{"id":4315,"date":"2014-02-03T00:00:36","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T05:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=4315"},"modified":"2014-02-03T05:38:34","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T10:38:34","slug":"rip-philip-seymour-hoffman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/rip-philip-seymour-hoffman\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Philip Seymour Hoffman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"philip\"
\n

\nToday we lost one of the absolute best. An actor who put his all in to every role, always giving you your money\u2019s worth, never wasting a moment of your time. A virtuoso, with all the adoration one could ever want or need from their peers and from audiences. Just goes to show, you can have it all, and still throw it away.<\/p>\n

Addiction is something I\u2019ve never personally experienced, so I\u2019m by no means an expert. But I do know what it looks like. It looks like the trading of soul gratification for momentary gratification. It looks like an invited wave, grabbing hold of your beach and eroding every castle you\u2019ve ever built, telling you it\u2019s all just sand anyway, so why bother having them. It is evil<\/i>, and it lies<\/i>, and it is the ultimate internal resistance. I hope he is finally at peace.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d say I \u2018miss\u2019 him, but I never knew his mortal self. I only ever knew his timeless self, which will be here as long as cinema\u2014which is to say, forever. Everything good about this man is immortal. Everything bad, I never encountered, and will never encounter. My heart goes out to his family, who I\u2019m sure have been struggling with his two selves for some time. I hope they are able to find peace as well.
\n
\nMagnolia<\/a> is the first Paul Thomas Anderson movie I ever saw, and in it was the first Philip Seymour Hoffman performance I ever saw. He and everything else in that movie blew me away. It instantly became my favorite film\u2014my first favorite film that was a \u2018serious\u2019 film. Up until that point, I was way more into comedies\u2014Tommy Boy<\/a>, What About Bob?<\/a>, and Wayne\u2019s World<\/a> being my top three. Magnolia sparked my foray into denser territory, which isn\u2019t to say I suddenly dismissed lighter fare\u2014I just wasn\u2019t obsessed with it anymore. P.T. Anderson, David Lynch, Wes Anderson\u2014these guys became my obsessions (replacing Farley, Murray, Myers) and are absolutely the reason I started writing screenplays.<\/p>\n

Every screenwriter hopes that one day an actor such as Philip Seymour Hoffman will grace their words with their delivery. It\u2019s a sign of \u2018making it\u2019, much like having a film of yours reviewed by Roger Ebert was, which I wrote about in my eulogy to him<\/a> last year. As these important icons pass, we realize that we never really needed these benchmarks to happen\u2014we just needed the idea<\/i> of them happening, to motivate us. A crucial part of our journey, but not a necessary part of our destination\u2014not literally, at least.<\/p>\n

I feel as though I have worked with Philip Seymour Hoffman, in that I have worked with actors I adored working with, who have brought life to lines I\u2019ve written in ways that feel wholly natural and spontaneous, yet are full of invisible, instantaneous, perfect calculation. So I have<\/i> reached my destination. And that\u2019s a beautiful feeling. But it\u2019s also a sobering one, because I don\u2019t \u2018feel\u2019 different. I still feel like me. But quoth the late great John Candy in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles<\/a>, \u201cI like<\/i> me.\u201d So I\u2019m happy with that. Not everyone feels that way about themselves though, and for them, success can be difficult to deal with.<\/p>\n

I get the sense that that was part of what lead to Philip Seymour Hoffman\u2019s demise. He was so phenomenally talented at portraying deeply troubled characters, and achieved great success doing so\u2014success that, in his dreams, I\u2019m sure he assumed he would achieve after<\/i> he\u2019d fully conquered his own demons. But that\u2019s not how life works. It\u2019s not always so linear. Like a great movie, it can be quite dense, and layered, and not black and white, but grey.<\/p>\n

In the end, life imitated art. One of the undisputed kings at being tragic characters died tragically. If it were a movie, we\u2019d be applauding it. We\u2019d give him an award. Instead, we\u2019re trapped in the reality of it all, forced to mourn, forced to deeply feel, our hearts forced fully open\u2014an actor\u2019s ultimate wish for their audience. A bittersweet wish.<\/p>\n

Philip Seymour Hoffman, we love you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"philip\"
\n

\nToday we lost one of the absolute best. An actor who put his all in to every role, always giving you your money\u2019s worth, never wasting a moment of your time. A virtuoso, with all the adoration one could ever want or need from their peers and from audiences. Just goes to show, you can have it all, and still throw it away.<\/p>\n

Addiction is something I\u2019ve never personally experienced, so I\u2019m by no means an expert. But I do know what it looks like. It looks like the trading of soul gratification for momentary gratification. It looks like an invited wave, grabbing hold of your beach and eroding every castle you\u2019ve ever built, telling you it\u2019s all just sand anyway, so why bother having them. It is evil<\/i>, and it lies<\/i>, and it is the ultimate internal resistance. I hope he is finally at peace.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d say I \u2018miss\u2019 him, but I never knew his mortal self. I only ever knew his timeless self, which will be here as long as cinema\u2014which is to say, forever. Everything good about this man is immortal. Everything bad, I never encountered, and will never encounter. My heart goes out to his family, who I\u2019m sure have been struggling with his two selves for some time. I hope they are able to find peace as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,18],"tags":[1868,3510,32,3512,63,3511,2697,60,473,3506,3505,3504,3513,3503,3502,104,185,3302,3507,2480,3508,3509],"class_list":["post-4315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-codysessays","tag-bill-murray","tag-chris-farley","tag-cody-clarke","tag-john-candy","tag-magnolia","tag-mike-myers","tag-p-t-anderson","tag-paul-thomas-anderson","tag-philip-seymour-hoffman","tag-philip-seymour-hoffman-dead","tag-philip-seymour-hoffman-death","tag-philip-seymour-hoffman-eulogy","tag-planes-trains-and-automobilies","tag-r-i-p-philip-seymour-hoffman","tag-rip-philip-seymour-hoffman","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-tommy-boy","tag-waynes-world","tag-wes-anderson","tag-what-about-bob","tag-what-about-bob-david-lynch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4315"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4327,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315\/revisions\/4327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}