I REALLY Miss Phil Hartman

I am a big fan of what my son calls, not inaccurately “murder podcasts.” One of my favorite murder podcasts is Love Murder. 

On a recent episode they covered the life and death of Phil Hartman. I usually listen to new episodes of Love Murder as soon as they come out, assuming that I’m not in the middle of binging the complete archives of a different true crime podcast but it took me a couple of weeks to listen to the Phil Hartman episode. 

That’s partially because, like so many other people, I never got over the death of Phil Hartman. It’s been twenty-five years since his wife murdered him, then killed herself but I still think about what an incredible tragedy Hartman’s murder represents. 

I also held off on listening to the podcast because I hold Hartman in such high regard that if the hosts characterized him as anything other than one of a kind comic genius who enriched the world of comedy during his extraordinary lifetime and whose death left a massive hole that can never be filled I would be angry at them. 

I had nothing to worry about. The hosts could not have been more effusive in their praise for Hartman as both a unique and remarkable talent and wonderful human being. 

I’m not entirely sure why Hartman’s death had such a profound effect on me. I was a huge fan, obviously, but I’m a huge fan of plenty of other comedians, actors, musicians, authors and whatnot whose deaths didn’t devastate me the way Hartman’s did. 

The shock of Hartman’s death certainly played a role. It came out of nowhere. One day I assumed that Hartman would be delighting the world until he was old and gray and the next he would never do anything ever again because he had been killed in a murder-suicide. 

Hartman was so damn young. He had so much more to give. It seemed cruel and patently unfair for someone like him to die at forty-nine under the worst possible circumstances while monsters like Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani will both live to be a hundred despite living on fast food grease, rage and confused horniness. 

Hartman’s death wasn’t the only one that had that profound of an effect on me. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s shocking death from a heroin overdose when he had seemingly licked his drug problems for good similarly rocked my world. 

I was horrified by Hoffman’s death for many of the same reasons that I was destroyed by Hartman’s passing. It was shocking. It came out of nowhere. It was a horrible, lonely way to die. Hoffman was so young. He had contributed so much yet he had so much more to give. 

That is a commonality in a lot of the celebrity deaths that I have never gotten over. Think of J-Dilla. Everything that he accomplished he accomplished in his thirty two short yet insanely fruitful years on the planet. 

DOOM is another death that destroyed me. He was my favorite rapper and, in my mind, the greatest lyricist of all time. I have a SHRINE to him in my home, for the love of god. 

Phife Dawg and Adam Yauch deaths were painful for many of the reasons I’ve outlined. There’s just something about dying young and unexpectedly. 

That’s one of the reasons Jim Henson’s death at fifty four was such a tragedy. Henson didn’t just leave a mark on the world; he single-handedly made the world a MUCH better place. 

Christ, now I’m tearing up just thinking about how much I loved Henson and what a massive loss for humanity his early death was. 

Some celebrity deaths hit hard because they were so close to home. I will never get over Harris Wittels’ death at  30 because I related to him so intensely as a man, writer and Phish fan. 

I would like to say that every death is sad but honestly, when Donald Trump dies I will throw a party and I am, as some of y’all might be aware, a weird recluse who knows no one. 

But some deaths hit us much harder than others. 

Which celebrity deaths had the biggest effect on you and why? 

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