Philip Seymour Hoffman c/d?

ts: philip seymour hoffman vs luis guzman

Especially in Love Liza. But also Lebowski, Magnolia, Almost Famous. And he rescued 25th Hour too.

I like him a lot as an actor though you wouldn't exactly want to hang out with any of his characters for very long. Looking at that photo, he should maybe go for the untucked look, or at least loosen the belt a bit.

i was underwhelmed by '25th hour'.

Hmm. I might rewatch Boogie Nights this afternoon.

i've always liked him, but looking through his filmography just now, i'm failing to find much to point to that really shows his classic-ness (apart from "Ripley")...

he is totally classic. you can do so many of his lines in so many situations: "you can either confirm or... disconfirm..." "i thought maybe...you wanted to make out with me..." etc!

My fave perf of his to date is the lead as a compulsive Toronto gambler in "Owning Mahowny." I've never much liked him in the PT Barnum stuff except Magnolia.

Jingle for the Smiths Diner?

My friend who was a late '70s CBGB habitue would disagree, as "Bangs was a much bigger asshole."

Is that sequel to 'Ripley' any good? It has Malkovich!

http://i.imdb.com/mptv1.gif

Phillip Seymour Hoffman
John Goodman
Christopher Walken

My favorite PSH performances: Boogie Nights, Happiness, Big Lebowski.

Can someone back me up here on how CUTE he is? Meow!

Uncle Bill from American Movie
Alain Delon (pre-1965-or-so)
Animal the Muppet
Quentin Crisp

'first lady of the nation, not just of california'

'this is our concern dude'

My short list of favorite actors that I'd like to see in every movie

- Brian Cox
- Don Cheadle
- Luis Guzmán
- Brent Briscoe
- Dwight Yoakam
- Bill Duke

I like Sean Penn, Romain Duris, Dennis Lavant, Tony Leung, Gary Oldman SOMETIMES.

I'd like every movie to have Kirsten Dunst and Ziyi Zhang in it.

I FOR ONE SECOND THIS MOTION

Don' waste my MOTHERFUCKIN' TIME

im also partial to John C. Reilly

did anyone in nyc see true west on broadway a couple years back?

http://www.applauseonline.com/store/media/True_West.jpg

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/theater/reviews/12Simon.jpg http://www.curtainup.com/truehoffmanlee.jpg

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/missionimpossibleiii/

My friend who was a late '70s CBGB habitue would disagree, as "Bangs was a much bigger asshole."

to be honest, i think he works as a character in Almost Famous more than if his assholeness was accencuated. he's an idealised figure in crowe's eyes, who remains pure and unsullied and heroic after the band let him down. it seems to suit crowe's soft-focus view of his world, and i like it for that (while having first hand experience that the rock world mostly is Not Like That).

Hadn't heard a whisper about this. good luck to him.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2013/05/31/philip-seymour-hoffman-detox-heroin-drugs-rehab-abuse/2375141/

Great actor. Unhappy irony: with Chris Farley gone, I heard a local DJ the other day say that PSH is the consensus choice to play Rob Ford if the mess here ever gets made into a film.

crazy good actor.

The WSJ is reporting that he's been found dead in his apt. :(

Good god.

!

https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/430043025113620480

Crazy, there was a death hoax a couple weeks ago.

a couple DAYS ago I mean!!!

http://en.mediamass.net/people/philip-seymour-hoffman/deathhoax.html

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626804579358943360702878

Is this coming from any other news sources other than the WSJ?

For future reference, any link from mediamass is bullshit. It's a page view trap site. They recycle the same story and change the name as applicable.

NY Post reporting it.

http://nypost.com/2014/02/02/philip-seymour-hoffman-found-dead-in-his-apartment/

I would really like this to not be true.

For future reference, any link from mediamass is bullshit. It's a page view trap site. They recycle the same story and change the name as applicable.

― Johnny Fever, Sunday, February 2, 2014 1:35 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was gonna say, that's the exact same site that confused the day Paul Walker died

what the fuck.

WSJ saying it too

sad

oh already noted

Oh man. Love love love PSH. I even liked him in movies I didn't like. I know "what a waste" is a cliche thing to say about (apparent) drug deaths, but really. Talk about a guy who had decades of good work left to come. R.I.P.

RIP

This is crazy! V bummed. RIP big guy

Always felt a little connected to him because he's just a few years older than me and grew up two suburbs away. Never met him or saw him at the grocery store or anything, but he was a local boy done good. Total bummer.

A lot of my friends have stories about running into him around Atlanta over the past couple years. Sad to say I'll never be able to have my own story like that. You were awesome, PSH.

awful. my dad's a huge fan; rare that we both like things. still hope it's a hoax.

Nope. Confirmations popping up all over the place.

This is so so sad. He had three young children. He was a super talented motherfucker, someone I would watch in anything, ANYTHING.

you are fucking joking. what the hell.

ABC News

http://abcnews.go.com/US/philip-seymour-hoffman-dead-46/story?id=22335771

Terrible. Always thought he was best in under the radar stuff like Owning Mahowny.

awful news

The first movie I noticed him in, and the first scene of his that lingered with me for a long, long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTMYcSU_HCc

I thought about that scene and then thought about him in MI:3 and the talented mr ripley, polar opposite roles. Equally great in all of them and in everything in between.

Oh man. Love love love PSH. I even liked him in movies I didn't like.
me too. this hit me like a ton of bricks for some reason.

damn. <3 this dude

xp for clarity -- "for some reason" = i really liked his work and felt warmly toward him as a human being. RIP PSH, you were great.

same Ned. that performance blew me away at the time because he was playing a type of dude i'd known before but never seen represented onscreen, let alone so perfectly. watching it again not that long ago i was struck by how amazingly thought out all his little gestures and shit were

Rip

yeah honestly i think most of my favorite PSH performances are ones where the movie wasn't that great but he was just fantastic in them anyway xp

WSJ story now unavailable, which gave me faint hope it wasn't true, but the WSJ reporter is still tweeting details, so

https://twitter.com/Pervaizistan/status/430052209942753280

Being updated I suspect. Too many other sources reporting it now.

CNN and NYT are reporting it.

I thought about that scene and then thought about him in MI:3 and the talented mr ripley, polar opposite roles. Equally great in all of them and in everything in between.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Sunday, February 2, 2014 1:57 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

he was even credible as art howe and that was a role he just had no business playing, on paper

re his embodiment of characters -- he always seemed like a very perceptive person, that's part of why i like him so much

it was really kinda shocking last year to read that he was going to rehab for heroin. a guy in his 40s, who had supposedly been clean for 20 years? was really hoping he was gonna be okay.

wow fuck this

he had the best line readings too. really deceptively low key but so idiosyncratic, kinda like jeff bridges

is his last movie really gonna be the hungry games?

he was even credible as art howe and that was a role he just had no business playing, on paper

― Hungry4Ass, Sunday, February 2, 2014 2:02 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes otm

was at Sundance two weeks ago to promote a film there

it's a Le Carre adap

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1972571/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_4

one of my favorite Hoffman moments is in talented mr ripley where he's just bullying ripley by plunking on some piano keys.

This is fucked up

showtime just picked up his tv show, not sure how much of it was filmed or if/when it would be shown. the next hunger games is in post-production but apparently the second half is still filming? this is from imdb so heavy grain of salt. he's also in some anton corbijn movie coming out this year and some movie john slattery directed apparently.

yeah, RIP. Didn't know about the substance abuse. A great loss.

NYpost now sketching in the details, they aren't pretty

Not even wrt ability but just the amount of stuff I've watched last 20 years that he's been a part of

Sad news...RIP

is his last movie really gonna be the hungry games?

― Hungry4Ass, Sunday, February 2, 2014 2:06 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he was good in Catching Fire! his role was supposed to be more prominent in the next 2 movies, which afaik they haven't finished shooting, so i'm curious what's going to happen with that character now.

Loved him in everything, but his Lester Bangs really got to me. Very sad right now.

the Jimi Hendrix of american cinema. from now on. RIP

i think this was the first time i noticed him -- i went to see "scent of a woman" and the movie itself did not move me but i remember thinking who's that guy?
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/12/21/magazine/21hoffman_slide01.jpg

this is just unbearable

I'm gutted. I cannot take it when people who've kicked and moved on and made it out suddenly fall like this. Fuck.

Trying to remember my first encounter w his acting. It wasn't happiness... I had seen him in one thing before that.

the poor guy
so beyond excellent that i can only have a selfish response to this
just unbearable

I cannot take it when people who've kicked and moved on and made it out suddenly fall like this. Fuck.
same

i cannot take it when people suddenly fall like this

Yeah I told you my friend's story LL. I wonder if something happened last year that precipitated psh back into using.

Hell of a shame

so fucking sad

first thing I remember noticing him in was Happiness & Boogie Nights.

one of my favorite "movie meh PSH tops" roles was Gust in Charlie Wilson's War. I love it when he plays aggressive misanthropes

This is just awful. So young, such a great actor.

i would love to watch love liza, for its ebullience & grief, but it would be just too too sad

Holy shit. Tbh, he seemed pretty on the ball, had a family, smart, etc. So I was surprised to hear the news last year or whenever that he was away for rehab. This is the worst possible outcome of that story.

He was an incredible actor. So good in Boogie Nights, as Lester Bangs, Capote (I still have no idea how they made such a big, doughy guy so small), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Charlie Wilson, The Master ... he was good in Moneyball. I assume he was great onstage.

Here he is as a bad guy in The Getaway:

http://www.hotflick.net/flicks/1994_The_Getaway/tn640/fhd994TGW_Philip_Seymour_Hoffman_001.jpg

RIP

I liked him in almost everything I saw him in, led by (in order) Magnolia, Capote, Boogie Nights, Happiness, Almost Famous, Moneyball, Love Liza, The Big Lebowski...a few others, too--I must have seen more than one film just because he was in it. (One of the few times he lost me was, Academy Award notwithstanding, the role he'll probably be most remembered for, Lancaster Dodd.) I wrote about him (sort of) soon after first noticing him. A couple of things to look forward to (maybe they've been mentioned already):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2920808/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_5
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1972571/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_4

he was my favorite currently working actor. RIP. he was able to embody evil, or hollowed out, or desperate and broken characters with such vividness and emotional precision.
http://i1354.photobucket.com/albums/q686/tinyservants/Screenshot2014-02-02at24907PM_zps4ac9417d.png

I know I'm restating the obvious here, but this is so sad. Such a huge fucking loss.

