GOLD COAST — Chicago author Mike Thomas broke out the fancy cupcakes for folks who came to the Barnes & Noble basement to hear him talk about — and hopefully buy — his second book, “You Might Remember Me, The Life and Times of Phil Hartman.”
“Take a couple,” Thomas told me, not looking at my belly at all. “Take three.”
Before Thomas read from the Hartman biography, a Chicago guy in the crowd — national best-selling author Jonathan Eig — used the free dessert as a foil to gently test Thomas on how well he knew his biography subject.
“What was Phil’s favorite flavor cupcake?” Eig asked.
And Thomas, without missing a beat, said Hartman’s brother told him that when it came to cupcakes, the late comedic actor was a huge fan of …. carrot cake with chocolate frosting.
Like Eig, whose latest book “The Birth Of The Pill” goes on sale next week, I was quite impressed.
Thomas said he even asked the bakers at the Cupcake Counter in the Loop to make a dozen of Hartman’s favorite, but they politely refused.
“They said there are certain combinations that they’re not comfortable making,” Thomas said. “Apparently, Phil had horrible taste in cupcakes.”
Hartman's cupcake preference is one of the few details not included in Thomas’ well-crafted and expertly researched tale of the life of arguably "Saturday Night Live"'s most underrated star. But it’s certainly proof that Thomas, who never met Hartman, was a full-fledged Phil-o-phile.
A lot had been written about Hartman’s work and his tragic death at the hands of his wife, Brynn, who fatally shot Hartman and killed herself.
But not much of the rest of the late comedian’s life — from his Canadian childhood, time on the road as a rock ‘n’ roll roadie and his sex kinks to his days as pot-smoking surfer dude, open-ocean sailor and Zen-poet philosopher and more — had been documented.
Thomas said he was able to “capture the many facets” of Hartman because so many people who loved him — his family, famous friends, ex-lovers and best buds among them — were willing to share their Phil stories.
“I hit that sweet spot where people were willing to talk. It was luck as much as anything else,” he said. “I got the idea in an email from Vince Vieceli, a comedian who knew I was looking for a new subject [for a book]. It said, ‘I’d love to read a book about Phil Hartman,’ And I thought, holy s---, that’s a great idea. And that got the ball rolling.”
Thomas is a good pal of mine. We worked together at the Sun-Times, where he’s still the paper’s arts and entertainment writer specializing in Chicago’s comedy scene. So I’ll spare you too much back-slapping.
But I will tell you that every time we had a beer during the last three years Thomas would tell me how hard he was at work compiling interviews, photos, videos, journal entries and letters — he even combed through every police record related to Hartman’s brutal murder. And it really comes through in a 336-page portrait of Hartman as both a comic icon and a regular guy.
Thomas will tell you that there’s no way he could have pulled it off if it wasn’t for one woman — his forgiving wife, Sandy. They live in the Gold Coast with their two daughters.
“She’s like super mom. I was writing the book and working a full-time job. So every single evening for hours and every single weekend for eight hours a day, every holiday and what seemed like every available moment, I was gone working on the book,” Thomas said. “Without her support, it would have taken me seven years.”
One of the book’s finest moments is the epilogue, a short story of Sept. 24, 2013 — what would have been the late comic's 65th birthday — when Thomas joined Hartman’s confidant and fellow outdoorsman Britt Marin on a rented double kayak to sprinkle the late comedian’s ashes in the water surrounding Indian Rock on Emerald Bay off of California’s Catalina Island.
It was a sweet, somber moment that fittingly included a little humor, too, because Marin and Thomas forgot to bring a screwdriver to open the box containing Hartman’s ashes.
“For me it was really poetic. I felt honored to be there,” Thomas said. “I had a vision of how it might go, and that’s exactly what happened, with a little additional comedy that was appropriate for the guy I wrote about.”
In some ways, the book project taught Thomas to have a little sunnier outlook in life.
“Phil’s whole thing was that he had an attitude of gratitude and really appreciated his life. You know me, I’m frequently grumpy,” Thomas said. “So after all this I’ve tried to be more in the moment and chilled out and to enjoy what’s going on while it happens. Because man, you never know when you could be shuffled off this mortal coil.”
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