Phil Hartman Tribute

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was thinking about him just a few weeks ago. What a loss to the world really.
 
NewsRadio is one of the few TV series I actually have on DVD. I have the Hartman seasons only; I prefer to pretend his character didn't die and they just ended the show between the 3rd and 4th seasons (or whichever season numbers they were). Phil Hartman was the only reason I watched Saturday Night Live in the latter half of the 1980s. He could be funny even with unfunny material to work from.
 
Dumarest said:
NewsRadio is one of the few TV series I actually have on DVD. I have the Hartman seasons only; I prefer to pretend his character didn't die and they just ended the show between the 3rd and 4th seasons (or whichever season numbers they were). Phil Hartman was the only reason I watched Saturday Night Live in the latter half of the 1980s. He could be funny even with unfunny material to work from.
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I bought the first four seasons of NewsRadio (the ones with Phil Hartman) on Amazon Prime Video yesterday and binge watched the entire first season.
 
Did anyone get to see this version of Disney's Alien Encounter before Phil Hartman's voice was replaced with Tim Curry's? You had to be in the original test audiences for the ride as I recall. His pre-show performance was apparently too light-hearted in tone for the horror ride that followed:

 
The only guy I found funnier on SNL back then was Chris Farley. Two huge talents that are missed.
 
Was thinking of him recently watching Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (which we wrote the screenplay for). The man was a genius and a treasure to the comedy world.

Remember the golden years of SNL 90s? Sigh...
 
Necrozius said:
Remember the golden years of SNL 90s? Sigh...
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I watched SNL intermittently in the early '80s, but it was nothing special. When Hartman joined the show in '86 is where it became something that I made a point of watching. I used to have the Best of Phil Hartman SNL DVD. It is just fantastic from beginning to end, and I am sure then could have made it a few hours longer and still not run out amazing sketches.

One thing I respected about Hartman was that he stuck with the show and the sketch comedy format. It makes me sad that sketch comedy is frequently just a stepping stone to making movies. To give an example, I was a big SCTV fan, and while a lot of the former cast members got to so good things in the '80s, few of them let them show their talent as much as SCTV did. Once they got to Hollywood, John Candy was mostly the loveable oaf and Rick Moranis was the nerd. Don't get my wrong, they were great at doing those parts, but it was like they were getting use 5% of their talent due to typecasting.

I like the fact that Hartman clearly loved doing sketch comedy, and he stuck with it.
 
Hartman was easily the best thing on SNL of that era, which despite a very talented cast (Lovitz, Carvey) I found very uneven. But then I agree with Chris zrock that after its first 4 years SNL has been hit or miss in general.

This is my favourite work of his:

 
More Hartman greatness from The Simpsons.



 
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