I cannot take it when people who've kicked and moved on and made it out suddenly fall like this. Fuck.

it fucking horrifies

Synecdoche, NY is one of my two or three favorite movies of the last decade, and he's a major part of that, obviously. RIP.

I liked his early roles in Leap of Faith and Twister. He was great at playing a soldier in a misfit army.

I am so sad about this, kind of felt like a blow out of nowhere. I can't believe I still haven't seen either The Master or Synedoche.

yeah this came out of nowhere for me too. In fact when I clicked a link to the NY post article (posted somewhere without context) I thought it was some kind of Onion joke at first. :(

RIP

this really sucks

I've loved how his characters in Capote and Moneyball are polar opposites, but made by the same director and (amazingly) played by the same actor.

so sad

wait what? The one Sunday I'm occupied for most of the afternoon and....shit? Oof.

An actor of real intelligence. I'm trying to think of anyone who could've played his loathsome snob in The Talented Mr Ripley; the role required him to be out of shape, a bit swollen, and, more importantly, effeminate, as if that was the reason why he loathed Tom Ripley. The moment when he realizes what Ripley wants out of Dickie is A+

one of the greats. RIP

Wait, he did a guest spot on PBS's 'Arthur' cartoon?

http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120315034634/arthur/images/1/1f/NPA_72.jpg

This is terrible news. RIP

he did snobs so well in early roles like Ripley and Lebowski that i thought he was gonna get stuck in that niche until he ended up playing a pretty huge spectrum of personalities

i fall in the camp of psh was my favorite working actor and this is absolutely gutting. just terrible news. feeling for his young family. i don't even know what to say.

RIP

that's lovely, johnny fever

rip

synecdoche is one of the very best films from the past decade or so imo and it's simply unimaginable without him.

in addition to major emotional intelligence, he had a really expressive face without having to move it very much

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HW9qVEVgWLE/UCF9ELkbPgI/AAAAAAAAFrg/riXQGhGNYGs/s1600/Philip%2BSeymour%2BHoffman.jpeg

Just one example of his transformative powers: His performance in Joel Schumacher's flawed, to say the least, Flawless redeems the whole enterprise. It's not even so much that PSH is "convincing" as a drag queen but that he's a goddamn force of nature.

a huge loss. RIP.

he did snobs so well in early roles like Ripley and Lebowski that i thought he was gonna get stuck in that niche until he ended up playing a pretty huge spectrum of personalities

― scott c-word (some dude)

re: this and clem's ancient blog posts i remember he did loser creeps so well (thinking of happiness here esp but scent of a woman and boogie nights have aspects of that as well) that i thought he might get stuck in that mode, i remember one thing i enjoyed about him and magnolia was how it played w/ this, that the typecasting was so apparent at that point you could turn a 'lol psh is ordering porn on the phone' scene on its head. was tempted to compare him to hackman in his ability to make anything watchable and this way he was a character actor that could just blow any trad lead off the screen w/o having to go big (thinking of mi:3 here) but he had a vulnerability that hackman rarely had and never just leaned on charisma the way hackman could sometimes. i'm sure someone can provide examples but thinking of river phoenix and then heath ledger and now hoffman from this generation, it just seems like a ridiculous waste, i can't immediately think of another generation of actors to lose this many giants or potential giants w/ so much work left on the table. obv hoffman got to fulfill his potential more than phoenix and ledger but 46 is just ridiculously too young, we should've had thirty more years of watching this guy.

I also really loved his sparkle and swagger when he got to play guys with a lot of ego and force. One of my favorite small roles is the sex-phone scam guy in Punch-Drunk Love. He's a total asshole, but so much fun to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE2FCCZ50VU

saw him onstage about three times, he was consistently exciting

just saw this news. a huge loss; r.i.p. was a singular-star from his appearance in boogie nights forward.

RIP, PSH

Not the news I was expecting today. Utterly tragic. He played an absurd amount of great roles.

awful news. great actor.

this is so sad. he was one of those actors you take for granted cos he was in so many movies and he always did a great job. one of my fave performances of his was in "before the devil knows your dead". not an amazing movie but hes just so excellent in it.

he was a leading star, too, but he showed how amazing it can be to focus a career on character/supporting roles.

this is devastating.

terrible, just terrible.

Always brought a certain 'je ne sais quoi' to his roles.

Was really looking forward to more of him. Ugh.

addiction is so patient and crafty and vicious, such a nasty thief.

Well this is shit. rip.

Nothing further to add, other than that hearing he passed in such a way makes it doubly painful. Similar feeling to when Heath Ledger died.

I remember seeing Synecdoche, New York blowing my mind to pieces when I saw it as an 18 year old. Rest in peace.

An actor of real intelligence. I'm trying to think of anyone who could've played his loathsome snob in The Talented Mr Ripley; the role required him to be out of shape, a bit swollen, and, more importantly, effeminate, as if that was the reason why he loathed Tom Ripley. The moment when he realizes what Ripley wants out of Dickie is A+

One of the most OTM things I've read is that PSH and Jude Law should have swapped roles, actually.

http://www.vulture.com/2014/02/edelstein-on-philip-seymour-hoffman-1967-2014.html

Eight years ago, I ate lunch with Hoffman in the East Village for a New York Times profile and had a small inkling of his demons. Capote had just come out and he was the favorite to win an Oscar. (He did.) He talked about what it had taken for a man with a big head, big body, and big deep voice to embody a man with a small head, small body, and bizarre baby voice—about the training that wasn’t unlike what he’d done as a high school jock (yes, he was a jock!), pushing his body and voice to places he wasn't even sure were in reach. And then he talked about the editing fights he’d had with his old friend, the first-time director, Bennett Miller.

When you hear about cutting-room fights, it almost always means the star thinks he or she is coming off as too unlikable and wants the director to ratchet up the vulnerability quotient. But Hoffman was arguing to make Capote less attractive—to make him, in fact, thoroughly reprehensible. He said he told Miller, “The way toward empathy is actually to be as hard as possible on this character.”

I said I had no idea what he was talking about.

“I think deep down inside, people understand how flawed they are,” he said. “I think the more benign you make somebody, the less truthful it is.”

PSH OTM. Fucking gutted here...

So fucking sad. And my sadness is mostly selfish: it really feels like a personal loss, to me, to be deprived of any more PSH roles/ performances... decades of them. Damn. There's just no one else like him in contemporary American cinema, no one comes close. Today, with him gone, it just seems to me a bleak wasteland populated by vapid pretty boys.

this . . . sucks

He said he told Miller, “The way toward empathy is actually to be as hard as possible on this character.”

I said I had no idea what he was talking about.

Edelstein is no doubt drawing him out, as this is a point so obvious that it's of course missed by lesser actors

Damn, this is terrible. Anybody who could play his "Happiness" and "Lebowski" roles in the very same year had to be some kinda amazing actor. Loved him in Morbs' favourite "Owning Mahoney" too. RIP

i had forgotten about his lebowski role until this happened---so perfect

Love Lebowski, but somehow his role in it never stands out for me. On the other hand: Synecdoche, New York, Boogie Nights, Happiness, The Talented Mr. Ripley, 25th Hour, Love Liza, Owning Mahoney--hell, he was even great in the otherwise worthless Mission: Impossible III. I have a feeling I might be able to add The Master to that list had I seen it yet.

Damn. Just...damn.

just wanna stand up for MI3 for a second here its pretty good

it's much better than the second one that's for sure but i thought in general ghost protocol blew it away

i remember he did loser creeps so well (thinking of happiness here esp but scent of a woman and boogie nights have aspects of that as well) that i thought he might get stuck in that mode

Me too. I wrote that blog piece very early, right after Happiness. Then he did a 180 and played just the sweetest, gentlest character imaginable in Magnolia; my feelings on the film have changed over the years, sometimes liking it more than at other times, but I've never wavered on how great he is. And whenever he needed to go back into creep mode, he did so effortlessly--found him scary in Punch Drunk Love. Thought his phone showdown with Sandler was the best thing in that film.

still need to see the master

I want to play something for my students tomorrow, think I'll go with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k0-pSCwcx4

I have to be careful about language, but I'm sure they can handle "hell of a disease."

Watched The Hunger Games 2 today, was thinking what a pleasure he was to watch in even a relatively minor and thankless role. Heard the news shortly after finishing the film. RIP, his was a career you felt was not yet near its apex. Reckon he had another oscar in him.

ugh. Haven't been this bummed out since DFW died.

It really is just gutting. It's weird how a guy can be so iconic yet so ... like PHS was. Many new him, but was he a star? He was a great actor, but I think easy to overlook. All sorts of contradictions, many no doubt because he was such a good actor he put the role first. (sorry, been drinking) Have there been any/many public statements? PTA?

He was one of the few universally agreed-upon Great Actors, among both casual film fans and nerds/critics, plus he was quite young, and seemed much more down-to-earth / less pretentious than anyone he might be compared with. This struck a very unique nerve.

Like, when Daniel Day-Lewis passes, I can't imagine people taking it this personally.

yeah...it's weird to think of just how famous and respected he was without seeming to make too many concessions to the business. like, if the closest thing to 'selling out' that he did was kick ass in a Mission Impossible movie and be pretty funny in a middling Ben Stiller movie,

Streep's a good comparison as far as range and fully embodying a character.

I never knew he had a problem, and I guess he was candid about it from what I heard today on the radio. I haven't really ever been sad about an actor passing, but this hit me today while driving. I keep remembering him in Love Liza.

Streep's a good comparison as far as range and fully embodying a character.

― tbd (Eazy), Monday, 3 February 2014 04:07 (3 minutes ago) Permalink

buscemi, too. (boardwalk empire, aside)

So sad. Addiction is horrible and scary.

I was surprised to find CNN devoting so much airtime to it today. He's a major actor, but not really a celebrity, so I'm a bit surprised they'd care so much. I'm assuming its the drug angle that is responsible for the coverage--like, so people who haven't seen his movies and probably do nothing but watch CNN can sit there and cluck their tongues over Hollywood druggies.

i cant imagine anyone not liking, or loving him

I was surprised to find CNN devoting so much airtime to it today. He's a major actor, but not really a celebrity, so I'm a bit surprised they'd care so much. I'm assuming its the drug angle that is responsible for the coverage--like, so people who haven't seen his movies and probably do nothing but watch CNN can sit there and cluck their tongues over Hollywood druggies.

