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Fartman (Howard Stern)
Encyclopedia
Fartman is a fictional superhero
, popularized and acted by American radio "shock jock
", Howard Stern
. The character first appeared in an issue of the National Lampoon humor magazine in the mid-1970s (Vol. 2, No. 11, June, 1979, Page 28). A recorded version of the character also appeared on National Lampoon's White Album in 1979. Stern began using the character on The Howard Stern Show in the early 1980s. According to the trademark that Howard Stern filed for the character on October 16, 1992, he first used Fartman in July 1981, when Adam West
was a guest on his show, to which he made an impromptu Fartman outfit in five minutes, although the original outfit contained a toilet seat
necklace which Stern later discontinued from his motif.
Fartman generally attacks evil using his super powered flatulence
, which also allows him to fly through the air.
On August 1, 1989, Howard Stern as Fartman called Beirut, Lebanon.
In the early 1990's, Howard and show guest, Robert Englund
, performed the live sketch: Fartman vs Freddy Krueger
. The sketch consisted of Fartman passing out from the smell of his own farts, falling into dreamland where he meets Freddy Krueger, and having to save a group of small children from Krueger's evil doing.
Some notable quotes:
Freddy Krueger: "Hi, I'm Freddy Norris. I mean...Krueger."
Fartman: "How does a Shakespearean trained actor end up making a living doing slasher films?"
Freddy Krueger: (in relation to wiping his backside) "I got more scabs on my ass than Captain Hook
!!!"
In the early 1990s, at the beginning of Desert Storm, Stern had Fartman call the Iraqi Embassy about the takeover of Kuwait.
Other Fartman bits from this era include the Fartman Theme Song and Fartman calls Mrs. Fartman.
On September 9, 1992, Stern famously appeared as Fartman on the MTV Video Music Awards
, in a costume that showed his buttocks
. Actor Luke Perry
introduced him. Howard came down to the stage when Metallica
band members Lars Ulrich
and Kirk Hammett
were making their acceptance speech. Ulrich then kicked Howard in the rear end. Howard later apologized on the radio to Lars Ulrich for this incident on August 20, 1996. He apologized to James Hetfield on the radio on July 30, 2004.
On April 29, 2000, there was a Fartman animation on episode #59 of The Howard Stern Radio Show, a late night syndicated television show.
On March 7, 2003, Stern interviewed Adam West
, and together they called Iraq as Fartman and Batman
.
On October 31, 2005, Stern said that he had an Adventures of Fartman cartoon in the works for his new Sirius Satellite Radio
Channel, and it may go over to his On Demand cable show as well.
On February 9, 2006, Stern, as Fartman, called Beirut, Lebanon, announcing that he was very upset about what was happening there and instructed the respondent to not hate Americans. The respondent surprised Stern by identifying him as Howard Stern.
On November 25, 1992, Variety
reported that J. F. Lawton
, writer of Pretty Woman
and Under Siege
, was planning to write and direct New Line Cinema
's Stern's film project, titled The Adventures of Fartman. The film, which would be budgeted at $8 million-to-$11 million, was expected to go into production the following May in New York. David Permut would produce the film under his Permut Presentations Banner, which has a first-look deal at New Line. According to Lawton, The Adventures of Fartman would revolve around the superhero and his alter ego, a magazine publisher in the mold of Screw
magazine's Al Goldstein
.
On June 28, 1993, Time
magazine reported that Lawton was working on a screenplay for The Adventures of Fartman. Lawton told Time, "There's a lot of nudity, some harsh language, a lesbian love scene, and the main character works for an underground sex magazine. We told New Line Cinema the plot, and they said, 'Yeah, it sounds great. But can't we make it PG-13?' "
The Fartman movie was not put into production. Instead, Stern made a movie out of his bestselling book, Private Parts
. Private Parts hit theaters on March 7, 1997, with the opening scene being a reenactment of Stern’s Fartman appearance at the 1992 MTV Music Awards.
In 1999, Stern hoped to follow up the modest success of Private Parts with a movie about the Fartman character.
Early in the year, Howard revealed he was in talks with movie studios to finally produce his movie Fartman. He said that it would go into production in the summer of 1999, and that there were studios prepared to finance it. In December, Stern stated that the movie was on hold. Though he had a script, and two studios willing to produce it, he was unsure that it was the right time to do it. Stern also didn't want to make a PG-13 version of the film, the way the studios wanted it to be.
