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Philip Seymour Hoffman's Death

February 2, 2014 by deirdre 6 Comments

I’m surprised that I feel such a loss at his death.
He wasn’t my favorite actor.
I like to call him: my favorite actor whose choices I mostly hated and mostly couldn’t watch. That’s because I strongly prefer comedy to drama and he clearly went the other way on that scale. Sometimes I would watch his movies even though I knew I’d hate them, but I stopped doing that after Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.
State & Main is one of my favorite films. A friend said he didn’t like it because it “lacked warmth.” Well, he’s from the south, so I just kinda laughed at that and said, “It’s got great warmth for Northern New England. After all, styles of warmth differ.” And it did. (And they do.)
So I’ll hang onto that and The Big Lebowski, Twister (aka: The Weather Channel with a plot), The Invention of Lying, and Pirate Radio.
And maybe, just maybe, at some point I’ll be in a place where I can watch The Master.
Philip Seymour Hoffman

Filed Under: In Memoriam Tagged With: memoriam, movies, scientology

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Comments

  1. Steven Scotten says

    February 2, 2014 at 3:42 pm

    Yeah.
    Whether I agreed with his choices (and I did more often than you but far from every time) I recognized that he was a tremendous talent and almost always made a picture better for having him in it.
    What a shame.

    Reply
    • deirdre says

      February 2, 2014 at 5:21 pm

      He was obviously a tremendous talent. I just wish he’d gotten enough help for his heroin addiction.
      Edit: sigh, no Markdown in comments with Jetpack?

      Reply
      • Steven Scotten says

        February 2, 2014 at 6:54 pm

        What I’m hearing is that he had 23 years clean until less than two years ago. That’s a hell of a relapse, and not the sort of thing we can blame on not having the help available.
        46. Jesus. I’m 44.
        Anyway, I keep forgetting the reason I started typing the first comment: State and Main. I remember liking it. And I also recall it having a trademark Mamet stage-production feel. Sometimes he makes movies which feel like stage plays, and State and Main was one. I might have to see it again but i think that may have more to do with the lack of warmth some people might perceive than it being about Vuhmahnt. Maybe.

        Reply
        • deirdre says

          February 2, 2014 at 7:41 pm

          A lot of Mamet’s stuff feels like stage work; some of his films were first brought to stage. State and Main also featured Julia Stiles. In 2009, we saw her on Broadway in Mamet’s Oleanna.
          Interesting idea that that may be why it feels less warm. I think it’s just the way the back-and-forth dialogue is written: all intellectual a la West Wing. But that’s how Vermont is in my experience.
          Maybe it’s time to find the DVD.

          Reply
          • Steven Scotten says

            February 2, 2014 at 9:21 pm

            Let me clarify that that doesn’t make *me* find it less warm and I wouldn’t expect it to make you find it less warm. But the “bringing a play to film” aspect is one that I suspect some people who aren’t me would find distancing and perhaps less intimate.
            And, you know, I’m a Vermonter so it could be that I just get it.

          • deirdre says

            February 2, 2014 at 9:24 pm

            Yeah, I totally got that. And, having lived in Vermont, I’m quite comfortable with the crusty folks up there. There’s the New York-style honesty, but it’s softer because you still want your neighbor to prevent you from freezing to death if things get really bad.
            For me, a lot of the southern-style warmth doesn’t feel warm to me at all—just intrusive.

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