― Inside Lewellyn Sinclair (cryptosicko), Sunday, February 2, 2014 11:13 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he was in a lot of movies

i think the best actor oscar tipped him pretty well into genuine celebrity, if not household name status

i cant imagine anyone not liking, or loving him

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, February 3, 2014 2:17 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can't either. i have the same kind of awful shocked sorrow about this that i had when phil hartman died.

He got a lot of acclaim for indie movies liked by a niche audience, like Happiness, or an outright popular disaster like Synecdoche. Capote grossed about $29 M in the US. I imagine the PTA movies have more of a cult following on home media than their grosses would indicate; I suspect Joe /Jane Average would name those or Hunger Games, or the MI movie if pressed.

Heroin can get fucked

I didn't love the guy all the time but his performances in Ripley + Synecdoche are all time imo

his moneyball broodin bit, and his character in charlie wilson's war are both great. his lester bangs was the only worthwhile part of almost famous.

Genuinely feel robbed of future roles. Fuck heroin...

hope they find his dealer. or that he fell off a cliff somewhere.

it's been such a shitty several months for awesome actors dying too young. also an acquaintance of mine had a personal connection to both gandolfini and hoffman and is really doubly slammed by this one.

Was looking on Netflix to see which of his movies are streaming. I don't think I ever heard about A Late Quartet.

I suspect Joe /Jane Average would name those or /Hunger Games/, or the MI movie if pressed.

Right. Cover of the daily mail this am http://t.co/QZ2vfGhRmi

WTF initial headline in the Australian Daily Telegraph (yes, Murdoch, obv.), toned down by now:
http://mumbrella.com.au/paying-respect-dead-203832

wow fuck them

The Drummer From Junkie Actor Dad

(I'm sorry)

Too soon? http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2014/02/02/charlie-sheen-found-alive-in-his-new-york-apartment-aged-48/

so fucked

His daughter Tallulah is exactly the same age as my daughter Tallulah (to the month anyway).

A poster on another forum pointed out that Hoffman's sparing partner in this scene, Christopher Even Welch, recently died. One of Welch's other prominent film roles was the Pastor in this scene in Synecdoche, New York.

This is horrible. Some smart and moving tributes though.

I never considered him famous in the sense that people would swarm and have their picture taken with him. I always figured he was famous in the sense that you'd see him at a local restaurant and recognize him, and maybe someone might come over for an autograph or something. I guess I'd call that New York famous vs. LA famous.

i saw him on broadway doing "true west" with john c. reilly. it's a two-man show and the two would switch roles every night. i'll always regret not seeing the show twice so that i could see hoffman do both roles. john c. reilly was good but not even in the same league as hoffmann, who dug himself so deeply into this gravel-voiced, obtuse drifter character that i literally couldn't imagine the roles reversed, no matter how i tried.

ha and now googling around for images from this show returns only shots of PSH as the preppy writer. i guess the PR stills were taken on one particular day and they didn't come back for the reversed version.

oh man, you reminded me that i saw that show too. must've been almost 15 years ago now

i saw him on broadway doing "true west" with john c. reilly. it's a two-man show and the two would switch roles every night. i'll always regret not seeing the show twice so that i could see hoffman do both roles. john c. reilly was good but not even in the same league as hoffmann, who dug himself so deeply into this gravel-voiced, obtuse drifter character that i literally couldn't imagine the roles reversed, no matter how i tried.

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, February 3, 2014 7:58 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

god i wish i could have seen that.

and man, the skill to do that—just to remember all the lines!—is absolutely unfathomable

(memory lane)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq4qH76O_5I

Ha, just saw on wiki the Quaid Bros did their version too.

what a loss, i had no idea he was that young. 46! could've sworn the guy was at least in 50s. just wanted to share my love for his roles in "Doubt" and "The Savages", i don't think they've been mentioned in this thread yet but he was astonishing in both of those movies. i'll totally miss his acting. so sad.

Richard Brody.

50 bags of heroin in his apartment, CNN's saying.

oh my god
does anyone know what sort of life event could have precipitated a purchase of that magnitude?

good grief

apologies for my ingnorance on this topic, how much is a bag of heroin? does 1 bag = 1 dose?

Had his partner kicked him out of their house recently? He was staying in a nearby apartment.

I think they'd split in recent months, yes.

:(
it's nosy of me to wonder but i wonder why

i really want to stop letting this bum me out so bad too but it just keeps lurking there around the corners of my mind. i feel really sad for him and all of the people who loved him.

"I have no inside information whatsoever but allow me to confidently explain how Hoffman's life could have been saved." (paraphrasing)

http://ideas.time.com/2014/02/02/how-philip-seymour-hoffman-could-have-been-saved/

i really want to stop letting this bum me out so bad too but it just keeps lurking there around the corners of my mind. i feel really sad for him and all of the people who loved him.

every word of this 2nded

xp yea that was totally wrongheaded to frame that story around hoffman. david sheff has researched and written extensively about addiction but it's kind of lame to use this very recent death of someone who has no personal connection to the author as the hook for the story.

apologies for my ingnorance on this topic, how much is a bag of heroin? does 1 bag = 1 dose?

it depends on how big a habit you have going but most people start out at a bag a day. if you are up to needing 2 bags to get high you are going to hurt pretty bad when you stop. if you have 50 bags in your apartment -- I never knew any users who would have that kind of supply on hand, that's way out of my league. but most users don't have enough cash to buy as much as they'd like to have handy.

Nathaniel at The FilmExp:

The Atlantic has a piece on PSH's talent that fascinated me. It's very well written but its thesis is EXACTLY the opposite about how I always felt about him as an actor, claiming that his greatest gift was understatement. I think he almost never understated anything... which is why he thrills people so much in big moments but also why I did not like his performance in Doubt at all (way too bold when that role needs exceptional restraint to cloud the issues, hence the title) and why my three favorite performances of his I consider very atypical because they have these lovely quiet non red-faced & screaming layers and subtle details. But it's a really good read.

http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2014/2/2/links.html

I'd seen Doubt on B'way, and once they cast PSH as the priest in the film, I thought the title shd've been changed to Guilty.

Very moving piece by Lester Bangs' friend and colleague Jaan Uhelszki:

http://www.spin.com/articles/philip-seymour-hoffman-lester-bangs-almost-famous/

The other problem with The Atlantic: Magnolia filled with "great performances."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnON-J8HHaE

^^ first movie i saw him in and loved the shit out of the character

when i get hungry i still say "food" the way he says "food" in this stupid movie even though nobody knows wtf i'm doing

(xpost) I think PSH is great. It's his thread, but I'd also add John C. Reilly, Melinda Dillon, the kid, Tom Cruise (I think so, anyway), Henry Gibson, maybe a couple more. Julianne Moore...acquired taste. Hoffman or Reilly head the list.

I just added a post about that character last week in imdb trivia

Magnolia is, like all PTA films til the last two, pretentious bilge with insufficient compensating perks, but I'll overlook praise for it as long as other ppl are claiming that Before the Devil Knows You're Dead has something to offer.

he's so good in that

No one is. The extras are terrible in it.

lol

Very moving piece by Lester Bangs' friend and colleague Jaan Uhelszki:

http://www.spin.com/articles/philip-seymour-hoffman-lester-bangs-almost-famous/

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, February 3, 2014 6:46 PM (26 minutes ago)

thanks for this -- an incredible read. gave me chills tbh.

clemenza otm about magnolia and yet it's still terrible

almost famous i will always like, and PSH is so great in it. i loved this part in the spin piece:

One of Lester's more annoying habits was that he always talked with food in his mouth — and one that I'd almost forgotten about. That is, until I saw the same behavior in Hoffman.

this has greyed things for me too. i keep thinking about his bouncy arms in lebowski. i didn't think that brody piece was very good.

But I didn't tell Cameron any of those things. I kept the list to stuff like personal hygiene, work ethos, favorite foods, or how when he was excited about something he was prone to grand, wild gestures, making big lavish circles in the air, or how he'd always pace when he talked on the phone. How he watched the soap opera All My Children religiously, owned a hermit crab named Spud, and that when things got bad, he used to say, "I could be selling shoes in El Cajon." But I never told anyone about how he used to talk with his mouth full.

"Lester"

but surely SOMEONE told him Bangs ate that way. PSH being quoted all over the place that acting is work, not magic.

but yeah Before The Devil is disgraceful. I suppose Sidney Lumet didn't wanna die without leaving the world a final movie in which the actors shout all the time, at once, and senselessly.

sorry if i am repeating something already said on this (understandably) lengthy thread, but just wanted to note that my favourite PSH performance is his role as Jude Law's sharp-eyed friend in The Talented Mr Ripley. and RIP.

i don't think it seems like magic is the thing! it seems like excellent intuitive work.

LB does seem like the kind of guy who would talk excitedly while eating.

A good performance we haven't mentioned much: The Savages.

mentioned by morbs and others in this thread: "owning mahowny" is really good. simple and minor, i guess. but he invests a lot of... something into a guy who is almost totally devoid of personality.

He was excellent as Bangs. The key was in not going for the cartoon gonzo Bangs; PSH portrays him as a thoughtful older brother. In the Greil Marcus interview on rockcritics.com, he had some pointed criticisms of the film, but he singled out Hoffman and Billy Crudup for praise--and I'm sure Marcus would have all over Hoffman if the character felt in any way false to his own memories of Bangs.

befor the devil is awesoem

http://entertainment.time.com/2014/02/03/philip-seymour-hoffman-last-photos/

That Edelstein PSH quote way up there gets to some of the heart of his craft:

When you hear about cutting-room fights, it almost always means the star thinks he or she is coming off as too unlikable and wants the director to ratchet up the vulnerability quotient. But Hoffman was arguing to make Capote less attractive—to make him, in fact, thoroughly reprehensible. He said he told Miller, “The way toward empathy is actually to be as hard as possible on this character.”

That, plus being able to play so many characters with different centers of gravity, physicality, all that. Funny how he's done so many movies that we're like..."Oh, wait, right, The Ides of March."

