Book review: You Might Remember Me by Mike Thomas

The forty-fourth book I read in 2018 was You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman by Mike Thomas.  Phil Hartman is largely known for four things: Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, NewsRadio, and his murder at the hands of his wife in 1998 at the age of fifty. 

Unfortunately, I have found that most (auto)biographies I have read leave me with a worse opinion of their subjects than I held in blissful ignorance.  (See: Van Dyke, Dick and Schulz, Charles.)  Hartman is no exception.  He was born in small-town Canada, but a trip to the Rose Bowl infected his parents with the Southern California dream, where they determined to relocate their family as soon as possible.  One can't help but question whether staying in Canada might not have resulted in a better outcome for their children, though it may have robbed television audiences of Phil's unquestionable comedic talent, as Phil and at least one brother became enthusiastic partakers of the 1960s celebrity culture of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll.

The Hartmanns (a numerology-influenced Phil dropped the extra N for better karma) were a Catholic family with the multiple siblings that implies, one of whom was severely disabled.  It is unclear whether it is Phil or his biographer or both that blamed his disabled sister for robbing him of the parental attention he rightfully deserved, but it's an unattractive sentiment poorly expressed.  Phil's distant and unsuccessful relationships with three wives likewise indicate an inability to connect and empathize with other human beings when it's inconvenient or upsetting, and his complaint about the "trailer parks across America" which, in preferring the Brett Butler family sitcom Grace Under Fire over the urban singles workplace comedy NewsRadio, denied him the success he felt was his due, displays a contempt for the very audience he hoped to win over.  (Full disclosure: I have watched and enjoyed both.)

In the end, of course, the story is a tragedy, not only for Phil and his fans but for his wife and murderer Brynn, whose motivations and mental state will never be fully understood but whose subsequent remorse and suicide robbed her children of both parents.  The final fifty pages of the narrative deal with the last day of Phil's life and the aftermath of the murder in excruciating detail; if you remember where you were when you heard the news, the walkthrough will answer as many questions as are answerable about what exactly happened while leaving you with the somewhat ghoulish feeling of being a rubbernecker at a crime scene.