In 2002, Stern considered shooting the Fartman movie on video for his fans, but to date no official productions have been greenlit.
Fartman was considered by Vince McMahon
to be brought in as a one time character for WrestleMania
, but he and Howard Stern had different views on how to show him. Stern wanted to have his character knock out a wrestler with flatulence, but McMahon wanted Stern to get pummeled by a wrestler.
, NY. While announcing the competition, Stern encouraged fans to make short films about not only the show and its cast, but popular bits and characters such as Fartman. Many films included Fartman, but while none of those were chosen as finalists, one submission did find a degree of success.
Director Tammy Caplan's Fartman: Caught in a Tight Ass stars Fartman and introduces the evil villain, Tight Ass, who has the ability to squeeze weapons from his ass. It also features a love interest for Fartman, the beautiful Labia Lips. The film was first chosen as a potential finalist in the festival, but later disqualified for using professional actors from the Screen Actors Guild
.
Following the festival, Fartman: Caught in a Tight Ass began airing on Howard TV, Howard Stern’s iN Demand
Cable Channel as part of the their “Best of the Film Festival” series. This is the first live action Fartman movie ever to be shown on television. In 2007, Fartman: Caught in a Tight Ass first appeared on Atom Films
.
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
, popularized and acted by American radio "shock jock
Shock jock
Shock jock is a slang term used to describe a type of any radio broadcaster who attracts attention using humor that a significant portion of the listening audience may find offensive. The term is usually used pejoratively to describe provocative or irreverent broadcasters whose mannerisms,...
", Howard Stern
Howard Stern
Howard Allan Stern is an American radio personality, television host, author, and actor best known for his radio show, which was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2005. He gained wide recognition in the 1990s where he was labeled a "shock jock" for his outspoken and sometimes controversial style...
. The character first appeared in an issue of the National Lampoon humor magazine in the mid-1970s (Vol. 2, No. 11, June, 1979, Page 28). A recorded version of the character also appeared on National Lampoon's White Album in 1979. Stern began using the character on The Howard Stern Show in the early 1980s. According to the trademark that Howard Stern filed for the character on October 16, 1992, he first used Fartman in July 1981, when Adam West
Adam West
William West Anderson , better known by the stage name Adam West, is an American actor best known for his lead role in the Batman TV series and the film of the same name...
was a guest on his show, to which he made an impromptu Fartman outfit in five minutes, although the original outfit contained a toilet seat
Toilet seat
A toilet seat is a hinged unit consisting of seat and lid which is bolted onto a toilet bowl for a flush toilet. A toilet seat consists of the seat itself, which may be contoured for the user to sit on, and the lid, which covers the toilet when it is not in use.If the toilet is located in a home...
necklace which Stern later discontinued from his motif.
Fartman generally attacks evil using his super powered flatulence
Flatulence
Flatulence is the expulsion through the rectum of a mixture of gases that are byproducts of the digestion process of mammals and other animals. The medical term for the mixture of gases is flatus, informally known as a fart, or simply gas...
, which also allows him to fly through the air.
Appearances
On March 7, 1989, Charles Freedman, as Fartman, called the Iranian Embassy. This routine was later animated for The Howard Stern Radio Show, a late night syndicated television show. This animation aired on Episode #80 on March 17, 2001.On August 1, 1989, Howard Stern as Fartman called Beirut, Lebanon.
In the early 1990's, Howard and show guest, Robert Englund
Robert Englund
Robert Barton Englund is an American actor, voice-actor and director, best known for playing the fictional serial killer Freddy Krueger, in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. He received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors in...
, performed the live sketch: Fartman vs Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger
Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is a fictional, horrifying character from the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. He first appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street as a disfigured dream stalker who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams,...
. The sketch consisted of Fartman passing out from the smell of his own farts, falling into dreamland where he meets Freddy Krueger, and having to save a group of small children from Krueger's evil doing.
Some notable quotes:
Freddy Krueger: "Hi, I'm Freddy Norris. I mean...Krueger."
Fartman: "How does a Shakespearean trained actor end up making a living doing slasher films?"