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/02/philip-seymour-hoffman-1967-2014/

Hoffman was a true body-actor. No doubt his athleticism and devotion to sports in his youth helped him toward the remarkable physical control he displays in all his performances. In an era when so many leading men and women seem unable to act at all below the neck, Hoffman’s gestures and stances sear themselves into your memory. I didn’t much care for Capote, but I still remember precise Hoffman postures. One was the too-constrained, too-still way he held himself in, with his large square head tilted uncomfortably back, in those repeated long-held shots of Truman Capote sitting alone in the small airplane to and from his jailhouse visits to the In Cold Blood killers who infatuated him.

lolmillennials i guess @ that whole thing being abt lebowski but it's otm about the moves he makes as that character: so conceptually broad and goofy, this terrified/enraptured toady, but built entirely of little things. near-absurd gestures like the the pantomime grief that article mentions on "mr. lebowski is in seclusion in the west wing" work cuz they seem legitimate as crisis versions of all the little motions he's making all the time. first lady of the nation, yes.

i always think of his weird at-attention stance when he's no longer part of one conversation

yeah i kinda winced at all the smug dismissals of the other movies but i thought it was dead-on for how unusually physical his talents were, whenever i think of PSH in a movie i can instantly recall a certain pose or a gesture, something no one else would've thought to do.

David Thomson has something up:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116447/philip-seymour-hoffman-dead-46

So Hoffman was on his way to becoming a supporting actor--

Was thinking about this too, how he was one of those people who won a Best Actor award but clearly wasn't going to slide easily into starring roles, unless it was something really offbeat like The Master or Synecdoche. (Of the two upcoming films, he seems to be the lead in one of them.) Like Hackman, he might have been more at home in the '70s. Or not--maybe he was exactly perfect for when he came along.

On his way to supporting actor...right after playing Willy Loman on Broadway for three-and-a-half months.

On a separate topic, it does sound like doing that show, with 8 performances per week, was exhausting.

wow, i can imagine. he had already started the show or was preparing for it?

p sure that "supporting actor" ref was to films. You didn't see Brian Dennehy playing a lot of movie leads in the late '90s when he did Salesman on B'way.

Last thing I saw him in was early episode of Law and Order, he stood out since most of the others couldn't act that well. RIP

he already did death of a salesman

He performed it in Spring 2012, with Mike Nichols directing. Not to overspeculate, but was thinking this was around the same, from what he said, he started taking painkillers.

Also thinking how Cobain always attributed his heroin use to fighting a chronic stomach ulcer,and how if there's something that takes away pain (physical, emotional) it sure it hard to push that thing away.

I see. That's why I asked. It makes sense. I started reading Barry Meier's Pain Killer last night because I guess I wanted to wallow in misery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcTf7CO-hdA

that minty flavor.

I just found out about this a few hours ago while I was at work. I was so shocked and saddened I had to leave my desk and go for a walk to clear my head. He was easily my favorite actor. The word gets thrown around a lot but I believe he was a true genius in his field.

that first "fuck you" in the kools outtake is just the most human amazing guys-working thing

just two guys smoking kools

clips like that break my heart

ultimate wkiw

My dad smoked Kools and that clip makes me wonder if he had convos like that.

u can tell they're going to crack up before he even says anything

Last thing I saw him in was early episode of Law and Order, he stood out since most of the others couldn't act that well. RIP

― badg, Monday, February 3, 2014 4:39 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Watched this ep tonight, bonus appearance from Samuel L Jackson.

Also this ep is his first imdb entry. He doesn't do a whole lot.

ultimate wkiw

this^^^

omg <3 that kools clip. three great readings!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy1Q1WL57Qo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkeLGisUHtc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ornzkdo9t1w

he looks off his nut i that tbh

Half-related, someone reposted this Russell Brand essay on addiction and empathy: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/mar/09/russell-brand-life-without-drugs

Whatever his failings in other areas of public discourse, that is a really really strong piece.

Agree!

please to keep posting the outtakes

shit, i have to see The Master now

Agree!

It really is

State and Main! Forgettable movie, but I totally forgot he was in it and once again good.

i can't believe Philip Seymour Hoffman is dead

so I haven't read all of this so maybe this has already been brought up, but I'm not sure why the all out NYPD search for the people who sold him heroin. Do they do this for everyone who ODs? No.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLtNd1h34F8

so I haven't read all of this so maybe this has already been brought up, but I'm not sure why the all out NYPD search for the people who sold him heroin. Do they do this for everyone who ODs? No.

― akm, Tuesday, February 4, 2014 1:20 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

they do it for cool and important people

akm i'm assuming it has to do w/ the large amount though it might have to do w/ this fentanyl spiked heroin that supposedly hit the east coast?

yea i was wondering that, if the fentanyl was related to hoffman's death

That's the most likely scenario here. They've probably determined the stockpile all came from the same source and that it's related to the fentanyl spiked incidents.

horrible

Has heroin really dropped down to $6 a bag? Wow.

nyt piece seems to suggest it's meant to flood the market and create addicts

The possibility that there are '80s action movie-style heroin distribution factories in the city is legitimately horrifying

Get Seagal and Van Damme on the case, asap.

a job for Che de Blasio

i'm sorry - that clip of Hoffman bouncing off the top of that car is hilarious!

Surprised it did not lead to an addiction to painkillers, tbh.

yeah, that Mattress King ad is all-time

for new yorkers:
https://www.facebook.com/events/291040771044583/

;_;

I think The Master deserves more praise. Some speculated that the film was too controversial for scientologists and that it would frustrate too many viewers who wanted a more conventional beginning, middle and end, to really achieve any success. But some people are betting on it being a future mighty classic.
The film was really nothing like I had imagined. I thought Phoenix was going to be the audience insertion/identification figure, but he was nothing like that.

I think Hoffman's performance was really great for the way his character tried to appear endlessly wise, jolly and generous, but his rage gets the better of him and I think those scenes of him awkwardly losing it are some of the best in the film.

I heard different takes on how much this was a critique of scientology/Hubbard. I think there is quite a lot of it, but it doesnt really seem like a main goal. Hubbard was quite open with friends and family about his cynical moneymaking scheme but Hoffman's character appears to have deluded himself. Hoffman's child in the film has a similar appalled stance as Hubbard's own children.

well it's harder to make an ambitious film about a con man than about a "visionary" who at least partly believes his own shit. I guess Elmer Gantry is the first exception that comes to mind, but it has Burt Lancaster lusting, tumbling and shouting all over the place.

well it's harder to make an ambitious film about a con man than about a "visionary" who at least partly believes his own shit

Why not both?

http://www.cinema.indiana.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/jpg34

The film was really nothing like I had imagined. I thought Phoenix was going to be the audience insertion/identification figure, but he was nothing like that.

maybe not for yoooou

yup, at the time it befuddled both packed theaters i saw it with, none of my PTA-loving friends were into it, i was disappointed, but it seemed like a movie that would make more sense in time…now that this has happened, that process will no doubt be expedited…

The Master felt more like the story of an alcoholic and his perfect antagonist than a shot at Scientology.

Good interview with his acting coach (with shitty URL name).

Also, four arrests.

none of my PTA-loving friends were into it

interesting. i lean towards anti-PTA and i thought it was pretty awesome.

The Master was great but it is pretty slow so definitely watch it only on a good stereo system/tv setup, like if you saw it on a laptop you might enjoy it but you might fall asleep.

re: four arrests
good info, but no thanks for telling us "what we're learning"

friend on FB:

Well, it looks like we got a couple of heroin dealers off the street, so Philip Seymour Hoffman's death wasn't completely in vain. Cold comfort to the families of the many who die of overdoses without anyone batting an eye, but that's what they get for not being celebrities.

What an asshole.

do you know Richard Pryor's "My GOD, it's an EPIDEMIC!" bit? Asshole too i guess.

xp That doesn't feel asshole-ish to me tbh? Maybe I'm not getting it?

List of threads to avoid if X, Y and Z ppl are on em is gettin' real fucking long.

so why don't you avoid them?

False Equivalency Twitter is having a field day with observations like "hey why didn't they find Whitney Houston's dealer? make you think huh"

http://rand.info/rands/images/marx.jpeg

stevie 100% otm obv

#falseequivalencytwitter

Well, it looks like we got a couple of heroin dealers off the street, so Philip Seymour Hoffman's death wasn't completely in vain. Cold comfort to the families of the many who die of overdoses without anyone batting an eye, but that's what they get for not being celebrities.

look forward to seeing this on counterpunch in a day or two

he isn't nearly as left as i am, but he would say sayonara to this board in about 5 minutes.

you say "bye" every five minutes too

you must have writers now that you're in LA.

anyway stevie, whether youre a cop or just a jerk, you let us know the next time an OD in Brownsville results in arrests within 72 hours.

from the cnn story:

Preliminary tests Tuesday showed the heroin recovered from the apartment does not contain fentanyl, a law enforcement official told CNN. More testing will be done.

Fentanyl is a powerful narcotic used to treat cancer patients' pain.

Last week, Maryland officials said heroin tainted with fentanyl had claimed at least 37 lives since September. And last month, at least 22 people in western Pennsylvania died after using heroin mixed with fentanyl.

i guess i figured using PSH's death to make some point seemed assholish to me, but i think i overreacted, so apologies to your friend on facebook. also, i don't think i know the pryor bit, and am a big fan, so if you could direct me to it that would be ace.

ugh, I know of two people who od'ed on fentanyl, although I'm not sure if it was sold to them as something else

interesting. i lean towards anti-PTA and i thought it was pretty awesome.

― goole,

His best since Hard Eight.

I don't remember which album... possibly Is It Something I Said?

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Pryor#On_Drugs

The end of this is so goddamn crushing.

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/for-phil-an-old-friend/Content?oid=3820363

Morbs, it's on Here And Now (one of the few bright spots on that otherwise meh record).

Thanks guys

Aaron Sorkin:

Phil Hoffman, this kind, decent, magnificent, thunderous actor, who was never outwardly “right” for any role but who completely dominated the real estate upon which every one of his characters walked, did not die from an overdose of heroin—he died from heroin. We should stop implying that if he’d just taken the proper amount then everything would have been fine.

sometimes we learn more about the writer than the subject in obituaries

Honestly, I can't imagine a worse industry to be in than his when you're trying to stay sober. Parties, meetings, money, downtime, stress, etc. It's a miracle some actors have ever managed to stay sober, and many of them it seems just made it so many years down the line that they were able to get over some sort of hump. Obviously getting clean and staying clean must be tough no matter the circumstances, but Hollywood and that lifestyle is so unusual, so unreal, that it must impose its own unique set of pressures. I'm just a guy, and I can't imagine how hard life would be without even the option of "hey, wanna grab a beer?"

well, club owner, bartender, or pharmacist might be worse
acting's pretty far up there, though

wow, Aaron Sorkin's dialogue sucks when he does it, too

PSH gets condolences from Miles Davis's family:
http://www.milesdavis.com/us/news/condolences-philip-seymour-hoffman

apparently based solely on an incident PSH described of meeting Miles when he was in his 20s. I thought it was cool and sort of touching that whoever manages the Miles site caught this and took the trouble to put a condolence on the page.

it never even occurred to me the PSH was sober. He didn't make a big deal about it, maybe because he wasn't famous when he went through his worst period, like Robert Downey Jr. In that sense, it was maybe safer and easier for him to slip back into it. Can you imagine what would happen if RDJ slipped up at this point? a giant ass huge film franchise rides on him not fucking up.

