Free You Might Remember Me The Life and Times of Phil Hartman by Mike Thomas Page A

he took full advantage of his newfound liberation. “The guy was a frickin’ animal!” Paul Hartmann says admiringly. “I’m sure he had a new [pickup] line for every occasion.” Having moved to a first-floor studio apartment on Santa Nella Boulevard in Malibu, in a funky mansion-like structure where the swashbuckling thespian Errol Flynn was said to have dwelled decades earlier, Phil drew and surfed (though not typically near his place, where the waves were too small) and smoked weed and charmed the ladies. He also landed the role of River City con man Harold Hill in a 1973 production of The Music Man at Santa Monica’s Morgan-Wixson Theatre. There he met a fellow aspiring actor named Floyd Dozier, who shared Phil’s interests in wave riding, drama (the showbiz kind), and cars. They hit it off right away. “Everybody wanted to be his friend because he was an interesting guy,” Dozier says. “Immediately when I met him, I sensed there was something really different about him. He was a true artist. He didn’t really march to the same drum as most people, although there was a part of him that wanted to be perceived as normal. He went through life trying to find a character that he could present to the public that seemed normal and wholesome.”
    During their first hang session they surfed, then shared a joint. Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s 1971 LP Blue, cued up by her countryman Phil, provided the soundtrack. There were also Music Man bashes on the beach with fellow cast members (Dozier was also part of the production). As ever, partygoers gathered around to watch Phil do impressions. And, as ever, Jonathan Winters routines were common. “Do Arnold!” revelers yelled, referencing a famous Winters bit called “Moby Dick & Captain Arnold” from the comic’s hit 1963 album Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, Phil and Dozier watched old black-and-white movies on television. Phil, Dozier says, was encyclopedic in his knowledge of actors and the characters they played. John Wayne’s were among his favorites.
    Phil and Dozier talked religion and philosophy, too, much as Phil had with Holloway back in high school. Though still a fan of the Urantia Book, Phil had lately become intrigued with another mystical tome: the ancient Chinese Book of Changes—or I Ching . It contains a so-called divination system that is essentially used to foretell events and solve problems. “Throwing the I Ching ,” as the parlance goes, involves tossing three coins (Chinese ones, pennies, etc.), then multiplying the number of heads by two and tails by three. The sum total of those numbers becomes the basis for interpretation via the symbolism of sixty-four different “hexagrams.”
    Phil frequently threw the I Ching for others and himself, as he was deeply curious about his own fate—and, if possible, redirecting it to better align with his aspirations. When Paul came across Phil’s I Ching years later he found scraps of paper inside, and on each scrap variations of Phil’s name (Philip Hartmann, Phil E. Hartman, etc.) in Phil’s handwriting along with calculated “destiny” numbers. In numerology, each letter has a value and each value a meaning. The name “Phil Hartmann,” for instance, has a “destiny number” (or “expression”) of 8, a “soul urge” of 11 and an “inner dream” of 6. Which meant, in short and in part, that Phil was an ambitious, practical, materialistic, spiritual utopian who envisioned living a happy-go-lucky family life, with doting children and a devoted wife. Merely dropping one “n” would change his destiny number (and thus, to Phil’s way of thinking, his actual destiny) to an even more desirable 3—the height of artistic fulfillment.
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    In an attempt to help bolster Phil’s artistic pursuits, Dozier bought his buddy a new drafting table, where Phil spent many solitary hours sketching, cartooning, and working on freelance graphic art