Freddy Krueger: (in relation to wiping his backside) "I got more scabs on my ass than Captain Hook
Captain Hook
Captain James Hook is the main antagonist of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up and its various adaptations. The character is a villainous pirate captain of the Jolly Roger brig, and lord of the pirate village/harbour in Neverland, where he is widely feared. Most...
!!!"
In the early 1990s, at the beginning of Desert Storm, Stern had Fartman call the Iraqi Embassy about the takeover of Kuwait.
Other Fartman bits from this era include the Fartman Theme Song and Fartman calls Mrs. Fartman.
On September 9, 1992, Stern famously appeared as Fartman on the MTV Video Music Awards
MTV Video Music Awards
An MTV Video Music Award , is an award presented by the cable channel MTV to honor the best in music videos...
, in a costume that showed his buttocks
Buttocks
The buttocks are two rounded portions of the anatomy, located on the posterior of the pelvic region of apes and humans, and many other bipeds or quadrupeds, and comprise a layer of fat superimposed on the gluteus maximus and gluteus medius muscles. Physiologically, the buttocks enable weight to...
. Actor Luke Perry
Luke Perry
Luke Perry is an American actor. Perry starred as Dylan McKay on the TV series Beverly Hills, 90210, a role he played from 1990–95, and then from 1998–2000. Much publicity was garnered over the fact that even though he was playing a sixteen-year-old when 90210 began, Perry was actually in his...
introduced him. Howard came down to the stage when Metallica
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
band members Lars Ulrich
Lars Ulrich
Lars Ulrich is a Danish drummer, and one of the founding members of the American thrash metal band Metallica. He was born in Gentofte, Denmark to an upper-middle class family. A tennis player in his youth, Ulrich moved to Los Angeles, California at age sixteen to pursue his training; though rather...
and Kirk Hammett
Kirk Hammett
Kirk Lee Hammett is the lead guitarist and a songwriter in the heavy metal band Metallica and has been a member of the band since 1983. Before joining Metallica he formed and named the band Exodus. In 2003, Hammett was ranked 11th on Rolling Stones list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time...
were making their acceptance speech. Ulrich then kicked Howard in the rear end. Howard later apologized on the radio to Lars Ulrich for this incident on August 20, 1996. He apologized to James Hetfield on the radio on July 30, 2004.
On April 29, 2000, there was a Fartman animation on episode #59 of The Howard Stern Radio Show, a late night syndicated television show.
On March 7, 2003, Stern interviewed Adam West
Adam West
William West Anderson , better known by the stage name Adam West, is an American actor best known for his lead role in the Batman TV series and the film of the same name...
, and together they called Iraq as Fartman and Batman
Batman
Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
.
On October 31, 2005, Stern said that he had an Adventures of Fartman cartoon in the works for his new Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Radio.Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially launched on July 1, 2002 and currently provides 69 streams of music and 65 streams of...
Channel, and it may go over to his On Demand cable show as well.
On February 9, 2006, Stern, as Fartman, called Beirut, Lebanon, announcing that he was very upset about what was happening there and instructed the respondent to not hate Americans. The respondent surprised Stern by identifying him as Howard Stern.
Feature film
In the early 1990s, Stern considered producing a movie based on this successful and well-received character from the show. Stern first revealed his intentions to make a Fartman movie in 1992.On November 25, 1992, Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
reported that J. F. Lawton
J. F. Lawton
Jonathan Frederick Lawton , born on August 11, 1960 in Riverside, California, is an American screenwriter, film producer and film director...
, writer of Pretty Woman
Pretty Woman
Pretty Woman is a 1990 romantic comedy film set in Los Angeles, California. Written by J.F. Lawton and directed by Garry Marshall, this motion picture features Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, and also Hector Elizondo, Ralph Bellamy, and Jason Alexander in supporting roles. Roberts played the only...
and Under Siege
Under Siege
Under Siege is a 1992 American action film directed by Andrew Davis and starring Steven Seagal as a former Navy SEAL who must stop a group of mercenaries, led by Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey, on a U.S. Navy battleship...