They'd sub in a younger guy in a heartbeat. They will eventually anywya.

Definitely had that thought when the Avengers cast was unveiled at comic-con before the release of Thor, though at this point Disney's already made their billions off him.

The "oh my god, do they realize who's the cornerstone of this planned chain of blockbusters" thought, I mean.

watched owning mahowny for the first time last night and Hoffman is of course brilliant. great little film, surprised it had never been brought to my attention before.

fire your staff

this is the greatest loss to cinema since the death of stanley kubrick y/n

what a massive void

Listen, Synechdoche New York or whatever it was called was so nihilistically, life-nullifyingly depressing that this story practically writes itself. I watched it once and was so horrified that it sent me into a spiral of substance abuse for several days. I can't imagine having actually been part of the film production...

Wow, glad I never saw it

I need to see it a second time -- a mess but clearly heartfelt and ambitious -- but damn, not for awhile.

NYT story today about his last week or two; not esp enlightening, just sad.

I liked it more the first time around then the second. it's an ambitious work, but not all of its pieces fit together. by the end it feels like its treading conceptual water a bit (altho I def enjoy Wiest's part)

than the second

bah

synecdoche floored me. the most powerful and moving movie i've ever seen

The second time I saw it the humor stood out more. It's an intense movie but not a totally self-serious one.

yeah there's a lot of funny stuff in it. but it's a bit overstuffed with ideas that don't all get resolved (all the body horror stuff in the first half hour, for instance)

Yeah, all I can remember from as far as I made it was green poop.

From that NY Times story:

He seemed reticent and rumpled at his last public appearance, promoting the films “God’s Pocket” and “A Most Wanted Man” at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah on Jan. 19. Friends, however, would later point out that Mr. Hoffman would often appear that way, as if he had been out partying all night when in fact he had just awaked from a night’s sleep.

This was something I heard about him over the years from a few theater friends who met him or shared a room with him: usually looking practically homeless and disheveled, like really unkempt. It always made sense to me as how an actor would choose to appear between movie shoots and shows requiring so much makeup prep. Also made sense as a good defensive posture--to make clear to everyone "I'm off the clock."

it can also just be how you look when you're a complete slob who doesn't give a shit, i know a few (non-famous) actors who fit that bill

Yeah, it's true.

kubrick is super boring
ed yang was a really big loss
& yeah this is just a disaster

synecdoche floored me. the most powerful and moving movie i've ever seen

I wouldn't go that far, but I loved it enough to write an fan letter to Charlie Kaufman that basically ran "you've changed my life, thanks"

I cannot take it when people who've kicked and moved on and made it out suddenly fall like this.

this

i really want to stop letting this bum me out so bad too but it just keeps lurking there around the corners of my mind. i feel really sad for him and all of the people who loved him.

and this.

I tend to be really hard on "Amerindie" films (been burned too often, I guess) but he's kind of an axiom of them good and bad. and no matter the quality of the movie a performance by PSH was always something to look forward to, and in some cases to redeem the film. such an absolute pleasure to watch.

i hated magnolia when i saw it, i still don't like it, but in any event my hating it was never about PSH's performance or indeed most of the performances in it. his scenes are great, and quite funny, at least until they get a mawkish toward the end (the resolution to that plotline is one of the more false, pat, and overly sentimental in the film; my problem with the film is in its overall design.)

i'm afraid that almost famous is too indulgent of its characters/milieu for me to really stomach it.

one of his best performances was in "the savages," which was a pretty hard-hitting film overall, I thought.

anyway

i'm not a heroin addict or even any kind of drug addict but i do have a kind of obsessive/addictive personality and i see this troubled guy and i keep thinking, there but for the grace of god...

so fucking sad. i'm almost crying right now, to my own surprise.

http://blog.eastmanhouse.org/2014/02/06/remembering-philip-seymour-hoffman/

The next month, Phil came back to Eastman House to present a documentary he appeared in called The Party’s Over. We talked afterward and he answered audience questions. I don’t remember much else about the evening, but my pal Bruce Bennett was there, and he reminded me that a teenage kid stood up and tried to explain how much Phil’s performances meant to him. He struggled in finding the right words and he finally just asked Phil if he could have a hug. Bruce remembers Phil as being “totally moved and disarmed and surprised by all the emotion clumsily and honestly pouring out of this young guy who clearly didn’t get to express his feelings too often” Phil quickly replied and said “yeah, sure, of course” and the two embraced. Bruce says, “People forget how much personal impact actors can have. I don’t think anyone’s ever asked to hug [Paul Thomas Anderson] because of a camera move he blocked or a line of dialogue he typed.”

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/02/06/the-night-philip-seymour-hoffman-changed-my-life/

I know it sounds glib from the URL. But worth a read.

That was really touching.

Has Paul Thomas Anderson made any statements?

man ned's last 2 links itt both made my eyes water

i have heard stories like these, of people relapsing after decades, and the end is always very rapid. In each case it is precipitated by a personal separation (spouse, child, or both). Obviously the first question I'd ask is whether Mr Hoffman's rapid decline occurred before or after the estrangememt from his partner and/or their children.

the EW story...just, wow.

and the thing is, you know, PSH was right about that.

this is just the most rotten story, all over

These few, brief personal encounters were pleasant and memorable for me. They gave me little insight into what drove him as an artist. I only know that he consistently surprised me and moved me with his honesty and his understanding of human beings.
Be Sociable, Share!

Iirc, he reportedly became estranged from his partner after he first relapsed/went to rehab, maybe a year ago?

so i guess one of the people arrested for selling heroin in this case was a known musician and also did that weird cable access NYC post punk show TV Party

A jazz saxophonist who played with the singer Amy Winehouse is one of three people arrested in New York for alleged drug offences following actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's death.
Musician Robert Vineberg is now facing a felony charge of heroin possession with intent to sell following his arrest on Tuesday night in his apartment at 302 Mott Street in the pricey Nolita district of Manhattan
The 57-year-old performed on the popstar's best-selling album Frank in 2003 and claims to have worked with other singers including Wyclef Jean, Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Tom Jones.

By this point I don't really have anything to add to what's been said above. Goddamn tragedy.

Has Paul Thomas Anderson made any statements?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, February 7, 2014 10:28 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark

I've been thinking a lil bit (but not much) about what it means for this guy to be most associated with such a polarizing director

I've always been partial to PTA and it's through his works I know PSH best

I'm sure there are many other famous actors/actresses who have also been associated with polarizing directors

Just curious as to what impact (if any) this association would have on PSH's legacy

All in all probably a really stupid question to wonder about

Is he really that polarizing? We're not talking Lars Von Trier here.

I guess Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love are the two lenses in the Oakleys

polarizing if you're on ilx maybe

Where else would I be

polarizing if you're married to my wife maybe

The EW piece is a choker. Nice to read about the man rather than the actor. I also like the image of him having a nervy smoke break before presenting an Oscar.

<3 emotional generosity being recognized always makes me happy

Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out something that you already know is true. He had no stake in it. He was just telling us what he knew.

also, wow PSH also had an excellent memory. so sad that he is gone, but if he has to be gone i hope this generosity is recognized as part of his legacy.

yeah, i've never encountered the level of PTA hate IRL that i've seen here. i'm sure he'll come out with a statement eventually though

Wow, that EW piece. Excellent. And, in my experience, his advice was absolutley 100% otm.

PTA's widely revered by non-ilxtards

eh I know plenty of people who hate him bar one or two films

But while his films may be ostensibly polarizing, no one would fault him as a director, writer or apt director of actors, right? Truly divisive directors, like Von Trier or I dunno Spike Lee or whomever, are derided/distrusted on almost all levels. PTA, I would never expect anything inept from him, or less than well-acted from his cast. His films may not all be equally revered, but as a director the only polarizing aspect is the degree to which he's revered/overrated by some/many, but which criteria Spielberg is also "polarizing," but of course he's really not.

For all his appearances in "polarizing" films, PSH somehow escaped the tag himself. Maybe because despite the challenging material, he was always an intrinsically ... inviting actor? You wanted to watch him.

no one would fault him as a director, writer or apt director of actors, right?

even if they dislike his films? yes, i tend to fault the guy who does the central work on a film i don't like.

I know what you're saying, but he's still operating at a pretty high standard. Like Kubrick, perhaps the works can be debated, but no one would cite either for lack of ambition/vision/technical skill/intellectual engagement. PTA's movies are mostly formidable and worthwhile, even if one didn't like them. IMO. I think truly polarizing directors, one might dismiss them outright. Again, like Von Trier. I think he's a fucking charlatan. But opinions vary.

Ambition is not nec a good thing, if your style is overly derivative or you cast Adam Sandler.

von trier's 'divisiveness' has much more to do with his public persona than his actual films imo.

xpost Ha, yeah, I'll concede Punch Drunk Love as polarizing! But I think that one's anomalous.

Von Trier, I dunno - his films are pretty fucking divisive, like the kind that actually, equally draw boos and cheers in public.

Like, literal boos and cheers.

PTA is at his worst as writer.

Maybe. But I don't think his writing is actually terrible, just a bit heavy-handed or muddled, sometimes. But he writes for his actors as well as any writer/director I think.

Spike Lee's persona gets the heat too, as his films generally do not register on the commercial side, at all.

But also a huge number of his films are shit, no? Like, outright not good movies.

Like Kubrick, perhaps the works can be debated, but no one would cite either for lack of ambition/vision/technical skill/intellectual engagement.

this is weird. "people might not like the films, but they can't deny he is ONe of the Greatest Directors Ever to Live."

i just don't accept this, and I'm not sure why you're pushing it so hard. surely their can be legit disagreement about these things? esp. "vision" and "intellectual engagement."

the idea that PTA's movies are somehow objectively 'good movies' even to ppl who dislike them while spike lee's movies are 'outright not good' is pretty strange.

