My brother taped a TV special about the production of the film and all the stuff we’d have to look forward to, and we played that tape over and over again. It annoyed the Hell out of my mum.

Sitting in a theater being blasted with Williams’ orchestra strike to start that film, 25 years after Jedi, was one of the most thrilling movie moments of my life. It’s tough to contrast that with how I felt two hours later.

For me, Hartman is on the same list as Philip Seymour Hoffman, not a list of Philips but of artists whose careers I honestly hoped would last all my life. That’s how much I loved his work.

Phil Hartman’s death hurt in a different way than Chris Farley’s. Everyone knew Farley had problems and it would have taken a much more optimistic person than me (and I’m borderline ridiculously optimistic) to think that his story would have had a happy ending. But the way Hartman died was so out of left field, so…

“Something happened to Pat Smear?!”

“Noooo! Not bassist Krist Novoselic!”

I remember sitting in art history class and not being able to concentrate because the Star Wars hype was getting so huge, and I had plans to see the first re-release of the first film (with new! exciting! ultimately annoying and unnecessary! features!) after class. I had been just a bit too young to see Star Wars in…

That’s how I found out about Cobain’s death too.  Picked up from school, and mom was like “That Nirvana guy you like killed himself today.”

My seinfeld finale story: I was at a Ben Folds Five concert in Austin that evening. The opening band was Superdrag. The venue put a projector and screen on the stage and aired the finale episode in its entirety. Then Superdrag came out, extremely pissed off that Seinfeld cut into their set time, and grumbled and…

Part of it my thinking may be down to the particularly sad nature of his loss, but IMHO Hartman was the most inately funny cast member SNL ever produced (high praise when you think that this is the staple that also produced Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy).

Farley had just died six months before, and that was saddening but not surprising. Then Phil dies, like a day or two after Sinatra, which was taking up all the oxygen in the room. I remember I didn’t even hear about it until that night, and it was an afterthought after some Sinatra piece. “Oh and, uh, that Phil…

My mom called and woke me up to tell me about Hartman’s death. She wanted me to hear it from her because she knew how much I loved him. It shook me to my core and is still, to me, the most gut-wrenching celebrity death of my lifetime. I was 21 and thought Hartman was the funniest person on TV. It wrecked me for the…

There were newspaper articles saying which movies and which times would have the trailer. I grabbed a buddy and went to see “The Waterboy” which was supposed to have it, but didn’t. Then I elbowed my friend, we got up and went into the next theater where “Meet Joe Black” was playing. All normal previews, then a pause,…

There should be some mention in one of these articles about the rise of WWE(F)’s Attitude Era. Pro wrestling became HUGE and actually a cool thing for people to admit to watching, and guys like Stone Cold and The Rock became household names while everyone in school was doing crotch chops and telling people to suck it.

The Seinfeld made me think of another detail: I recall the summer of ‘98 being the height of that “No soup for you!” thing.

Does anyone remember the last episode of The Simpsons they saw before Phil Hartman died and the first one after?

I remember being at the theater about to see Rugrats and there was a huge line, so 5 year old me naturally assumed everyone was there for Rugrats.

On the Friday that Meet Joe Black opened up in theaters (and had the Phantom Menace trailer playing before it), people would go to the theaters on their lunch break just to buy a ticket, watch the trailer, and then leave to go back to work.

For anyone who wasn’t around for the debut of the Phantom Menace trailer, I don’t think there is anyway to truly describe how ridiculously excited everyone was. Before YouTube and the like, people were emailing it around at work and school, burning it on to CD-R to pass it around and/or watch at home. I mean, dude, we…

To this day, I can remember clearly hearing about Phil Hartman’s death. I was already a huge NewsRadio fan. When I came home from school that day, the first thing my mother said to me was “That actor from that show you like was killed.” And then I watched the news and just became more horrified then more details I…