, was planning to write and direct New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
's Stern's film project, titled The Adventures of Fartman. The film, which would be budgeted at $8 million-to-$11 million, was expected to go into production the following May in New York. David Permut would produce the film under his Permut Presentations Banner, which has a first-look deal at New Line. According to Lawton, The Adventures of Fartman would revolve around the superhero and his alter ego, a magazine publisher in the mold of Screw
Screw magazine
Screw is a weekly pornographic magazine published in the United States aimed at heterosexual men. It was first published in 1968 by Al Goldstein and was printed weekly in tabloid form...
magazine's Al Goldstein
Al Goldstein
Alvin "Al" Goldstein is a former American publisher and pornographer. His company Milky Way Productions, home of Screw, and his long-running cable TV show, Midnight Blue was started in 1968 and went into bankruptcy in 2004...
.
On June 28, 1993, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine reported that Lawton was working on a screenplay for The Adventures of Fartman. Lawton told Time, "There's a lot of nudity, some harsh language, a lesbian love scene, and the main character works for an underground sex magazine. We told New Line Cinema the plot, and they said, 'Yeah, it sounds great. But can't we make it PG-13?' "
The Fartman movie was not put into production. Instead, Stern made a movie out of his bestselling book, Private Parts
Private Parts
Private Parts may refer to:*Intimate parts, such as the human sex organs*Private Parts , a 1993 autobiography by radio personality Howard Stern*Private Parts , a 1997 film based on Howard Stern's autobiography of the same name...
. Private Parts hit theaters on March 7, 1997, with the opening scene being a reenactment of Stern’s Fartman appearance at the 1992 MTV Music Awards.
In 1999, Stern hoped to follow up the modest success of Private Parts with a movie about the Fartman character.
Early in the year, Howard revealed he was in talks with movie studios to finally produce his movie Fartman. He said that it would go into production in the summer of 1999, and that there were studios prepared to finance it. In December, Stern stated that the movie was on hold. Though he had a script, and two studios willing to produce it, he was unsure that it was the right time to do it. Stern also didn't want to make a PG-13 version of the film, the way the studios wanted it to be.
In 2002, Stern considered shooting the Fartman movie on video for his fans, but to date no official productions have been greenlit.
Fartman was considered by Vince McMahon
Vince McMahon
Vincent Kennedy "Vince" McMahon is an American professional wrestling promoter, announcer, commentator, film producer, actor and former occasional professional wrestler. McMahon is the current Chairman, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Committee of professional wrestling promotion WWE...
to be brought in as a one time character for WrestleMania
WrestleMania
WrestleMania is a professional wrestling pay-per-view event, produced annually in late March or early April by WWE, a professional wrestling promotion based in Connecticut...
, but he and Howard Stern had different views on how to show him. Stern wanted to have his character knock out a wrestler with flatulence, but McMahon wanted Stern to get pummeled by a wrestler.
Short film
In April 2006, the Howard Stern Film Festival took place at the Hudson Theatre in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, NY. While announcing the competition, Stern encouraged fans to make short films about not only the show and its cast, but popular bits and characters such as Fartman. Many films included Fartman, but while none of those were chosen as finalists, one submission did find a degree of success.
Director Tammy Caplan's Fartman: Caught in a Tight Ass stars Fartman and introduces the evil villain, Tight Ass, who has the ability to squeeze weapons from his ass. It also features a love interest for Fartman, the beautiful Labia Lips. The film was first chosen as a potential finalist in the festival, but later disqualified for using professional actors from the Screen Actors Guild
Screen Actors Guild
The Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...
.
Following the festival, Fartman: Caught in a Tight Ass began airing on Howard TV, Howard Stern’s iN Demand
IN DEMAND
In Demand is a provider of pay-per-view and subscription video-on-demand services, jointly owned by Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks...
Cable Channel as part of the their “Best of the Film Festival” series. This is the first live action Fartman movie ever to be shown on television. In 2007, Fartman: Caught in a Tight Ass first appeared on Atom Films
Atom Films
Atom.com is a broadband entertainment network offering original short subject films, animations, and series by independent creators...
.
External links
- Howard TV website
- Howard Stern's Official Site
- Extensive Archive of Past Howard Stern radio shows
- Private Parts on IMDB
- Film Fest: Howard on IMDB
- "Fartman: Caught in a Tight Ass" Film on AtomFilms
- Mr. Methane - The world's only professional fart performer, as featured on the Howard Stern show
- The Adventures Of Fartman Script Review