TWBB bothered me a lot at the time because it was the most distended, ah likeistorical adaptation I'd seen. Seems like monomania is an easier subject than the novel's clumsy but vital comprehension of the U.S. in the early twentieth century.

synecdoche floored me. the most powerful and moving movie i've ever seen

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Thursday, February 6, 2014 4:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yep, I was thinking a few days ago that SNY may be my favorite all time movie, flaws and all.

*ahistorical

one problem I have with his films is that he often seems more interested in big, impactful scenes (which, yes, give actors a lot of room to make big acting gestures; you could call them set-pieces) than in longer threads of emotional and narrative coherence. this is esp. problematic for me in there will be blood. i actually think he tames this a fair bit w/ the master, but not completely.

i also find it a bit weird that you can so easily imagine separating some idea of "directorial skill" from "are the films any good?" I do admire his craft in some respects—he's really good at some things contemporary directors, esp. American ones, are just not especially good at—but the overall "technic" of his films is inseperable from their bombast, pretentiousness, and the way he constructs his (recent) films of willful negatory gestures.

but we've hashed this out a lot on ILX so I guess I just refer to my posts in TWWB and TM threads...

At his best, Spike kicks PTA's ass (DtRT, 25th Hour -- a good seamless PSH performance in the latter). Have skipped a lot of his recent stuff, but Inside Man (biggest BO hit of his career) was a good genre film.

i don't get the point of these matchups. Lee Vs Anderson, Anderson VS Anderson who cares?

games cinephiles play

"writes for his actors" by having them all sing "Wise Up"

people don't like things

Oh, I admit I'm being totally inconsistent. I guess what I mean is that there are entire Spike Lee films that I think are poorly written, acted, directed, executed, everything all around, but no PTA equivalent. But, you know, opinions. And those are just very specific examples, muddying the original assertion that PTA is polarizing, which I don't think is true. Maybe a film of his or two, but I don't detect a lot of people with tomatoes at the ready when he announces a new film.

And Morbs, I think I agree with you re: Spike Lee. Those films you cite are all great. But I don't look forward to his films the way I do PTAs, because my expectations have been dashed in dramatic fashion so many times.

But, you know, opinions

this is important.

PTA is polarizing in that I often the only one in the room who doesn't much like his movies. and seldom do people take my points. people whose tastes and sensibilities I respect enormously think he's great. it would be so easy for me just to assent. but, no, i persevere. I march ahead, alone.

he's really good at some things contemporary directors, esp. American ones, are just not especially good at

like what? just curious

staging, long takes, threading a scene through the camera (in minnelli's terms), subtly offbeat framings, getting interesting off-rhythms going w/ his actors

I'd take PTA over Sp[ke Lee in terms of peak or career value, and also when weighing the films I like least. Peak value is close, and Spike Lee obviously has more historical significance.

to get back to the original context of bringing up PTA, I don't think it will have much an effect on Hoffman's legacy because, even if you accept the idea that Anderson is a "polarizing" director, there are a ton of movies Hoffman's acclaimed for that Anderson didn't direct. Now if Hoffman was polarizing it'd make more sense for that to affect Anderson's legacy, as there's only like one PTA movie so far he wasn't in.

i'm interested in what he's has to say because i believe they were close collaborators and friends; but if he hasn't said anything by now, i assume he's not going to make a statement

the only PTA movie Hoffman got a big award nomination for was The Master - Academy gave him nods for Capote, Doubt and Charlie Wilson's War, BAFTA for those and the Ides Of March, Golden Globes throws in The Savages, SAG nominated him in Flawless, Independent Spirit for Happiness, etc.

In decades after, award nominations gen don't mean jack for a film artist's rep. Bogart won an Oscar for The African Queen -- one of his least significant roles -- and nominated twice otherwise for Casablanca and Caine Mutiny. If he's too movie starrish and not chopsy enough for you, of the Monty Clift roles considered great today, he only got awards attention for From Here to Eternity and A Place in the Sun, both big hits.

I think PSH's two most iconic roles will be the two most obvious ones: The Master and Capote. I can see somewhat of a parallel with Hackman: Capote = The French Connection (award winner), The Master = The Conversation (moody art film...I'm not sure how well Synecdoche will be remembered down the road).

*I meant to say African Queen is one of Bogart's least characteristic roles. I don't happen to think it's all that significant either, but ymmv.

I'd say The African Queen, Casablance and the Caine Mutiny mean quite a bit of jack for Bogart's rep.

But you're missing my point, which is just that "oooh I hate PTA" obviously doesn't deny people opportunities to like PSH

Spike vs. PTA is a pretty random comparison but I think Morbz is otm. Spike's made more movies, and thus more bad ones, but you put their best up against each other and yeah I think DtRT is better than Boogie Nights.

xp

Casablanca is one of the iconic roles along w/ the two private-detective milestones, but critics these days much more impressed by In a Lonely Place, High Sierra, possibly Treasure of the SM, maybe To Have and Have Not. xxp

Captain Queeg is fun to watch but p clearly overacting.

Though, again, it's beside the point, Capote is actually one of my least favorite PSH performances

Sierra Madre / Maltese Falcon / Big Sleep definitely my preferred Bogeys

Casablanca is one of the iconic roles along w/ the two private-detective milestones, but critics these days much more impressed by In a Lonely Place, High Sierra, possibly Treasure of the SM, maybe To Have and Have Not. xxp

I dunno why you insist on this binary though!

only point i'm trying to make is there's no way to know Hoffman's most popular performances will be in 2065 as people paddle through melted polar icecaps.

He was super in a lot of roles but I can't pick one or even three standouts besides Freddie in The Talented Mr Ripley. I'm realizing I took him for granted.

The main thing I recall of that role is his leering smirk at Tom on the sailboat. He was good.

I'm not sure having been the best thing in crap movies (like that one) makes a legend. By the Lumet movie I was tired of him, then had an uptick from Synecdoche and The Master.

I'm not sure having been the best thing in crap movies (like that one) makes a legend.

I didn't know you distrusted Bette Davis.

yeah, never been interested in Beyond the Forest

bette davis is in a whole bunch of good movies!

y'all trippin

not to "ironic" gays, apparently; thank God I'm not in the "community."

I prefer The Letter to any American films I've seen in at least ten years, except maybe Fantastic Mr. Fox.

"Legendary" is an Access Hollywood word. It's hard enough to make a living in American movies w/out living up to a conception of yourself, let alone Us Weekly. To sneeze at PSH's achievements because he worked in a lot of movies is ridiculous.

i ain't sneezing. I think it's somewhat unfortunate he came along in an era when American filmmaking isn't up to the talent of the actors.

Again, look at Capote and Moneyball as a double feature.

performance-wise

I've never looked at Capote. (I couldn't even read more than a third of In Cold Blood.) I don't think I'm bothered much by him seeming nothing like Art Howe in Moneyball, but I found the whole film faintly ridiculous and though PSH's role was utterly thankless, as the villain/ostrich who doesn't comprehend Billy Beane's innovations. (obv my baseball fanaticism is inextricable here)

thoughT PSH's role

I don't even remember him in Moneyball!

I liked Capote at the time but thinking Infamous is the slightly better movie has tainted it.

and, Morbs, In Cold Blood bored me too.

am, you distilled PTA's strengths well.

http://astanduplife.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/philip-seymour-3.jpg

http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/201412/rs_1024x759-140202111537-1024.Phillip-Seymour-Hoffman-Capote-Movie.jl.020214.jpg

(Point I was making--akin to what Josh said about PTA, he's got great craft.)

look at his hands

*I meant to say African Queen is one of Bogart's least characteristic roles. I don't happen to think it's all that significant either, but ymmv.

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Friday, February 7, 2014 8:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's a thoroughly mediocre performance imo.

La Lechera's remark echoed in Anthony Lane's generous obit:

As for Lester Bangs, the rock journalist in “Almost Famous” (2000), nothing in Hoffman’s résumé was more wrenching than the careful, low-toned advice that Bangs dispensed over the phone, one evening, to a rookie in the same profession, steering him away from bright lights, and from the lure of loveliness. “Good-looking people, they got no spine; their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we’re smarter,” he said, adding, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”

How could that not speak to a million moviegoers? If they embraced Hoffman with ardor, it was in part because he looked so uncool, and so unbeautiful, and because he so obviously hailed from the same tribe as they did, and because there was a kind of beauty, after all, in the flame of feeling that got stoked inside that sweaty heft and pallor. The ordinary body housed a furnace. Besides, who’d be a romantic lead these days, in Hollywood? When did the industry last deliver a fine romance for gorgeous grownups? Yearn as we may for Cary Grant, and for Grant-like opportunities for George Clooney, we dwell in the age of Hoffman.

I demur but whatever.

honestly the first half of the quote from almost famous just sounds vain and judgmental

and mostly correct

if you're a solipsistic misogynist

second half would hold a lot more weight if it wasn't in the context of "just know in your heart that you're better than the people you envy"

now I'm sorry PSH never got to ply Bryan Ferry

it reflects the character

sorry, as u know i'm a solipsistic kid-toucher

honestly the first half of the quote from almost famous just sounds vain and judgmental

― da croupier, Monday, February 10, 2014 9:27 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

vain and judgemental sounds good to an adolescent reject, or a perpetual adolescent reject.

but this is true

The ordinary body housed a furnace.

also it's kinda painful to have a furnace housed in your body

if someone had to make a line of from one of his movies an epigram encompassing his appeal, i think this one works better:

There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.

agree
dignity

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/sundance-tintype-portraits-2014#slide-9

:(

look at his hands

― we slowly invented brains (La Lechera), Friday, February 7, 2014 5:57 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lane talked about this too. i watched the talented mr ripley again and, in the scene where dickie confronts tom, the way he lets his right hand dangle as he keeps making jabs at ripley is so perfect.
http://i1354.photobucket.com/albums/q686/tinyservants/Screenshot2014-02-15at102736AM_zps67c04ae2.png

Tommy Tommy Tommy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP9soL5UNM8

a bunch of PSH movies on tv tonight. watched "doubt" on RTE (its on BBC at pretty much the same time) and then caught the last 45 mins of "before the devil..." on channel 4

seeing a picture of this guy and catching the new internal reflex, about what happened, reroute away from the old feeling - oh awesome!, PSH - is just the worst

http://youtu.be/TiQkdprJso0

Nice video of PSH talking with Simon Critchley about happiness (and Happiness as well as other films).

!

finally watched synecdoche this morning btw and man am i glad i preplanned an afternoon pick me up

watching that critchley dialogue now

"I think I've killed pleasure. You know, you have too much of anything--coffee, and you're miserable. There's no pleasure that I haven't actually made myself sick on--I look at pleasure and I get scared."

the crowd and critchley laughs, he doesn't. ugh.

