Biography

Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Phil Hartman graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, where he founded the P.U. Film Society, was the film critic for the daily paper and received The Daily Princetonian Award as the university's outstanding contributor.

Phil has sold or optioned six screenplays, including Bleeding Heat, a punk rock detective story, The Beheader, an Ivy League revenge fantasy, and They Were Ten, an adaptation of a best-selling German novel. Frustrated by the studio's inability (or unwillingness!) to put his offbeat scripts into production, Phil wrote and directed his first feature film, the Sundance-award winning, No Picnic (1987), with Luis Guzmán, David Brisbin and a cameo by Steve Buscemi as "Dead Pimp." His second feature, Eerie, shot entirely on the Erie Canal, starred Felicity Huffman and Will Arnett.

In his parallel life, Phil (with Rich Kresberg) created the Great Jones Café in 1983 (which started NYC's Cajun cooking craze); and Two Boots in 1987, with partners Doris Kornish and John Touhey. Two Boots now has 16 locations including NYC's Grand Central Station & Citi Field, Baltimore, Nashville and Los Angeles, and is, as Time Out New York put it, "a genuine NYC cultural institution."

Phil is also the founder of the HOWL! Festival which honors the cultural history of the East Village; throws the annual Two Boots Mardi Gras Ball, a benefit for the Lower East Side Girls Club; founded the East Village Softball Association; and has raised three amazing children on NYC's Lower East Side.

He plans on shooting his new script, A Day At The Beach, in 2015.
- IMDb mini biography by: A. Pavone

Owner of Two Boots Pizza, Two Boots Video, and the eclectic, indie, underground Two Boots Pioneer Theatre (closed in 2008). The Pioneer Theatre is largely responsible for the success of the film Donnie Darko after being the first to create a cult following by screening it as the midnight movie for 28 months.

Interviewed in "The 80's: Downtown", a special feature documentary, on the American Psycho DVD (Uncut Collector's Edition).