Former B-Town Blog intern Bryan Shickley is bringing new life to the voice of late comedy legend Phil Hartman through an animated short film built entirely around rarely heard archival recordings of the “Saturday Night Live” star.

Animator and filmmaker Shickley, who interned for us while a student at Burien’s Big Picture High School. is currently working on an animated film built around rarely heard recordings by the late comedy legend Hartman, combining archival audio with a wide range of animation techniques.

Shickley previously released a short film in 2023 about local Maury Island Incident curio Fred Crisman, continuing his interest in telling stories about iconic legends.

Phil Hartman’s Flat TV

The project, titled Phil Hartman’s Flat TV, is an animated adaptation of the album of the same name, released by RockBeat Records with the involvement of Hartman’s brothers, Paul and John. The audio was originally found in deep storage in the early 2000s, and Hartman’s family sought to bring the material to the public. Hartman’s recordings form the backbone of the film, with every line of dialogue voiced by Hartman himself – no impersonations or AI – leaving Phil to speak for Phil.

Hartman was a Canadian/American actor, comedian and graphic artist best known for his eight seasons on “Saturday Night Live,” where his wide range of spot on impressions and steady, everyman characters earned him the nickname “The Glue” for holding sketches together. He later starred on the NBC sitcom “NewsRadio” and voiced multiple characters on “The Simpsons,” including Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz. Hartman was widely regarded as one of the most versatile and reliable performers of the late 1980s and 1990s comedy scene.

“Phil brought a lot of joy into people’s lives, and the least I could do is help him bring a little more of that into the world,” Shickley told The B-Town Blog. “My mom passed away at the same age as Phil. The circumstances were less hostile, but the amount of ‘what-ifs’ and unfinished business left behind are universal to anyone who’s lost someone so suddenly.”

“Seeing Phil’s voice and ideas take shape this way means a lot to our family,” said Hartman’s brother, Paul. “Bryan has treated Phil’s work with real care and respect, and it’s exciting to see these recordings come alive for new audiences.”

Visually, the film uses a range of animation approaches Shickley hadn’t been able to explore previously. The segments combine hand-drawn animation, puppetry, claymation, CGI, construction-paper cutouts, physically built miniature sets, and hand-painted backgrounds, with each style shifting to match the tone of Hartman’s sketches. The finished short runs approximately 10 minutes. The film also includes numerous references to The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, and NewsRadio as Easter eggs for longtime fans.

“Phil recorded these sketches as a sort of demo reel to show his level of craft,” Shickley said. “So if I do my job right, I’ll be doing something similar myself, in both quality and variety.”

Looking ahead, Shickley will be submitting the 10-minute film to festivals later this year. If the project is received well, he would like to adapt another of Hartman’s archived recordings using the same approach. Hartman had long discussed his detective character Chick Hazzard but never realized the project during his lifetime; Shickley hopes to give that character a spotlight some day.

Shickley and Hartman’s brothers also share an ambitious long-term hope: that the project could earn Phil Hartman a posthumous Academy Award for his voiceover work, highlighting the significance of his performances in animation history.

“Like Mel Blanc and Rich Little before him, Phil was my generation’s ‘man of a thousand voices,’” Shickley said. “And now I get the honor of making it 1,012.”

Following its festival run, Shickley intends for the film to be made publicly viewable by 2027.

On a personal note, here are my thoughts about my former intern:

“Shickley has always had that rare mix of curiosity, creativity and follow through. Even as a young 14-year-old intern, he wasn’t just completing assignments – he was dreaming up bigger ideas and finding ways to bring them to life. Watching him continue to chase ambitious projects like ‘Phil Hartman’s Flat TV‘ and carve out his own creative path has been incredibly rewarding. I’m genuinely proud of the filmmaker and storyteller he’s becoming.”