Watched Doubt the other night. I suppose I'm cutting it some slack, but I thought it was pretty good. It did feel like a play--not in the way that filmed plays can look stagy, but more in how the "problem" seemed weirdly detached from the sense of a story moving along. I read Stephanie Zacharek's review, and she really went off on Streep, calling her performance high camp. I'm sure at least one person here would agree; myself, I thought Streep was interesting, the character made sense to me, and I don't know what Zacharek was going on about. PSH was fine. The ending was awkward and a cheat. Something else: the director's occasional use of a tilted frame, like an old Batman episode. I kept waiting for Frank Gorshin or Victor Buono to suddenly show up. Anyway, not as good as The Boys of St. Vincent, but, for PSH at the very least, worth watching.

watched Love Liza last night. what a strange movie. felt like everything about it was small and compact, comprised entirely of little details and short scenes. and v believable in an alternately sad and funny way. PSH is great, totally carries it (Bates does her share as well). very much a downer, so much so that I kind of wonder how stuff like this gets made, it's appeal seems extremely limited.

I'll have to give that one another look--liked it at the time.

it's good. but it's hard for me to describe it in any way that seems like a selling point... "a drama/comedy that centers on a guy dealing with his wife's suicide by huffing gasoline" oh yeah sounds like a good night out!

love liza is great and only had a budget of a million bucks IIRC

I really like Love Liza, but I would think that it'd be the hardest PSH performance to watch at the moment.

Love Liza was written by PSH's brother Gordy, not sure if many people know that. Also not sure how well known that is was directed by Todd Louiso (Jack Black and John Cusack's bald co-worker in High Fidelity). Lastly not sure how well known that the soundtrack of Love Liza was done by Jim O'Rourke.

Sdtrk was the most annoying thing about it thx jim orourke for continuing to be lame

it's all just preexisting o'rourke music laid over the top iirc

the scene of an ecstatic PSH in the lake shouting is one of the first i think of when i think of him

Richard Brody:
"Is Method Acting Destroying Actors?"

"Hoffman had a fury for acting and a virtuoso technique that he yoked, brilliantly, to it. He found his characters' passions within himself, took their passions upon himself, and then created, with an uncanny gift for impersonation, a set of gestures and inflections that embodied them. But that supreme artifice became, in turn, a block to the expression of passion, and to make it real he dug deeper and burned brighter—and, then, found the gestures to show it. The connection of his inner life and outer skill generated a sort of emotional short circuit that overheated him terrifyingly, resulting in the justly admired intensity that he brought to every role—which was also, however, a sign of an actor giving more of himself, moment by moment, than an actor should ever be called upon, or need, to give."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2014/02/is-method-acting-destroying-actors.html

I think there's a lotta bullshit in there, John Wayne not being an actor for starters. The comments are interesting.

yeah... as if actors didnt have tortured personal lives before method acting

actors are all nuts ime, no matter their technique

Brando’s performances revolutionized American acting precisely because he didn’t seem to be “performing,” in the sense that he wasn’t putting something on as much as he was being.

This Franco line is bullshit.

I'm willing to give that a pass for the use of "seem," though as one of the comments says you could say the same (in a different style) of Spencer Tracy, or John Garfield.

Depends whether you think Brando's nose scratching, mumbling, and other tics were affectations.

probably more affected in Julius Caesar!

well, of course, because no one in ancient Rome picked his nose or mumbled.

I dunno if there's a better thread for this, but I caught A Most Dangerous Man earlier tonight and was impressed above all by Hoffman, who really does disappear into his role. Also, the last sequence kind of works a fitting albeit unintended curtain closer on his career.

Also: looking back at this thread--such an unfortunate post before the jump.

A Most Dangerous Man = A Most Wanted Man, obvs.

Brando said, in at least one interview, that he wanted to perform with his own rhythm, so as to defeat standard editing: like if you see an actor sitting alone at a table in the right corner of the foreground, you know somebody's likely to appear to the left, in the background, about x seconds in---so Brando might lean over that way, and move around unpredictably in subsequent takes, make the editor/director/fellow actor do something else. (Malcolm MacDowell said if you *want* the editor to cut a close-up at a certain point, let your eyes go from intense to blank). That's also the thing w Tracy, Garfield, Forest Whitaker, and Hoffman, they all have their own rhythm, their own phrasing, def incl body language.

I would not let him get to 3rd base with me.
― jeffrey (johnson), Thursday, August 18, 2005 3:11 PM (8 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Skipping 413 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.
I don't even remember him in Moneyball!

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, February 7, 2014 2:33 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cosign on a most wanted man

I liked it. First of all, I just appreciated that I could make sense of it; I've seen spy films (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, for one) where I was lost. And Hoffmann was very unflashily excellent. If he hadn't already won a best actor award, I imagine he'd be in line for a posthumous win. Thought Robin Wright and Rachel McAdams were really good too, and the ending had kind of a Third Man feel to it.

thought penn was bad in a mediocre role and McAdams very good in one. ending v lecarré tbh, without giving it away.

the Jimi Hendrix of american cinema. from now on. RIP

― nostormo, Sunday, February 2, 2014 2:17 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Make-it-Rain.jpg

sadness

it wasn't supposed to be this way.

i watched one of his final films, God's Pocket, recently. wouldn't recommend it.

just watched A Most Wanted Man, so-so

that image is fucking hilarious

just watched next stop wonderland for the first time in years and forgot he was even in it. he had his whiny loser thing perfected even back then.

was watching a few clips from before the devil knows your dead. he was really good in that i thought

God's Pocket is kind of like a lesser cousin of Before The Devil, right down to an opening sex scene between Hoffman and an out-of-his-league wife.

i still think about him in Charlie Wilson's War. it was like he was in a different, better movie

i love all of his unkempt slovenly fuckup characters though

i watched one of his final films, God's Pocket, recently. wouldn't recommend it.

saw that one on an airplane earlier this week - not real good, no, and even he didn't really seem up to it. only one or two moments of "oh there's the guy who owns the screen"

seems destined to be remembered only for being one of his last movies, and being directed by Roger Sterling

Don't remember hearing about this until I found it in a sale bin today--PSH directs and stars.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1278379/

I did not enjoy that movie

i couldn't make it through it.

I want my $2.99 back.

I think it was just the toque he wears all through it

Watched Quartet the other week. It was wonderful, PSH was wonderful in it, RIP PSH.

A Late Quartet was fantastic. I refuse to accept that PSH is dead. He'll be back. Maybe in the next PTA movie.

i saw that Boating movie after he passed away. and the PSH locked in the bathroom scene was kinda.. ouch. :(

how tf is philip seymour hoffman still dead

:(

reposting bc <3

I watched Love Liza for the first time tonight. I really, really miss him.

he absolutely tears me to pieces in that one

that scene of him huffing gas for the first time set to jim o'rourke's "halfway to a threeway" is just stunning

Loved the other O'Rourke song placement at the end of Love Liza, Good Times.

I feel the need to revisit Synechdoch at some point, to my mind it's one of the great films of the last decade, but once PSH passed it just became too tough to go back to.

This scene, damn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9PzSNy3xj0

Synecdoche is my favorite movie ever, I've seen it ~15 times, but haven't watched it since he died. Not intentionally, just hasn't happened. I keep putting it off now. imo that funeral monologue is the most on the nose thing in the whole movie, but still, devastating... (also hilarious, as Caden/Ellen watches on with that goofy wig)... his performance in Love Liza reminded me of Synecdoche a lot in places, especially when he just explodes... "I don't want a letter, I don't want a letter, I DON'T WANT A FUCKING LETTER!!!!!!!!!!!"

The scene in Synecdoche that always makes me cry is when he's in Berlin and goes to see Olive dance. pounding on the plexiglass screaming "SHE'S MY DAUGHTER! SHE'S MY DAUGHTER!!!"

Christopher Evan Welch, the monologuer in that clip, is also no longer with us. xp

I really loved the actress that played Hazel's performance in SNY. Bummed I haven't seen her in anything else since.

well at least Diane Wiest is still alive

thank god

Samantha Morton is in a ton of stuff still, most recently the not-bad Victorian prostitution drama Harlots

Michelle Williams, too. I watched Wendy and Lucy recently, which came out the same month as SNY iirc. Really, really great film.

xp ah cool! I'll check that one out...

Mimi O’Donnell Reflects on the Loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman and the Devastation of Addiction

Take the time for this heartbreaking, nakedly truthful account by PSH's wife. What a read.

god fucking dammit

I still just can't fucking believe he's dead, and it's been nearly 4 years. I don't know when I'll be in the right frame of mind to read that piece, but I will.

It's a rough one but you'll feel glad you read it. I promise.

It's a great piece. But tough to read.

it was very sad. reminded me of the reasons everyone liked/loved him so much :(

A sad piece but worth reading. The thing where an addict decides it might be a good idea to have a few drinks again, and then drinks responsibly/normally for a short-time before going completely off the deep-end is particularly resonant for me.

Still haven't read it (but definitely will), but very important to realize that if you're an addict you're an addict for life and ALWAYS need to watch yourself.

Dismissing the careers of sexual harassers vs. dismissing the careers of those who completely fuck over their wife, kids, family, friends...

Dude

yeah, wtf

not sure i can read this atm, but wanted to say synecdoche is a life affirming flick

I read the article and thought he was a (albeit talented) selfish prick who intentionally and perhaps irreparably fucked with the emotional stability of his kids, wife and undoubtedly many others. I'm sorry if that offends you, but after hearing Mimi's side it made me want to never to see any of his films again.

Oh yeah and read the article before you "Dude" me, you may learn something.

I read the article and thought he was a (albeit talented) selfish prick who intentionally and perhaps irreparably fucked with the emotional stability of his kids, wife and undoubtedly many others

That's what addiction does. It's a severe illness.

good piece

It feels like being boiled in oil.

:c

I truly don't see how you can interpret this piece as PSH being egocentric. The craving for heroin is probably the worst one of all, and the deadliest at the same time.

