Speaker 2 Not sure who started the cocaine thing, maybe Andy Dick, but she got back into cocaine and was in a pretty bad state of mind.

Speaker 2 And on May 27th, 1998, she had gone out for drinks at an Italian restaurant and wanted to go to another bar, but her friend didn't want to.

Speaker 2 So she called up her old drugging buddy from the 70s and early 80s, guy named Doug.

Speaker 2 And Doug was clean now, but said, why don't you come over to my house?

Speaker 2 She had some more drinks over there and was basically complaining about her marriage, about Phil smoking too much pot and them not getting along and, you know, being just at loose ends.

Speaker 2 And at one in the morning, he's like, you know, you need to go home. You need to go home to your husband.

Speaker 17 So she did. I don't think she had much of a choice.
Doug was like, you got to leave.

Speaker 17 And I guess when she got home shortly after that, she and Phil got into an argument. Phil went off to bed, managed to fall asleep.

Speaker 17 And remember, Bryn is on Zoloft, has been drinking for hours now and is on cocaine.

Speaker 17 And she went and got one of their guns, a 38 special, and walked up to Phil while he was sleeping and shot him three times, once in the head. And

Speaker 17 I never saw if he woke up or if he even knew it happened. Hopefully not.
And he just died while he was asleep.

Speaker 17 That would be what I would hope, but he died instantly because he was shot three times at close range.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So

Speaker 2 about an hour after that, she called up her friend Doug, who she was just with. She was super, super drunk at this point.

Speaker 2 Doug said, you need to just sleep this off. She didn't tell him at that point what it happened.

Speaker 2 And about 20 minutes later, she shows up back at Doug's house saying that she killed Phil, and he doesn't believe her.

Speaker 2 And then apparently, as the story goes, while she was there, the gun fell out of her purse, and he was like, what is going on?

Speaker 2 He helps her sober up over the course of a couple of hours, drives her back over at about six in the morning to their house, and he he sees Phil dead.

Speaker 2 And uh, he calls the cops, and at that point, Bryn locks herself in the bedroom with Phil's body, and that's where she was when the cops arrived.

Speaker 17 Yeah, um,

Speaker 17 I both of their kids were in the house at the time. I think, yeah, uh, Sean, the oldest, woke up, and Doug was like, Let's get you out of here, and took uh, took Sean outside to the police.

Speaker 17 But the whole time, Bergen's sleeping through like her mom just murdered her dad, and then it just gets worse, actually.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so she is barricaded in the room with Phil. The cops are there.
She's making phone calls to friends and family, saying, you know, confessing basically to what she had done.

Speaker 2 And finally, her last call was to her sister Kathy.

Speaker 2 She said, take care of my children. Just let them know how much I love them.
She got a second gun and laid down on the bed next to Phil and shot herself and killed herself. Yeah.

Speaker 17 And became one of the most hated people. in America, if not the world, almost overnight.
I remember hating her guts when I heard about this. Me too.

Speaker 17 As an older person, I have a little more empathy for her,

Speaker 17 just the amount of loneliness. And then also being on antidepressants, cocaine, and alcohol definitely is not a good combination, especially when you have guns in the house.

Speaker 17 But yeah, I've changed my approach to her a little bit. And I was kind of happy to read that at the funeral,

Speaker 17 Phil's brother John, was asking the people in attendance, like, please try to find it in your heart to forgive her for this.

Speaker 17 Like, this wasn't, this is, this was a horrible thing, but it's not like she was evil. She was

Speaker 17 a loving wife and a loving mother. And, like, let's try to remember her for that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure. And especially at the funeral, to have the guts to say something like that was

Speaker 2 pretty stand-up thing to do, I think.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a good life lesson there. Phil was, he was going to come back to news radio.
It's not like he was done with the show. He was going to come back for season five.

Speaker 2 But like you mentioned, John Lubbitz took over.

Speaker 2 The first episode of season five dealt with the death of the character. It was called Bill Moves On.
Yeah. Very emotional episode.

Speaker 2 And I think you already mentioned that they, you know, The Simpsons was like, we're never, ever going to get someone to do Troy McClure or Lionel Hutz again.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's true. And then he finally got his star on the Walk of Fame in 2014.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And we should mention,

Speaker 2 Bryn's sister Kathy respected her wishes, and she's who raised the kids.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Along with her husband. Yep.

Speaker 17 So good for her. Yeah.
Good for them.

Speaker 17 That's Phil Hartman.

Speaker 17 One of the sad outcomes of all this, Chuck, I think is when you search Phil Hartman, just Phil Hartman, most of what comes up on the first couple pages of search engines is about the murder. Yeah.

Speaker 17 Not like, look at all the hilarious stuff he did. So maybe look up Phil Hartman SNL videos and just go from there.

Speaker 2 Totally.

Speaker 17 And that's all we have to say about Phil Hartman for now. So I guess, Chuck, it's time for listener mail.

Speaker 2 This is from

Speaker 2 Katie, Josiah, a six-month-old baby.

Speaker 17 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 And Chris. This is amazing.
Hey, guys, my wife and I were just listening to the William A. Mitchell story from a few weeks ago.
We heard that Bill was the inventor of Tang.

Speaker 2 My wife is from Georgia, but I'm from the Midwest. So we always like to talk about things we grew up with, different foods and traditions, restaurants, etc.

Speaker 2 and how they were similar or sometimes very different. Well, I found out that I consumed Tang in a very unique way, apparently.

Speaker 17 Hot.

Speaker 17 I thought he was going to say right up the nose.

Speaker 2 When I was young in the winter months in Ohio, my dad would warm up the kettle and mix tang in boiling water.

Speaker 2 It was a warm drink that we could have whenever we played out in the snow, and my sister and I loved it. And he called it hot tang.

Speaker 2 And I just thought all tang was consumed hot, which is pretty funny. I've actually never drank cold or even room temperature tang.

Speaker 2 I hope all is well with you and yours. With love from North Georgia, Katie, Josiah, six months old, and Chris.

Speaker 17 I would try that, especially with like a cinnamon stick.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it sounds like a...

Speaker 2 You ever have like Theraflu or something when you're sick?

Speaker 17 Man.

Speaker 2 Or hot or hot toddy?

Speaker 17 I love the taste of Theraflu so much, I would drink it once in a while when I'm not sick.

Speaker 2 It really puts you to sleep, man.

Speaker 17 It really does.

Speaker 2 If you get the good stuff, I too love Theraflu.

Speaker 17 The warning on the box about your liver is it scares me, so I only do it once in a while.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, we should get them on as a sponsor, man.

Speaker 17 We should. We should drink it on the podcast once in a while.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I bet Tang, hot tang is pretty similar, and a bit of a little whiskey in in there would be pretty good.

Speaker 17 Yeah, well, don't get Katie started this early. She's only six months old.

Speaker 2 No, the Katie's the wife.

Speaker 17 Oh, okay. Well, who is six months old?

Speaker 2 What was it, Josiah?

Speaker 17 Oh, okay. I thought Katie's last name was Josiah.
I see. There was a comma in there that I wasn't aware of.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Chris wrote the letter. Right.

Speaker 17 He

Speaker 2 married Katie. Okay.
And they had Josiah six months ago.

Speaker 17 Okay, gotcha. Well, I guess I should just say congratulations to Katie and John.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah, for Josiah and everything else.

Speaker 17 There you go. Yeah, and thank you also for sending the email.
That was a great one. Hot tang sounds wonderful.
We'll go try it.

Speaker 17 And if you want to be like Katie, Josiah, and Chris, who I may have just called John, I'm not sure, you can send us an email too at stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

Speaker 1 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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