I read the article and thought he was a (albeit talented) selfish prick who intentionally and perhaps irreparably fucked with the emotional stability of his kids, wife and undoubtedly many others. I'm sorry if that offends you, but after hearing Mimi's side it made me want to never to see any of his films again.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Friday, December 15, 2017 8:37 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you know, "I don't understand the first thing about addiction" would have expressed exactly the same sentiment in fewer words and made you seem much less of a judgemental prick

There's room for a lot of perspectives on addiction and addicts and what it does to them and what it does to their people during and after

A lot of those perspectives seem better informed than a lot of others though

Thats as maybe but

I should say rather that idk if probably if taking that line of critique make very sure I was 100% informed of how the other person's perspective was informed before launching in

Not saying I manage this tbf

I don't think it's correct to describe addiction as an illness; insofar as, if you put a gun to someone's head, he would be able to stop. What we call addiction is really just the human state in which the compulsion for excess is harder (or much harder) to restrain than it is for most people. There's always a choice involved, and, as such, "addiction" is always to some extent self-indulgence. However, to observe this isn't to preclude sympathy for human frailty; and the view that PSH was merely being gleefully feckless and selfish is almost certainly highly reductive (especially given that he had managed to stay dry for 20 years.)

It's a great piece and I hope it helped her to write it. I have thankfully never lost anyone I loved to addiction but I've definitely seen it up close, and it's way too complex to make easy judgments about. She captures the deep mix of anger, frustration, sympathy, empathy and powerlessness that overwhelms people close to an addict. Like you're up against a darkness that you can't really understand or penetrate. And if they die or otherwise slip away, you'll always feel like maybe there was something else you should have or could have done.

Finally got around to reading this and fuck, that last paragraph just floored me.

I don't think it's correct to describe addiction as an illness; insofar as, if you put a gun to someone's head, he would be able to stop. What we call addiction is really just the human state in which the compulsion for excess is harder (or much harder) to restrain than it is for most people. There's always a choice involved, and, as such, "addiction" is always to some extent self-indulgence. However, to observe this isn't to preclude sympathy for human frailty; and the view that PSH was merely being gleefully feckless and selfish is almost certainly highly reductive (especially given that he had managed to stay dry for 20 years.)

no no i'm sure they're a doctor

some real wtf takes itt

what is our compulsion to heap scorn on those who killed themselves? they suffered in life and ultimately succumbed to the dark impulses. what good does it do now to judge these things from the outside as if it even matters to you?

One person has run with that angle tbf

Hope keeps running iirc

Addiction literally alters the structure of the brain, of course it can be described as an illness

was gonna otm this.

There's always a choice involved, and, as such, "addiction" is always to some extent self-indulgence.

eh this kind of blaming bullshit. there's "a choice involved" yet the one making the choice has to compromise with an addictive bio-chemical makeup, obviously the choice is not 100% theirs to make. also fwiw i think people tend to overrate willpower in general, if your body wants to do something (eat, sleep, etc.) it doesn't matter if you decide not to, you are going to lose a battle vs your body.

Does that include political opinions and shit like

Skipping queues

addict concern trolls are the fucking worst, seriously go fuck off and be responsible somewhere else FREEDUMB

it's always a bunch of entitled emotional bullshit cloaked in fake rational vomit

if you put a gun to someone's head, he would be able to stop

it isn't as simple as this btw, idiot

There's always a choice involved, and, as such, "addiction" is always to some extent self-indulgence.

eh this kind of blaming bullshit. there's "a choice involved" yet the one making the choice has to compromise with an addictive bio-chemical makeup, obviously the choice is not 100% theirs to make. also fwiw i think people tend to overrate willpower in general, if your body wants to do something (eat, sleep, etc.) it doesn't matter if you decide not to, you are going to lose a battle vs your body.

Okay, it would have been better to say there is always an *element* of choice. I think this is an relevant point to make, as there can also exist a psychological tendency for people to use the fact they have an addiction itself as grounds for continuing to indulge, and that can lead to more deaths. As I already said, none of this precludes having sympathy for people who do give in in this way. If PSH possessed completely understandable human weaknesses, then I do not condemn him for that. One should not confuse a wish to impartially discuss the mechanics of addiction with a wish to make moral judgements.

I disagree completely with your second sentence. Food and sleep are always essential for staying alive; insofar as recovery from addiction is possible, drugs are not.

you should stop caring about this!

if you put a gun to someone's head, he would be able to stop

it isn't as simple as this btw, idiot

Please elaborate.

people literally go through physical hell, intense pain, vomiting etc etc withdrawing off opiods

chronic alcoholics get the shakes when they don't have alcohol in their system

i'm not fucking teaching you, jackass, just go away xxp

This is not a new insight or anything (same for most successful working actors, musicians, etc), but when reading this it struck me how much he was not around even when he was clean & sober.

god what a beautiful, devastating piece of writing.
the love, the beauty of small moments, the fear, the wreckage... so heartwrenching.

That was a heartbreaking story and that level of transparency should be applauded. I think there should be more transparency with regard to overdose deaths. Families and loved ones are understandably sensitive to this information being broadcast to the community at large and risking harsh judgements from strangers (as demonstrated in this thread), but given that it's one of the leading causes of death I can't help but feel that if people were more aware of the issue they could take action to prevent similar tragedies happening to their friends or family. It's suspicious when a celebrity just drops dead in their mid fifties/60s and there seems to be a collective its-a-mystery shrug from the community at large. I also suspect that drug use probably factors into a lot of the sexual harassment/abuse cases that have been reported recently but that's just speculation.

he was good at making me cringe in movies, so, that's good i guess? i don't really like seeing his big face and that smile when he pops up in movies though. he was a really big ham. like a theater ham. like one of those people who did years of sam shepard plays at the steppenwolf and then did movies. but he wasn't really in the kinds of movies that i like so maybe that has something to do with why i'm not a fan. i remember liking the big lebowski and state and main but i only saw them at the time so i don't really remember what he did in those. i will tend to watch cohen/mamet movies even if gary sinise is in them or someone else i'm not big on.

there have been a few times where i didn't watch a movie on netflix because he was in the movie. so i go with dud i guess.

wins otm

Addicts also feel shame for what they do and how it affects their family, no need to demonize the addict

Glad there's some reasonable responses here

In this instance the wall to wall coverage was sympathy and positive with plenty of respectful and fair reference to the torture and difficulties faced by even a professionally successful and domestically lucky addict.

One dissenting view on ilx the message board that specifically grounds their issues with PSH with reference to the effects on his surviving family is not a wall of hate and shaming that anyone here is earning any medals for.

🙄 all this thread needs now is LJ

great article

Yeah dmac otm

In this instance the wall to wall coverage was sympathy and positive with plenty of respectful and fair reference to the torture and difficulties faced by even a professionally successful and domestically lucky addict.

One dissenting view on ilx the message board that specifically grounds their issues with PSH with reference to the effects on his surviving family is not a wall of hate and shaming that anyone here is earning any medals for.

― remember the lmao (darraghmac), Friday, December 15, 2017 9:57 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's literally the stupid fucking attitude held by lots of people that prevents society doing anything to ameliorate the suffering and premature death of addicts, and with drug deaths being one of the biggest causes of death it's fucking annoying to have to read such pish. ilx discourse at the level of daily mail comments

Serious question, what would society be doing more to help if the odd person, be it nine out of ten daily mail readers or one out of ten ilxors, didn't consider - in the specific instance- PSH's relapse selfish and cruel on his family?

It's probably geographically specific but I don't know if the decision making process in allocation of resources or the strategic decisions made in helping addicts or combatting drugs and their effects are under heavy influence from the tutting classes?

If the POV is daily mail comment level, the immediate jump by the significant majority here to react as if every irl govt and society wide frustration they can tenuously link is directly attributable to a comment expressing that POV seems like not much better tbh

Oh yeah and read the article before you "Dude" me, you may learn something.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Friday, December 15, 2017 3:38 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm yeah i read it, you're still a fucking asshole

xp Can't see a single person saying that anything is directly attributable to shitty posts itt tbh, let alone a "significant majority"

To answer your question tho yes, I will put my neck on the line and take the position that societal attitudes toward addicts informs societal treatment of addicts

Dunno dmac, I'm a longtime addict. I didn't elaborate on my post and didn't feel need to add anything mkre significant as well

societal attitudes toward addicts informs societal treatment of addicts

wins otm

Joan, the examples you mention show that addiction, at a certain level, can lead to a situation in which refraining from consuming a certain drug is highly unpleasant, but even here the compulsion doesn't become uncontrollable, which I think would be a necessary basis for it to be considered an illness. Again, to observe this isn't to diminish the hideousness of the experience, but the distinction is a necessary one for the sake of accurate analysis.

There are extreme cases with, for example, the DTs, where withdrawal literally can be fatal, but those cases would, I think, be the exception.

Ok wins if we're getting specific then I don't see anyone itt being all of society damn what a cool thread

Ross, I'm the product of a shittily behaved addict. That was one of my points upthread in that imo brocollis post was from certain perspectives - maybe that one- an arguable one, and one that someone can hold without having society's treatment of addicts (again I'd note we are discussing the death of a much loved and wealthy actor here not the situation in the back alleys or whatever) tied to that is imo unfair and it's also dishonest.

Freedoms perspective yeah look not so much.

", but even here the compulsion doesn't become uncontrollable,"

you are a true idiot with little to no firsthand experience with addiction, clearly.

why does it being fatal or not make any difference?

If it isn't fatal it's not an illness, duh. Did you skip biology or something ums?

I mean it's literally a matter of life and death jeez

gentlemen...i just beat the flu

i will never die

I didn't say that it being fatal or not was the key factor; I was just giving an extreme example of where the label of illness might be applicable.

Ok wins if we're getting specific then I don't see anyone itt being all of society damn what a cool thread


It isn't an overly nice distinction! aiui jim was just saying the post itt was annoying because it's indicative of an attitude that is prevalent & harmful outside of ilx, not that its expression here will lead to the collapse of civilisation

Fwiw I took your point straight away about valid emotional response re ppl caught in the fallout, as long as we all agree "freedom" is a dumb cunt it's all good 🙂

As always we cool

anyone that isn't an addict or hasn't had an addict in their lives can fuck right off with their ignorant judgment and analysis of something they clearly don't understand. i cannot see how anyone can read this piece and come away thinking "what a selfish, emotionally manipulative asshole." un-fucking-believable

I didn't say that it being fatal or not was the key factor; I was just giving an extreme example of where the label of illness might be applicable.

i have experienced addiction first hand and i don't blame anyone who looks at it from the outside and doesn't understand it... it's an incomprehensible thing. also, if a result of the disease is that it in some sense turns one into a selfish emotionally manipulative asshole, is someone really wrong to observe that, regardless of the underlying cause? i dunno